Monthly Archives: September 2017

I confess that, for much of my high school teaching career, I’ve had reservations about giving project assignments to my Latin students. Latin language and Roman culture have always been the focus of my courses, and students make the best progress through sustained, frequent engagement with the language. Above all this requires time and attention, precious things in the average public school day and often under assault by various centrifugal forces. Taking time away from learning the language and about the culture in order to conceive, organize and work on an individual or group project has seemed to me a spectacular misuse of time.
Of course, looking back now, from the vantage point of the end of my teaching career, I am aware that my attitude says as much about me as a teacher and a person and about my various intelligences as it does about pedagogical principles. So there may be an element of kharma as I find myself teaching in a tiny semester school with an overall emphasis on human ecology—both knowledge of the natural world and awareness of our species’ place, actions, and impact upon it.
Here experiential learning is emphasized in all subjects at least to a degree. Math is taught with an eye to real applications; science is taught with a lot of field work. My Spanish colleague teaches a unit in which his students describe an animal from our Traveling Natural History Program in great detail, focusing on their senses and their physical evolutionary adaptations in order to thrive in their environment. My French colleague makes every exam a real-world situation—for example, call up a hotel in Quebec City, make a reservation for the weekend and ask about parking arrangements in the Old Town (obviously the hotels are alerted ahead of time and agree to participate). My Mandarin colleague makes holiday dishes with her students entirely in the target language.
And me? I feel my hands are tied both by my school (oddly, I think) and by the programs of the schools my students come from. After six years of doing summer Latin immersions, I would like very much to use the 400-acre campus as my classroom and teach about the natural world and the Romans’ view of it in Latin. For one thing, this would support the science teachers’ efforts to teach binomial nomenclature. For another, it would make me once again terrifically excited about teaching.
But I can’t get my school to buy into this, because most of my students come from big-city, college-prep independent school programs and they are in pre-AP or AP Latin courses as juniors. I do understand this, but it is a pity.
Anyway, the final week of our semester is taken up by our Human Ecology Capstone (HEC) project, to which an entire week is devoted. This can push semester finals back before Thanksgiving (although some of my colleagues of course give them). This is one of many reasons I offer doing a semester final project instead of writing an exam.
I give students about 2/3rds of our semester to choose and work on their project, so they don’t get overloaded with having to work on their HEC project at the same time. I make it clear that three formal write-ups of their progress are as much a part of their grade as the project itself. Aside from alleviating the perils of procrastination and avoiding conflict with their HEC projects, my thinking here is that some projects do very worthy investigation of a topic, but don’t really come together at the end; also, a student may well convince herself that her original conceptional frame was just faulty. I see no reason why that conclusion in itself should penalize a student; a lot of bright ideas end in failure in life.
Results over seven years have ranged from good to truly fantastic. Out of about 45 projects, I’ve only had one that I would characterize as unsuccessful and one case where the student changed topics mid-stream. The latter student ended up writing a rap based on Francisco J Cabrera’s Latin poetry about the Aztec culture hero Quetzalcoatl and teaching himself how to scan hexameters in the process, so the end result was quite a success. The gifted Latinists have generally chosen topics that allow their talents to shine: one student wrote a 25-pp. paper investigating William S. Anderson’s and Richard J Tarrant’s editorial choices for the Phaethon tale in their Teubner and Oxford texts of the Metamorphoses (1.747-779; 2.1-328). That a high-school junior could organize this amount of data and say anything analytical about the evidence I found astonishing.
Another student, with whom I read Iliad 1, was quite interested in mythology and posed the Judgment of Paris question to the school community via a survey form. At first I thought this project was more than a little wacky, but the results proved interesting. Aphrodite got very few takers (were adolescents shying away from admitting how much they think about sexual attraction?), and the rest were evenly split between Hera and Athena. And everyone wanted to use their power for the good of humankind. My school is a remarkably altruistic place. This student was disappointed in a 2/3rds response rate on the survey and was only partially assuaged when I told her that any marketing or political survey company would jump for joy at such success.
Our school chef, a very experienced professional in the kitchen, has very wide-ranging knowledge of the history of food, loves working with our students, and has been more than supportive of students who want to investigate Roman food. Six of my students have planned and prepared a Roman supper for the school community (about 70 people). I require a Latin menu card for each table and a 10-minute pre-supper talk on available ingredients, eating habits over the course of a day and Roman preferences for flavors. And I love watching high school students up to their elbows in raw pork, stuffing sausage casings.
Of course, what I’m describing is unimaginable in many school situations. By applying to our school, students are self-selecting for personal responsibility and self-motivation in their learning. They expect to do a lot of physical work and learn by direct, hands-on experience. According to the Buck Institute for Education, a leading promoter of Project Based Learning (PBL), a challenging problem or question, sustained independent inquiry, and student voice and choice all are “essential design elements” characterizing good PBL. I’m very grateful to have an opportunity to see what PBL offers students who are succeeding in traditional college-prep programs, and I hope to embrace the model in my own teaching even more.

As the school year has brought itself into full swing for many folk in New England, a lot of us are finding that time is wanting for our own Latin development, should that be a goal of yours. This past summer was such that I spent most of my time engrossed in Latin and Ancient Greek, specifically speaking it with the Polis Institute/UMass Boston at Bridgewater State University, two weeks with SALVI at both rusticatio omnibus and veteranorum, and finally with the Paideia Institute at Living Greek in Greece.
At these various conventicula Classica, ut ita dicam, I shared with others some habits I developed to make myself a better Latin speaker (and now working on Greek) and also, therefore, a better reader of the Classical languages. I began my own journey into speaking Latin during summer 2016 with the Paideia Institute at their Living Latin in Rome program and it has been thoroughly fruitful thus far. I am hoping that these things will also help you. I am sure many others have similar habits they conduct but I thought I would lay out for you all what I do quo melius agam.
I break my practices into three parts: speaking, reading, and listening. I try to do these things daily but sometimes, life happens. Just like any habit, such as going to the gym, you might slip but what matters is that you pick it back up. The amount you do matters far less than the fact that you actually do it.
First, speaking. It is sometimes quite difficult to find opportunities to speak Latin or Ancient Greek (even though new communities and opportunities are cropping up every day) but there is one resource we all have: ourselves. Most of us have a strong enough monitor that we can recognize mistakes when others speak but sometimes lack the ability ourselves to be able to speak ex tempore and so there are few things I recommend that I have done myself quo melius loquar. I want to be clear that I am not necessarily proposing original ideas so much as specifically citing what I do and these ideas were pulled from various resources or articles I have read. I claim no credit for any of them. All things below can be substituted with lingua Graeca or pretty much any language you wish to develop.
-Memorize something every day. Take a sententia or locutio and commit it to your brain. It will make it far easier to access later when reading or speaking.
-If you are able, label things in your home or office with post-its in Latin (I do this in my classroom too). This will make the vocabulary seem more meaningful and ready for active use.
-Take a walk through your space for any amount of time (could be five minutes, could be twenty minutes). Narrate what you are doing as you are doing it Latine e.g. ‘Hoc tempore ad culinam ambulo ut cenam coquam etc.’ Then, take a seat somewhere and narrate what you did. After this, narrate what you did as if someone else were telling it.
Using the language actively like this is something many of us are not used to but, more importanly, it is something often we are afraid of doing. You might have been studying Latin for twenty-five years but when you speak, you don’t want to look like a tiro who just started Latin I. Doing the above might help you build enough confidence to get out into the real world of Latin speaking, ut sic loquar. All of this will lead to better reading.
Second, reading. This will likely be the easiest area to cultivate. Like I said above, it does not matter if you read for ten minutes or fifty, as long as you do it consistently. When one reads Latin, the goal is to understand it per se and with this in mind, your reading consuetudo should likely not be the speeches of Cicero or Histories of Livy but rather, simple material such as Øerbeg’s Lingua Latina: Per Se Illustrata which has helped countless autodidacts and Latinists become better. Read it without an English filter and read through until you feel like you have to translate. Once you get there, go back a few chapters and re-read up to that point.
Re-reading is incredibly productive for acquisition and fluency in languages because you are already familiar with the text and have expectations of what is coming. Therefore, feel free to re-read as often as you want unless it becomes boring. Tedium is the enemy of learning. If you are not enjoying it at all, read something else. We are all doing this because we love it. There are many introductory texts out there and if they are good enough for our students, they are good enough for us.
What I personally did was to read LLPSI thrice and I have been reading works ranging from Plautus to modern blog posts in Latin everyday for twenty-five minutes. That’s one sitcom episode on Netflix. I personally have many people in my life with whom I can text in Latin and this is what language is for: communication between people, not just dead authors. Reading is reading whether through a tome or an iPhone.
Third, listening. Listening to the language is thoroughly important in understanding it in all of its glory. Greek and Latin sound beautiful when read aloud, especially by experienced speakers and luckily, there are those out there that are helping us in this department. Podcasts such as Quomodo Dicitur?, Latinitium, Sermones Raedarii, and others exist in which experienced speakers will talk about rebus variis. 
I have listenend to episodes and readings from many sources everyday for the past year, sometimes for multiple hours (it can get very easy to lose time in the content), and I have re-listened to episodes and readings iterum iterumque. Listen while you do dishes, drive your car, do housework or yardwork, at the gym, or in the morning before you work. I find that listening to Latin in the morning gives me the boost I need to go into my Latin classroom mentally equipped for the day.
Many guides exist for how one increases their Latin and Greek abilities. There is a fourth part that I did not mention in my main body of text because it might not pertain to every person but something that I personally have done with great effect is to look up the grammar rules or tendencies in a prose composition book and then to use specific constructions in my speaking as often as possible. Exempli gratia, I might look up indirect questions with utrum and find that they end in necne to mean ‘whether I will ______ or not,’ and pepper that into my speech as often as possible.
Ultimately, this may not help you but it sure helped me. We all love Latin, that is why you are reading this, but, for me, doing this for my Latin renewed my zeal for the language in a way that never could have happened for me otherwise.
 
-Andrew Morehouse

Collegis peramantibus Linguae Latinae Stephanus SPD!
I hope that you are returning to your academic responsibilities well rested and refreshed, in part from some time given to mental and physical recreation during the summer. I have two things to report on myself along these lines: 1) I retired and 2) I attended the Conventiculum Bostoniense (CB) in Salem (MA) for the first time.
As regards #1, I became eligible for the Maine Public Employees Retirement System this July through my work as a public school teacher decades ago. I’m only a little more than vested in the system, and can say it’s a heckuva good thing this pension isn’t a major part of my retirement planning.
But this additamentum nummorum will make the Conventiculum Bostoniense more affordable for me, which is good news. This summer gathering is a rollicking good time and just a boon for one’s Latin—even for senes like me.
For those unfamiliar with the genre, a conventiculum or conventus is a Latin immersion experience at which experienced Latin speakers share their ideas. Conventūs are more like conferences of professional organizations, whereas conventicula have more characteristics of a workshop. Also, conventicula are, generally speaking, an American species (although the Conventiculum Viterbiense took place in Italy this summer). Also, conventicula in my experience include a formal agreement/pledge/oath to use only Latin for the duration of the program. Beyond this I think it’s hard to generalize: conventional classroom experiences, lectures, model classes, excursions, group singing and skits and other dramatic performances can and do all figure in the mix.
I hardly consider myself a conventiculum connoisseur, but I have attended five summer conventicula, run by Terence Tunberg and Milena Minkova, at Dickinson College and also one meeting of LVPA (Latinitati Vivae Provehendae Associatio) in Poznan, Poland, in 2014, prior to this summer. What distinguished the Conventiculum Bostoniense in my experience was the number of instructors and assistants, the quality of their spoken Latin, and their diverse interests. This year, for perhaps 40 attendees, there were four instructors (all faculty at U Mass Boston) and five assistant instructors, themselves quite an international group, which makes for an instructional ratio of 1:4-5. The spoken Latinity of these instructors and assistants ranges from good to the equal of any I have heard anywhere in the world.
Let me outline my criteria for describing someone’s skill at speaking ex tempore Latin. What I am interested in is having the experience of comprehending Latin without recourse to translating it. Because of the way I was trained (and I do not intend any criticism of my mentors here), unless the Latin speaker is quite fluent, I cannot have this experience—the translation “switch” will not stay off in my head. So, to me, fluency is of prime importance, followed by lexical accuracy (recognizing that one might find oneself listening to a specialist in Classical, Christian, or Neo-Latin), followed by grammatical accuracy. I notice grammatical mistakes (it’s what I was trained to do) but try very hard to to focus on them. Speaking Latin is hard work for the majority of us.
In these terms there are several Latin speakers on the Conventiculum Bostoniense faculty who are truly astonishing for their fluency. For the first time in my life, I had the experience of listening to Latin for twenty or thirty minutes without the appearance of a single thought in English popping up in my head.
Others may have other, equally valid criteria.
What of high school teachers and college instructors who are first-time speakers? There were a number attending this summer, and (to judge from the group debriefing at the end of the program) the experience was rewarding but tiring, stressful, and led to real frustration for some.
The underlying reasons for the frustrations that many Latin teachers experience in these immersion workshops is worth a separate blog post. In general, it is important, I think, for an immersion program to provide a support system or safety net for participants who are feeling stressed. The Conventiculum Bostoniense does do this, although I can’t report on how well it works. Certainly the faculty is aware of the problem.
But—and let me emphasize this—the Conventiculum Bostoniense is not an intellectual boot camp. In fact a great strength of the program is its overall sense of play—of true recreation. Some instructional sessions are peripatetic, using the environment or the group to generate examples to focus on. We reviewed ablatives absolute and double datives in this way (both constructions that are incredibly useful when speaking Latin and which many speakers neglect). Scavenger hunts (one in downtown Salem, the other at the excellent Peabody/Essex Museum) are a wonderful way to take your mind off of how you’re saying something and to focus on what you want to communicate. Time for physical recreation (playing kickball or basketball, doing yoga) is planned into the instructional day. Singing (in both formal, instructional settings and informal ones) figures prominently among the activities. And board game playing in the evening is a way to encourage group socializing.
The range of interests of the Conventiculum Bostoniense teaching staff deeply enriches the program. We were offered sessions on ancient music, paleography, the work of the Mexican Neo-Latin poet Francisco Cabrera, and the uses of a well-designed web site for Latin teaching, in addition to the for-credit courses that comprise the academic “meat” of the program. I found this Smörgåsbord approach both stimulating and appealing. I should mention that all attendees enroll in a graduate-level course, either in active learning methodologies or in a literature topic. Inexperienced speakers take the methodologies course. Those who have attended both courses in prior years, who are over 60, or who are college faculty have an audit option at a reduced fee. I believe that this mandatory enrollment in a course is unique among American conventicula.
I most certainly plan to go again, more physically fit and with more pairs of comfortable shoes. Curate ut valeatis!