Edutopia - October/November 2008 - (Page 42)

learns as the w rld Virgil Rocks In Sicily, a creative teacher ﬁnds a novel and hip way to make Latin stick. By Erla Zwingle all it the corridor effect—that random creative spark struck when two people pass each other in the hall and stop for a minute to talk. That’s what happened eight years ago when Maurizio Vento, Latin teacher at the Vincenzo Fardella high school, in Trapani, Sicily, ran into the principal, Franca Valenti. From Valenti’s casual observation that there ought to be some new way to teach Latin—a required subject, which makes it even less appealing to students than its merely being an extinct language—Vento came up with the idea to set his curriculum to music. And not to Bach or Monteverdi, but rather to the pop music the students already knew by heart. Thus, Schola cantans—“the school that sings”—was born. The program consisted of two phases: First, the class studied Latin poetry in the usual way, learning about the author, the history, and the context of each piece. Then, before students began looking for music, they focused on learning the ancient rhythm of the text by beating it out on tables and making sketches on the chalkboard. Finally, they began to bring in CDs in order to ⇒nd pieces that would work well with the text. You might not have thought so, but plenty of cutting-edge music out there goes really well with trochaic tetrameters. It wasn’t long before students who had signed up for what was a mystery project were singing “Cras amet qui numquam amavit; quique amavit cras amet” to the breakdance funk of Afrika Bambaataa. C There were only a few restrictions: The music couldn’t already have words, it couldn’t be too long, and it couldn’t ⇒nish out of sync with the rhythm of the poem. By the time they were ready to put music and words together, Vento says, “they felt the rhythm inside them.” Eventually the students had assembled a repertoire of eight works, among them Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue (to the electronic riffs of Music House) and several poems by Catullus, from the deeply romantic Fifth (to the strains of Algerian pop-rai singer Khaled) and Seventh (Jovanotti) to the frankly funny Thirteenth (Music House again). It was the time-tested pedagogic principle of “Non nova sed nove”—not something new, but in a new form. “The effect was to revive Latin from being a dead language to one reborn into something modern” says Vento.” The result? Students were not only slaloming their way through forests of verbiage, they were also smiling as they went, and a few were barely suppressing the urge to dance. Matching Melody to Meaning Things went so well because Vento cleverly played another card: content. He chose poetry that was inherently interesting, that could still touch young hearts. Some of Catullus’s most famous poems, such as the Fifth and the Seventh, are about love: “You ask how many kisses of yours, Lesbia, would be enough and more for me.” Humor is another bonding ingredient, as in 42 EDUTOPIA OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2008

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Edutopia - October/November 2008

Edutopia - October/November 2008 Contents UpFront Feedback Dispatches Sage Advice Ask Ellen Head of Class Cool Schools Design: Lessons from the Mall The Bucks Start Here Go Global: Virgil Rocks Big Ideas: Powerful Learning Mapping Their Futures Heart & Soul Pop Quiz: Suze Orman

Edutopia - October/November 2008

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