When a Myth is a Hit

Mary L. B. Pendergraft (Wake Forest University)
and Danetta Genung

Wake Forest University has as its motto Pro Humanitate, and our active service learning program is one way the university acts on that commitment. I participated in a semester-long faculty seminar as an ACE Fellow (Academic & Community Engagement) and inspired with ideas of how such a program could encourage my students’ study of Latin while providing a real service to local public schools, I embarked on a service-learning class. For two semesters, my Intermediate Latin Class partnered with two Latin teachers to help with tutoring their students, with producing pedagogical materials, or filling any other needs that those teachers identified.

My goals for my students were to give these third semester students an immediate reason to take ownership of their Latin learning and of the learning process in general as they offered a real service to teachers and learned about students whose backgrounds were very different from their own.  Discussions with the collaborating teachers suggest that we met the third goal, and some poignant entries in student journals reveal real progress on the fourth.

One project in particular bore fruit in exciting ways: Wake Forest students helped Latin I students produce mythology picture books that incorporated information from the internet and digital photography, thus enabling the high schooler students to achieve one of the goals of the North Carolina Standard Course of Study. East Forsyth students in turn took their books to two nearby elementary schools where they introduced younger children to the world of Greek mythology and encouraged them in their reading. Our vertical teaming thus stretched from third grade to college seniors, and provided a positive experience at every level.

A project like this is easy to implement and replicate; it can meet a variety of community needs and it can include college students with varying degrees of proficiency and experience. Coordination of schedules, transportation and communication between my students and our collaborating schools were the biggest challenges we faced, and flexibility in defining the service component enabled us to meet them.