Segueing off of teaching, you have a very distinct style of teaching Latin that is considered by many to be “unorthodox.” Do you want to talk about that?
And crazy, yes I get that. I do, I speak a lot of Latin in my classroom, and I feel like on a certain level, my pedagogy is informed more by my modern language colleagues-- the French teachers, the Mandarin teachers, the Spanish teachers-- than the Latin teachers. And I’m not saying I’ve turned my back on the Latin community because there’s such a depth of resources there and people whose knowledge of the grammar is so far beyond my own, but it's so exciting to watch the French teachers engage their students in different ways, and it, for me, allows me to engage my students in a way that makes sense to me. I mean, I love being an auditory learner and hearing it while I’m seeing it and saying it; but yes, the main focus of my pedagogy is to treat Latin as if it were a living language. We all know it’s a dead language in a sense that the rules are fixed and immutable, and that’s what makes it immortal, but that does not make it inaccessible for the modern Latin student. You can still use it as a language and you can still have conversations. So that’s why it’s so important to try to communicate in the language because that’s what CIcero was doing, that’s what Caesar was doing. They never intended to be read and turned into another language. They were communicating their thoughts and so I try to learn how to do that.I think speaking Latin helps me understand what they were doing more than when I was reading it and analyzing it.
Had you ever heard of the JCL or been exposed to it pre-Latin-teaching?
No, no. And my first exposure was actually the ACL, which is the American Classical League, so that was my first exposure, knowing that there was a consortium. Then, my first exposure to JCL was through our state chapter, and then the convention. And to see the energy that students bring to that event helps you understand that no matter how broad you think the world of Latin is, or Latin instruction, or Latin learning, it’s actually broader than that. And so, you get a sense at these JCL events of just how not only deep the roots grow, but how broad the roots stretch out, so JCL is a wonderful way for students to access a much much broader community of likeminded and similarly passioned colleagues.
Do you have a favorite JCL memory?
Oh yeah, my favorite JCL memory is always the Valete Assembly, when we pack up and go home. No, no. My favorite JCL memory is the sensations of-- it’s not a single memory-- it’s the energy that you feel when you see the students and when you’re in those big assemblies, or the tests, or the contests, the students are so crazy excited to be doing this. And it’s a test, which they don’t usually like doing. Or it’s a skit, that they don’t usually want to perform. But there’s something that changes when they get to the Convention, that makes it all worthwhile. Apart from that general excitement, coming home from Convention this year was actually pretty special, because we were a first year delegation. So it was the first time that almost all of my students had gone to the Convention and that means that this was the first time that many of them were coming home with awards, and could not believe that they had placed in the top three of the whole state. And it really is like a State Championship, so that is kind of special because they were excited, they didn’t realize they were going to be able to do it, and they went down there, they did their best, and they came home with honors and awards and it was wonderful.