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There's been a, what, squabble on Latinteach, that ended in a bit of name-calling ("elitists" and "I don't care what they think"), which I did take offense at--but not because the person (I'm guessing it's a he because his handle ends with "jr") hit close to home, but because it just saddened me that a good conversation dropped down to name calling. Name calling...just one of those things that keeps people from actually looking at the discussion. Just one of those things that my children have to deal with in school from people who don't understand differences, who don't want to understand differences, or who are indifferent to them.
Yeah, I'm sensitive when someone mistakes my good intentions for malicious ones, which is probably why I still have a knee-jerk reaction to what happened at my former school. In trying to protect students and faculty from real safety threats I was accused of being a whiner who didn't like the new principal. Truth is, she had some good ideas, which I did support. Anyway, I know I'm rambling. But this is part of what came next on Latinteach:
> Ginny, while I apologize for whatever I may have done to offend you
> personally (even though my e-mail was NEVER directed toward you personally,
> so, again, why the ultra-personal response?), I don't appreciate other
> "Latinists" telling me that my teaching is ineffective because I'm not
> teaching my students how to "think in Latin".....whatever that means. My
> course is one of the most rigorous in the school....YET it is also one of
> the most popular. I think I am doing a fine job getting my students to
> think, and I take offense when anyone implies otherwise. (And yes, I realize
> no one made the implication directly towards me....However, I have seen the
> snobbery on here before, and I'm not going to sit back while others who
> practice methods similar to mine are told how "wrong" they are.)
I think the snobbery you've seen is imagined. I think if you had met a lot of the people that are vocal on this list, you would know they are very kind, helpful, not forceful, not elitist. We become overzealous, perhaps, when we see students achieving things that our previous students have not or that even we did not at their age. We are seeing groups of students that have not been among the achievers find different means to grasp the same concepts and rise to the top.
Go to an ACL conference and meet a lot of the people on this list. Listen to them, go to their sessions. You'll find that there are a lot of different but equally valid teaching techniques being utilized with success. You'll find some people doing incredible things with different authors, different time periods, different approaches. And you'll find some of the friendliest people on the planet.
Perhaps many of us have just fought with our own personal difficulties in our own school days with the traditional grammar first programs, feeling that there are sometimes glass ceilings that just don't need to be there if approached differently. I certainly found that for myself. No question that I knew my forms. No question I could decode with the best of them. But something was *missing*.
And no one is trying to say that you are doing an ineffective job because you aren't teaching your students to think in Latin--which means exactly what it says (staying in the Latin and not resorting to English to complete thoughts and express comprehension). What we are saying is that if you think you've gotten your students to a certain high level doing things the way you are doing them, why not try stretching them a little be more language-wise to see if they can surpass your reading skills? It might blow your mind!
There used to be a Latin teacher on this list, Jennie Clifton, whose son went to Davidson College. She was telling me that in his leisure time--once out of school and into high finance--he would read Latin for pleasure. He hit a level of fluency under his professors at Davidson (our own Jeanne N.) who teach in Latin, who require written responses in Latin, and assign significantly larger amounts of Latin than one can easily parse at a go. The end result? His fluency is more like that of someone taking a modern language. Even professors--like the late Glenn Knudsvig, former ACL president--understood the frustration that some undergrads felt when seeing their friends majoring in modern languages reading whole novels while they were doing X amount of lines of a chapter in a book, and not necessarily reading the whole Aeneid or Metamorphoses, etc. There is a glass ceiling that is struck where one can feel that one can't translate any faster or do any more than X lines at a go, and the dream of reading page by page seems just that--a dream.
What turned me around was corresponding with Dexter Hoyos down under, whose book, _Latin: How to Read it Fluently_, really changed how I viewed the number of lines I could get through. I wish--oh God how I wish--I had had that book as a freshman at UT. I would have been READING Latin, instead of just being an efficient decoder.
All we're saying is there's another level that may be attainable, a level of fluency taught in a way we weren't taught. This isn't snobbery. This is EXCITEMENT! This is us being STUDENTS ourselves, young and still with that incredible gift of WONDER! Reaching for the STARS! Seeing what's BEYOND our meager small solar system! Willing to take RISKS! Willing to make MISTAKES! Willing, even, to be laughed at... but not willing to pass over something that could make an incredible difference in our own lives and those of our students. In fact, for me, it's not about how good I get at Latin, it's all about how good I can make them--can I get them to surpass me?! that's all....
***
Yeah, I suppose there are times when I am a snob, when I am frustrated by teaching that is hardly teaching; teaching that looks good on paper but the students walk away frustrated and feeling like they've learned nothing. I've known many students who have complained to me of that about their own Latin teacher, and it is a sad, frustrating thing. But that's not what we're talking about here, not at all.
This person has a strong program, no question by what he says. And no one was trying to say he was a lousy teacher. We were only saying that you think your students are doing well now, try this and see if they don't go even farther.
But someone always misinterprets the best intentions. Here, lists, & in life.
Such is life.
Yeah, I'm sensitive when someone mistakes my good intentions for malicious ones, which is probably why I still have a knee-jerk reaction to what happened at my former school. In trying to protect students and faculty from real safety threats I was accused of being a whiner who didn't like the new principal. Truth is, she had some good ideas, which I did support. Anyway, I know I'm rambling. But this is part of what came next on Latinteach:
> Ginny, while I apologize for whatever I may have done to offend you
> personally (even though my e-mail was NEVER directed toward you personally,
> so, again, why the ultra-personal response?), I don't appreciate other
> "Latinists" telling me that my teaching is ineffective because I'm not
> teaching my students how to "think in Latin".....whatever that means. My
> course is one of the most rigorous in the school....YET it is also one of
> the most popular. I think I am doing a fine job getting my students to
> think, and I take offense when anyone implies otherwise. (And yes, I realize
> no one made the implication directly towards me....However, I have seen the
> snobbery on here before, and I'm not going to sit back while others who
> practice methods similar to mine are told how "wrong" they are.)
I think the snobbery you've seen is imagined. I think if you had met a lot of the people that are vocal on this list, you would know they are very kind, helpful, not forceful, not elitist. We become overzealous, perhaps, when we see students achieving things that our previous students have not or that even we did not at their age. We are seeing groups of students that have not been among the achievers find different means to grasp the same concepts and rise to the top.
Go to an ACL conference and meet a lot of the people on this list. Listen to them, go to their sessions. You'll find that there are a lot of different but equally valid teaching techniques being utilized with success. You'll find some people doing incredible things with different authors, different time periods, different approaches. And you'll find some of the friendliest people on the planet.
Perhaps many of us have just fought with our own personal difficulties in our own school days with the traditional grammar first programs, feeling that there are sometimes glass ceilings that just don't need to be there if approached differently. I certainly found that for myself. No question that I knew my forms. No question I could decode with the best of them. But something was *missing*.
And no one is trying to say that you are doing an ineffective job because you aren't teaching your students to think in Latin--which means exactly what it says (staying in the Latin and not resorting to English to complete thoughts and express comprehension). What we are saying is that if you think you've gotten your students to a certain high level doing things the way you are doing them, why not try stretching them a little be more language-wise to see if they can surpass your reading skills? It might blow your mind!
There used to be a Latin teacher on this list, Jennie Clifton, whose son went to Davidson College. She was telling me that in his leisure time--once out of school and into high finance--he would read Latin for pleasure. He hit a level of fluency under his professors at Davidson (our own Jeanne N.) who teach in Latin, who require written responses in Latin, and assign significantly larger amounts of Latin than one can easily parse at a go. The end result? His fluency is more like that of someone taking a modern language. Even professors--like the late Glenn Knudsvig, former ACL president--understood the frustration that some undergrads felt when seeing their friends majoring in modern languages reading whole novels while they were doing X amount of lines of a chapter in a book, and not necessarily reading the whole Aeneid or Metamorphoses, etc. There is a glass ceiling that is struck where one can feel that one can't translate any faster or do any more than X lines at a go, and the dream of reading page by page seems just that--a dream.
What turned me around was corresponding with Dexter Hoyos down under, whose book, _Latin: How to Read it Fluently_, really changed how I viewed the number of lines I could get through. I wish--oh God how I wish--I had had that book as a freshman at UT. I would have been READING Latin, instead of just being an efficient decoder.
All we're saying is there's another level that may be attainable, a level of fluency taught in a way we weren't taught. This isn't snobbery. This is EXCITEMENT! This is us being STUDENTS ourselves, young and still with that incredible gift of WONDER! Reaching for the STARS! Seeing what's BEYOND our meager small solar system! Willing to take RISKS! Willing to make MISTAKES! Willing, even, to be laughed at... but not willing to pass over something that could make an incredible difference in our own lives and those of our students. In fact, for me, it's not about how good I get at Latin, it's all about how good I can make them--can I get them to surpass me?! that's all....
***
Yeah, I suppose there are times when I am a snob, when I am frustrated by teaching that is hardly teaching; teaching that looks good on paper but the students walk away frustrated and feeling like they've learned nothing. I've known many students who have complained to me of that about their own Latin teacher, and it is a sad, frustrating thing. But that's not what we're talking about here, not at all.
This person has a strong program, no question by what he says. And no one was trying to say he was a lousy teacher. We were only saying that you think your students are doing well now, try this and see if they don't go even farther.
But someone always misinterprets the best intentions. Here, lists, & in life.
Such is life.
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Date: 2008-03-27 10:12 am (UTC)Naturally I was upset directly afterwards--pissed at myself for doing such a lousy job and just plain upset from utter exhaustion. The only thing I could do was think...I wasn't to exhausted to think.
I had been thinking earlier in class, while the testees were doing forms and defense techniques and such which involved people running up and sitting down, that I was in that class to relearn respect and humility. Does that sound odd? For instance, you have to run not walk to stand in front of the board if they call you up. You always face the board, even when returning to your seat, never turning your back (sign of disrespect). You should "yes,sir" loudly, etc. Admittedly part of it to me is a theatrical game. But....
But it feels good in a way to have something, someone worth respecting, worth shouting a "yes, sir" at.
I've often thought that in some ways it's good that I'm no longer like that little new teacher, graduating from college, with her first principal (nothin' but a coach) telling her this and that on what to do and her never questioning. I never questioned anything. I just did whatever I was told.
But I totally lost respect for administration after what I went through at my old school. Don't get me wrong; I like and respect my new principal. It's why I'm willing to commute 30 minutes.
I have thought to myself that it is a matter of finally finding my voice, sticking up for my beliefs against the odds, etc. And that is part of it; that is good.
But this thread above, whether we are being elitists at wanting to go beyong drill and kill grammar, did make me stop and think. Am I arrogant? No, not really, I don't think, though I suppose one must be to have your own blog, to think you have something to say that is worth other people listening to. Perhaps I was arrogant to think others would see how I stood up to a dangerous adminstration and applaud that, and not question how I get away with trashing people. Perhaps I was arrogant to be critical of fellow teachers who don't seem to teach in their classes. I'm not critical of approach, I'm critical of lack of approach altogether. But then I'm arrogant to think I really know. Yes, I know.
Respect and humility last night. Respect for the board, humility when having my clock cleaned.
Maybe it's good when people misunderstand our best intentions and make us see how our actions are viewed as arrogant. Maybe we all need more humility. Maybe that humility will make us better teachers.
Ok, now I'm just rambling.