![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The following is a reply to the survey for "Latin for All Reasons" which can be found at http://home.earthlink.net/~caroline.kelly/. Feel free to do the survey yourself. I know Caroline would like all the replies she can get.
IO SATURNALIA et FELICEM NATALEM CHRISTI!
***
>What is the first (English) word that comes to mind when you think
>of Latin?
Extraordinary.
>Why?
Latin is beyond the ordinary foreign language. There's a beauty to Latin that's inherent in its inflectional nature and revealed in its sound and rhythm. Then consider that Latin has been around not for centuries, but for millennia! Although most people only read the major classical authors (Caesar, Vergil, Ovid, Cicero), there's so much more available including Galileo and Copernicus in their own words, the Vulgate Bible, even the earliest accounts of King Arthur. Among these accounts are many letters spanning time, demonstrating among other things that we have a common humanity, a common bond in our feelings toward our fellow man, ours loves, our failures, our triumphs. Learning Latin is like opening a door to the past... and yet, it also opens doors to the future. While my goal of learning/teaching Latin is to read Latin, even for those students who only study for a few years, the benefits are far-reaching. Simple linguistic shifts allow you to understand derivatives not only in English but also in Spanish and other romance languages. Comprehension of the basic structure of Latin grammar aides in mastering finer points of English grammar. So what other word could possibly describe Latin other than EXTRAORDINARY??
>When you encourage students (and their parents) to go for
>Latin, what is the number one reason you give?
Quite honestly, I use the ol' improved SAT score, building verbals and helping with English grammar. Parents want something tangible, something practical, something that can justify not choosing Spanish over Latin. The students, however, choose Latin because it is interesting and different.
>What is the main reason that students in your classes give for going
>to the next level?
For 7th graders, it is to have me as a teacher for the next year. For the majority of 8th graders it is to get the required foreign language credits necessary for graduation. It's really that simple. For a few it is a fascination with Latin that keeps them going, but as we all know the teacher can make the course and your interest in a class is often only as strong as the passion of the teacher teaching the class. So perhaps what I'm saying is that we need more passionate, enthusiastic teachers in order to maintain student interest in the language beyond the utility of improved SAT verbals and English writing skills.
>What is the main reason that you stayed with Latin?
In high school it was a combination of a fun teacher, a love of reading/reciting Latin (participated in JCL dramatic interpretation), and the general fun of JCL competitions. In college I changed my major to Latin because I had some extraordinary professors who exposed me to real Latin authors--Ovid, Vergil, Livy, Catullus, even Geoffrey of Monmouth. I walked away from Latin for a while after my first year of teaching because I felt I was missing something--and I was. I hadn't really learned how to READ Latin from left to right. Since this discovery I have been on a quest to improve my own Latin reading skills and build my pedagogical repertoire so that I can be both a good teacher as well as a true lifelong learner. In my spare time I often pick up Martial or Catullus to read on my own. I often choose a poem or an epigram and rewrite it in some way or another. Why did I stay with Latin? Because people who lived 2000 plus years ago still speak to me, their words still excite me and light me up.
>What is the ideal age for beginning Latin? Why?
If there were enough people trained in Latin and a curriculum developed, I'd start Latin as early as 7-10 years old. The Minimus books are very successful in England. But I also think that in Texas it would be ideal to have instruction in Spanish from kindergarten. Sadly I've seen it poorly executed in great measure because of a lack of qualified Spanish teachers, money to support Spanish teachers in the elementaries, and an inconsistency in what is taught. (Such an experience has killed my son's interest in Spanish.) We currently don't have enough Latin teachers to fill middle school and high school positions so I am skeptical regarding starting Latin any younger. In an ideal world, I'd easily start Latin in 4th or 5th grade.
>What is the worst thing about Latin? (!)
Worst? To me one of the worst things about Latin is the profession's inability or disinterest in changing pedagogical styles in order to teach Latin as efficiently and effectively as possible. The worst thing about Latin is when it is taught as a bunch of endings you have to memorize and actually reading the language is treated more like decoding. That is, when reading the language as a language is not put as the foremost important activity, Latin because something that it was never meant to be. The sad thing is that many students learning Latin will tell you that the worst thing is actually having to translate a story--and yet that is supposed to be the whole point of studying Latin. But the tide is changing and more people are exploring different ways to teach the reading of Latin. Textbooks are changing too and I think the future is bright for Latin.
>Is Latin gaining or losing adherents? Why?
I think it's swinging back to gaining adherents if for no other reason than the side benefits of improved English skills and how Latin looks on a college transcript. But I also think that people are rediscovering Latin and the Romans and the ancient world, and they are discovering that Latin is an extraordinary language and the Romans were fascinating people not much different in many ways from us. Of course, one of the most important factors in the rise in enrollments is the different style of textbooks, more of which below.
>What textbook do you use?
I use the Cambridge Latin Course and love it. Most people will say that its greatest strength is its storyline, which is certainly true, but I think many overlook the sheer brilliance at which material is introduced. Many traditionalists will consider books like CLC to be Diet Latin or Latin Light, because of the lack of repetitive grammatical drills. They will glance through the text and decide that it is fluff, that it is a horrible text, that it isn't worth using. They won't understand the popularity of the text. They will think it is something for the touchy-feely generation and that people who like the book only teach level 1 Latin and thus like it that it's so much easier and "fun" etc. But people who think this way have not taken a close look at the book nor have they read the teacher's manual.
Yes, it starts slowly and simply, getting students used to the idea that the language is inflectional and that verbs are often at the end of sentences. Students are introduced to all three declensions at once, but only one case at a time. Students are introduced to all 4 conjugations of verbs, though only 3rd p.s. is used at first. Students are exposed to the language in the most natural way for Latin--through reading, and lots of it. The repetition of reading the language embeds the forms and uses more firmly into the brain than short term rote memory. As the book progresses the learning curve increases greatly.
This textbook is ideal to use if teaching/emphasizing reading. From very early on, metaphrasing and reading cards can be used to help focus on the morphology. Substitution drills and transformation drills in the context of a sentence reinforce the language as a whole. The end result is that you can teach students to read real Latin as opposed to in the past where students might have excelled in the old drill and kill texts at learning new sets of endings but would choke when presented a passage.
There are several good reading based textbooks out on the market, but I think CLC is the best for several reasons: 1) the storyline is excellent, 2) the introduction of new grammar/morphology is based in great measure on frequency of usage and 3) the beginning chapters of the text truly begin slowly so that students with limited academic preparedness can still succeed. Let me explain. I have found that relative clauses are some of the trickiest things for my students to learn and I am grateful that CLC focuses on noun/adj agreement in preceding chapters so that I can tie in how relative pronouns work. Ecce Romani has relative clauses in its very first chapter. Now, if you are lucky enough to have students who are intelligent and are academically prepared, no problem. But at my school, where the population is probably 85% on the free/reduced lunch program, they do not come prepared academically, do not have much of an awareness of English grammar, and need to begin with these baby steps of the simplest sentences. I think this also make the book ideal for younger students.
>What features do you like best about it?
I like the running storyline the most, because it is truly excellent. Writing a good story is about the most difficult thing one can do; coming up with supplemental grammar should be easy for any Latin teacher. I like the illustrated model sentences at the beginning of each chapter. And I enjoy the wealth of ancillary material to choose from. I often do my own thing, as they say, but am happy to fall back on worksheets and other materials that have been prepared by both the publisher and other CLC teachers. The CLC discussion list also has a healthy group of teachers who share regularly and help teachers new to CLC to adjust to the different approach to grammar.
>Should oral Latin be a central part of the curriculum? Why or why
>not?
ABSOLUTELY. It absolutely should, and teachers who were not educated well with regards to Latin pronunciation should find a way to work on their pronunciation. Each year I incorporate more and more oral Latin into my program. The students like it/learn from it, and it makes the language seem more like a language. I don't do fluff conversations; I just try to find ways to incorporate more Latin into our daily routines and commands.
I greet students at the door and ask them questions in Latin. I am often holding a white board with a prompt to help them out, but it is important to me to make sure they hear Latin and that they have to speak the language themselves. I am able to work forms this way--simply asking "habEsne pEnsum?" means they have to reply "habeO/nOn habeO," changing forms and thus working the language.
My warm-ups are written at least half in Latin. I call them praeparAtiOnEs, and most begin with "quaesO, aperIte spIrAlEs, scrIbite diem hodiernum, et...." and then the rest of the instructions will be in English. Once the bell rings, I will say these exact things outloud to them. I give many orders in Latin, from tacEte to shut them up to nOlI tangere when one kid is touching another.
For most chapters students have to phone in and leave an oral recitation (recitAtiO) on my voicemail. (This makes it easier to grade on my own time.) We have a master sheet with a couple of sentences pulled from stories in the chapter we are on which we will practice in class several days straight. No memorization is required, simply reading the Latin outloud with attention to vowel length and accent.
Now, here is WHY I think oral Latin is so important. We have no native speakers around. Cicero won't pop in to give a talk, Ovid won't be signing books, and there's really nowhere we can go to hear those ancient natives speak. But we do have a record of how they spoke--the written word. Even in ancient times people were writing about HOW to pronounce Latin and we truly do have evidence both from literature and epigraphy to tell us how to pronounce Latin. Fine, good, you say. But who really cares? It's not like Cicero is around to complain. But I ask you--how did you learn to read English? You read outloud with help from Mom and Dad. Mom or Dad (or a sibling) was there to help you everytime you tripped over a word and stumbled with a pronunciation. You sounded words out, and had your efforts praised by a native speaker. You fixed new words in your mind by saying it correctly and perhaps even discussing the meaning with your parents. You were not allowed to pronounce words one way one time and a different way the next. You were taught that there was a right way. In early readers you may have even had long marks over long vowels and short marks over short vowels, which you no longer needed as you developed as a reader. And over time your parents and teachers would encourage you to read silently to yourself. And what is silent reading if not hearing the words in your head? (Ok, unless you are a speed reader.)
I myself don't want to read texts without long marks/macrons. I don't need them for the inflectional endings; that I can manage fine. But the new vocabulary, the overwhelming amount of new vocabulary that you meet when reading a new author can be overwhelming. The RIGHT way to learn vocabulary is via context--that is, you will retain the meaning of the word longer if you read it in a sentence than if you look at it in an isolated list or in the dictionary. And if I'm learning a new word, I want to say it outloud, I want to hear it, I want to fix the way that word sounds in my head so that if I ever need to WRITE that word, I can write it accurately--long marks and all--without looking. Impossible? Well, I can tell you that I vowed to learn all the vocabulary in CLC Unit 1 & 2 cold--macrons and all--so that when I write tests or write on the board or need to use the vocabulary without having my book in hand that I can pronounce and write the word accurately. And for probably 98% of the words I truly can say/write them accurately.
Well, what does that mean? It means when I pick up an author/text that does not have macrons (like some Catullus I was reading the other night) that I can probably read it accurately--proper vowel length and accentuation--at site BECAUSE I REALLY KNOW MY VOCABULARY. I don't know just what a word means, I know the WHOLE WORD.
And so what? Let's just say that I can enjoy a Latin passage with considerably more pleasure than the average person because I CAN HEAR WHAT IT WAS SUPPOSED TO SOUND LIKE! We have no native speakers so we MUST be vigilant ourselves. We must.
And how can we ever get our minds to bend around Roman word order if we don't try to speak it? After all, it's only "Yoda Speak" isn't it? Speak like Yoda, we can.
Look, everything with me is a work in progress toward a lofty goal. I want to teach my students in ways that I was NOT taught, and I want them to teach in ways that go beyond how they were taught. Can I converse in Latin? No, not that well. I lack the experience and the practical vocabulary. But that doesn't mean that I don't think oral Latin is important. My goal each year is to incorporate more oral Latin into my classes. Who knows? Maybe one day I can do Latin as an immersion class. It is being done that way elsewhere....
What I despise, what I truly despise, are those teachers who *know* they don't pronounce Latin well and don't care. How can they not care? Are they not reading Vergil and Ovid and Cicero to their students? After all, ancient Romans preferred to LISTEN to readings, not read silently to themselves. They are letting their own insecurities and failings dictate how they teach the language. I'd rather make an ass of myself and fail at some new effort to use Latin in the classroom than to never try at all.
>If you have an anecdote about a student who was 'transformed' by
>taking Latin, please share the story:
My students are young--middle schoolers--and it is perhaps too early to say if they were transformed by Latin. I know I have students who will bend over backwards to make good grades for me and who struggle or fail other classes. The most I can say is that I have instilled in many of these students a love for Latin that seems to last even after they have had to stop taking Latin. (That is, many of these students end up at one fo the high schools that does not offer Latin.) I think what many of my students share is the feeling of control in their academic life because of how I teach studying skills along with Latin. I teach them how to be smart; I don't weed them out as incapable of learning. I'd like to think they leave me with a higher self-esteem and a realization that they are capable of doing anything they put their minds to.
IO SATURNALIA et FELICEM NATALEM CHRISTI!
***
>What is the first (English) word that comes to mind when you think
>of Latin?
Extraordinary.
>Why?
Latin is beyond the ordinary foreign language. There's a beauty to Latin that's inherent in its inflectional nature and revealed in its sound and rhythm. Then consider that Latin has been around not for centuries, but for millennia! Although most people only read the major classical authors (Caesar, Vergil, Ovid, Cicero), there's so much more available including Galileo and Copernicus in their own words, the Vulgate Bible, even the earliest accounts of King Arthur. Among these accounts are many letters spanning time, demonstrating among other things that we have a common humanity, a common bond in our feelings toward our fellow man, ours loves, our failures, our triumphs. Learning Latin is like opening a door to the past... and yet, it also opens doors to the future. While my goal of learning/teaching Latin is to read Latin, even for those students who only study for a few years, the benefits are far-reaching. Simple linguistic shifts allow you to understand derivatives not only in English but also in Spanish and other romance languages. Comprehension of the basic structure of Latin grammar aides in mastering finer points of English grammar. So what other word could possibly describe Latin other than EXTRAORDINARY??
>When you encourage students (and their parents) to go for
>Latin, what is the number one reason you give?
Quite honestly, I use the ol' improved SAT score, building verbals and helping with English grammar. Parents want something tangible, something practical, something that can justify not choosing Spanish over Latin. The students, however, choose Latin because it is interesting and different.
>What is the main reason that students in your classes give for going
>to the next level?
For 7th graders, it is to have me as a teacher for the next year. For the majority of 8th graders it is to get the required foreign language credits necessary for graduation. It's really that simple. For a few it is a fascination with Latin that keeps them going, but as we all know the teacher can make the course and your interest in a class is often only as strong as the passion of the teacher teaching the class. So perhaps what I'm saying is that we need more passionate, enthusiastic teachers in order to maintain student interest in the language beyond the utility of improved SAT verbals and English writing skills.
>What is the main reason that you stayed with Latin?
In high school it was a combination of a fun teacher, a love of reading/reciting Latin (participated in JCL dramatic interpretation), and the general fun of JCL competitions. In college I changed my major to Latin because I had some extraordinary professors who exposed me to real Latin authors--Ovid, Vergil, Livy, Catullus, even Geoffrey of Monmouth. I walked away from Latin for a while after my first year of teaching because I felt I was missing something--and I was. I hadn't really learned how to READ Latin from left to right. Since this discovery I have been on a quest to improve my own Latin reading skills and build my pedagogical repertoire so that I can be both a good teacher as well as a true lifelong learner. In my spare time I often pick up Martial or Catullus to read on my own. I often choose a poem or an epigram and rewrite it in some way or another. Why did I stay with Latin? Because people who lived 2000 plus years ago still speak to me, their words still excite me and light me up.
>What is the ideal age for beginning Latin? Why?
If there were enough people trained in Latin and a curriculum developed, I'd start Latin as early as 7-10 years old. The Minimus books are very successful in England. But I also think that in Texas it would be ideal to have instruction in Spanish from kindergarten. Sadly I've seen it poorly executed in great measure because of a lack of qualified Spanish teachers, money to support Spanish teachers in the elementaries, and an inconsistency in what is taught. (Such an experience has killed my son's interest in Spanish.) We currently don't have enough Latin teachers to fill middle school and high school positions so I am skeptical regarding starting Latin any younger. In an ideal world, I'd easily start Latin in 4th or 5th grade.
>What is the worst thing about Latin? (!)
Worst? To me one of the worst things about Latin is the profession's inability or disinterest in changing pedagogical styles in order to teach Latin as efficiently and effectively as possible. The worst thing about Latin is when it is taught as a bunch of endings you have to memorize and actually reading the language is treated more like decoding. That is, when reading the language as a language is not put as the foremost important activity, Latin because something that it was never meant to be. The sad thing is that many students learning Latin will tell you that the worst thing is actually having to translate a story--and yet that is supposed to be the whole point of studying Latin. But the tide is changing and more people are exploring different ways to teach the reading of Latin. Textbooks are changing too and I think the future is bright for Latin.
>Is Latin gaining or losing adherents? Why?
I think it's swinging back to gaining adherents if for no other reason than the side benefits of improved English skills and how Latin looks on a college transcript. But I also think that people are rediscovering Latin and the Romans and the ancient world, and they are discovering that Latin is an extraordinary language and the Romans were fascinating people not much different in many ways from us. Of course, one of the most important factors in the rise in enrollments is the different style of textbooks, more of which below.
>What textbook do you use?
I use the Cambridge Latin Course and love it. Most people will say that its greatest strength is its storyline, which is certainly true, but I think many overlook the sheer brilliance at which material is introduced. Many traditionalists will consider books like CLC to be Diet Latin or Latin Light, because of the lack of repetitive grammatical drills. They will glance through the text and decide that it is fluff, that it is a horrible text, that it isn't worth using. They won't understand the popularity of the text. They will think it is something for the touchy-feely generation and that people who like the book only teach level 1 Latin and thus like it that it's so much easier and "fun" etc. But people who think this way have not taken a close look at the book nor have they read the teacher's manual.
Yes, it starts slowly and simply, getting students used to the idea that the language is inflectional and that verbs are often at the end of sentences. Students are introduced to all three declensions at once, but only one case at a time. Students are introduced to all 4 conjugations of verbs, though only 3rd p.s. is used at first. Students are exposed to the language in the most natural way for Latin--through reading, and lots of it. The repetition of reading the language embeds the forms and uses more firmly into the brain than short term rote memory. As the book progresses the learning curve increases greatly.
This textbook is ideal to use if teaching/emphasizing reading. From very early on, metaphrasing and reading cards can be used to help focus on the morphology. Substitution drills and transformation drills in the context of a sentence reinforce the language as a whole. The end result is that you can teach students to read real Latin as opposed to in the past where students might have excelled in the old drill and kill texts at learning new sets of endings but would choke when presented a passage.
There are several good reading based textbooks out on the market, but I think CLC is the best for several reasons: 1) the storyline is excellent, 2) the introduction of new grammar/morphology is based in great measure on frequency of usage and 3) the beginning chapters of the text truly begin slowly so that students with limited academic preparedness can still succeed. Let me explain. I have found that relative clauses are some of the trickiest things for my students to learn and I am grateful that CLC focuses on noun/adj agreement in preceding chapters so that I can tie in how relative pronouns work. Ecce Romani has relative clauses in its very first chapter. Now, if you are lucky enough to have students who are intelligent and are academically prepared, no problem. But at my school, where the population is probably 85% on the free/reduced lunch program, they do not come prepared academically, do not have much of an awareness of English grammar, and need to begin with these baby steps of the simplest sentences. I think this also make the book ideal for younger students.
>What features do you like best about it?
I like the running storyline the most, because it is truly excellent. Writing a good story is about the most difficult thing one can do; coming up with supplemental grammar should be easy for any Latin teacher. I like the illustrated model sentences at the beginning of each chapter. And I enjoy the wealth of ancillary material to choose from. I often do my own thing, as they say, but am happy to fall back on worksheets and other materials that have been prepared by both the publisher and other CLC teachers. The CLC discussion list also has a healthy group of teachers who share regularly and help teachers new to CLC to adjust to the different approach to grammar.
>Should oral Latin be a central part of the curriculum? Why or why
>not?
ABSOLUTELY. It absolutely should, and teachers who were not educated well with regards to Latin pronunciation should find a way to work on their pronunciation. Each year I incorporate more and more oral Latin into my program. The students like it/learn from it, and it makes the language seem more like a language. I don't do fluff conversations; I just try to find ways to incorporate more Latin into our daily routines and commands.
I greet students at the door and ask them questions in Latin. I am often holding a white board with a prompt to help them out, but it is important to me to make sure they hear Latin and that they have to speak the language themselves. I am able to work forms this way--simply asking "habEsne pEnsum?" means they have to reply "habeO/nOn habeO," changing forms and thus working the language.
My warm-ups are written at least half in Latin. I call them praeparAtiOnEs, and most begin with "quaesO, aperIte spIrAlEs, scrIbite diem hodiernum, et...." and then the rest of the instructions will be in English. Once the bell rings, I will say these exact things outloud to them. I give many orders in Latin, from tacEte to shut them up to nOlI tangere when one kid is touching another.
For most chapters students have to phone in and leave an oral recitation (recitAtiO) on my voicemail. (This makes it easier to grade on my own time.) We have a master sheet with a couple of sentences pulled from stories in the chapter we are on which we will practice in class several days straight. No memorization is required, simply reading the Latin outloud with attention to vowel length and accent.
Now, here is WHY I think oral Latin is so important. We have no native speakers around. Cicero won't pop in to give a talk, Ovid won't be signing books, and there's really nowhere we can go to hear those ancient natives speak. But we do have a record of how they spoke--the written word. Even in ancient times people were writing about HOW to pronounce Latin and we truly do have evidence both from literature and epigraphy to tell us how to pronounce Latin. Fine, good, you say. But who really cares? It's not like Cicero is around to complain. But I ask you--how did you learn to read English? You read outloud with help from Mom and Dad. Mom or Dad (or a sibling) was there to help you everytime you tripped over a word and stumbled with a pronunciation. You sounded words out, and had your efforts praised by a native speaker. You fixed new words in your mind by saying it correctly and perhaps even discussing the meaning with your parents. You were not allowed to pronounce words one way one time and a different way the next. You were taught that there was a right way. In early readers you may have even had long marks over long vowels and short marks over short vowels, which you no longer needed as you developed as a reader. And over time your parents and teachers would encourage you to read silently to yourself. And what is silent reading if not hearing the words in your head? (Ok, unless you are a speed reader.)
I myself don't want to read texts without long marks/macrons. I don't need them for the inflectional endings; that I can manage fine. But the new vocabulary, the overwhelming amount of new vocabulary that you meet when reading a new author can be overwhelming. The RIGHT way to learn vocabulary is via context--that is, you will retain the meaning of the word longer if you read it in a sentence than if you look at it in an isolated list or in the dictionary. And if I'm learning a new word, I want to say it outloud, I want to hear it, I want to fix the way that word sounds in my head so that if I ever need to WRITE that word, I can write it accurately--long marks and all--without looking. Impossible? Well, I can tell you that I vowed to learn all the vocabulary in CLC Unit 1 & 2 cold--macrons and all--so that when I write tests or write on the board or need to use the vocabulary without having my book in hand that I can pronounce and write the word accurately. And for probably 98% of the words I truly can say/write them accurately.
Well, what does that mean? It means when I pick up an author/text that does not have macrons (like some Catullus I was reading the other night) that I can probably read it accurately--proper vowel length and accentuation--at site BECAUSE I REALLY KNOW MY VOCABULARY. I don't know just what a word means, I know the WHOLE WORD.
And so what? Let's just say that I can enjoy a Latin passage with considerably more pleasure than the average person because I CAN HEAR WHAT IT WAS SUPPOSED TO SOUND LIKE! We have no native speakers so we MUST be vigilant ourselves. We must.
And how can we ever get our minds to bend around Roman word order if we don't try to speak it? After all, it's only "Yoda Speak" isn't it? Speak like Yoda, we can.
Look, everything with me is a work in progress toward a lofty goal. I want to teach my students in ways that I was NOT taught, and I want them to teach in ways that go beyond how they were taught. Can I converse in Latin? No, not that well. I lack the experience and the practical vocabulary. But that doesn't mean that I don't think oral Latin is important. My goal each year is to incorporate more oral Latin into my classes. Who knows? Maybe one day I can do Latin as an immersion class. It is being done that way elsewhere....
What I despise, what I truly despise, are those teachers who *know* they don't pronounce Latin well and don't care. How can they not care? Are they not reading Vergil and Ovid and Cicero to their students? After all, ancient Romans preferred to LISTEN to readings, not read silently to themselves. They are letting their own insecurities and failings dictate how they teach the language. I'd rather make an ass of myself and fail at some new effort to use Latin in the classroom than to never try at all.
>If you have an anecdote about a student who was 'transformed' by
>taking Latin, please share the story:
My students are young--middle schoolers--and it is perhaps too early to say if they were transformed by Latin. I know I have students who will bend over backwards to make good grades for me and who struggle or fail other classes. The most I can say is that I have instilled in many of these students a love for Latin that seems to last even after they have had to stop taking Latin. (That is, many of these students end up at one fo the high schools that does not offer Latin.) I think what many of my students share is the feeling of control in their academic life because of how I teach studying skills along with Latin. I teach them how to be smart; I don't weed them out as incapable of learning. I'd like to think they leave me with a higher self-esteem and a realization that they are capable of doing anything they put their minds to.
