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Ep ree ------_ ea AN Bn rg I 4 - PORT PERRY STAR, Tuesday, March 6, 2001 COMMUNITY FEATURES "Scugog's Community Newspaper of Choice" rpe diem, or Semper ubi sub ubi? Latin, long considered a dead language, is enjoying a revival at Port Perry High School ~ By Lisa McClure Port Perry Star Carpe diem may seem like an appropriate motto for a high school Latin class, but Gail Chellew's Grade 11 students kind rh prefer this one: Semper ubi sub ubi. Although many consider Latin to be a "dead" language, the course has been revived just this year at Port. Perry High School. And Latin's return to the curricu- lum has been met with enthusi- 'asm by both teachers and stu- dents. A lively response, you might say; even the text the class is taught from is called "Living Latin". The program was thriving as an elective course at the high school more than a decade ago, but even- tually was dropped due to a lack of interest among students. Mrs. Chellew chose to begin offering the course again this year after receiving inquiries about the pro- gram from a number of students. Eventually, enough students signed up to warrant two Grade I1 level classes. - "I'm pleased about the upsurge in interest," said Mrs. Chellew. "I think the most: useful thing I took in high school was Latin." Students who view the lan- guage as ancient and arcane ques- tion the context in which they may use Latin in the future. Mrs. Chellew counters that Latin is extremely helpful as a foundation subject to anyone considering fur- thering - their education in areas such as history, English, languages, classical studies, romance lan- guages, biology and botany. Latin's applications in these sub- jects range from sentence struc- ture to terminology, as well as simply helping to understand some of the history of our own lan- guage. And while Latin i is a base course for the aforementioned subjects, there's another reason for its con- tinued inclusion in high school cur- riculum here: Students enrolled in the Latin program are enjoying themselves. "I think it's fun," said Latin stu- dent Kirsty Robertson: " took it because | want to learn languages, and I'm going into the field of medicine." Fun is a word that many stu- dents use to describe the class. They enjoy the intimate class size - fewer than 15 students - and wel- coming atmosphere of this semes- ter's course. "It's great. The class is small, so we have time to get work done and time to go off on a tangent," claims Lesley Partington, a student in the second period class and the self- proclaimed "Goddess of Latin". -"] signed up for the course because | needed to fill. my semester, and | thought. it would be interesting and fun." Of course, a lot of the credit for the popularity of the revived Latin classés must be attributed to the "teacher who brought the language back from the dead at PPHS - Mrs. Chellew. A graduate of the University of Toronto, Mrs. Chellew is a certified English and Latin teacher, and is also educated in French, Greek and German. She has been a teacher for more than 20 years, and has been employed at Sir Sandford Fleming High School in North York as well as at Port Perry High. Although she is orimanly an English teacher, Mrs. Chellew finds Latin "comforting" to teach. That's because there are specific correct and incorrect answers in the lan- guage - unlike English, she said. "Very often it's the students who like maths and sciences who do well in Latin because it's a very structured, organized language," said Mrs. Chellew. "Almost everyone does well in Latin because you either know it, or you don't." With the commitment of Mrs. Chellew and growing enthusiasm- among students, the Latin pro- gram appears to have a bright future at Port High. Next year, there will be an OAC level Latin course offered in addition to the Grade 11 course. And for now, the current Latin class will continue to broaden their creative Latin abilities and knowledge in languages as they form such terms as Semper ubi sub ubi - which, loosely translated, means "Always wear underwear". Latin, ¢ a dead language? Don dents. They're enjoying the study of Latin, high school. Above, Mrs. "Goddess of Latin". And below, Now, doesn't that look like fun? LISA McCLURE/PORT PERRY STAR t try to tell that to Gail Chellew's Port Perry High School stu- which was re-introduced just this year at the local Chellew confers with Lesley Partington, class members cooperate to say Latin with body language. the self-proclaimed By Jeff Mitchell Port Perry Star Saturday. dawned bright and cold, a - jcantly over the years. Why snow golf? hint of frost in the air, about five degrees below zero, and no sign of precipitation. Perfect day for golf, eh? Well, according to about 70 fun-loving souls in Caesarea, it was. They. assembled Saturday at the Summit Dr. home of Gerry and Karen Tyler for the Seventh Annual Lake Scugog Snow Golf Tournament, a decidedly goofy event that's grown signif: "I don't know," said Mrs. Tyler, who along with her husband has hosted the event for the last three years. "Jimmy Croft started it a couple of years ago, and it's just grown and grown." Years ago the tourney began with a few die-hard duffers at Mr. Croft's place on the other side of town, but as it grew in popu- larity, a new venue had to be found, she explained. "Because of the number of people, we had the biggest place to hold it." . Mild temperatures prevailed Saturday as golfers played a best-ball scramble for- mat, teeing off from the Tylers' back yard to the first green, which lay just offshore. A flag marked the hole that had been drilled in the ice, and a "green" had been swept clean of snow. And man, those greens were fast. So were the other eight; Mr. Tyler and some friends plowed fairways and swept Why SNOW golf? Tourney participants reply, Why not? greens to assemble a nine-hole, 3,600- yard course, which rang in at a par 34. Best round off the day was a combined seven-under 27, recorded by the four- some of Mr. Croft, Mr. Tyler, Dale Williams, and Kelly Sweetman. Each of those golfers made the money list with the receipt of a crisp $20 bill, and they hoist- ed the home-made trophy, which consists of, well, mostly beer bottles. Golfers who registered brought a dona- tion for the Operation Scugog food bank.