Christopher Chan (Henry James Memorial School)
When students ponder their goals for Latin class, many of them offer some variation of “the ability to speak fluently,” a lofty goal for middle school students, and one that is distinctly not related to, “read Caesar’s Bellum Gallicum with an eye to rhetoric.” The three-year pandemic has changed middle-school students in many ways, for example leaving many tuned-in online and yet isolated from their peers. The Latin students of today look and learn differently too, and aspects of Latin teacher training should promote skills in future teachers that facilitate enriching experiences for all learners.
In this presentation I will share my experiences as a middle school teacher and discuss the ways that the “comprehensible input approach” to Latin teaching places students at the center of the classroom experience, rather than the texts they read. The methods and texts I use, specifically a variety of Latin novellas, provide a vibrant classroom environment where students take ownership of their learning. Although these methods were originally developed by researchers in applied linguistics (most notably S. D. Krashen and T. D. Terrell) for modern language teachers, I have found them just as valuable to a Latin teacher, and I advocate for these methods to play a greater role in the way we train Latin teachers.
There is a long history of lamenting the lack of truly beginner-level Latin texts. The recent proliferation of Latin novellas now provides teachers with many alternatives to traditional textbooks which focus overly on grammar and overload students with vocabulary. These novellas provide interesting, comprehensible, long-form readings that aid students in their proficiency with the language. Part of meeting pedagogical standards should include training on how best to use novellas in the classroom. Every classroom and student has different needs, so when a novella does not exactly suit a class, a teacher should be able to adapt a text to a comprehensible level, or even write an original one. This is a skill that the revision of teacher standards should address.
I have found within my middle school Latin classroom that the methods related to “comprehensible input” and the use of accessible texts like Latin novellas spur lively conversations that reinforce social bonds within my classes and promote lifelong learning.