The team in the languages and culture department at Trinity College School continues to find ways by which students can connect with the sounds, culture, people and places in our shared world. The guiding principles that drive the study of contemporary language, including French and Spanish, remain those derived from the shared study of and commitment to teaching through storytelling, reading and speaking. The dynamism of Sra. María Velasquez-Labrecque, Ms. Tiffany Bathurst and Mrs. Rachel Stephens has been complemented by the innovative work of Ms. Lydia Conlon. Together this team drives lessons that have the hallways in the W.A. Johnson Block of TCS ring with the sounds of students exploring confidently some global languages. Interaction and performance together encourage students to explore collectively and collaboratively the language as something that serves to build community. Attention has been paid, through partnership with student representatives of the Gender & Sexuality Alliance and Trinity Students for Social Justice, to the changing modalities of inclusive modelling in inflected language constructs.
French language and its heritage is celebrated in the core and enriched French offerings at TCS. Ms. Stephens, Mr. Andrew Petrolito, Ms. Bathurst and Ms. Conlon continue to provide important and extensive language opportunities including DELF and Advanced Placement French initiatives that provide lasting and externally recognized measures of language fluency. The art, culture and global reach of French are being explored through a variety of texts that provide insight into the presence of the language and its legacy in various contexts.
The work being done in the Spanish sequence by Ms. Velasquez-Labrecque includes a variety of different activities that address things including common modes of expression to environmental details. The fall provided students with an occasion to reflect upon the practices associated with Día de los Muertos. The meaningful and sensitive approach brought to this thematic topic helped students to make personal connections to the practices of remembrance. This is all the more pertinent in light of the initiatives that have been brought to the fore as part of Canada’s own National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.
The Latin program explores the intricacies of language as analogous to various modes of contemporary expression. Mathematics and coding both are dependent upon expressions that are ordered and that have their own syntax. This is a connection that is highlighted in the Latin classroom, a topic that encourages students to be systematic, analytical readers, writers and listeners. At various levels, emphasis is being placed upon the practice of history and its place as a cultural product. Students explore this idea through thematic analysis and textual study. The degree to which history is a product of geography is under consideration in classes exploring the dynamic methods by which the Roman state evolves. This allows for important and critical connection to contemporary culture and politics. Students are learning to interpret the present by reading the past.
The languages and culture department continues to give new voices to new students. Foreign language affords unique perspective and a capacity for cross-cultural communication that brings all of us together.
- By Dr. Greg Hodges, head of languages and culture
