ABOUT OUR SITE AND AEQUORA
Our Aequora site is located at the Chester Addison Community Center in Stamford, CT. At Chester Addison, we are proud to partner with The Paideia Institute and offer Aequora as an after-school program.
Aequora is a K-8 curriculum focusing on literacy education via Latin. At Chester Addison, we have chosen Aequora because we believe in the benefits of a classical education. Through The Paideia Institute’s Aequora curriculum, our volunteers harness the classical languages’ power to improve literacy, cultural understanding, and equity in education — all while making the ancient Mediterranean world fun and accessible to students of all backgrounds.
Aequora is shaped by a belief that everyone should have access to Latin and by a vision of Classics as an inclusive, diverse, and socially engaged field. To learn more about The Paideia Institute’s Aequora program, its groundbreaking curriculum, or how we can work together, click Partner with Us.
HOW WE TEACH AEQUORA
Our Aequora site meets weekly on Thursdays at the Chester Addison Community Center of Stamford, Connecticut. The site serves a wide variety of students from several ethnic backgrounds, with most students identifying as Latinx and/or African American.
The Stamford site seeks to teach and strengthen students’ English literacy and Classical familiarity through cultural and linguistic instruction; although students are encouraged to think critically and individually, instruction corporates a wide variety of vocabulary games, conversational activities, and small group discussions.
Given our diverse demographic, the Chester Addison Aequora site places particular emphasis on Latin education through comparison with other Romance languages — especially Spanish — since the majority of our students are bilingual. When observing similarities between Latin root words and Spanish cognates, students become eager to contribute their own cultural knowledge and thoughtfully engage in the classroom setting.
We value the importance of small group instruction, which is aided by volunteers from local high schools in the area. Sessions usually begin with structured vocabulary or cultural education, followed by in class activities which test the students' knowledge of current or previously learned material.
SITE COORDINATORS
Our site coordinator, Kamil Maron Salame, is a student at the Brunswick School in Greenwich, CT. Click on the picture below to learn more about him! If you would like to volunteer at the Chester Addison Aequora site, please contact Kamil at [email protected]