The Quintilian Society

Maria Luisa De Seta

Maria Luisa De Seta grew up and studied Classics in Italy and Germany, and now teaches Latin I through AP Latin at Menlo Atherton High School in California. She holds a  BA in Classics (summa cum laude) and PhD on Literary studies from the Universita’ della Calabria, MA in Teaching Classics and MA in teaching Italian from the Universita’ per Stranieri di Siena; she was a fellow of  at the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae for two years. Her adventure as teacher started in 2005, at the Liceo Ginnasio Virgilio in Mantua, where she taught Latin and Ancient Greek, both with the traditional and natural approaches. After moving to California, she went back to teaching in public schools and started mentoring new Latin teachers from the San Francisco State Credentialing Program: she is proud of seeing three (so far) of her former students and advisees continuing studying Classics and becoming teachers as well. She has published articles on lexicography, Terence and Ovid and is interested in Rhetorical studies and the reception of the Classics. Recent interests include digital education and the use of technology in the classroom. Maria Luisa teaches a Telepaideia course on "Italian for Classicists".

Francis R Hittinger

Francis R. Hittinger teaches Latin/Social Studies and coaches the debate team at Mountain Lakes High School in Mountain Lakes, NJ. He holds his AB in Classics from the University of Chicago, MA in Romance Languages from Notre Dame, and PhD in Italian and Comparative Literature & Society from Columbia University. Before becoming a high school teacher, Francis was a lecturer in Columbia’s Core Curriculum, teaching Contemporary Civilization, Columbia’s flagship survey of western texts in ethics, political theory, economics, and philosophy. He is also Paideia Legionnaire and participated in Reginaldus Foster’s Summer Latin in Rome in 2006. Among his academic interests are the history of political and economic theory, particularly from medieval to modern periods, the work Giambattista Vico, and the great books of western literature and intellectual history. In his currently role, Francis teaches all levels of Latin, World History, and a great books course for high school students. 

Laura Manning

Laura is a Latin teacher with fourteen years of experience teaching in diverse environments and at different levels, from Introductory Latin through AP. Her teaching experience has included face-to-face courses that meet on various schedules, blended courses, and courses delivered entirely online. In 2013, she was honored to be named Teacher of the Year in Pequannock Township High School. She is currently certified to teach in these states: New Jersey, Virginia, Wisconsin, Texas, Georgia, Kentucky, Minnesota, Washington, and Alabama.

Early on in the course of her teaching career, Laura developed an interest in active Latin teaching methods. She has been facilitating the active use and acquisition of Latin in the Conventiculum Lexintoniense in Kentucky, and has been an avid participant since 2004. In 2014, she made the decision to go back to school, in order to increase her understanding of the Latin language and literature from all ages and how to teach it.

In August 2016, Laura earned her Master's Degree in Classics, and the Graduate Certificate in Latin studies at the University of Kentucky, which is a degree in spoken Latin. She is about to receive her PhD in Education Sciences with a focus on Latin pedagogy, investigating teaching methods that have supported the teaching of Latin as a second language for millennia.

Mark Mash

Mark Mash is a public high school Latin teacher and independent scholar who lives and works in the Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina. He earned his MA and PhD in Classics from UNC-Chapel Hill, and his BA in Classics from the University of Texas at Austin. He studied abroad in the summer programs of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens and the American Academy in Rome. For the past 16 years, Mark has taught Latin I-AP at Leesville Road High School in Wake County, the largest public school system in North Carolina and the 15th largest in the United States. In 2015, Mark was named his school's Teacher of the Year, and in 2016 he was named a Teacher of the Year finalist for the school system. In 2016-2017, he was appointed to the Superintendent's Teacher Advisory Council. Mark's current roles at Leesville Road High School include School Improvement Chair, Webmaster, Social Media Manager, Mentor Teacher, and member of the Instructional Leadership Team. He has published essays on Herodotus in a Routledge monograph (2016), Histos Supplement 6 (2017), and The Herodotus Encyclopedia (Wiley, forthcoming 2019). He regularly advises Classics graduate students who are considering teaching Latin in public high schools.

Mark Pearsall

Mark Pearsall has taught Latin and Ancient Greek in high school for over 25 years. After completing his BA in Classics at UMass, Amherst, he went on to Boston University where he got his MAT in Latin and Classical Humanities so he could get a job teaching while he worked on his PhD. Unexpectedly, he discovered he loved teaching at the secondary level and after receiving his PhD in Medieval Studies at UConn, he returned to the high school classroom which he preferred to college instruction. Mark has been a leader in state, regional, and national Classics organizations (ACTFL, ACL, CANE, and ClassConn among others) and is well known as a teacher trainer. He presents workshops regularly at conferences on teaching Latin and Ancient Greek language, history, and culture. He has received numerous awards for his teaching and service to the profession.

Colleen Rice

I graduated from Colgate University with a B.A. in Classics and from the University of Wisconsin with a Ph.D. in Classics. Since graduating, I have been teaching Latin for Oak Meadow, a progressive, distance learning school based in Brattleboro, Vermont. I teach Latin to incredible students from around the world. I work with each student individually, providing support and evaluating their work as they make their way through their Latin courses. People often ask me how I came to study Classics in college and the truth is that I have been fascinated by ancient civilizations since I was a kid. In high school and college, I was fortunate to have Latin teachers who mentored me and fostered my love for Latin language and Roman culture. I love teaching Classics to young people because I am able to spark the same wonder about the ancient world. I am now working on my MAT at Clarkson University where I will earn my teaching certification in Latin in hopes of having the opportunity to teach at one of many public high schools in desperate need of Latin teachers.

Cecile Tougas

Cecile T. Tougas, a member of the Humanities Department at the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics since 2005, teaches all levels of Latin. She enjoys seeing students become aware of grammatical laws and rhetorical devices of style, as they study science and mathematics, or what used to be called “The Seven Liberal Arts”: arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, harmony, logic, grammar, and rhetoric.

Cecile received a doctorate in philosophy from Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, in 1981. She taught philosophy at the University of New Hampshire, the University of Massachusetts Lowell, and the University of Southern Maine. She attended programs in child and adolescent studies at the C. G. Jung Institute-Boston. Her experience at Ben Franklin Academy in Atlanta, Georgia, showed her many facets of high school students who were having attention deficit difficulties.

Teaching Latin in Nottingham High School in Syracuse, New York, gave her insight into lives and needs of inner city students. Collaborating with Sara Ebenreck, Cecile co-edited a book, Presenting Women Philosophers (Temple University Press, 2000). She kept a light on inside for many years by writing The Phenomena of Awareness: Husserl, Cantor, Jung (Routledge, London, 2013). Her chapter, “Phenomenological Practices and Philosophical Insights in Jung”, will appear in Jung and Philosophy, edited by Jon Mills, to be published by Routledge in 2019.

Edward Zarrow

Before earning his PhD in Classics and Ancient History from Yale in 2007, Dr. Edward “Ted” Zarrow received an M.St. in Greek & Roman History from Brasenose College, Oxford, and an M.A. in Classical Languages from Boston College.  In 2007, he made the transition from teaching in college to the high school environment, and he is currently in his 11th year teaching Latin (and sometimes Greek) at Westwood High School, a public high school in Westwood, MA.  He is the past-President of the Classical Association of Massachusetts (CAM), the Coordinator of Educational Programs for the Classical Association of New England (CANE), Advocacy Coordinator for the Massachusetts Foreign Language Association (MaFLA), and the Massachusetts representative to the National Council of State Supervisors of Foreign Languages (NCSSFL).  He has won numerous teaching awards at both the high school and college levels for his unorthodox approaches to teaching language, history, & culture, and he is regarded as a national language advocate.  He was the ACTFL 2016 National Language Teacher of the Year.