Brown: Yes, the kids are all right, at least on Hawk Hill
There is so much dissatisfaction with certain colleges and students these days that I would like to share insights with you about the current students at Saint Joseph’s University.
And these are my Latin students who just finished up AY23-24.
First, a brief explanation of my grading set-up. I use what I call micro grades, especially because my Latin 101-102 students tend to be majoring in something other than languages.
In fact, year-to-year, the majority of my students are enrolled in the SJU Erivan K. Haub School of Business or in the life sciences.
So, “micro grades” refers to approximately thirty grades earned throughout the 16 week semester, not just three grades pretty typical these days.
The clear-cut advantage for these Latin students is that no one grade can have an unduly dramatic effect on their overall grade.
This system also promotes “preparedness and engagement” since any given assignment can be due in any of five categories, tests, quizzes, class participation, assignments and projects.
The “variety is the spice of life” thesis at work here, and the students love it.
This also means that it is tough to miss a class because we are so ACTIVE, but we work out arrangements for missed classes through Canvas, email, and texting.
A key concept in my grading is customizing. This means, for example, that an assignment is geared to each student’s unique work, but sharing a basic prompt and doing comparative analysis.
When we are studying verbs, let’s say Conjugation I, each student combs through the lexicon, selects a verb, and enters his or her verb in a table in our Google doc, “first come, first serve” to avoid duplications, and excluding the textbook paradigms.
This way, everyone is responding to the prompt to construct a verb synopsis, but each one is different.
Oh, I should add that my classes, once the students enter, are “no devices, except for agreed upon quick research” and this also means that my students actually meet each other and form friendships.
Plus, we do daily work in teams of two or more to introduce friendly competition and tap into the entrepreneurial spirit.
Names? This happens the first day of class, along with the Roman date system.
One of my best ideas in fifty years of teaching is the Persona Project. YOU, on the first day of class, will research an ancient Mediterranean “person” to be in our Latin class.
Julius Caesar, Cleopatra, Augustus, Livia, Darius, Solomon, Aspasia, Hypatia, Marcus Antonius, Vercingetorix, Roxana, Xerxes, Cicero, Philip of Macedon, Traianus, Sulpicia, Hatshepsut, there are simply thousands of choices, almost unlimited.
Day 1, I can teach the Vocative Case for direct address, and preview the five declensions of nouns.
For reinforcement, we build a timeline to display in the classroom, showing the images and lifetime eras arranged in chronological order so students viscerally understand and use the terms Before Christ (B.C.), Before the Common Era (B.C.E.), Anno Domini (A.D.), and Common Era (C.E.).
The Persona Project is amazing, so instrumental in building a sense of community within the classroom, and it is a special moment when the students organically address each other by Persona names.
You will laugh . . . last night at Narberth Summer Basketball, I bumped into Trajan, the Roman Emperor.
Actually, it was Matt Quigley who “assistant coaches” the team Donohue Funeral Home, but who also is my former SJU Latin student recently back from a semester in Florence, Italy with Marcus Antonius, aka Robbie Dowd.
Another application of the Persona Project interfacing with Canvas, Google sign-ups, micro grades, and customizing is administering our 12-page, 200 points final exam over a ten day period.
Students absolutely love this concept and practice.
So, here is an example. Our excellent and malleable textbook is Wheelock’s Latin, 7th Edition. I had used this text for the first time while teaching at Springside Chestnut Hill Academy.
One of the beautiful components of Wheelock is his inclusion of original Latin aphorisms early on. If there are twenty students in a class, then each student can get his or her own “sententia antiqua.”
For one of our final exam sections, the students each picked their favorite “sententia,” translated without the aid of AI (I can tell when AI generates a translation), and wrote a 250-word minimum essay response.
These responses are unbelievably unique, delightful, inspiring, and a critical tonic for all of the negatives on other campuses about which anyone has read this past semester.
Let me share, having gained the students’permission, several excerpts from their handwritten responses.
In response to a Latin aphorism from Persius,“Vive memor mortis; fugit hora. Live mindful of death; the hour flees, escapes.”
My student Publius Ovidius Naso states,“To me, this aphorism explains the importance of understanding the value of time.
“Time can escape you quickly, so you should not wait until the end of your time to start truly living.
“To me, this sense of truly living encompasses loving, being vulnerable, taking chances, putting yourself out there, being appreciative, learning, trying new things, saying how you feel, doing what you love, and so much more.
“It is in the small things, the way one lives day-to-day.
“One reaction I have to this is the consequence of phone addiction. People spend hours every day scrolling on their phones.
“People walk on campus, looking down on their phones. This aphorism calls us to look up, to be aware that every second we have on this earth is precious.”
Based on Publilius Syrus and the aphorism “Pecunia avarum irritat, non satiat. Money excites the greedy man, it does not satiate him.”
My student Diogenes tells us, “To me this sentence is important as I believe many forget that in feeding greed, you will only help it to grow.
“In my opinion, this is especially relevant today as time and time again we see those with wealth and power grow greedier and attempt to take more as they go on creating a sort of never ending cycle.
“A perfect example of this is the harvesting of the Amazon Rainforest. Just as few decades age, we were harvesting tens of thousands of acres a day. Since then, this number has grown to two hundred thousand acres a day as the greed of those involved only grows.”
Next, Seneca’s “Ex meis erroribus hominibus rectum iter demonstrare possum. From my errors I am able to show, point out, the right way to men, people.”
From Sappho, “This aphorism means that from our mistakes we can prevent others from making the same mistakes we did.
“Sometimes, when people make a mistake or error, they may be reluctant to share what they learned with others.
“This may be because they are afraid of other people knowing that they did something wrong or because they want others to learn the same way they did.
“However, when people understand that everyone makes mistakes and that making an error does not mean you are terrible at something, that is when people can, in turn, help others.
“This action not only shows that we are human but it also shows a person’s compassion for their peers and selflessness.
“This aphorism reminds me of something YouTube philanthropist MrBeast said, that it would be better to share what works and what doesn’t work so friends can learn and grow together.
“This sentiment relates directly to what Seneca says, once we commit an error, it is best to tell others of this error to prevent them from committing it. If this was done in modern society, we could all benefit from it.”
Extrapolation is always a gamble but I will place my bet on the success of these students in making the world a better place.
And, yes, the kids are all right, at least on Hawk Hill.
Mary Brown teaches Latin at Saint Joseph’s University and is a weekly columnist and feature writer for Main Line Media News.
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