I’m surprised by how much I enjoy teaching.  It’s even got me thinking I might want to expand into teaching other skills, like programming or webmaster work.  I always thought I’d hate teaching because I hate getting up and talking in front of people.  I’m sure I would hate the lecture-hall kind of teaching, but this isn’t like that.  It’s more like a lab setting or a conversation, with a lot of feedback, so it doesn’t feel like giving a speech at all.  I’m still a little nervous about it, but that’s because these people are trusting me to know what the heck I’m doing, and I don’t want to let them down.  And I don’t have the subject down cold 100% myself, so that’s a bit nervous-making too.

Whiteboards are really cool.  I scribble a lot of examples up there while I explain things, so I have to erase a lot to make room for the next thing.  Our whiteboard is probably 6′ x 4′ or so, and I probably cover it a few times during the course of a class.  Someday when I build my own office, at least one entire wall will be whiteboard, so I’ve got plenty of room to sketch things out.

Another surprise has been how easy it is to tell when someone “gets it.”  People just don’t stick their hands up and say, “Could you repeat that whole thing, because I didn’t get that at all.”  They generally look back and forth between the board and their book, or stare at the board looking slightly puzzled, trying to figure it out.  Then when they get it and it falls into place, their face kind of relaxes, and they might even nod a little.  So all I have to do is keep explaining things in different ways, trying to find a way that makes sense to them, until they’re all relaxed and nodding.  Simple, eh?

It occurred to me during the last class that learning a language (at least a heavily inflected one like Latin) is kind of like doing a jigsaw puzzle without the picture on the box.  You have to start with the corner pieces, then the edges, and continue working toward the middle.  Every piece gives you the foundation for the next piece.  Eventually the big picture comes into focus; but when you start, you don’t know whether the blue pieces are sky or water—you just know they go together, and you’ll see why later.

Learning Latin is like that: you don’t know why you have to learn this chart of endings or memorize two forms for each noun, but later it’ll make sense.  You have to start with one piece and get it right, without understanding how it will fit into the final picture.  Sometimes I pretty much have to say, “Just go with me on this, and I promise there’s a reason for it and it’ll make sense someday.”  I just have to keep them interested for a few more weeks until they can see some of those pieces fitting together.

So we’ll be continuing on pronunciation next week, and practicing by going through the prayers at the foot of the altar (the beginning of Mass) line by line, covering any tricky words.  I think the worst one is cithara, which is pronounced CHEE-tah-rah.  The word means harp, but to me it sounds like the name of the half-girl, half-cat heroine of an 80s Saturday morning cartoon.

Class is also moving to Tuesdays at 6:30pm.  As soon as I picked Monday, I found out some people couldn’t make it on Monday, which is about what I figured would happen.  So it’ll be Tuesday until further notice.  We’ll be reviewing last week’s material again, so if anyone was interested but thought they’d missed out, you’ve got one more chance to get in at the beginning!

Anyway, it looks like I’m going to get a chance to teach Latin to real people in person.  We’re going to start a second, slower-paced Latin class at St. Rose, which will start over at the beginning, taking more time to go over some of the concepts people are having trouble with, and probably taking more time to review some English grammar that you really need to understand if you’re going to get Latin.  My vague plan is to go as slow as people need to, and make sure they get it, so I hope people will ask a lot of questions and stop me if I get to going too fast.  I’ve done some tutoring before, but I’ve never taught in a classroom setting, so it should be interesting.

The class should start soon after the first of the year.  If anyone is interested who hasn’t been to Father Devillers’s class before, please contact me, as we need to determine what night would be best for everyone’s schedule.  We’re probably looking at Monday or Tuesday, but I’d like to pick a time that’s best for everyone.  People are also welcome to attend both classes, if they like.  I certainly won’t mind if I’ve got students smart enough to correct me if I make mistakes!  The rectory has the textbooks, which I think are $10 or $15.

I’ve also started putting the Latin Mass propers that I make up for Sundays and Holy Days on a side page here on my blog, free for anyone’s use.  Maybe I can save someone else the trouble of copying and pasting and proofreading that I’ve gone through for the past year.  We’re almost up to where Fr. D. started saving them last year, so I won’t have to do them most weeks, so I’ll have time to re-proof them and publish them online.

I remember the subjunctive being a tough one for our class in school, because the subjunctive is one area where there’s no simple translation in English.  Latin is very particular about separating things that have happened or will happen from things that might happen.  So you often can’t just translate the words literally anymore, but have to figure out what they meant and then find the best way to say that in English.  When you can translate the meaning of a sentence instead of the individual words, you’ve reached a different level.

I’ve only covered the active and imperative voices and the indicative moods, though.  That leaves the passive voice and the subjunctive mood, both of which have their own sets of endings, so I’ve really only covered about a third of the possible combinations.  The passive and subjunctive won’t take as many lessons, though, now that we’ve got the active indicative down.

Incidentally, when I was waiting at a bus stop in Chicago, I noticed a plaque on the bus stop that said Urbs In Horto.  That means “city in a garden,” but the H in Horto was kind of worn, so at first I thought it was “Morto.”  “Morto” doesn’t make sense, because mors is third declension so it would be in Morte, so I figured it out.  But just for a second, I wondered why they had a plaque up that said, “City in Death.”

I’m pretty pleased with the traffic the lessons are getting so far: about 24 page views a day on average.  That’s almost all from people looking for answers to specific questions on search engines.  I need to start posting to some Latin forums to promote it a little to people actually looking for lessons.