The presentations for Honor Latin V, a Latin class for Donahue Academy seniors, are affectionately titled “Convivium Pro Mente” or “A Feast for the Mind.” The presentations are an annual showcase event where each enrolled senior selects, studies, memorizes, and explores a Latin passage over the course of an eight-to-ten-minute presentation.
The goal is for students to share with the broader community some of the fruits of six years of diligent Latin study, which, beginning in Grade 6, sees students learn the rudiments of the language and core vocabulary words and progress to reading fluently the Gospel of Mark.
Presentation topics range from Sacred Scripture to Roman gladiatorial battles to Latin poetry. This year, on May 5, students presented on:
- Elizabeth Burke – De Architectura (About Architecture)
- Theresa Schneider – De Medicina (Medicine: Empiricism over Theory)
- Rebecca Shmina – De Arte Poetica: Horace (Poetic Art: Horace)
- Celina Perreault – Pange Lingua (Pange Lingua Hymn by St. Thomas Aquinas)
- Isabelle Meyer – Aduclescentium Educatio (Education of the Youth)
- Hannah Hopkins: Pulchritudo Etymology Botanica (The Beauty of Botanical Etymology)
- Patrick Long: Ludi Gladiatorium Delenda Sunt! (The Gladiators’ Games Must be Destroyed!)
- Vivian Luzarraga: Pulchritudo Linguae Latinae (The Beauty of the Latin Tongue)
Students begin to think about a topic in January, select a topic and passage in February, and memorize the (90-100-word) passage in Latin throughout March and April. Passages must have been originally composed in Latin or have a significant historical value as a Latin translation (e.g., St. Jerome’s Vulgate). Students then choose some aspect of their passage to highlight in their presentation (e.g., poetic structure, word choice, historical significance). Finally, they put everything together in a rhetorically beautiful slideshow presented to Latin students from Grades 10 and 11 as well as special guests.
“Convivum Pro Mente” feeds into Donahue Academy’s foundational pedagogical principle: the Divine Pedagogy (i.e., meeting each student where he or she is at). Donahue Academy has found that project-based learning with a high degree of student choice successfully meets the needs of second semester seniors, with the ultimate example being the Senior Thesis presentation, after which the Latin presentation is modeled.
The project also functions as the language department’s capstone, demonstrating students’ 13 years of intellectual and spiritual formation. Even through this narrow lens, the project reveals the constituent parts that make such a presentation possible: the memorization and recitation work of the Grammar Stage, the comparing and contrasting of the Logic Stage, and the beauty, rigor, and personal ownership of the Rhetoric Stage.
When a student freely chooses to memorize and analyze the Latin Vulgate edition of Psalm 22 and critically evaluate three different English translations based upon the Vulgate, as a recent graduate did, Donahue Academy’s vision for education is on vivid display.
“Laudetur Jesus Christus,” we cry!
