Grace Anderson

LANGUAGES Global speakers

Having learned and taught two distince foreign languages, Latin instructor David Cox talks about his experience with Latin and Greek, and Chinese instructor Grace Anderson about her experience with Chinese and Spanish.

WORLDWIDE According to Ethnologue, there are nearly 538 million Spanish speakers and over 1.1 billion Mandarin speakers in the world. 21 countries have Spanish as their official language, while only 3 recognize Mandarin as an official language. On the other hand, no country lists Latin as an official language, and modern Greek is distinct from the ancient Greek taught at the school.

Axel Icazbalceta: Where did you learn Spanish and Chinese? Grace Anderson: I learned Spanish in secondary school when I was an eighth grader, and I just continued to learn throughout high school and in college. Chinese was a little more weird because my parents spoke Chinese to me and I spoke it as a toddler, but once I started attending school, I spoke English to them. Even though they sent me to Chinese school on Saturdays, I didn’t really learn much Chinese then. I was interested in learning in high school but my school didn’t offer Chinese classes, so I really started learning in college and just continued to learn Chinese from there. I actually majored in both Spanish and Chinese.

AI: Spanish and Chinese come from completely different language branches and are so different in many ways, but have you discovered any similarities as you studied the two languages? GA: The really cool thing about knowing other languages is that you can see similarities despite them being so different. My first year of teaching, Grace I was telling my Spanish Anderson immersion student the Chinese instructor difference between the two words “to know” – knowing a person versus knowing information. In Spanish, that’s ‘él conoce’ for ‘he knows a person’ versus ‘él sabe’ for ‘he knows information’. I was trying to explain that in Chinese, we have the same thing – ‘他认识’ for ‘he knows someone’ versus ‘他知道’ for ‘he knows something in his head’. But in English, we just have that one word: ‘knows’ . It’s just really cool when I learn different languages and I can make those connections that otherwise wouldn’t come.

AI: What are some differences and similarities in how you teach the two languages? GA: The way I think about it, Chinese pinyin is similar to Spanish. In terms of reading and writing, Spanish and pinyin are similar, but Chinese has another layer of characters. Chinese typically just takes longer to teach because of its very unique writing system. My focus for students is ‘Are you able to communicate?’ so I’m not too concerned if the grammar is incorrect as long as I can still understand them, and with time, I know they will be able to communicate better and more accurately.

AI: So you’ve taught both Spanish and Chinese in the past, but you only teach Chinese at the school. Is there any reason why? Any plans to teach both in the future? GA: This was what the position was and where the need is. I knew when we transitioned to this new school that we needed a full-time Chinese teacher to come on. It just depends on the needs of the Spanish department or the Chinese department. We’ll just see what will happen.

Jamie Mahowald: Where did you first learn Latin and Greek? David Cox: Actually, I began learning French first, in fourth grade. I began learning Latin in high school in ninth grade, and I had a really great high school teacher who passed away just recently. She was a big influence on the trajectory of my life. In college, I was thinking I’d be an engineer, but it only took me one calculus course to realize this wasn’t what I wanted to do. In the meantime, I decided because I had liked Latin in high school, I took a course my freshman year and they welcomed me with open arms. I didn’t have to take Greek, but I ended up going for an honors major in Classics, and that did require taking Greek.

JM: How is your approach to teaching Latin different from teaching Greek? DC: Greek, like Latin, has declensions and conjugations, but instead of four principal parts, verbs have as many as seven. There’s a lot of repetition. As the Romans said, repetitio est mater scienti – repetition is the mother of knowledge. They learn by just repeating, and if you can inject some fun and energy into that, that helps. But my individual approach is really not very different. I think it would be if I were teaching French, simply because it’s a spoken language.

JM: What places have you taught at in the past? DC: My first teaching gig was at Philips Andover just north of Boston, but that was just an internship – more like indentured servitude because I was David paid almost nothing. Cox Latin instructor The payment is that I got the honor of teaching at Andover, and then I taught for six years at a school called Middlesex in Concord, Massachusetts. Both of these are boarding schools, so there’s a fundamental difference. You’re living with the students. You can develop a closer relationship with the students, but at the same time, it can also be kind of smothering.

JM: How has the way you’ve taught Greek and Latin changed over time through these schools? DC: In both Latin and Greek, it’s hard to find good textbooks. I’ve learned how to compensate for the bad points by developing my own material that supplements what the textbook lacks. I also built up a pretty broad knowledge of both the Greeks and above all, the Romans. My philosophy about teaching is that the teacher has to try to be the best student in the class, to model the joy of learning – which I still very much believe in – and also to stay on top of current scholarship.

STORY Axel Icazbalceta, Jamie Mahowald GRAPHIC Jonathan Yin

21

October 29, 2020 Culture The ReMarker

INTERVIEW Shreyan Daulat

Since December 2018, junior Owen Simon has dedicated himself to photography both on and off campus. Simon created his account — @owensimonphoto – where he posts the favorite photos he has taken. Here are his favorites.

One of my favorite posts was a set of photos that I took the day after the tornado. One of the most heart wrenching photos in the set was on the tennis court. You can see Hicks Gym destroyed, and posing for the photo is Tristan Doan. Not only is he holding a volleyball, but he is also wearing his SPC volleyball championship shirt.

It was both ironic and painful to see, because he was wearing a championship shirt while standing on top of all these tattered SPC banners. This photo wasn’t one of my best taken photos of all time in terms of composition, but it certainly means a lot to me.

Another meaningful photo I posted was something I took at the BLM protest. My experience going down there was really powerful and there was such a vibrant atmosphere. This picture was taken at a time during a moment of silence.

This one woman was riding her bike and she had a mask on. She was wearing sunglasses and the rainbow jumpsuit. This created a really cool picture. Also, she was still standing while everyone else was on the ground. This was a fully candid shot and I think it created a really powerful image. You can see the Main St. sign, which is a cool aspect of the image that shows that the picture was taken in the heart of downtown Dallas.

This photo was really cool and I was able to use a lot of editing skills. For example, I edited a frame around my brother Jonah, who is posing. Also, I added a paint stripe over his face which was a really cool aspect of the photo. Currently, I am writing a piece about this picture to submit to a New York Times competition.

I am paralleling the stripe on his face to the anonymity of people wearing a mask because it is hard to tell who the person is in a mask so I think it is a fitting photo for modern times. The photo was also partly inspired by the cover of the movie Parasite, where the man has a black bar over his eyes. In general, this is just a super unique photo and I like it a lot.