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The students in Amy Rosevear’s Latin class at Cherry Creek High School are reading a poem by the Roman poet Catullus, one written during the first century B.C.E. in which he’s both feeling sorry for himself and admonishing himself over unrequited love.
With Rosevear’s help, the students translate the ancient words, touching on verb tenses and proper pronunciation but also 21st century connections. When she gets to the phrase “Valē puella,” she laughs and tells the class, “You could have translated that on your first week of Latin.”
“Bye girl!” a student quickly chimes in.
The Latin program at Cherry Creek High School, Colorado’s largest high school with more than 3,800 students, is an anomaly in today’s public school landscape. It’s one of about seven Latin programs left in comprehensive district-run high schools across the state, down from about 17 two decades ago. For Latin educators, the decline is worrisome, representing the loss of lessons that help students understand the classical language and history that still echo in their lives.
Latin offerings will soon dwindle further as two other high schools in the Cherry Creek district — Smoky Hill and Eaglecrest — jettison Latin over the next couple years. Fairview High in the Boulder Valley district still offers higher level Latin classes, but this year for the first time doesn’t offer an introductory class. A district spokesman said the school may offer Latin 1 next year if there’s enough student interest. In a bright spot, Doherty High School in the Colorado Springs 11 district will launch a Latin program next school year.
Even as Latin offerings decline in some public schools, the classes are thriving in many charter schools, which are publicly funded and privately run. Some charters, including several that feature a classical education model, offer Latin in elementary through high school.
While Latin educators and advocates are pleased to see robust Latin programs in charter schools, they also want to keep the classes alive in traditional public schools, which serve about 85% of Colorado’s public school students. The Colorado Classics Association recently made a promotional video called “You belong in Latin,” to get the word out.
Pierre Habel, a spokesperson for the association, said the idea is to educate school leaders and parents “who have lost contact with Latin’s value,” or who experienced an earlier iteration of Latin education that involved chanting verb forms and noun declensions — endings that indicate a word’s function in a sentence. Habel retired in 2021 after teaching Latin at the Jeffco district’s D’Evelyn Junior/Senior High School, which still offers a full menu of Latin classes.
Rosevear’s elevator pitch for Latin often highlights its interdisciplinary nature: “This is not only a language, but it’s also culture and history and mythology and art all combined.”
“I try to emphasize how it really does live on in so many places,” she said. “You’re going to understand American government more if you understand Roman government. You’re going to understand philosophy and religious discussions more if you understand the Latin underpinnings of some of those terms they’re using.”
Students say Latin is ‘equalizing’
Talk to the students in Rosevear’s classes, which range from Latin 1 to AP Latin, and you’ll hear all kinds of reasons for enrolling. Some say singing Latin songs in choir class or studying mythology piqued their interest. Others say Latin helps them excel in other classes, prepare for the SATs, or learn terminology that will come in handy for medical or law careers.
Many simply want to understand the building blocks of the language they use every day.
“It just gives you a really good insight into how so many people speak,” said Eden, a ninth grader who worked with three classmates to translate a story about a Roman family fleeing from a rent-collector.
Nyx, a junior who hopes to go into psychiatry, said some of her friends think Latin is a “little dorky,” sometimes saying things like, “Oh, it’s a dead language.” But she doesn’t care. To her, it’s unique and helps her see where words come from, including vocabulary from her language arts class.
“I find myself blowing through them because I can just dissect them and know the root words and stuff from Latin class.” she said. “Like the word amnesty and amnesia, they come from the same root,” which is to forget.
Before class started on a recent day, Noah, a 10th grader, compared favorite Latin words with his classmate Finn, a senior. Noah chose “placenta,” which means cake, and Finn chose “invictus,” which means unconquered and is the name of a famous British poem about fortitude in the face of hardship.
Noah, who’s vice president of the school’s Latin club, said he appreciates Latin because everybody starts on the same footing.
“It’s equalizing,” he said. “No one’s coming in like, ‘I already know Latin.’”
Latin offerings decline over 20 years
Two decades ago, more than a dozen traditional public high schools in the state offered Latin, including five in Colorado Springs, George Washington High in Denver, Northridge High in Greeley, and Grand Junction High in western Colorado.
Barbara Hill, who used to coordinate Latin programming at the University of Colorado Boulder, said, “When I arrived in the 80s, Latin was thriving and there were [high school] programs all across the state.”
She said there are lots of reasons Latin has been steadily discontinued in some public schools, including the rise of American Sign Language offerings and increasing demand for Spanish, which is attractive to many students because of its prevalence in Colorado and its usefulness in future careers.
Hill said there’s also a misconception among some school leaders that Latin’s an elitist language — a claim that may have been true in some classrooms in the past, but not anymore.
“The teachers have changed with the times, and they realize that a Latin program depends largely upon their ability to connect with and … teach a wide variety of students,” she said.
Rosevear, who started taking Latin in eighth grade in her Fargo, North Dakota junior high school, said another impediment to broader Latin adoption is that the state doesn’t require any world language courses for high school graduation. And while Cherry Creek High School offers six languages — Latin, Spanish, French, German, Mandarin Chinese, and American Sign Language — the Cherry Creek district, like many in Colorado, also doesn’t require any world language to graduate.
Some teachers emphasize Latin as a spoken language
Tim Smith started a recent Latin class at Loveland Classical School with a story about Saint Columba saving his friend from Scotland’s famed Loch Ness monster more than a thousand years ago.
Soon, Smith and his ninth grade students were discussing which form of “mordere,” the verb “to bite,” they should use to describe Nessie’s attack on the friend. Was it one clean bite to the leg? Or was it taking awhile to chomp through the limb?
As they talked it through, one student murmured, “It’s where we get morsel.”
Smith, who’s one of four Latin teachers at the K-12 charter school’s two campuses, favors a newer approach to Latin education that emphasizes immersion in the spoken language, the same way students might learn Spanish or French.
Smith became a convert about a decade ago when his wife suggested he learn to speak Latin as an everyday language. At first he told her “That’s not a thing,” but after researching it, discovered a weeklong Latin immersion experience in West Virginia.
“I was confident that I could say things like, ‘Caesar led an army across the Alps,’” Smith said. “But to ask, ‘Where’s the bathroom?’ or ‘How old are you?’ ... I had never tried to have any kind of casual conversation before.”
The West Virginia trip jump-started his journey to becoming a fluent Latin speaker and now he emphasizes speaking in his Latin class as much as reading and writing. Smith also tapes a Latin cooking show on YouTube called Coquamus, or “Let’s Cook.” Recent episodes, filmed with his daughter, who’s a senior at Loveland Classical, feature the pair cutting up a pineapple — “ananas” — and making a chocolate pie — “scriblita socolata.”
Smith said he realized the impact of his immersion approach to Latin when he saw seventh grade boys trash-talking on the basketball court
“Like, a kid makes a basket, and he’ll shout, ‘Quid est nomen mihi?’” said Hill, laughing. “What’s my name? What’s my name?”
Ann Schimke is a senior reporter at Chalkbeat, covering early childhood issues and early literacy. Contact Ann at aschimke@chalkbeat.org
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