Driving to school in the morning is one of my favorite times. I get to listen to my favorite hair metal and classic rock CDs. Call it a some me time with the sound turned up to 11. This morning, however, I chose to turn off the music and call my wife to share with her a couple of stories from our Latin III class.
This class meets the last period of the day, so it would be natural to expect less than enthusiastic engagement with the material. It is a large class, so no one would be surprised if only a few really participated well. Neither is the case with this group of young scholars. They daily come in well prepared and with some of the most brilliant questions I have had the opportunity to hear.
For example, we have been reviewing some basic grammar at the start of the year. This is hardly the most exciting thing in the world, but recently one young lady asked why the present subjunctive almost sounded like the future. Her question stunned me in my tracks. She had moved from mere decoding of the language to picking up on its nuances and developing a feel for it. This led us to discuss the inherently fuzzy nature of the subjunctive mood, the reason why it contains no genuine future tense as the indicative mood does, and the sense of the very near future that the present carries with it.
As we explored conditional sentences yesterday, another student said that to her the passive voice in English reminded her of an adjective and wondered why. I was again rendered motionless and speechless for a moment by the depth her comment. We explored as a class the nature of the English passive system and how it is constructed by the copulative verb and a participle, which is, of course, part verb and part adjective, giving us essentially parallel sentences like The boy was defeated and The boy was tall.
So on my way to school today, I turned my rock 'n' roll down from 11 to 0 and called my wife. I had not had the chance to tell her these stories, and as we discussed the depth of inquiry and insight of which students are capable, the morning darkness gave way with the first hints of light, and I arrived at school charged up and excited, which is not a bad thing for a Friday.
Updates in the exciting world of North Central Panther Latin!
Friday, August 29, 2014
Wednesday, August 20, 2014
IB Learners in Latin
At the beginning of the school year, I invite our Latin I students to complete a brief profile of themselves for extra credit. We display their work in the hallway just before back-to-school night so parents can get a sense of what their children will be doing in this class.
The directions are for students to include their name and a recent picture of themselves. They must complete the Latin sentence Ego sum _____ with the Latin term for one of the IB Learner Profiles. Even though the words on our resource page are in the plural and a singular is required to complete the sentence, I overlook the necessary grammatical error. This is, after all, a project within the first few days of school. They must then include the English translation of the sentence and a brief explanation for why they chose that particular trait as it would apply to them in Latin class. As always, the results show that our students come to school already prepared for the kind of reflective learning that will lead them to success.
Take Isaac, for example. He writes that he has "many experiences...which I will be able to draw on to enrich our Latin class experience." I like that. As I often tell people, Latin at North Central is a microcosm of a complete liberal arts program, for in it we explore math, art, geography, history, English, and performing arts, all in our study of the ancient Greco-Roman world. I can't wait to see what Isaac will "bring to the table!"
Then there is Magnolia. She sees herself as a thinker, one who can use her critical thinking skills to "make reasonable and ethical decisions." This would be an admirable quality in any adult leader, but it is even more striking when you know that Magnolia is one of our eighth grade students who come to the high school before their middle school starts to take advantage of our world language program.
Zach is open minded, not just in the sense of being willing to explore new ideas, but also by letting "others share their ideas when I am in a group." Many people talk of being open minded, but it goes to an entirely different level to be willing to sit back and actually listen as others share their ideas. Once again, this is a striking quality in one of our eighth grade students.
As with being open minded, many people like to say they are risk-takers, but how many actually take that plunge into the deep water? Carly is doing that not only by taking a new language, but by being willing to risk being wrong with an answer. I love that! The first step toward mature learning is not worrying about what people will think if you are wrong. With an attitude like that, chances are good you will be right more often than you imagined.
While there were many more wonderful profiles, we will conclude with a look at Noah's. As a thinker he is already expecting to reflect on the topics we discuss. Any true thinker must engage in reflection, and Noah's awareness of this proves that he is indeed the thinker he thinks himself to be!
With these and all the other wonderful qualities flowing into the mosaic that is Latin at North Central, it is no wonder that our students create the most amazing art with their lives!
Wednesday, August 6, 2014
Of Math and Latin
School resumed for us on Monday, and once again the A.P. Latin class has taken the plunge into the work of epic literature that has captivated the world for two thousand years, Vergil's Aeneid. Before diving straight into the deep end, we dangle our toes in the water first with a couple of articles, one of which is Eric Ormsby's 2006 New York Sun review of Robert Fagles' translation.
As we were discussing the article today, we paused on Ormsby's line, "A successful translation of 'The Aeneid' must capture the supple Virgilian line without sacrificing the powerful momentum of the narrative." We talked about the challenges of translating even a simple, three-word sentence like Puella aquam portat, which has some twenty-seven distinct translations in English. When one takes into account the complexity of literary Latin, to say nothing of the poetry of an epic like Aeneid, it quickly becomes apparent that complete translation is impossible.
Enter Nick, a senior. He suggested that translation is rather like an asymptote. You don't remember that little mathematical gem? It is a line that gets closer and closer to a curve without touching it.
He was right, of course, but what I loved was his application of mathematical understanding to literature. It was the perfect blend of learning, the very thing we hope for in our students. I also loved it because his introduction of mathematics into our literary discussion led to a look at one particular line of Vergil's poetry via quantum physics.*
Interestingly, if you do a Google search on the word "asymptote," you will find that the second link is to a new journal of literary translation titled Asymptote, which takes its name from the mathematical term in recognition of the fact that "a translation may never fully replicate the original."
Nick's comment was brilliant, and fortunately for me, it was not atypical of the sort of thing I hear on a regular basis from the students in room A526. I would also suggest that my students are not unique. Many students are capable of this kind of thought and engagement, if only they have the background and exposure to the depth and breadth of learning that is their birthright as members of the human race, a birthright that continues to be secured by schools that commit to a well-rounded education in which STEM and liberal arts walk in the unity with which they truly exist in the natural world.
*So what was that all about? In Aeneid I.7 we find the phrase,
atque altae moenia Romae.
The adjective altae (high) properly modifies Romae (Rome), yet in sense it also connects with moenia (walls). Because of the flexibility of Latin, the phrase indicates that both the walls are high and so is the city. English, however, cannot quite accommodate this, and we must say either "the walls of high Rome" or "the high walls of Rome," usually opting for the former since it is grammatically accurate. The idea of quantum superposition states that an electron exists in all possible states until a measurement is made, causing the electron to resolve into only one state. The Latin in Vergil's line is like the electron in that it contains all the possible meanings. Translation is like the act of measurement, forcing the attainment of only one state.
As we were discussing the article today, we paused on Ormsby's line, "A successful translation of 'The Aeneid' must capture the supple Virgilian line without sacrificing the powerful momentum of the narrative." We talked about the challenges of translating even a simple, three-word sentence like Puella aquam portat, which has some twenty-seven distinct translations in English. When one takes into account the complexity of literary Latin, to say nothing of the poetry of an epic like Aeneid, it quickly becomes apparent that complete translation is impossible.
Enter Nick, a senior. He suggested that translation is rather like an asymptote. You don't remember that little mathematical gem? It is a line that gets closer and closer to a curve without touching it.
He was right, of course, but what I loved was his application of mathematical understanding to literature. It was the perfect blend of learning, the very thing we hope for in our students. I also loved it because his introduction of mathematics into our literary discussion led to a look at one particular line of Vergil's poetry via quantum physics.*
Interestingly, if you do a Google search on the word "asymptote," you will find that the second link is to a new journal of literary translation titled Asymptote, which takes its name from the mathematical term in recognition of the fact that "a translation may never fully replicate the original."
Nick's comment was brilliant, and fortunately for me, it was not atypical of the sort of thing I hear on a regular basis from the students in room A526. I would also suggest that my students are not unique. Many students are capable of this kind of thought and engagement, if only they have the background and exposure to the depth and breadth of learning that is their birthright as members of the human race, a birthright that continues to be secured by schools that commit to a well-rounded education in which STEM and liberal arts walk in the unity with which they truly exist in the natural world.
*So what was that all about? In Aeneid I.7 we find the phrase,
atque altae moenia Romae.
The adjective altae (high) properly modifies Romae (Rome), yet in sense it also connects with moenia (walls). Because of the flexibility of Latin, the phrase indicates that both the walls are high and so is the city. English, however, cannot quite accommodate this, and we must say either "the walls of high Rome" or "the high walls of Rome," usually opting for the former since it is grammatically accurate. The idea of quantum superposition states that an electron exists in all possible states until a measurement is made, causing the electron to resolve into only one state. The Latin in Vergil's line is like the electron in that it contains all the possible meanings. Translation is like the act of measurement, forcing the attainment of only one state.
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