Creating an AP Syllabus

Any new teachers out there?

I sometimes feel like I am a perpetually new teacher.  When I came back to teaching 8 years ago, I was a new teacher again (I had taught a year right out of college and then ran away screaming back in the late 80s and did other things for about a dozen years).  For 6 years I taught the same three courses: Latin 1a, Latin 1b, and exploratory.  Frankly, there's a LOT to be said for teaching middle school first, if for no other reason than you can usually keep your preps limited to three.  I had time to develop and modify materials, figure out what worked and what didn't, and get "good" at it, or at least really comfortable.

Then I switched to Dripping Springs HS where I had a Latin 1 class (CLC), a Latin 2 class (Ecce) split with Latin 3 (Ecce), plus four sophomore English classes.  So I had materials for the Latin 1 class, but it was like I was a newbie all over again for Latin 2/3 and English.  I made tons of quia stuff for Ecce (that I probably will not use ever again!) and survived teaching English.  Last year I had 3 Latin 1 classes, and Latin 2/3 split, but this time Latin 2 was CLC--once again, I needed to make my style of quizzes and tests, and quia stuff.  Plus I had two English classes.  So I still had new things, plus I decided to change up part of my tests--for all Latin levels--so I was revising stuff a lot.

Now....  now here I am again.  Still feeling like a newbie.  I will have Latin 3 this year with CLC, and need to make up quia stuff and my style of quizzes, etc etc.  And I agreed to do Latin 4 with 2 girls--so 3/4 will be my split-level.  Latin 4 will be Vergil and I told the girls that if they really wanted to, I could get them ready for the AP Latin and they could challenge it.

THEN I discovered on the College Board website that June 1 was the recommended due date, but they would accept them after (with no promise of acceptance!).  So, now I'm trying to write a real AP syllabus.  I had thought I could get it done in a week, 2-3 weeks ago.  I wasn't counting on how much time I can't sit and focus on it because I try to wear my Mom hat in the summer as much as possible.

Even still, I've poured a lot of time into this.

I've studied the four sample syllabi.  I've read all the pertinent materials.  I've made up school calendars with our holidays and test days and anything else I could think of.  I pondered what would be the best split-level schedule for the Latin 4's, when I would require what, etc.  I've looked at materials.

I'm going to use my pal Rick LaFleur's _Song of War_ and Bolchazy-Carducci's _A Vergil Workbook_.  In my mind's eye, Monday's will be a quia.com day (for review for vocab quizzes and grammar and whatnot), Tuesday's will be for quizzes and reading, Wednesdays I'll read with them, Thursdays for independent reading again, Friday I'll read with them.  (Therefore, I'll be working with Latin 3 on Tues/Thurs and maybe Mondays as well....)  I'll assign parts of a Lesson from the workbook over the weekends and work on developing reading skills during the week.  At least twice a grading period students will have to phone in an oral recitation of a passage of my choosing, and twice during the grading period students will have major tests.  That's as much as I've worked out.

Not sure about wiggle room for discussions, essay writing (though some of that is in the workbook material), etc.  

And frankly, it's been 20 years since I've read Vergil (with the exception, of course, of the sea serpent scene!), so I don't have any great ideas for clever projects so it's not just toiling through the lines.  But I have to think of something.

Frankly, just working out WHAT lines for WHICH WEEK and how to get through it all fast enough is really tricky!  I ended up making a table in Word that had the Lessons from the Vergil Workbook with the lines it covered aligned with the subtitles and line breaks in Song of War.  Mostly it lines up, but some places it doesn't.

OF COURSE, if I planned my other courses with this kind of detail, I might finish the texts....then again... well, I dunno.  I think if you push to fast through beginning stuff you lose too many people, but maybe the reality is that I'm too soft a touch.

All I know is that I really want this to work.  I want these two girls to have a good shot at a 4 or a 5 on the AP exam, ya know?  At least a 3, maybe, to say that I'm on the right track.  

<sigh>

I have these crazy ideas of how I want them to work and take notes that I'm not sure are practical... maybe I need to try them out for myself.  Not a bad idea....

Well, there are things I can be doing regarding the syllabus and stuff for next year.  I better get going.  Man, June is almost done and what the hell have I got to show for it?  Only a lot of thinking, it seems.