A majority of students at Sandburg strengthen their learning through the various language programs that Sandburg offers. For many years, Sandburg offered students opportunities to learn Spanish, French, German, and Latin; however, as of this fall, the Latin language course was discontinued for both incoming and current students.
Formerly, the Latin language program was taught in two sections: a Latin 1 section, and a Latin 2 through AP section. The first-year Latin course taught students basic grammar and stylistic aspects of Latin to prepare them for the following year.
“The upper-level classes are literature-based,” explained former Latin teacher Mr. McDonough. “The goal of the course is learning how to translate and read Latin.”
Regarding how to manage the difference between levels in the second section, he said, “We just did a set of authors that the seniors had not done before and gave sophomores a little more support.”
Mr. McDonough had been the Latin teacher for over a decade and always found that the language had something special to offer. He said, “For students who are interested in history, it’s learning history in a really profound way because they are not just reading about what ancient Romans said, they are actually reading the words that the ancient Romans wrote down.”
He also stated that “Latin grammar is very different from the grammar of modern languages; because of that, it forces students to understand language in a new way…that linguistic analysis is very eye-opening and students deepen their understanding of how language works. Similarly, because a huge percentage of English vocabulary is based in Latin, they learn the deeper meaning of a lot of vocab words in English.”
In sum, McDonough stated, “The thinking that Latin requires is the kind of thinking you have to do in a lot of academic work or in fields like medicine, law, and engineering, where it’s a lot of problem-solving. It’s like a combination of Math and English, where it’s got the literature component of English, but the problem-solving component of math.”
His students shared a similar perspective, sharing that the course was different from other languages and allowed them to develop critical skills. “It was so fun. It’s a hard language to learn because of all the conjugations, but [Mr. McDonough] made it easy and straightforward,” said former Latin student and current junior Samantha Mockevich.
Students who were enrolled in the Latin language program were notified that they would be unable to take the course this school year during second semester of the previous school year.
“It’s been an ongoing conversation for five to ten years, about enrollment going down, so I wasn’t surprised that we reached the point where we weren’t going to have regular Latin classes anymore,” said Mr. McDonough. He explained that “one of the big challenges is that, because District 135 only offers Spanish now, students are coming in with Spanish as their background, so convincing students to switch to a different language is challenging. It’s especially challenging because the kinds of students who may be motivated to switch are the kinds who test into Spanish honors two or three, so then asking both to start over and also take a non-honors class for the first year…is kind of a double negative on motivating a student to make a different choice.”
“Also, as the numbers go down, it kind of has a compounding effect because there are fewer students taking it, talking about their experiences, which means fewer students are aware of it as an option,” he added.
Former students impacted by the decision share feelings of frustration. Anna Grah, a former Latin student and current junior, said, “The whole situation is pretty frustrating. In a way, it feels like we were told we were going to be getting four years of this [class] and it kind of got taken from us.”
“In a perfect world, it would have been great to have the class run, but I also understand that there are constraints in terms of running a class that’s really small, because it costs a lot of money, so the school district has to make choices based on balancing different needs,” said Mr. McDonough. Course cancellation due to low enrollment also affects many smaller electives, so the issue was not unique to Latin.
Upon receiving news of the cancellation, students were also presented with a few options about how to proceed with their language learning. At first, students were offered the opportunity to take the class at Sandburg’s sister school, Stagg, during first hour.
Grah explained that there were two issues with this option: students would miss class time from both zero and second hour, and no transportation would be provided. Seeing that the option wasn’t appealing to most students, students were then offered to take the class as an independent study hour. With this option, Mr. McDonough would assign work for the students to do independently, allowing them to continue learning in school. There are currently four students enrolled in this alternative program.
Although the state of the Latin program at Sandburg is not ideal for some students, it opens up many possibilities. There is still hope for the Latin language program. Mr. McDonough said, “We have a few students doing independent study currently, and maybe that’ll be a pathway in the future and maybe some future students will be able to take advantage of that. It’s something I’m open to if other students are.”
This would enable future students to also take control of their learning and continue to learn what will best suit their interests. Grah and Mockevich are also interested in the possibility of adding a language program in place of Latin. “Sign language would be pretty cool, and I feel like a lot of kids would want to take something like that,” they stated.
At times, it may be difficult to accept changes that directly affect us and those around us, but the willingness of the Sandburg staff and students to overcome and face these roadblocks shows the strength of our school and provides hope for the future. Latin may have finally “fallen” at Carl Sandburg High School, but after the Roman Empire came many more.