Inner-City Latin

Meet Jonathan, The Latin Programme’s longest-serving teacher.  When he started working with The Latin Programme he taught 60 children per week. Now, eight years later, he teaches over 600 in 22 different classrooms across London.

Before joining The Latin Programme Jonathan worked as a music producer and had his own pirate radio show.  His hip-hop background is surprisingly useful in the Latin classroom where he encourages pupils to participate in activities based around music and performance.  Using a call-and-response technique Jonathan helps children understand verbal cues and has written rap songs about various grammatical concepts to help them with memorisation.  If you were to take a peak into one of The Latin Programme classrooms you might find him teaching the “nominative case song” (see below), playing games like the Mexican wave or noughts and crosses and then finishing off with some translation. 

Engaging pupils in this way makes lessons interactive and fun.  Children not only absorb the principles of grammar, syntax and language structure, which help their literacy and language learning, but also have a great time doing it.  It is no surprise that we regularly hear: “Latin is my favourite subject”.

Jonathan says that even with just one Latin Programme lesson a week many of the 10 year olds he teaches with The Latin Programme in state primary schools know at least as much Latin as some of the 13 year old privately-educated children he occasionally tutors. And that’s what makes the job so rewarding for him.

Your funding allows The Latin Programme to recruit teachers like Jonathan who engage and excite children to learn.  By making lessons enjoyable The Latin Programme ensures that all children, regardless of their background, gain solid literacy skills to take forward into their lives.

Thank you so much for your continued support.

Links:

• The Nominative Case Rap
• The Noun Song