The Latin Pedagogy of Fr. Foster

Two posts today. Sorry I missed last week.

Have I mentioned yet how much Fr. Foster reminds me of some of my previous magistri? He bears some especial resemblances to Mrs. Schearer and Dr. May, but I am also not infrequently reminded of Prof. Groton and Prof. Brunelle. I’ll see if any of my fellow discipuli can name the teachers resembled in any of the following:
1. He has a Double Dative Dance.
2. No published Latin books were sufficient for his teaching method, so he created his own beginning Latin curriculum by culling from a whole bunch of authors and writing out his own worksheets on legal-sized paper.
3. He developed his own names and explanations for Latin grammar.
4. He calls people and authors “bums” on a regular basis.
5. He has a tendency to exclaim, “This is HUGE. You all won’t BELIEVE the beauty of this next sentence.”
6. He uses wild and/or bizarre gestures to indicate grammatical ideas (and to extract correct answers from waffling students).
7. He loves Gregorian chant, and uses it in the classroom.
8. He tends to perform imitations of his past teachers and his past or current superiors, and he loves telling stories about them (usually in Latin).
9. “Latin will kill you. Every time.”
10. He’s not afraid to use insults as a means to lovingly encourage his students to get their act together and learn the language. Actually, the more he likes you, the more he’ll pick on you.
11. His main purpose is to make the language and texts come alive to his students. He stops at very little (save mediocrity and corner-cutting) in striving toward that goal; ergo, class tends to include a lot more shouting, drama, and student-teacher interaction than your typical academic setting.
12. He’s always right. Even when he’s not.

Other endearing idiosyncrasies:
1. He loves dictionaries. Big, beautiful ones. And he loves reading them.
2. Physically, he’s a mess, and it’s obvious that walking is very painful for him, yet one never hears him complain.
3. He loves deeply, a fact which is very obvious when he sees or speaks of his former students.
4. He’s 100% eccentric curmudgeon.
5. He really would cut off his right arm to teach you Latin.