Two boys from different year groups and different friendship groups came together to create a tool to help other students study Latin – all because of a bond they formed in their boarding house.
Remove Former Oscar Qualtrough and Fourth Former Daniel Luschay, who both study Latin, came up with the idea when Daniel came for a trial week in Talbot’s Boarding House. They got talking about Latin and Oscar told Daniel about his idea to create a Latin hub, which he has called Latin Primer, to help work out Latin problems and test vocabulary and grammar. Daniel agreed that this would indeed be a good idea – he had experienced a similar problem and had begun to create flashcards on Memrise as a solution.
The boys agreed to collaborate, each continuing what they were already doing but adding links and intertwining the two projects, to cover the whole GCSE course.
Daniel explained, “For me, the idea of creating Latin vocabulary and grammar testing came when I was practising Latin vocabulary and I saw Oscar creating an early version of Latin Primer. We talked and found that we both had a similar problem with online resources in regard to learning Latin. As a result, we decided to work together to create a resource that ordered and taught Latin knowledge.”
Assistant House Master Keelan Peters explained how common this type of collaboration between pupils is when boarding, often with boys from different year groups and social circles. He said, “This is a brilliant example of the one of the many benefits of boarding.”
While the Latin Primer project has been a great academic project for the boys, it is the flourishing relationship that is most striking. When talking of their friendship, Oscar told us, “Two boys who had never met or even known of each other before came to work together for months on a project, simply because boarding had brought them together, and a similar interest and problem had got them talking. Boarding also tied into why I decided to take on the project – if I did not have the structure of prep time every night there is no way I would have looked to take on extra projects.”