Biduum Noveboracense 2017

Salvete omnes!

I am just back from the first Biduum Noveboracense, held in Cornwall-on-Hudson, NY. I thought I'd share my experience and tell you some neat things I learned. It was about a four hour drive from my school, which wasn't ideal, but it was a heck of a lot closer than the other SALVI event I've been to in West Virginia! I wrote about that here. SALVI is also hoping to build regional nodes of itself so they can hold more Bidua throughout the country. So far they've had them in Los Angeles and Oklahoma, and they're planning more. Definitely subscribe to their blog if you're interested.

The basic deal with SALVI events is this: come make friends in Latin. That's basically it. I mean, there's a whole philosophical and pedagogical agenda to it, but what makes SALVI special is the atmosphere. I've heard Rusticatio described as "a big week-long house party in Latin." That's about right, minus the parts of a house party that are scariest to homebodies like me. The atmosphere is summed up with three dicta, thus:

regulae SALVIenses

serva patientiam!

Be patient, especially with yourself, but also with others. You will make a zillion mistakes, but that's okay. No one cares as much as you do. Keep trying.

mitte difficiliora - dic quod potes!

Throw out what's too hard, and say what you can. If you can't remember the exact word for what you want, find another way. For example, maybe you don't know how to say "Open the drawer please and get me a hand towel." That's fine. Instead, try this: quaeso, aperi hoc :points at drawer: et da mihi :mimes drying hands:. aqua in manibus est." Pointing and grunting is also a valid strategy.

memento te versari apud amicos

Remember that you're among friends. This is the big thing I like about SALVI. Sure, there're always be people you "click" with better than others. The expectation however is that we put that aside and treat one another kindly. The staff is explicitly there to HELP you through the experience, and not just to TEACH you something.

This Biduum was different from Rusticatio Veteranorum in a couple of key ways. First, it was Friday night through Sunday morning, so it was a LOT shorter. That length difference was my least favorite thing. bi is not enough duum! But that's a necessary limitation of doing these things during the school year. 

Secondly, there was more of a mix of proficiencies. Since RV is aimed at people with higher speaking & reading proficiencies, and Biduum is a mix, that's to be expected. I didn't mind this at all. In fact, it was kind of fun to hang out with people who hadn't done much spoken Latin and get to be one of the friendly (I hope) faces helping (I hope) them lose some of their shyness. At both RV and the Biduum, I felt totally safe asking questions during reading sessions.

Third, at RV, there is staff that feeds you. This is awesome. I was NOT looking forward to helping in the kitchen at Biduum because I am lazy. However, what I'd forgotten is that I like cooking and helping. I managed not to do a single dish the entire weekend, but I helped out a fair bit and definitely learned a LOT of useful words & expressions for food and cooking. 

Fourth, and this isn't a normal difference, but one notable difference between RV and this particular Biduum was BABIES! There were twin one year olds and a three month old, and they were so cute. If babies aren't your thing, not to worry; they are not a default feature of SALVI events. I did feel relieved, however, because I thought this would be my last immersion event for several years due to the kid I'm expecting in June. Now I feel like it doesn't have to be. I also learned some useful words for diapers and what babies do to them and so on, which will come in handy with my kid when I'm indoctrinating him/her into Latin nerddom enriching his/her brain by speaking Latin. The fact that there were babies running around was awesome for me personally, but it also expresses something about the comfiness of the atmosphere.

Anyway, so those are some words about my Biduum experience. Soon hopefully I will post two entries about different teaching & reading techniques we used. I still have to write them though so no promises!

Summer fun is speaking Latin!

Salvete internet!

I have been busy! Or rather, I have been at leisure, but in a non-English speaking way, and then lazy because I was tired from all that Latin leisure. The below is as usual a rather rambly reflection on my time at Rusticatio and the other spoken Latin stuff I've done recently. More under the cut.

Spoken Latin in the classroom

The core tenet of CI is that kids need comprehensible input to acquire language-- a LOT of it. As Latin teachers we traditionally only provide input in written form, and it's rarely if ever actually comprehensible. So how can we deliver more input? By speaking Latin... a LOT. Terrifying! Right?

Well, yes. It's hard. But we've got to do it. I'm going to say right now that I'm really very weak. We've done classroom commands and stuff but I hardly ever use them. We do attendance in Latin now, but that's limited to "adestne Marcus?" "adsum." etc. When I'm doing a story or PQA, I speak Latin, but I pretty regularly break into English, and very few of the kids use Latin beyond sic, non, and adsum. One of my goals for next year* is to really push the spoken Latin and use it whenever possible.

Oh wait there's the rub. "Use it whenever possible." There are two huge constraints on this before we even worry about the kids' use of English. The first is the teacher's ability to speak, and the second is the kids' ability to understand.

As Latin teachers, we are usually pretty horrible at output. Most of us never even take prose comp courses, and forget about speaking practice. I posted previously about how to improve your spoken Latin (tl;dr: the answer is get more comprehensible input yourself!).

What about ensuring that the kids can understand you? You can read Cicero to them all day and they won't acquire a damn thing. You have to make sure that the input you provide is truly comprehensible. How do we do that? More under the cut.

"So, do you speak Latin?"

Recently I wrote a post for CANE's blog, CANENS, and I posted it to Latin Teacher Idea Exchange on Facebook. A fellow teacher replied,

When you have time, would you be willing to expand on your use of oral Latin? Like most Latin teachers, I was not taught to speak Latin so I am super hesitant to start. But I know I should get over myself for the sake of my students. How did you start?

So here I am. First, the title of this entry. sodales, you know that question and the embarrassment that attends it. "Well, no, but you see, I can read it. I mean like I've been reading it for a really long time. So I KNOW it, I just don't speak it. You see?" I cringe inside every time I have to answer that. Or I used to, anyway. No one's asked me in a while. But I hated that question because well, NO, I didn't speak Latin, even though I'd been studying it for half my life. Ouch.

But now I do speak Latin. Kind of. I can have conversations about random stuff especially if it's not technology-heavy subject matter. I'm still not fluent at ALL and there's a pretty heavy English influence on my word order. But I certainly speak it better than I do any other language besides English, my L1.

So, how did I start? Some tips to get over the hump.

1. Yes, you do know Latin. I have been studying Latin for 15ish years. I may not speak Latin, but I know it. You do too. It's there, even if it takes a while to come out.

2. Be patient with yourself. Go look at this entry and turn those tips on yourself. Guess what? You're going to get case endings and tenses wrong. All the time. ALL the time. It's not the end of the world. Do your best to get it right when you're teaching a new structure, but if it's just in passing or practice with other Latinists, give yourself a break. I've heard excellent Latinists who have been speaking for YEARS make case mistakes. It's what happens. How do you think Italian was invented?

3. Baby steps. You don't have to be able to give a lecture in Latin to start using it with your kids. On the contrary, you really shouldn't! You need to pick a way to say yes & no (I use sic and non.), a couple of adjectives, and you're done. Like this:

Board: -ne = ?, sic = yes, non = no, procerus = tall, brevis = short, est = is.
T: estne Shelby procera? :gesture with your hand way above Shelby's head: (Your speaking speed should be something around where the bad kind of tourist tries to speak English to non-English-speaking locals: EHSSSTTTT NAY SHELBY PROOOOO-CEHR-AHH?)
Ss: non.
T: bene! Shelby procera non est! estne Shelby brevis? :gesture below Shelby's height:
Ss: sic.
T: sic! Shelby brevis est! estne Shelby brevis an procera? :use each hand to gesture one or the other:
Ss: short?
T: bene! :big smiles: Shelby brevis est! Shelby procera non est! Shelby brevis est!

Repeat with other students. Pick some more adjectives or nouns. Consider throwing in some comparatives- estne Shelby procerIOR quam Julia? etc. Congrats, you're using oral Latin in the classroom. It gets more complex from there as you need it to. Check out this lesson plan by Keith Toda. You'd be doing the same as above, only add in some question words (again, provide them on the board). You can ask: estne elephantus laetus? estne elephantus tristis? vultne Earl elephantum? etc. Which brings us to 3.

4. The bar is not that high. In Keith's story, you are only dealing with three verbs (est, habet, vult) and two adjectives (laetus, tristis). It's not brain surgery. You can do this on Day 1 of Latin class even if you have never taken Latin and have only read this post & Keith's.

How?

Your kids don't speak Latin either. They won't know you're keeping it simple. They need you to keep it simple, and go slow, and repeat yourself.

There is no one to feel embarrassed in front of or to feel inadequate compared to. Spend a couple minutes practicing Latin with your kids every day or so, point at your board a lot, and your speech will become smoother.

5. Take any opportunity to improve. The above stuff will get you over that embarrassment hump. Now let's talk about how to become a functional Latin speaker. A bullet list! In ascending order of effort required!

• Listen to Latin (and even better here and also see the listening links here. And also, if you have audio from your textbook series, load it up on your phone and listen to it while you drive. Really.)
• Read more Latin 
• Write to someone else in Latin, like a penpal.
• Speak to others aloud in Latin, including your students, pets, furniture... or just join a spoken Latin gathering either IRL or online (I host one weekly on Saturday mornings and sometimes more often. Info & calendar here.)
• There may be local IRL Latin speaking gatherings near you. I only know about Amherst, MA (contact TJ Howell) & Boston. If you know of others, please post them in the comments!
• Go to a Latin camp! Then go to more! Conventiculum Bostoniense; Conventiculum Lexintoniense & Dickinsoniense; SALVI's Rusticationes & other programs; Paideia Institute events; Europa Latina's summer school in Sicily,

I hope that gives you some ideas on how to take the plunge. Next time, I'll talk more about how I use it in class on a daily(ish) basis.

edit 8/4/2016: Look under the tag "Spoken Latin" for more similar entries, especially this one with a much better list of resources & opportunities. You may also find this "Useful Phrases for Spoken Latin" document helpful for saying a lot of things Cicero never taught you how to say.

Staying in the Target Language: Tips from someone bad at it (& thoughts on an EdCamp)

On Saturday I attended langcampct, an "EdCamp" for language teachers. An EdCamp is an "unconference" (I know) which is sort of a thing where the participants themselves decide, on the day, what sessions they'd like to have, and there's no dedicated panel leaders or schedules or talks. On the whole, I think such a format would be most valuable as part of a larger pedagogy conference: one or two blocks of "unconference" with more structure for the rest of the day. That aside, it was interesting and valuable, and most importantly, free!

This is what our session schedule ended up looking like.
You can find notes from all the sessions linked there, and there are some additional ones here.

The session I got the most out of in terms of concrete ideas was about ways to encourage students to use the target language (editable doc: please be careful). I didn't love everything I heard- since it was not all CI people by any means, there was a lot about forcing output. But, this leads us to the main topic of this post.

One major goal for a lot of CI practitioners is to stay in the TL for 90% of the class time. This is something I struggle with big time for a couple of reasons. Mainly, I'm not that good at Latin-speaking yet. Working on that. But also, my kids aren't super interested in participating because there's no motivation for them to do so. I've tried a lot of different participation tracking systems but they're hard to keep track of in the moment and they're mostly fundamentally punitive. So... Gotta find a good way. Here are some things I've been chewing on lately, plus my favorites from this past weekend's "unconference."