Alex Baggott-Rowe is an English turned Latin teacher who is enjoying his first year at WHHS. He has taught at other schools before, but none as big as WHHS, and none with a classics dept. as large as WHHS’.

“There’s a dozen super well qualified, amazing Latin teachers I get to work with every day. I love the environment here, I love the energy, and I love the fact that everyone supports each other and helps each other out, both the faculty and the students,” Baggott-Rowe said.

Baggott-Rowe wants to help students understand the reason why they take Latin and to discover how useful the language can actually be. To do this, Baggott-Rowe does a certain activity at the beginning of each of his classes.

“I give students a Latin word they’ve never seen before and I tell them, ‘Hey this Latin word is where we get a bunch of different English words that have various meanings. Can you guess what this Latin word means?’  and more often than not they’ll come up with something that is either exactly the definition or something very close.”

However, because Latin is required at WHHS, there will be some students who hate it, and Baggott-Rowe knows that. His goal is to soften this resentment toward learning Latin.

“The nature of something that is required of everybody is that not everyone is going to love that thing, so my goal is to, to the best of my ability, help students to, at the very least, find some joy and purpose in taking Latin.”

Baggott-Rowe started working at WHHS halfway through last year, as a long-term substitute. During that time, he found the classics staff especially helpful and supportive.

“I relied on the help of all of the other Latin teachers; borrowing quizzes and tests; using notes and powerpoints that they created, and they were so generous with their resources and allowed me to use them.”

Baggott-Rowe is a strong believer in students taking time for themselves because he knows how much students stress on a daily basis. 

“I try to come in every day thinking, ‘students are under so much pressure nowadays, I should do anything to relieve that stress, as opposed to adding more on.’ That’s the philosophy that guides so much of what I do.”