If your e-mail inbox was preserved for 1,000 years, what would the archive of letters, political commentary and other daily memorabilia tell future scholars about the world we live in today?

The flipside to that question - how we learn about a past civilization from its remains - is how two middle and high school Latin teachers at Heritage Christian School expose their students to the extinct language and culture of the Roman Empire whose roots weave through modern society.

Starting in the eighth grade, students at the private, sixth to 12th grade school are required to take Latin until they graduate. Because the school's Christian-based curriculum focuses on rigorous study of grammar, logic and rhetoric, administrators say Latin is necessary to understand texts written during approximately 1,000 years when the Roman Empire - and Christianity - spread through Europe, the Middle East and parts of Africa and Asia.

Most of those texts are used as classroom materials and include stories, letters, poems and public records that range from the political to the social.

"They're like e-mails from the past," said veteran Latin teacher Donann Warren, who started teaching at the school last fall. "The really important thing is it enables us to get into the mind of another culture."

Nine schools in Oregon offer Latin, said Judy Mathison, who has been teaching the language at Heritage for four years. Although it's more common for even public schools on the East Coast to offer Latin, Mathison said the interest is growing in Oregon.

Because the Romance languages spoken in Western Europe and much of English are based on Latin, Mathison said high school-level students at Heritage score high in language on the SATs.

"They're linguistically gifted," she said.

Each year Latin students across the country take the National Latin Exam, a 40-minute test held in March that awards the highest-scoring takers. Twenty-six students this year from Heritage placed in the top four categories, beating the school's old record of one gold-medal winner and two silver medal winners.

First place winners are: Grace Hahn-Steichen, Tyler Sonsteng, Orlando Diaz, Quinn Baron, Ryan Scott, Craig Bingham, Annika Dixon and Kady Hossner.

Second place winners are: Andrea Sunada, Lilia Sahnow, Tessa Matteson, Alex Hossner, Karissa Thomas, Zachariah Slawik, Seth VanDerEems, Pamela Glass, Jasmine Wilson and Andrew Ritchie.

Third place winners are: Joshua Stiling, Jordan Ott, Ashley Woolery, Emmett Ackerlund and Brent Hartig. Honorable mention names are: Nikole Sartin, Ambyr Stewart, Raquel Lemire and Derek Anderson.

Students also attend the annual Latin forum at Reed College in November, where Latin-speakers around the state attend workshops and other activities.