Faculty Profile: Dr. Barnard

Scott Barnard has been teaching Latin at Lawrenceville since 2016. In addition to his role in the classroom, Barnard is also one of the Heads of Upper House and the Deputy Director of Academics and Harkness Coach. When he is not teaching a class in Pop Hall or doing duty in Upper, Barnard can be found at the field coaching the Girls’ Junior Varsity Soccer team or relaxing with his wife and two kids at home.

Barnard, now in his seventh year at the Schoolteaches Latin 3, Advanced Latin, and Introduction to Ancient Greek. “My first year here, I taught a small Latin class, and it was wonderful…I fell in love with the School, and at the end of that year, a full-time job was available,” Barnard said. 

One of his favorite aspects of teaching Latin is sending students to conferences hosted by the Classical Association of the Atlantic States (CAAS), an organization focused on fostering public support for the languages, civilizations, and cultures of ancient Greece and Rome. A number of Barnard’s students have had the opportunity to attend the CAAS’s local classics conference and “deliver papers alongside the other members of the conference.” “Last month, I created a new panel at the conference just for high school kids, and we had our first ever secondary level Latin presentation,” Barnard said. Students from local schools like the Peddie School and the Hun School Princeton also attended, creating a truly collaborative environment. 

In his Ancient Greek class, Barnard collaborates with one of his former classmates, who now works at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. The institute has a large collection of untranslated Greek artifacts, specifically “stone rubbings of words carved on stones in ancient Greece.” “Some of the students have a really unique opportunity to translate these stone rubbings,” Barnard elaborated. 

Since it is an elective course, the Ancient Greek class consists mostly of V Formers. “I want my students to understand that college acceptances are just one moment that doesn’t define who they are or dictate what is going to happen later in their lives,” Barnard said. 

Outside of class, Barnard is the Assistant Girls’ Junior Varsity Soccer Coach and coaches Junior Varsity Baseball in the Spring Term. He coached House Disc his first year at the School, as he used to be the captain of his school’s Ultimate Disc team. “One of my hobbies is definitely playing frisbee or throwing around a baseball with my two kids,” he said. When he’s not busy coaching or playing with his kids, Barnard can also be found running or “playing lots of video games.” Additionally, Barnard is the director of the New Jersey Scholars Program, which is a five-week academic program that takes place at Lawrenceville every summer.

Before joining Lawrenceville, Barnard was a teacher at Rutgers University. “I didn’t like that I was doing these big lecture halls with around 200 people in my classroom, and that I didn’t know what happened to them after they left my class,” he said of his experience teaching there. This motivated Barnard to come to Lawrenceville, where he found that students were “more ambitious” and driven in their academics, which was “wonderfully refreshing” for him. Barnard also appreciates having more opportunities to interact with his students on a more personal level: “I feel like I know the students as a person, not just as students but as young people that are at a really exciting point in their lives.” 

Overall, whether it be at the Harkness table, on the soccer field, or in Upper House, Barnard has had a “wonderful” experience while at Lawrenceville.