Dear Proud Parent:
Salve and welcome to another great school year! Mrs. Ash and I are very excited and ready to get started with an increasingly full schedule of Latin this year. Our Latin family now has over 300 students among Latin I, Latin II, Latin III, AP Vergil, and Latin V. In fact, North Gwinnett High School can't contain us! We are very happy now to offer Latin I at North Gwinnett Middle School! This year, I will be teaching the Latin II, III, AP Vergil, and V classes, while Mrs. Ash will teach Latin I at both NGHS and NGMS.
North Gwinnett Latin is entering a new decade of excellence, as this is our eleventh year in existence since I had the pleasure of starting the program those many years ago. I am originally from Arizona, attended grade school in Cobb County, and graduated in 1999 with a Bachelor's in Latin from the University of Georgia. I then enrolled in the Modified Masters Program in Foreign Language Education to obtain my teaching certificate and came soon after to North to round out an already wonderful Foreign Language Department. I completed my Masters in Latin through the Summer Classics Institute at the University of Georgia, with a thesis focused on Vergil's Aeneid and Statius' Thebaid. I also spent six weeks in Rome in the summer of 2007 as a Fellow with the UGA Classics Study Abroad, taking coursework and teaching on site.
The Latin students had a great year last year and we are continually looking to best ourselves. Our chapter of the Junior Classical League was the strongest it has ever been and one of my main goals this year is to achieve 100% participation in the JCL (Latin Club) and to double the active participation in all of its activities. We are already looking forward to more fun and adventure at Fall Forum and at the State Latin Convention. North took about thirty delegates to Fall Forum and fifty delegates to Rock Eagle for State last year, and had a great time in an educational environment. At State Convention, we were among the largest delegations, and came away with over fifty awards. Each year, North's Latin students take the National Latin Exam, which allows us to measure ourselves against Latin students from all over the world. The students again performed wonderfully, winning three NLE Book Awards, and about 80% of all students receiving awards. The students this year have big shoes to fill!
One of the most exciting aspects of this year is how large we have become, especially now that we are teaching Latin at North Gwinnett Middle School as well. Mrs. Ash and I rejoice in the fact that such a large part of our North Gwinnett cluster will be so well prepared for the SAT's, for their other classes, and for their future.
None of this is possible without the great parental support we and the students receive as well as the open communication among all of us that allows this to happen. We want to reiterate that frequent and open communication is not only welcome, but highly encouraged. We will do our best to keep in contact with all parents, but keep in mind that Mrs. Ash and I each teach over a hundred students, so this is quite a daunting task! Therefore, we ask that you feel free to email us (the best way to get in touch with us) without hesitation. In fact, we love getting emails from parents, as this extends the North Gwinnett community into the classroom. You will receive a progress report via email every week and various update emails from us once we get everyone's email on the listserv. Again, we will do our best to contact all our parents, but feel free to contact us with any questions or comments you may have.
Sincerely,
Patrick Yaggy
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