2007 ICC Lifetime Achievement Award:
Judy Hayes

Our next honoree received her BA degree from Mt. Holyoke and her MAT from Northwestern University. She began her teaching career as an intern at New Trier H.S. in Winnetka, IL in 1968 and shortly after left for a few years to raise a family. In 1983 she returned to teach at Marillac H.S. where she began the Latin program with a fledgling class of freshman and within seven years built it to a successful four-year sequence. After the school merged its students with those of Loyola Academy, our honoree returned to New Trier in 1990 and has remained there until her retirement in 2007.

While at New Trier, our honoree taught all levels of Latin, but she came to be most associated with the third year Cicero course and the AP Catullus/Horace classes. When New Trier opened its freshman campus a few years ago, she volunteered to break new Latin ground there and returned to teaching the lower levels, while still maintaining her interest and ties with the upper division classes. In the final year of her employment, she became the fabled commuting teacher and she drove between the two campuses. For her successful teaching achievements, the ICC honored her with the Illinois Latin Teacher of the Year Award in l997. Also while at New Trier, she spent some time teaching in Viterbo, Italy, helping the STUDENT YEAR ABROAD program at the school to get off the ground.

While at New Trier, our honoree’s students distinguished themselves in many arenas. They were frequent winners, especially at the third year level, in the IHSA State Latin Tournament. They amassed many AP credits as well, establishing the New Trier Latin program as one of the finest in the area.

Our honoree participated, along with her students, in the North Shore Regional Division of Certamen, where she helped organize the many activities that accompany this highly popular student event. She organized and scheduled matches and pairings, wrote and read questions, and acted as sometime scorekeeper, timer, and referee while her students continued to take home many trophies and ribbons in competition.

Continuing to work on behalf of students, our honoree was responsible for the ICC’s innovative LATIN DAY IN CHICAGO which allowed teachers to bring students to some of the city’s educational museums and exhibits with a special emphasis on Latin subjects. Field trips to the Oriental Institute, the Shedd Aquarium and particularly the Art Institute were enjoyed by hundreds of students every year in the spring. Our honoree became a liaison between the ICC and the Art Institute, developing a relationship that has paid numerous benefits over the years.

Sharing her years of classroom expertise and Latin knowledge with her fellow teachers, our honoree has given many an ICC workshop – most recently in Springfield where she provided some pointers on teaching Ciceronian grammar. As I watched her dissect the most complex of Ciceronian prose, I marveled at not only the analysis provided, but also the genuine enthusiasm, passion and appreciation for a well-constructed piece of work.

Our honoree has also made her mark in the field of publishing, working with Gilbert Lawall on A TEACHER’S GUIDE TO CICERO. She recently produced A CICERO WORKBOOK with Jane Crawford for Bolchazy-Carducci, and is currently working on the TEACHER’S MANUAL for that same text. These works give evidence to her vast knowledge of every facet of the AP Cicero syllabus: content, translation, meter, figures of speech, vocabulary, and literary analysis.

And yet while working on all these projects over the years our honoree is still a busy wife and mother of two grown children. She has handled her teaching duties and ICC roles with humility and dignity befitting a true professional. She is a private and yet increasingly public person, happily balancing her scholarship with humanity, perception with a good sense of humor. As her retirement goes into full swing, she is headed off to teach another term in Italy this fall.

And so I ask now not for a Ciceronian oration, but a Ciceronian OVATION as the ICC presents its Lifetime Achievement Award to my friend and colleague, Judy Hayes.