A classic comeback

It's second period and Ray Smith is a man divided. At the front of his Latin class, the third-year students at Arlington High School huddle over their Latin vocabulary work sheets. In the back of the class, six Advanced Placement students sit spread out in preparation for their test, translating a passage of Tacitus. First period is just as energetic, when Smith reviews the parts of the Roman forum for 29 students, guiding his Latin 2 honors students while trying to challenge those in third-year college prep.

His academic balancing act began two years ago, when Geraldine Tremblay, the school's doyenne of Latin, retired. She had taught hundreds of students for more than 30 years. "Hiring to replace her," Smith said, "was hiring to replace a legend."

To save money, the school dispatched Smith to find someone willing to teach Latin for only three, instead of five, classes a day. He interviewed eight candidates and in the end, took a chance on a young woman with very little teaching experience, but a background in European history, some Latin and Italian.

"This is a situation where failure is not an option. You find someone or else," Smith said. "I'm lucky to get what I got."

Elsewhere, Latin teachers are retiring and their programs are lying fallow while the schools struggle to find replacements. Drury High School in North Adams lost its teacher two years ago and, without a steward, has been forced to shelve the program. Principals from New Jersey are frantically calling New England colleges, hoping to recruit anyone majoring in the classics. Openings posted on professional websites stay open for months.

"It was called the dead language and it's going deeper in the ground as we speak," said James E. Montepare, interim superintendent of North Adams schools.

The shortage is untimely now as Latin is undergoing a resurgence in American public schools. From California to Massachusetts, programs have been revived or are oversubscribed. Tens of thousands of students are taking the competitive National Latin exam.

"You're not just teaching a bunch of declensions. You're teaching how a language works," said Kenneth Kitchell, a professor with the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and president of the American Classical League. Part of Kitchell's mission for the next year is to address the dearth of Latin teachers, a situation he blames on baby boomers.

Latin plummeted in popularity in the 1960s, when it was dismissed as a bane to multiculturalism, a dead language spoken by very dead white European men. Schools and universities cut programs. Students opted for modern languages that seemed more relevant in the multilingual US. Even classically-based schools like Boston Latin reduced the number of required years of Latin study.

A decade later, professionals like Kitchell went in the mid-1970s on the "counteroffensive," as he calls it, speaking to educators, academics, professional organizations, parents and anyone else who needed to know that Latin was still relevant: It is the foundation for understanding the English and romance languages, and its culture is a basis for our own. Students worried about the ever-competitive frenzy of college admissions signed up. Districts revived high school programs and started them in middle schools.

Many of Smith's students began studying in the sixth grade.

Now that they are working, Smith's students are amazed at Latin's utility. Senior Kim Hazeltine, 17, works as a paralegal after school. When the law firm staff explained terms like habeas corpus, she told them, "I already know." Senior Desiree Rose, 17, said she uses Latin at her bakery job.

"All the people I work with speak Portuguese," she said. When she needs more bread, she asks for "pan" and everybody understands.

None of the students plans to teach Latin, following a two-decade trend that has caused the teaching shortage.

"We've done such a good job, we now have more programs than we have recent grads to teach it," Kitchell said.

Professional associations are trying to address the problem. The University of Massachusetts has a Master of Arts in Teaching in Latin and Classical Humanities, designed to quickly mold a classics major into a teaching professional. The Classical Association of New England has a shadow teaching program, designed to get interested students thinking about teaching as a career. In the Southwest United States a program called SPLAT encourages native Spanish speakers to study Latin.

But the UMass program graduates only a half-dozen people a year, said Sally Murphy, a Latin teacher at The Winsor School in Boston: "People worry about retiring because they're not quite sure anyone will be there to fill their position."

Suzanne Sataline can be reached at sataline@globe.com.