Could it be?
No way. But it is!
My god, look who finally bothered to show up!
It's Dr. G!
drg in the written word, if not the flesh.
The one, the only, the infamous!
And where have you been lately?
Well, let me begin by stating the obvious:
A long time between posts.
Three months.
A lot has happened.
In that time, I have taught at Chapin, a private school for girls in New York City.
Teaching lets me tap into my own reserves of imagination and creativity.
And to replenish those resources.
I never want to be one of those folks who go around talking about teaching, then have to sheepishly admit that that teaching is a distant memory.
They are great girls at Chapin.
They know when they're working hard;
they don't kid themselves when they're hardly working.
They candidly, refreshingly take responsibility when that's the case.
Chapin girls are willing, able, and keen on going deeper, broader, and forward into the material.
When these girls have a teacher who sparks that interest, the spark ignites, unleashing a conflagration which is their passion to learn.
They restored my faith in those privileged to be at a private school in the heart of the City.
I thank them for that from the depths of my heart, from the underpinnings of my soul.
How prosaic!
I didn't know that souls even had underpinnings.
But surely you jest.
No, I don't.
Surely then you're overstating the case.
No, I'm not.
And stop calling me Shirley.
Meanwhile, I've been to the UK twice.
I've seen what our programs - cagse's programs - do over there.
I've met with the head teachers of the schools wherein our programs are ensconsced, and the teachers in charge of literacy, English, etc.
And I've met with the real powers that be:
the kids themselves.
They're not just doing well.
They're doing good.
Don't adjust your screen.
That is not a grammatical error.
"good" here is the substantive form of the adjective.
The adjective raised to the status of Noun.
And yeah, that's a fragment.
Anybody want to edit it?
No?
Good.
So why the UK? Why London?
We have a number of schools there using my text Via Facilis: Mastering Latin and Understanding Language.
Caveat Lector! (Let the Reader Beware!)
Read the whole title of that text, not just the first four words.
Understanding Language is the key.
But the students taking these classes must be older, right?
No.
The students are 9 and 10 years old.
They are from every cultural background imaginable.
No need to mention "diversity" across the Pond.
It would be redundant.
I had the privilege of teaching one of the classes.
What enthusiasm! What desire to learn! What eagerness of spirit!
Every type of kid imaginable was in that class. The eager beaver who wants to be not simply noticed, but heard.
The inspector type.
A veritable successor to Maggie Thatcher.
A future head of MI5.
They love learning Latin.
But it's not just that.
These 9 and 10 year olds love understanding language.
Even those who don't speak or know English well are enthralled with the class.
It is an eye-opening experience to have these young people look me in the eye and tell me clearly that a verb is constructed of three pieces:
base
thematic vowel
personal ending
That if you change the ending, you change who's speaking, who's the actor of the verb.
That the base tells you the basic meaning.
That the thematic vowel tells you the class of verb you have in front of you.
Their confidence in their understanding is palpable.
These students see Latin and how cagse teaches it for what it truely is: a powerful tool that will get them wherever they need to go, and allow them to thrive wherever they happen to find themselves.
This is not simply writing postcards to people long dead.
That's a quaint exercise.
It's also a gimmick.
Kids recognize such cheap gimmickry for what it is.
And an approach employing such "methodology" is ultimately condescending.
Condescension is Poison.
It is the one thing teachers cannot exhibit or harbor in any remote way when teaching kids - not if they entertain any shred of hope that their students will learn effectively.
cagse doesn't do that.
our belief is that students can learn the complicated and complex - provided that it is dealt with head on.
cagse specializes in making the complex and complicated accessible.
We have no patience for dumbing down concepts.
We simplify in the mathematical sense.
We of cagse ACCESSIFY.
We know it's working.
Remarked the head of one of our participant schools,
"We've already seen a positive impact on literacy."
This at a school where whole months are dedicated to the familiarization of the students to each of their constituent languages.
There have been forty of these "get to know your chum's language months" so far.
And the program is only seven weeks old.
That's one class per week.
The effect is that powerful.
drg