JCL is a place for service, learning, community, classics, and spreading the JCLove. But how can we do that even outside of JCL?. The Latin Roots program was created by Marwan Mikdadi and its current president is Angelina Culotta. It provides middle school students without Latin classes an opportunity to learn the classics. JCL or Latin students teach them Greek and Latin Roots, with Roman culture and mythology lessons, as well as fun classics-based games for the students to participate in at meetings every Wednesday. It has provided me with valuable experience that I'm grateful for, such as learning about teaching the classics to younger students, and it has been a lot of fun working with them. All JCLers should have an opportunity to be a part of this program which combines learning experiences, community service, and fun- so I interviewed Marwan and Angelina to answer any questions you may have before signing up!
Interview done By Emma Hulse - Historian
Q: So for the Latin roots program, Marwan, how did you start the program and what were your goals or visions for it?
Marwan: I always wanted to do something along the lines of having an after school program that would reach for English grammatical applications of Latin. Ever since I was a freshman in high school I always liked researching ways of expanding interest in Latin amongst students who don't have access to it, like kids who go to public schools - typically, it's not offered as a course, especially public high schools. There's this program called Aequora, which has a similar purpose that taught a lot about the connection between English and Latin grammar. For the longest time when I was a state officer for JCL I wanted to do something - COVID, of course, prevented that when I was state president, so once I left office in March 2021, after my term had ended, I had an opening to begin work on something for he following school year, since things looked as if we were gonna go back in person. One of the big things I had to do to get it up and running was to get funding, so for that I needed a grant. I spoked with Ms. Natalie Roy, the Roman technology and Latin teacher at Glasgow, she told me about the Ascanlus Grant Corporation that offers $1000 grants year-round for programs like this to apply for it. I needed an adult sponsor. I asked a lot of different Latin professors in the state, but all were too busy, so I was contacting classics professors that I'd researched in other states. Eventually, I heard back from one of them, his name was Dr. Dieter Gunkel. He is a classical and international linguistics professor at the Univeristy of Richmond, and he directed me to some helpful resources, one of them heing an article about a similarily focused program done by the university's classics students where they taught middle school students the connections between Greek and Latin etymology and English- basically what we do - and I took some of the activities and games that they did, so I used that for our curriculum. Then I worked on creating a curriculum itself with the professor - a word list of the Latin wors themselves, and the words in English
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