The following speech was given at the annual Summer School of the Association for Latin Teaching, held at Haberdashers’ Monmouth School for Girls in July 2015.

Every Latin teacher has at some point been asked to justify why the study of Latin, a dead language, matters today. SAT scores, success in the medical and law fields, and its basis for the Romance languages are often cited as valid justifications to study Latin (see the NCSSFL “Benefits of Latin Study”); but these reasons are devoid of any true meaning or purpose, and I cringe when I hear them, even if they do help bolster enrolment.

I teach Spartan history at the University of Leeds both as part of an introductory course about the Greek World and also as part of a range of more closely-focused Special Subject modules for second and third year undergraduates, including Image of Sparta and Classics on Screen. I use the film 300, and other modern popular culture material, in different ways in each of these modules: as a subject in its own right for Classics on Screen, focusing on questions around what the material says about contemporary culture; and, in Image of Sparta, as a coda to the course's survey of ancient ‘images’, which allows for reflection back over the ancient material. Blanshard and Shahabudin suggest that cinematic output can be ‘…an important vehicle for discussing the values, history, and cultural politics of the classical past. It demands that we think about what are the key elements that make the cultures of the ancient Mediterranean so distinctive and worthy of study’ (Blanshard & Shahabudin, 2011, p. 1). While modern popular receptions of ancient Greek history are not actually on the AS or A Level specifications (perhaps they should be!), they have some potential for teaching at this level if a teacher wants their students to get to grips with the particular topic of Sparta.

How many interactions do you have with students on a daily basis? In these interactions do you lead the conversation or do the students? Do students in your classes have the confidence to speak rather than listen? This is what this article is about: giving your students the ability to confidently assert their opinions and ideas. Classical subjects are some of the few subjects where students learn about rhetoric, what it is and how the ancients used it; yet they often do not necessarily know how to use rhetoric or employ rhetorical skills themselves. Most students, who have taken a Classical subject, will consider the term rhetoric to be connected with the sorts of rhetorical devices common in Cicero and speeches in Greek drama. However, rhetoric is used by everyone. Rhetoric is found everywhere in every type of communication, and it is almost impossible to escape from it. Rhetoric embodies everyday communication skills, how we speak, what we write, the debate in a discussion, how we present ourselves in meetings, how we teach and our online presences on Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin. Rhetoric is a useful skill and at the heart of the concept is the ability to express oneself effectively orally and in writing; what are more commonly known as communication skills. Oracy is part of everyday rhetoric: it encompasses how we are communicating with our intended audience and others around us through spoken language, body language and gestures.

Is my PGCE drew towards its end, the prospect of my first teaching job loomed large in my mind. I had been forewarned that 50% of my teaching workload would consist of teaching Classical Civilisation, and that the majority of this would be at A Level. However, I did not have personal experience of the subject as a school pupil (I studied Latin, Greek and English Literature at A Level – there was no Classical Civilisation option), so I had no personal frame of reference or pre-formed opinion of how it might be taught best. The final research project of the PGCE course presented an ideal and much-needed opportunity to investigate the possible teaching strategies I should consider in preparation for my own teaching of the subject. I was particularly interested in how to ‘get through’ the seemingly vast amount of text which teachers often cited as a real challenge.

For the last few years, I have been working on an extensive digital model of ancient Rome as it appeared in the early 4th Century AD. This sort of visualisation lends itself to many applications in diverse fields: I am currently using it for research work into illumination and sightlines in the ancient city, have licensed it for broadcast in TV documentaries and publication in magazines, and am working with a computer games studio to turn it into an online game where players will be able to walk round the streets and buildings of the entire city (when not engaged in trading with or assassinating one another). Later this year I will be making a free online course, or MOOC, about the architecture of ancient Rome, which will largely be illustrated by this model.

The Ashmolean Latin Inscriptions Project (AshLI) is a three-year collaboration between the universities of Warwick and Oxford, and the Ashmolean Museum. Its remit comprises, aside from photographing, cataloguing and translating the Museum's collection of more than 350 Latin-inscribed objects, a wide-ranging programme of public- and schools-engagement: as well as the epigraphers (inscriptions specialists), imaging experts and digital encoders, Professor Alison Cooley's team also includes a PGCE-qualified Classics teacher and blogger, and a trained podcast producer. Their aim is to tell stories of Roman life, using inscriptions as a starting point, through INSET days, free teaching resources, short films and regular podcasts made available through the project's blog ‘Reading, Writing, Romans’. In 2015, the team organised the first in a series of large-scale, direct public engagement events, when it staged a Roman funeral procession in the Ashmolean Museum.

It is commonly known that in Latin, the verb that means to teach (docere) takes a double accusative: you teach a subject and a student. After a Master's degree and 12 years of teaching at the secondary level, I feel like I am pretty good at teaching my subject. But what I have come to realise is that the Latin teacher training program I graduated from did not prepare me quite so well as to teach my students – in the sense that there was a very important aspect of teacher training missing from my program and, as far as I knew, every other program out there. I never formally learned the importance of an inclusive and affirming classroom and curriculum, or how to achieve it.

We have been delivering the A Level Classical Civilisation unit ‘Roman Society and Thought’ on the OCR specification for a number of years at Peter Symonds College. This paper focuses on the delivery of one of the four set texts for this AS unit, Petronius' Dinner with Trimalchio. It points out some of the challenges teaching this translated text and then explains a number of the teaching methods and resources that we employ to enable our students to understand and learn this tricky piece of ancient literature. Petronius is one of the texts on the draft proposal for the new A Level Classical Civilisation under the section ‘Literature written in Latin’ under the sub-section ‘Novel & Fable’ and therefore this paper should aid teachers considering it as a unit option.

Having decided to leave Haberdashers’ Monmouth School for Girls (HMSG) after 23 years in 2013, most of my former colleagues were under the impression that I was planning to retire. To an extent that was true; I did decide to take my teachers’ pension early after a talk about pensions on an INSET day a couple of years earlier (and here I must apologise to younger teachers for whom this may not be a choice). There were some startling statistics about retirement age and the likelihood of death if left too late. Someone suggested it was probably a ruse by the governors to get rid of expensive teachers. If so, it worked. As far as I was concerned, it was one of the most worthwhile INSET days during my career.

Five years since its launch in 2010, Classics for All (CfA) has an increasingly high profile in schools. For anyone still not in the picture, CfA works to increase take-up of Classics (Latin, Greek, Classical Civilisation, Ancient History) in state primary and secondary schools across the UK.

The Classics in Communities project (http://classicsincommunities.org/) is a partnership between members of the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge and the Iris Project. It was set up in response to the primary curriculum reforms which were implemented in England from September 2014. In the Key Stage 2 (KS2) Languages curriculum policy, for the first time, Classical Greek and Latin can be chosen for study by pupils aged 6-11 in place of a modern language. The project particularly targets schools where Classical languages have not previously featured on the curriculum. It has twin aims: to equip teachers in primary schools with the skills and knowledge necessary to teach these languages; and to conduct parallel research to determine the impact of Classical language learning on children's cognitive development.

Nominative determinism occurs when a person's name reflects what that person does or is, for instance Mr Baker making bread or Ms Taylor making dresses. In the Potter saga J. K. Rowling seems to have a particular fondness for nominative determinism. In her case the names often derive from Latin and Greek language and tradition.

Caroline is the OCR Subject Specialist, and here she explains how the OCR Classics team is supporting teachers through general qualifications reform.