By Tobin Smith, ’24
I am Tobin Smith, Riverside class of 2024. I took Latin for all seven years that I attended Lakewood Montessori Middle School and Riverside High School, and would, without hesitation, consider it the most valuable part of my education in the Durham Public Schools system. Recently, I was made aware by my old instructor, Melissa Lido, that Riverside was in danger of losing its Latin program due to low enrollment numbers. I am incredibly concerned about this because I believe striking the Latin program at Riverside would only negatively affect students and the school itself.
Learning Latin at Riverside prepared me and so many of my peers and friends for education beyond high school. Taking Latin courses made me a better writer, reader, thinker, history student, and overall student. As a STEM student, I have found that Latin’s highly structured nature has made me better at math in college, and I think others would agree. It is also very attractive on college applications, scholarship applications, and for students applying to NCSSM. Studying Latin demonstrates a strong interest in a focused academic field and suggests a tendency toward interdisciplinary learning, which colleges love. In my time at Riverside, I have seen my peers within the Latin program move on to various prestigious colleges, universities, and art institutions across the country and even outside of the country. They have gone into various fields such as media, engineering, other STEM, social work, law, and art, but they all have ties to the Riverside Latin program. I myself just finished my first year studying data science at UNC Chapel Hill and got accepted into the B.S. program as a freshman. I believe that, while Latin might not be directly related to my primary field of study, studying it in high school acted like a springboard for me and others to go in any direction we wanted after high school.
In addition to just being a Latin student, I was also a part of both Lakewood and Riverside’s Junior Classical League (JCL) chapters. JCL is an incredible extracurricular opportunity available to Latin students that allows them to combine their passion for the classics with their interests in other academic fields, arts, crafts, athletics, trivia, and leadership in statewide and nationwide events where they can compete, present, and learn with other Latin students on college campuses. Students, including myself, win awards at these events that they can use to advertise themselves on a college application or an art portfolio. Riverside’s JCL program has a special place in North Carolina JCL, being the most decorated and established JCL program at a public high school in the state.
During my senior year, I had the honor and privilege of serving both as Riverside JCL’s president and as NCJCL’s first vice president. Holding these leadership positions is one of the best things I’ve ever been able to do, and provided me with a perspective on Latin’s current place in secondary education that I feel is valuable in this issue. During my year on the NCJCL board, I was the only student on that board representing a public school. In the year before I was elected, my friend Iris Henry served as president and was the only student on the board representing a public school. Iris was then a student at NCSSM, but had started the short-lived JCL chapter at NCSSM after being part of JCL at both Lakewood and Riverside. In the year after I served on the board, none of the board members represented a public school, and in this
upcoming academic year, a student at Lakewood will serve as the middle school representative,
once again giving public schools a head at the table.
There is a clear disparity between public and private/charter schools when it comes to offering Latin. While it is not the entire issue, I think this is illustrative of the greater disparity in student outcomes and performance between public and private schools. I think that Riverside’s Latin program is the best opportunity available for any student at Riverside, and it must be one of the best opportunities for any student in the district. One frustration I had as Riverside JCL president was how I felt the school and the district did little to promote the program, despite how important it was. I found that the responsibility of promoting the program and recruiting students fell entirely on us and Ms. Lido. I made a few trips to Lakewood during my senior year to encourage students to continue studying Latin at Riverside at their JCL meetings, but that isn’t an option available to future Riverside JCL officers, and I don’t think it is something I should have felt the personal responsibility to do. Riverside is the only high school in the district that still offers Latin, but I cannot find that information on the DPS website, meaning that if I were a parent wanting my student to take Latin in high school, the information needed to do that is not immediately available to me, which it should be.
Aside from the academic benefits of learning Latin, I also found that the Latin classroom environment was conducive to a healthy high school experience. Students who have attended Riverside in the past five years have been in an environment of constant teacher turnover. Latin was often the only class I could register for where I would confidently know who my instructor would be and which other students would be in that class with me. I had that all four years, and it provided a sense of continuity throughout my time at Riverside that, looking back upon, I am very grateful for. I am incredibly grateful to have had the invaluable opportunity to study Latin in middle and high school, and I hope this opportunity exists for all young people in Durham for the foreseeable future.
