SPANISH

The Spanish program at Sage focuses students on the primary reason behind the development of language: communication. Language classes at Sage are meant to encourage oral and written communication, and Spanish is the primary language of both instruction and communication. At Sage, we aim not just to have students acquire the knowledge of a language, but to see its applicability to the real world. Sage seeks both to educate students and to promote students’ enjoyment of and success with foreign language. Such enjoyment translates into increased commitment to learning, curiosity about the culture, and a greater willingness to speak in the target language.

Sage Habla Español:
Sage offers Spanish instruction to all students beginning in kindergarten. Best curriculum practices in foreign language instruction indicate that students gain higher levels of proficiency when they focus on a single foreign language. Spanish allows us to create a community of language learners, enhance academic rigor, enrich depth and flexibility of content, and increase flexibility of pacing and grouping. What this means is that learning Spanish as a second language becomes an integral part of the Sage experience.

The language department brings the Spanish language and cultures alive in our school community. Here is a snapshot of what the Sage Habla Español program has offered:

(1) An in-house, whole-school bilingual presentation of a Zapotec legend from Mexico

(2) Classroom teachers sitting in on Spanish classes with students in an effort to improve their own language skills

(3) An on-campus flamenco presentation and workshop for students

(4) After-school leisure activities centered around Spanish language or heritage, such as el Día de los Muertos

(5) Cross-disciplinary lessons, infusing culture and heritage into students’ non-language classes (examples include Latino civil rights movement studies in Humanities, choreography of José Limón in Dance and Movement, related summer reading, etc.)

(6) Our annual International Night, which celebrates all of the cultures and families represented at Sage

“A different language is a different vision of life.”
-Federico Fellini

LATIN

We have three main reasons for teaching Latin at Sage:

(1) To help put students in touch with their roots (as speakers of English, Spanish, and other modern languages; as students of the arts and sciences; as U.S. citizens, etc.)

(2) To train them to become better listeners and readers (more finely attuned to verbal detail; willing to take greater pains to hear what another person has to say; less quick to assume that they know what they do not know, etc.)

(3) To enlarge their capacities for disciplined, creative self-expression.

Our Middle School Latin program, while helping students understand and value the Latin language in its own right, also serves to strengthen their understanding in other subjects. Grammatical concepts applied to the English language as part of the humanities curriculum and to the Spanish language as part of the Spanish curriculum are reinforced through extensive application to classical Latin. Students’ English vocabulary, reading skills, and historical knowledge are strengthened through further exposure to Greek and Latin roots, ancient Greek and Roman culture, and classical literature in translation. Scientific terms are rendered less mysterious by a deeper understanding of their Greek and Latin origins. Students’ musical talents are exercised by the composition and recitation of Latin verses in ancient poetic meters.

All Sage students begin their formal study of Latin upon entering the Middle School; all Middle School students take Latin twice a week. Our three-year Latin curriculum covers most of the grammatical material presented in a standard first-semester college Latin course, or first-year high school course, though we depart from standard introductions to Latin in our emphasis on poetry, recitation, and original composition. Another innovation is The Sage School Latin Album, a collaborative online/paper textbook launched by our own Dr. David Berger in 2012 and continually revised and expanded under his editorship by our students themselves.

“Men sometimes speak as if the study of the classics would at length make way for more modern and practical studies; but the adventurous student will always study classics, in whatever language they may be written and however ancient they may be. . . . We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old.”
– Henry D. Thoreau