Latin

The Riverhead Central School District has a high school Latin teacher after a year without a Latin teacher on staff.

Middle school Latin teacher Lorene Custer has retired after 27 years in Riverhead, after the district informed her she'd be teaching high school, rather than middle-level, Latin.

The district today posted a job listing for a Latin teacher, with a start date of Sept. 1. The listing was posted on a K-12 education employment website.

I want to echo the sentiments of Virginia Campbell with regard to phasing out Riverhead High School's Latin language program.

"Latin is so much more than learning a dead language. It is learning how languages work, it is a building block for English and other Romance languages, it is gaining the ability to analyze language, to applying critical thinking to texts, and to understanding so much of the basis of law, government, literature, and art not only of the past, but of today." Guest column by Dr. Virginia Campbell, a Professor of Classics at the University of Leeds in Englandand a 1994 graduate of Riverhead High School, where she first studied Latin under the tutelage of 'Doc' Greenberger.

Riverhead School Superintendent Dr. Aurelia Henriquez said in an email today that “no final decision” has been made about the Latin program for the 2020-2021 school year. “The district is currently reviewing the number of students who have expressed interest in enrolling in the program,” Henriquez said.

Riverhead Latinists came away with top honors in this week’s regional Certamen, taking first place at the most advanced level and placing in every other level of the competition.