Grex Latinus: Encouraging Community and Leadership

As a Latin teacher who grew up in the Junior Classical League (JCL) herself, starting a chapter was a no brainer for me.  However, when I first came to my school there was no formal or officer structure.   Then, when expanded to start an upper school, I found myself in that same boat again.  Both times I chose to create a leadership structure for our club, partly because that was familiar to me from my own experience.  However, someone recently asked me to post about our Latin club leadership structure, and reflecting on why we are doing what we are doing has been good.

Why Do this Work

First, let me address why I believe that being a part of JCL is important for my students.  I want my students to understand that what we do in Latin class is connected to the outside world in a panoply of ways.  As a matter of fact, we have a requirement that each trimester our students find away to connect to the outside Latin community.  JCL is an easy way for my students to fulfill this requirement (though not the only way).  Additionally, the JCL organization (especially on the local and state level) is student-run.  By its very nature JCL is student-driven.  Additionally, the officers who run this organization get some of the best leadership training I’ve ever seen or experienced.  Finally, collaborating with other teachers and students through JCL has been an important part of my own professional development over the years.

Our Club:  The Early Years

When I first started our upper school club, the students and I established leadership positions for the organization that made sense according to what we wanted to accomplish:

·      Senior Consul:  basically serves as President, running meetings and following up on plans.

·      Junior Consul:  takes minutes and runs meetings when the President is absent.

·      Proconsul:  plans activities surrounding our trips to conventions.

·      Quaestor:  serves as treasurer.

·      Senatores:  represent each Latin class on the Latin Club Senate.

Unlike my own club experience (and the state and national organizations), I wanted to use Latin names for our club positions to reinforce the language and cultural concepts from class. 

Because of their exposure to the state JCL organization, our new officers wanted to write their own constitution and bylaws.  I hadn’t anticipated them wanting to do this, but I loved the idea of them establishing their own governing documents.  The many meetings that led to the final product took a great deal of time, but the students learned a lot from thinking deliberately through the organization and its functioning.  I wasn’t sure how long these documents would last, but definitely wanted to encourage their work.

Twenty Years Later

It has now been twenty years since our club was originally established.  We are still using the constitution and bylaws written by my early students, though they have been revised several times by the students who have followed.   I believe the documents specify a revision every five years or so, though I hope there will be a future change to revise them every four years so that all students will have the opportunity to participate in constitutional revisions during their high school experience.

In the ensuing years, we’ve also added a couple of other positions:  Historicus/Historica Libri and Historicus/Historica Peregrinus/Peregrina.  Both offices were established to take care of perceived needs.  The Historicus Libri makes our club scrapbook and enters it at JCL conventions.  Our Historica Peregrina was added to handle promotional and social media duties in addition to planning community service projects for the group. 

Conclusions

My commitment to continuing to foster student leadership through the Latin Club at my school is stronger than ever.  Students are expected to be leaders – often without any training or direction about what that means.  I am proud that we started this year with an officer retreat just before school started and that part of that retreat was a discussion of how to lead.  I firmly believe that the leadership training that students get through JCL is an important part of what we do, and I think it is important that we share that work with prospective Latin students. 

Additionally, the community that JCL fosters among Latin student beyond our school walls has been an important networking tool for my students that I see benefitting them during their college years and beyond.  Coming from a small school means that these connections are sometimes even more important.  I’ve seen tough adjustments to large universities made easier by meeting up with friends they knew through JCL. 

For these reasons and more I’ll continue sponsoring JCL and working to encourage student leadership and ownership over our chapter. - Parva