My name is Abbi Holt or Fausta Silva* in Latin and I started storytelling in Latin because amusing my students makes me inordinately happy. It also has the added benefit of improving language acquisition.
I have studied Latin at the University of Virginia, the University of Pennsylvania, Boston University and Umass Boston. Along the way I have managed to acquire a BA in History and Anthropology and a MAT in Latin and Classical Studies.
I started speaking Latin in 2013 with the help of a grant from the Arlington Education Association to the Conventiculum Bostoniense, a summer Latin immersion experience. By the end of the week my brain was producing perfectly paired noun adjective pairs without thinking. That fall our amazing school librarian Edith Moisand gave me a copy of Harrius Potter she had picked up at a yard sale. It was the most fun I have ever had doing something "good for me." By the time I had finished Harrius Potter I and II and Hobbitus Ille I could read Caesar, slowly, but really read him, no translating. I have gone to the Conventiculum Bostoniense and a similar event called the Rusticatio many times since and every year I read more fluently. Much of what I have written or drawn I did at these events with the kind support of so many colleagues.
Because of my belief in the value of communicating in Latin I now run the Boston Circulus Latinus (CLIPeus), maintain the Classical Association of Massachusetts website and regularly present at conferences about using communicative strategies in Latin teaching. I have presented at the Massachusetts Foreign Language Association, American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, the Classical Association of Massachusetts and Our Voices: A Conference for Inclusive Classics Pedagogy.
If you want to read more about my teaching and particularly the annual gladiator tournament that is our 7th grade capstone project, please read this article in the Boston Globe. The video from that article also has me rocking a toga and explaining my teaching philosophy in greater detail.
*Nerdy detail: Holt means forest in old English