2026 was the third year of the DCC Summer High School Internship Program, which meant to give high school Latin and Greek students a chance to contribute to the site, learn digital humanities skills, improve their language skills, and collaborate with others under the supervision of professional classicists. Students contribute to publications on the site and receive credit on the site for all their contributions. An example of a completed project with student credits is now available on the site here, and several more texts are in the pipeline.
A huge thank you to everybody involved!!!
The internship lasted 6 weeks (June 22–July 31, 2026), and involved meeting over Zoom approximately 3–5 hours per week, depending on the project, plus asynchronous work.
Participants: this year the program grew from 75 participants last year to include
- 96 students in 8 groups working on DCC with supervisors overseen by Christopher Francese.
- About 60% were HS class of 2027 (having just completed their junior year), and the rest were class of ’28 (just completed sophomore year), apart from one from class of ’29 and one class of ’26.
- Twenty-two states were represented, the top being New York (25), Massachusetts (10), Maryland (7), Pennsylvania (5), and California (5).
Supervisors:
- Dr. Emma Dyson, Visiting Assistant Professor of Classical Studies
- Ashley Roman Francese, Adjunct Faculty in Classical Studies
- Dr. Christopher Francese, Asbury J. Clarke Professor of Classical Studies
- Dr. Luther Karper, PhD in Ancient History, Brown 2019; Web Developer with Schweb Design, LLC, based in Shippensburg, PA
- Christopher Martin, Chair of the Art Department, Shippensburg Area High School
- Dr. Lucy McInerney, Director of the Writing Center, PhD in Classical Philology, Brown 2025
- Dr. Alvaro Pires (PhD in Classical Philology, Brown 2025; Adjunct Faculty, Writing Program, Dickinson College)
Projects
Augustine, Confessions selections. 11 students working with Emma Dyson. The goal was to revise a draft commentary by William Turpin on excerpts from Augustine’s Confessions. The group read through selections 1-8 and 11. In the sessions they read Latin together at sight, and students made suggestions for the notes. Emma edited live based on their suggestions. When we came across especially difficult grammar, Emma assigned a student to draft a note at home in asynchronous work. They used Mondays to re-read the previous week’s material and double-check notes. The commentary is now ready for final editing and posting.
Petronius, Cena Trimalchionis. 10 students working with Christopher Francese. The goal was to start a commentary from scratch using a new tool developed by one of last year’s interns, Raana Thacker (Trinity High School, New York, now a student at Yale University). Commentarius.org uses ClaudeAI to streamline DCC workflows. It helps harvest notes from older public domain commentaries, drafts vocabulary lists, and even generates fresh notes. It needed testing and fine tuning. Feedback from the students helped with a major upgrade for the tool. We used Commentarius to harvest and create notes and vocabulary lists for Petronius’s novel the Satyricon, the portion known as the Dinner of Trimalchio (Cena Trimalchionis). The groups read Petronius at sight and edited notes. Asynchronous work included creating a digitized Latin text based on that available in PHI, Background reading on Roman daily life, harvesting notes from older school commentaries, creating notes using generative AI, and identifying images of archaeological artifacts relevant to or illustrative of the text. One of the interns created further AI based tools to clean the Latin text and search museum sites for relevant images. Deliverables: Latin text of all selections from the Cena; Draft vocabulary lists all selections from the Cena; Combined notes for sections 26-30.
Vergil, Aeneid. 19 students in two groups working with Lucy McInerney. This group collected and edited notes to fill in the gaps in the DCC edition of Vergil’s Aeneid, especially those passages on the AP exam and Book 12. They sight-read new passages together, re-read and discussed the previous day’s sight passage using notes from various commentaries. Selected the most helpful published commentary notes collaboratively, and worked asynchronously using Google Docs with track changes to refine notes. Deliverables: Notes on Book 4 (294 lines), Book 6 (47 lines), Book 12 (215) ready for final editing by a DCC editorial board member.
Anthon’s Greek Reader. 7 students working with Luther Karper. The goal of this project was to revise and update the first part of the classic introductory Greek Reader by Charles Anthon (1854). The group read and annotated chapters 10-17 (~2,900 words). Students edited notes, created and translations, worked collaboratively on editing these documents and correcting typos. They also prepared quiz questions for later inclusion on the site. This project is almost ready for final editing.
Ilias Latina. 16 students working with Ashley Roman Francese. The goal was to edit notes and vocabulary lists for a partly drafted commentary on this Latin version of Homer’s Iliad. Students read Latin, helped revise and create notes. Revised Latin text and notes are complete and ready for final editing by a DCC editorial board member.
Catullus 64. 17 students working with Ashley Roman Francese. The goal was to revise a draft commentary by William Turpin on Catullus’s 600-line mini epic telling the story of Ariadne. Students read Latin, helped revise and create notes. Revised Latin text and notes are complete and ready for final editing by a DCC editorial board member.
Core Vocabulary Images Project. 10 students working with Christopher Martin. The purpose of this ongoing project is to create memorable illustrations and images to go with the words in the DCC Core Latin Vocabulary list to help students learn and remember the words. Many of these are visible on the site (example). Students met on Zoom 2 hours per week. They researched meanings and nuances of words they chose. Students each created two artistic renderings per week for words from the DCC Latin Core Vocabulary list. In weekly meetings, students presented their artwork, gave feedback on each other’s work, and selected words for the following week. Supervisor prepared by selecting target words and managing project files. This campaign resulted in another hundred words illustrated.
Caesar, Gallic Wars Book 2. 8 students working with Alvaro Pires. The goals was to check and proof-read a draft commentary on Caesar’s Gallic War, Book 2. Notes originally harvested by Raana Thacker using Commentarius.org. Students read 8 sections, about 1,000 total of Latin, discussed and edited notes, and created vocabulary lists using bridge.haverford.edu
Student Feedback
We solicited feedback from students via Google Forms. 48 responded to that survey.
What students learned
The strongest learning outcome was increased confidence and fluency in reading authentic Latin and Greek, especially sight-reading. Students repeatedly described becoming faster, less intimidated, and more attentive to syntax, vocabulary, word choice, and context. Roughly half the respondents explicitly discussed improvement in translation, grammar, parsing, vocabulary, or reading comprehension, and at least 13 specifically singled out sight-reading or increased speed.
A second major outcome was something more distinctive to DCC: students learned how scholarship and commentary-making work. Many entered the program thinking of notes as something simply supplied to a reader; they left understanding that commentary is an editorial product involving judgment—what needs explanation, how much help to provide, what is important, and how to make notes useful to another learner. At least 16 responses explicitly discussed learning about commentary, notes, or editorial work.
A third theme was close reading and interpretation. Students learned to move beyond getting the basic meaning and to think about nuances of diction, authorial style, metaphor, poetic technique, historical context, mythology, religion, and literary interpretation. Several responses suggest that the process of writing commentary actually changed how they read: having to explain something to another student forced them to understand it more precisely themselves.
Finally, students learned collaborative scholarly habits: listening to competing translations, defending interpretive choices, editing other people’s work, accepting criticism, and recognizing that there is not always one correct translation or one ideal commentary. That seems to have been especially important because many students had not previously encountered a community of peers who were equally interested in Classics.
One especially good summary is:
“Having to articulate clear and concise notes helped clarify my own understanding of the Latin grammar as well as the text itself.”
And another captures the shift in students’ understanding of commentaries:
“Producing a commentary is far from a simple task—it requires careful analysis, thoughtful decision-making, and significant attention to detail.”
What they enjoyed most
By far the most common pleasure was actually reading and translating ancient texts, particularly in the live sessions. About half the responses explicitly mention translation, sight-reading, or reading as a favorite activity.
But the social dimension seems nearly as important. Students repeatedly praised working with other students who shared their interest in Classics, hearing different interpretations, debating translations, and working through difficulties together. At least 19 responses explicitly mention peers, discussion, collaboration, group work, or Zoom interaction as something they particularly enjoyed.
This suggests that the live sessions were valuable not merely as instructional meetings but as a kind of intellectual community. A number of students appear to come from schools where they do not ordinarily have many peers who are seriously interested in Latin or Greek. The internship gave them access to such peers.
The mentors also mattered substantially. Several students singled out professors or project leaders for their encouragement, grammatical explanations, historical knowledge, and willingness to let students try things without fear of being wrong.
Some particularly good quotations:
“I had a fantastic time just getting to collaborate with other Latin scholars who I felt were enjoying the experience as much as I was!”
“The sight-reading was really fun; it was very casual and stress-free.”
“The discussions made the text feel much more interesting and alive.”
“I like how we felt encouraged to try, even if it wasn’t going to be 100% right the first time.”
“Even when encountering difficulty, the ability to talk about it and discuss potential solutions felt very fulfilling.”
There was also genuine enthusiasm for the scholarly minutiae. One Ilias Latina student wrote:
“I loved checking all the little details… I found it really satisfying to notice things that I probably would have overlooked when simply reading the Iliad.”
The program gets high-school students to experience the pleasure of scholarly attention.
What could be improved
There wasn’t one overwhelming complaint. Quite a few students explicitly said that they could think of nothing that needed improvement. Among those who did make suggestions, however, several patterns recur.
The biggest issue is participation and group organization. Some groups were apparently large enough that a few students dominated the live translation or completed much of the asynchronous editing before others could contribute. Students asked for smaller groups, more equitable participation, more collaboration, or mechanisms ensuring that everyone has something substantive to do. The problem therefore seems less “too much sight-reading” than how to structure sight-reading so everyone participates.
Relatedly, several students wanted a better division between synchronous and asynchronous work. Some thought more work could be assigned individually beforehand so that meetings could concentrate on difficult passages and editorial decisions. Others specifically valued asynchronous work because it gave them time to think.
A second recurring suggestion is clearer onboarding for editorial work. Students sometimes did not initially know what constituted a good DCC note, how much scaffolding to provide, or what sort of comments were expected. Suggestions included seeing a completed model at the beginning, receiving clearer written instructions, and getting feedback on their first few editorial contributions.
A third issue concerns editing infrastructure/workflow. In at least some projects, students found Google Docs/commenting cumbersome or disconnected from the actual DCC text. One Caesar student summarized the problem very clearly:
“I feel that we should have been editing the text directly.”
Another described the document as “unwieldy/disorganized.” That suggests a practical opportunity to streamline the pathway between reading → discussing → proposing an edit → seeing that edit incorporated.
A fourth request was for more time for discussion and contextual material. Several students wanted longer conversations after translating, more historical/philosophical/literary background, or supplementary readings. Notably, they generally did not ask for less demanding material. They wanted more opportunity to understand why the material mattered.
There are also some project-specific comments: one group wanted a longer internship because it did not finish; one wanted faster pacing; another wanted a text with more unfinished editorial work; the vocabulary/art project had one request to permit AI; and one student wished promised ancillary Catullus activities had actually happened.
The most important takeaway
The feedback suggests that the program’s greatest strength may be the combination of authentic scholarly work and collaborative reading. Students weren’t simply receiving Latin instruction. They were being asked to behave like junior scholars: read difficult primary texts, notice problems, consult resources, make editorial judgments, explain those judgments, and negotiate interpretations with other people.
That combination seems to have improved their language skills while also changing their conception of Classics. A particularly strong quotation is:
“Working on a project designed to benefit the learning of others was a wonderful experience that was beneficial towards my own study of Classics.”
And perhaps the best short statement of the effect on reading is:
“I learned how much meaning can come from looking closely at an author’s specific word choices rather than just translating for the basic meaning.”
For 2027, the feedback points toward preserving the live collaborative translation as the core of the program, while tightening the structure around it: smaller groups or more deliberate turn-taking; a short orientation using an exemplary finished DCC passage; clearer initial editorial assignments and feedback; more efficient editing tools; and protected time in meetings for the contextual and interpretive discussions that students clearly relish.
One other striking result: several students explicitly said that sight-reading was something they did not normally do in school. The internship therefore seems to be filling a pedagogical gap rather than merely providing more of what students already receive in their Latin classes.
