Latin at All Saints is moving right along.
Sure, there were some initial difficulties.
Getting back into the swing of things was somewhat difficult for me.
Even though I'm a veteran teacher.
It always is, somewhat.
Like Major League baseball players, Spring Training is required.
You forget that kids are, well, kids.
The double accusative of teaching kids is as follows:
I teach Latin.
I teach kids.
Sometimes I teach the one to the other.
But when you're talking about grade school kids, their focus is split.
Their mind is on what they're doing.
Their mind is on what they're not doing.
In equal measures.
Always good to remember that.
Also: you can start with some "easy" stuff.
Some "party favors" as I call them.
Latin numbers.
Latin for hello and good-bye.
Latin for "how are you?"
Throw in some cool facts for grade schoolers to know:
"6 out of every 10 English words are Latinate in derivation."
"The most recent state to stop using Latin as the national language is Hungary in 1849."
"The Romance languages are...."
"Latin was spoken in Italy and all of Europe."
This is all "cosmetics" more than "linguistics".
Sooner or later, you have to get to the blood and guts of the language.
This is where the real learning comes in.
The deeper level, not just the "higher".
And so, last Friday, I had my students - I've got nine of them (a mix of 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th graders - talk about a range) learn the first declension.
Not that they knew it.
I had a word with its ten forms as follows:
terra terrae terrae terram terra terrae terrarum terris terras terris
then i had another ten words underneath as follows:
forma formae
silva silvae
I had the students posit, based on the first forms, what the other forms would be.
Sneaky me. They were practicing a declension and didn't even know it.
I think there is a powerful lesson here.
Students can do a tremendous amount when teachers don't tell them that it's a tremendous amount. They will meet teachers' expectations.
If the expectations are high, the delivery will be high.
Next week, we'll see how they make out with employing the cases.
But I will be teaching them somewhat unconventionally.
I'll let you know.
But it's exciting.
-drg