Introduction

We are suggesting a focused, theme-based, cross-curricular middle school program. Such programs certainly are not new to the middle school. Our narrow innovation is the use of Latin and the Classics as the center of a theme-based curriculum. Our thesis is simply that the study of Latin and the field of Classics provide a natural focal point for developing skills required of a middle school student.

Most of the components of our suggested program are borrowed, reworked, or otherwise derived from a variety of sources. The middle school experiences of many, many teachers is the resource for this program, not a particular educational philosophy, language methodology or political or social agenda. Our emphasis is upon a developmental curriculum, taking students from the points we find them and guiding their skills development to a level ready for high school.

We probably can agree that a focused, theme-based, cross-curriculum program can be an improvement. Our modest suggestion is an enhancement for combining the various tracts of learning with the thread that binds our pluralistic society. We all know that Latin is the language and Classics is the subject at the heart of Western Culture and Judeo-Christian Civilization. Therefore, I ask you, should we not use this Classical Heritage as our theme, and consequently, our raison d'être in the middle school?

Background

My school got very lucky one year. We had a new Headmaster, who was a bit eccentric, but he was very supportive of the foreign language department. The eccentric part involved his notions of what a "private" school was about. He pictured things like a "dining commons" instead of a cafeteria. Now we had a cafeteria, but he saw a dining commons, and renamed it accordingly. He envisioned faculty "receptions," perhaps with sherry served, at which his wife (a very successful educator in her own right and the epitome of patience) poured tea for the female faculty and wives, all spiffily attired in white gloves. (I bet you're beginning to wonder what the "lucky" part was!)

Our new Headmaster began a middle school, or "Junior School" as we call it, grades 7 and 8, and later Grade 6. He felt particularly that all Junior School students would benefit from some Latin. To his credit, he was also quite supportive of high school level 4 and 5 language courses and of maintaining all four languages in the high school, all this with small class sizes. Our objectivity, however, required that, at the very least, we consider the possibility that his passion for Latin in the Junior School was as dated and delusional as his desire for white-gloved faculty teas.

To address that possibility required that we find in Latin something that may singularly benefit the middle school student. In a very real sense, our quest for curricular purpose and meaning in middle school Latin began with that quixotic decision to make Latin all things to all little men and, a few years later, little women.

Plunked squarely in the maelstrom we were compelled to establish some good anchor and reason for being there, or drown. We were particularly fortunate at this time to have the aid of a CAM colleague of ours, Ms. Rita DeBellis, now at Burlington High School. She helped us develop the Junior School Latin program at Austin, and also began cross-curricular work with the English Department.

With some trepidation I decided that, as titular head of languages, I may well be found lacking if I did not jump into the "deep end" myself and take a section of 7th grade Latin. And here I learned real fear! As an experienced high school teacher and language chair I strode manfully into my first middle school class, did my best "stuff" on the first few days, and generally cut quite a figure, or so I thought.

It really took only 3 or 4 classes before I realized that I had no longer had any idea of what I was doing! Everything that worked so well in my high school classes fell flat in the 7th grade. With 20 years of teaching experience I felt as though I was a first year teacher all over again.

Fear is a motivator that is often woefully undervalued by today's popular culture. I was afraid and I began to search furiously for answers. In the end I learned to teach all over again - my little 7th graders, and then my 8th graders taught me how. I watched and studied them, and they showed me how to learn while doing things that I would have earlier called "playing" or "games".

They showed me how their intense desire to deal hands on with any subject - school subject or no - made them become actually engaged in their own learning and self-teaching. I watched them in groups, and I studied how I could "manipulate" their activities into language learning ones. In brief, I began to learn some of the things which so many of my middle school colleagues and so many of you had already known.

Thesis

The need for curriculum integration springs, I think, from the ways in which middle school students learn. We have all learnt that theirs is not a category based, top-down, deductive approach. But does our curriculum continue to present to our middle school students just such an approach?

We know that as teachers we work better in teams. We know too that our students thrive in cooperative learning activities, group projects and theme-based approaches. But do we continue to offer a middle school curriculum which remains based upon the perception of the skills divisions the high school needs to prepare students for a college curriculum?

I fear the answer to both questions is too often "yes". This then is the impetus for our suggestion that we consider a theme-based, cross-curricular middle school program focused on the study of Latin and the field of Classics for developing the skills required of a middle school student. Why Latin and Classics as the thematic foundation? As I noted earlier: We all know that Latin is the language and Classics is the subject at the heart of Western Culture and Judeo-Christian Civilization. These are woven into a common thread that binds the pluralistic society our children will inherit.

Potential Objections

1) Are we spreading ourselves, as it were, "too thin" - trying to be all things to all subjects?

If student skills development and not a "content" based curriculum is the objective, then the measurable outcomes of our student classroom activities become the "content" of our program.

2) Are we compromising the time spent on a "pure" Latin curriculum?

This is a course taken by all students and thus should be geared as a developmental course for middle school students, not a production facility for high school Latin enrollment. Besides, the familiarity and positive experiences of our middle school students have been very healthy for high school Latin enrollment. After the two-year program, at Grade 8 or 9, we can provide a very intense language course, with no compromises. AP scores have born this out.

3) Are we going against the grain of Education Reform?

Our goal is not to replace the inevitable K-12 public school language program (typically Spanish) with Latin, but to use our expertise in Classics as a thematic core around which MOST or ALL the middle school subjects can taught.

4) Does it not take a great deal of time and coordination with colleagues to produce such a theme-based program?

YES! You got me there!