LYNN — Around 30 students took the National Latin Exam at Marshall Middle School on Thursday morning, making them the first middle schoolers in the city to do so.
Amina Petrone is the first Latin teacher at the middle school level in Lynn Public Schools, teaching two seventh grade and two eighth grade classes. Petrone said that so far, her students are enjoying learning Latin.
“A lot of them want to continue on next year … especially with my eighth graders, who are super interested in continuing it at either English or Classical,” Petrone said. “Overall, they really enjoy the history aspect.”
Petrone studied Latin throughout her four years at Lynn Classical High School and received her undergraduate degree in classical languages with a minor in classical studies. Although it is a dead language, Petrone believes it is still important to learn.
“I think it’s definitely important, because of the root words more than anything else,” Petrone said. “I did a whole entire unit on Latin prepositions and how they become English prefixes and I feel like the students can kind of see how these Latin words travel through history and become the English words that they see so often.”
Petrone began her work at Marshall as a building substitute, but said she was thrilled when there was an opening for a world language position and the school asked if she wanted to teach Latin.
“It’s nice to have Spanish classes and now a Latin class in the middle school because then we can lead our students into the high school level language programs,” Petrone said. “I’ve also had a lot of students tell me that it’s been helping them in their science and math classes.”
The Latin middle school program is an introductory class where students learn the basics. Petrone said this is beneficial because it allows more time to focus on world building.
“In high school, you have to focus a lot more on the grammar,” Petrone said. “So I feel like [middle schoolers] get sort of a sense of who the Romans are, as well as what Latin is.”
The 33 out of nearly 80 Latin students who chose to take the exam at Marshall will have their tests sent out to the National Latin Exam Committee to be scored. Top scorers will receive certificates.
