Latin comes alive at Rock Hill Christian school

The subject in Judy Heinzl’s seventh- and eighth-grade class was antebellum.

Immediately, thoughts turned to the antebellum houses in Charleston and other parts of the South. Student Andrew Hiner said he wasn’t sure he wanted to live in a house that big.

From houses the discussion turned to culture and how antebellum generally described the Southern lifestyle before the Civil War.

They broke the word down into its component parts and Latin roots.

Ante can be a prefix or a preposition in Latin, Heinzl explained. It means “before,” she said.

Bellum is a noun that means “war” Heinzl said.

And, she continued, it a second declension, neuter noun, evident by its “um” ending.

It’s also in the accusative case, she said. “That’s why it ends in ‘um’,” Heinzl said.

Diving deep into the Latin grammar was by design. It happens four days a week in Heinzl’s classroom and the others at Providence Classical School of Rock Hill. Latin is the foundation of the school’s teachings and is included in almost every subject.

Providence Classical opened this year at the College Park Baptist Church off Cherry Road.

The school is brainchild of Marcie Davis, who moved to Rock Hill when her husband, Scott, became the senior pastor at Northside Baptist Church on Curtis Street.

The Davis family came from Louisville, Ky., where their children attended Highlands Latin School, a classical Christian school which has grown from one room to serving more than 500 students.

When Marcie, a former college math professor and then high school teacher, couldn’t find the same educational experience in Rock Hill, she and others founded Providence Classical. The school’s motto is even in Latin, “Dei sub numine viget,” which translates to flourishing under the will of God.

To teach Latin, Marcie Davis recruited Heinzl, who has taught the ancient language for 17 years. Heinzl and her husband also have experience in educational start-ups, helping found a classic Christian school in Pennsylvania before moving to Rock Hill.

What Davis said was “barely a dream or just a thought a year ago,” now serves students from kindergarten through eighth grade. The plan is to add a grade each year as the older students progress into high school.

Davis and Heinzl bristle at the frequent charge that Latin is a dead language.

They note that Latin is highly relevant, as it is the root for many English words. Other Latin words have come directly into the vocabulary, especially via the medical or legal profession.

They also note that studies by the Association of Classical and Christian Schools, show that students who study the classical method scored, on average, five points higher on the college-entrance ACT exam.

They acknowledge, though, that Latin, especially its grammar, can be difficult to teach and learn. That’s where the classical method of teaching comes in.

At Providence Classical, the teaching follows the “trivium model” of child development.

Young students learn language, learn vocabulary and learn the basics of other subjects. This phase is commonly called the “grammar phase.” At Providence Classic there’s some Latin taught as early as kindergarten but formal Latin instruction starts in the second grade. Students that young memorize better, Davis said.

By seventh and eighth grade, students are learning about the why, the logic and about making the connections. By high school they are focusing on rhetoric, expression and developing – and defending – their ideas.

Constant and frequent oral and written quizzing reinforce lessons, Heinzl said. In her class students use markers and small white boards to take their daily quizzes.

The quizzes help students learn the various forms of Latin words. The various endings determine a word’s “case,” whether it is a subject, adjective, a possessive noun or an object.

For students it means learning the general rules and the exceptions.

“Natural gender trumps every other gender rule,” Heinzl explained to her class.

The rule means that words that end in ‘a’ are most often feminine, but some can be masculine. Most words that end in “us” are masculine, and those that end in “um” are neuter, she said.

Students in Heinzl’s classes have learned hundreds of nouns. They also have learned hundreds of verbs and can recall them in rapid-fire fashion.

Heinzl frequently plays games with her students, having them stand as she asks the word and case ending. They sit down after a wrong answer.

No one, she says, sits down.

Or they play a version of Latin bingo. The winner shouts “Vinco!” I win.

The Latin studies also include literature. Her seventh- and eighth-grade students are reading – in English – the Iliad, the epic Greek tale written by Homer, set during the Trojan War and the 10-year siege of Troy. It follows the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles.

Her students agree that all the fighting might make for a good video game. They also agree that the Iliad, written in the mid-8th Century B.C., still is relevant today.

The lesson?

“Don’t take someone else’s wife,” said student Elin Twitty.

This story was originally published December 27, 2015 at 6:34 PM with the headline "Latin comes alive at Rock Hill Christian school."