Ryan Farrell teaches his Latin class at St. Mary of the Hills School in Milton, March 11. Pilot photo/Wes Cipolla
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MILTON -- Birds circled around the empty tarmac behind St. Mary of the Hills School in Milton on the sunny morning of March 11.
Three stories above them, a small classroom of students thumbed through well-worn books with the imposing title "First Form Latin." Their teacher, Ryan Farrell, wrote long lists of Latin verbs on the board. That day's lesson was all about declensions -- the different forms of Latin nouns. Latin does not use articles such as the English words "and" or "the." Nouns instead have different forms, which signal how they are supposed to be used. At the start of the school year, Farrell's Latin students were discouraged. They thought they'd never be able to figure it out. Now, those same students are excelling.
"They just needed to adjust to the fact that Latin requires a somewhat different approach from other languages that they're accustomed to," Farrell told The Pilot.
Farrell is the middle school Latin and religion teacher at St. Mary of the Hills, a school with 261 students from pre-K to eighth grade. This is his first year teaching full-time at St. Mary's, and his first year teaching Latin.
"It's definitely a challenging language," he said. "It's very heavy on memorization and sort of drilling the use of the different forms."
Latin is offered to sixth, seventh, and eighth graders, who can choose between it and Spanish. Farrell said that his students appreciate the structure of Latin because it's much more "organized" than English or Spanish.
"They know and have heard that there are many Latin roots in the English language, so they see it as an opportunity to improve their English language grammar, their English language vocabulary," he said. "It's often talked about that students who study Latin tend to score higher on the SATs and other standardized tests."
Farrell has always had a passion for Latin. He minored in classics at Christendom College in Virginia, which required him to study the language. He was raised Protestant but converted to Catholicism because he was interested in the Catholic Church's "clarity of teaching." Much of the space on his desk is taken by religious icons. A rosary sits beside his cell phone.
"I also became drawn to the church's traditions and felt that one of the best ways for me to really immerse myself in what it was to be Catholic was in part to learn the Latin language," he said. "And then, of course, there's this immense beauty to the Latin language. It has this succinctness and this clarity and this rhythm."
He is a member of the St. Thomas More Teaching Fellowship, established by former Archdiocese of Boston Superintendent of Catholic Schools Thomas Carroll. According to its webpage, the purpose of the fellowship is to find teachers who "love learning, love children, and believe in the church's mission of saving souls." Farrell was initially director of faith formation at St. Mary of the Hills Church. Pastor Father Eric Bennett was interested in adding Latin to the school curriculum, and seeing Farrell's interest in the language, decided to make him the teacher.
Farrell said that while Latin is "not as useful" as languages that are widely spoken in the modern day, he believes that if Catholics do not study Latin, they will be "disconnected from our patrimony."
"Western civilization always considered education in Latin as the kind of cornerstone of becoming educated, or being educated," he said. "It allows students, over the course of time, access to a great variety of writings, many of which are some of the most beautiful that have ever been written."
His goal is to make Latin accessible and interesting for younger students without sacrificing rigor. He gives his students Latin stories to read and makes lessons into games. The kids love it when he splits the room into teams and gives them a Latin grammar question in a race to see which team can answer it first.
"I think most of the time, there can be a discouragement that comes in the beginning, because it's difficult," he said. "But if you just kind of work with them and show them that they're absolutely able to do this. They're just not accustomed to it."