Experienced High School Latin Teacher Beginner to Advanced Literature

Dean F.

Salve! Is Latin a heap of confusing rules? I can provide an effective path for learning to read authentic classical Latin texts, and I work with everyone from complete beginners to graduate students taking difficult classes.
I have taught Latin for over thirteen years at a public high school, and before that at the University of Notre Dame as a teaching assistant. As an experienced teacher:
* I'm AP-certified and have attended two AP Institutes for teachers.
* I'm familiar with the popular textbooks (Ecce Romani, Cambridge Latin Course, Oxford Latin Course, Latin for the New Millennium, Suburani, etc.).
* I offer National Latin Exam preparation.
* I have students who have consistently taken 1st or 2nd places at the annual state convention in Grammar and Reading Comprehension since 2019, including Best of Show (meaning my fourth-year Latin student scored higher than all other fourth- and fifth-year private and public students from across the state).
Note: I do not use spoken Latin. Speaking is an important part of learning a living language that has native speakers to interact with. In the case of dead languages, speaking a language that is still not fully understood (hence debates and disagreements among experts) risks unconsciously ingraining non-native speech patterns and mental representations. Understanding Latin at a structural level is the key to reading it, I believe, and in order to do that, I believe input should be largely confined to native Latin patterns, which in this case means written Latin drawn from classical sources.