Our very own Helen Wilson was declared National Teacher of the Year for Primary Latin 2022 at the Classics for All National Teacher of the Year Awards! It is a worthy recognition of all the hard work she has put into the subject this year. Hillcrest will receive £300 to put towards Latin-related materials.

 

Bene, bene, bene, bene! Next stop the world!

 

Her approach to teaching Latin at Hillcrest has been featured on the Bristol Classics Hub website, too!

 

A transcript from the Classics for All award ceremony...

 

"Helen Wilson, from Hillcrest Primary, has proven to be one of the most enthusiastic and dedicated Latin trainees we’ve had the pleasure to train. She’s totally committed to introducing Latin on curriculum time. She’s worked tirelessly from scratch to grow her knowledge of Latin, to provide the best teaching that she can.  It’s wonderful to see such energy and enthusiasm, which is doubtless paying off in lessons. The pupils of Hillcrest have struck gold with Miss. Wilson as their Latin teacher. Well done to Hillcrest Primary School."

 

Miss Wilson:  "Thank you. It’s an absolute honour and a surprise to be nominated for this award, especially as this time last year, I couldn’t even speak Latin. I’d never studied it, never mind teach it!  

 

But the Classics for All team and especially Mike Beer have made it really easy to pick up the Maximum course and to run with it. It’s a joy to see the children get excited about etymology and their links between Latin, English and other languages….and even in a recent OfSted visit, the inspector commented that it was good to see references to Latin in other curriculum areas such as History and Geography.

 

So, I’m enjoying seeing an increasing improvement in the children’s grammar and their spelling too... and not only is Latin a great foundation from which to learn many other languages, it is also for building English skills. So we say in our classroom, “If you know your SPaG, You’ll get yourLatin in the bag!”

 

Thanks again for the nomination."