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2002 CAMWS Award
for Special Service

Christine Ayers

For the past three years Christine Ayers has devoted significant time, energy, and financial expense to the promotion of Latin in the City of Monmouth, Illinois, and, in particular, toward efforts first to save the Latin program at Monmouth High School, and then to maintain enrollments.

Chris's involvement in Latin began in the summer of 1999 as the Monmouth School Board was contemplating an immediate phase-out of the high school Latin program due to decreasing enrollments and a particularly small prospective Latin I class for the fall. Therefore, the board was planning immediate elimination of Latin I and placement of those already enrolled for the fall in another language. Chris Ayers' daughter was one of these incoming freshman who hoped to take Latin.  Chris made it a personal cause to rouse community support for the Latin program.  She sent members of the School Board a variety of Latin promotional materials, met with the superintendent and high school principal, and attended meetings of the School Board. She was successful in obtaining a reprieve for Latin:  instead of canceling Latin I for the fall, the school board agreed to allow Latin to be offered to a class of six (instead of the official minimum of ten) and put the program on probation, with the understanding that the program would be eliminated if ten students did not enroll in Latin for the following school year (2000-2001).

Chris took this as a personal challenge. She organized monthly meetings for parents and teachers interested in saving Latin.  Over the course of several months, and under Chris' stubborn guidance, the group decided upon a number of activities:  1.) letters to eighth graders encouraging them to take Latin; 2.) educational programs on the Classics for grade and high school students; and, in particular, 3.) a Classics Bee modeled on highly successful spelling and geography bees already held in the school district.

Chris herself found a variety of funding sources (including a CPL grant) to bring a Latin persona performance to the High School and, more importantly, to the Junior High, in the spring of 2000, just before the time for registration at the high school.  She even made sure that the local parochial school was able to bring its students to one of the performances.

Chris got a lot of people involved in these efforts. High school Latin students wrote the letter to send to eighth graders. They wrote the questions for the Classics Bee and served as questioners and hosts at the Bee. The professor of Classics at the local college prepared a qualifying test for the Bee.  But it was Chris Ayers who addressed and mailed all the letters, who delicately negotiated with reluctant administrators and teachers in six different schools to allow the 5-8 grade students to take the qualifying test in class, who prepared ribbons for participants, who notified the local media, etc. The 2000 Classics Bee was such a great success that teachers were already talking about the next bee as they were  leaving the first one.  Even more importantly, 22 students registered for Latin for the following year and the Board of Education no longer considered elimination of the program.

Chris did not rest on her laurels. She has continued to support the high school Latin program in subsequent years.  She has made sure that the Classics Bee has been held again in 2001 and 2002, with equal success.  She has made sure that the recruiting letter has gone out. She has helped organize additional programming, including Legio XIIII in 2001 and again in 2002.  During the present academic year, twenty-five students are enrolled in Latin I and more than twenty in Latin II.

The Latin students at Monmouth High School are not the only ones who have benefited from Chris' energy and devotion. Thanks to Chris, even those hundreds of students who have not taken Latin have still had positive experiences with Classical culture by attending persona or Legio XIIII performance or participating in the Classics Bee. If anyone is a selfless friend of Latin and the Classics, it is Chris Ayers and she is most deserving of recognition by the Classical Association of the Middle West and South.

2002 CAMWS Award
for Special Service

Lindsay Meck and Kathy Ellison

In response to the defeat of two levies, the school board in Oxford, Ohio (home to ACL and Miami University) voted to eliminate Latin from the Talawanda High School curriculum effective in the fall of 2000. This decision was made despite the fact that 45 students were already registered for Latin for the 2000-2001 school year, not including an additional 15-20 incoming ninth graders registered for Latin. The Talawanda Latin teacher, Natalie Harwood, was in the district for 20 years and was in the process of finishing her recently-published The Complete Idiot's Guide to Learning Latin.  In response to this short-sighted decision, Lindsay Meck, a Talawanda freshman and first year Latin student, and  her mother Kathy Ellison, waged a successful campaign to keep Latin in the curriculum.

Lindsay wrote a proposal to the local radio station for a possible 60-minute show about Latin's value to today's youth on one of the shows they have about local issues.  They agreed and even asked Lindsay to serve as associate producer of the show which went well, with many call-ins. The local paper printed a big article on her and her Latin Crusade.  Nevertheless the School Board held firm in its resolve to cut Latin for 2000-2001.

The Latin Task Force considered a variety of alternatives, including distance learning, hiring a part-time teacher, sending students to Miami University, but none were viable for various reasons. Instead the Task Force directed its energies to reinstating Latin at Talawanda. In January, 2001, the School Board agreed to do so in the fall of 2001, provided there was sufficient interest. This is when the work of the Task Force really began. Lindsay Meck and Kathy Elison obtained copies of a CPL brochure entitled "Latin, Try It, You'll Like It!" which was distributed to middle and high school students in the district. In addition, with some help and advice from the CPL Chair, they organized a Classics Bee designed to show prospective Latin students how much Latin and Classics they already knew and how important Latin was to general culture. They even used an appropriate e-mail handle: GotLatin@aol.com.

Here is how their efforts were described in an article in the Oxford Press published on the appropriate date of April 21, 2001:  “When the school board voted to cut Latin from the curriculum last year, Meck and her mother, Kathy Ellison fought back. Forming an organization called Latin Task Force, they created a Web site, lobbied the school board, and tried to create interest in Latin among eighth-graders at Talawanda Middle School by placing articles in the middle school newsletter and putting on a "Classics Bee."

Their efforts were remarkably successful. Latin was welcomed back to Talawanda High School in the fall of 2001 with near record enrollments. Last spring, eighty-three students, including forty-three freshmen, registered for Latin I. Lindsay Meck and Kathy Ellison have not rested on their laurels, however. Their recruitment campaign continues as they look ahead to the 2002-2003 academic year. They recently circulated a flyer on the study of Latin among eighth graders and their parents at registration for high school. Lindsay Meck will be COSMO Girl magazine Girl of the Month for May in recognition of her crusade to bring Latin back to Talawanda High School--great publicity for her, her school, and for Latin!

I think that Lindsay Meck and Kathy Ellison are also appropriate recipients of the CAMWS Service Award.

--Thomas J. Sienkewicz, Chair, Committee for the Promotion of Latin