There is nothing more exhilarating than those ‘aha’ moments that can transform a learning experience for kids into something that exudes excitement, those times when students really ‘want to be there’.  Usually this means that a student has the chance to shine in front of peers, especially if your lesson provides an opportunity for kids to lend their own unique touches to Latin passages that have a special hold on them.  The following ideas for upper-level students are not lesson plans per se, but they might be useful for you when you apply your own skills and talents to bring Latin alive in your classroom in a way that lets everyone do both the teaching and the learning.  It is no secret that we teachers often learn from our students just as they learn from us.  Continue reading for a discussion of Lucretius as the basis for advanced student projects.

Try Lucretius

There is something in Lucretius for everyone, and your advanced students would find no shortage of project possibilities connected to the poem’s multiple and varied contents. The text I used (and heartily recommend) with my students for years is the excellent Lucretius—Selections from De Rerum Natura published in 1998 by Bolchazy-Carducci. Its author is a CANE member and former CANE president, Professor Bonnie Catto, Assumption University, Emerita. The text has superb notes and vocabulary along with multiple comparative references to Homer, Epicurus, Karl Marx, and Carl Sagan, among others, with excellent thought-provoking questions. Students will never be without enormously helpful information about the poem’s grammar, syntax, and metrical scheme.

By the time Latin students have reached senior year, their personal and academic growth is a wonderful thing to witness. As a kind of ‘exit project’ each student could find a passage from Catto’s Lucretius text that would serve as a teaching unit. You can draft the project’s goals and guidelines to suit your own taste since you know these advanced students and their abilities/interests better than anyone. I would have students craft a full period lesson plan, including assessments for peers who would also submit notes/questions to the presenter and to you at the end of each project session. As a project requirement, each student must, during at least a full period class, read the Latin passage (or invite his peers to read), pointing out unusual grammar or syntax, as well as any scansion idiosyncrasies 

Here is one example of how Lucretius played an essential role in my Latin IV classes through the years. In Book II of the poem, there is a passage in which Lucretius describes the swerve of atoms and the notion of free will (not in a religious sense) in the universe. Your students may be taking physics at this stage of their high school career. The passage in Catto’s text has supportive notes and excerpts from such luminaries as Stephen Hawking, Epicurus, Albert Einstein, and the New York Times Magazine. One of my senior students was a champion golfer in Berkshire County, and an outstanding physics and Latin student. After completing the mandatory reading of the Latin passage and its English translation, the student invited the rest of the class to gather on the soccer field in the back of the school. He explained after the students lined up  behind him how  when he hit the golf ball, it at first would seem to be moving in a straight line with an inevitable swerve taking place soon after it was in the air. This is just one of hundreds of examples a Latin/physics student might use to demonstrate an understanding of the laws of physics. Not only do the student’s classmates become more familiar with Lucretius, but they also begin to see a side of a classmate with which they might not be at all familiar. As an added thought, I was able to find time to share classes with our school’s physics teacher. His class would join mine and I would give appropriate background to Epicurus and Lucretius, and my students would meet with a physics class in his room where he would stress the importance of the atomic theory espoused by ancient scientists like Lucretius. This is a terrific way to cross-fertilize what students are learning in common across the curriculum.

Another student was fascinated by Lucretius’s declaration that other worlds exist (Book II). She completed the project’s reading and translation requirements, followed by showing the class an inspiring episode of Cosmos during which Neil deGrasse Tyson spends  time lauding the seminal contribution to understanding the universe championed by none other than Lucretius! Yet another project focused on what all the seniors in the class could identify with—the Lucretian argument that humans have a basic fear of newness (Book II), something seniors encounter as they move from the known world of high school to the unknown one of life after high school. One year a student selected the ominous and curious closing passage of the poem in Book VI which describes the great Plague of Athens in 430 BCE as described by Thucydides. He was fascinated by the passage and wanted to pursue a career in medicine. Ironically, he presented his exit project only three years before the Covid 19 pandemic!

By encouraging students to teach their peers Latin that speaks to them personally is a wonderful way to build community united by a deep appreciation for all things classical. These projects can involve art, music, business, science and math, physical education—in fact, most disciplines in a standard high school curriculum. 

About the Author

Charlie Bradshaw, the author of today’s post, is a longtime Latin teacher and CANE member.

Latin teaching career in Massachusetts:

• Haverhill High School—one year
• Pioneer Valley Regional School (Northfield)—one year
• Ludlow High School—seventeen years
• Wahconah Regional High School (Dalton)—thirty-five years

CANE:

• Director of the CANE Summer Institute at Dartmouth College—2010
• CANE President 2017-2018 academic year
• CARE Chairman  2020 to the present