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I'm sorry. I'm confused.
WHY should we Latin teachers think we are above other teachers in being able to have a varied curriculum?
The debate continues regarding whether Vergil will remain as is, whether there will be other authors added to it, etc. If so, what authros would we like to see? Etc. Then someone exclaimed that they couldn't stand to teach Vergil and only Vergil until the end of time. (Well, something like that.)
Think about all the other teachers on campus. They don't have choices and opportunities for variety. Everyone else has their own AP curriculum at the pinnacle of their field.
And even if we weren't teaching AP, MOST school districts and schools have set curricula. There are certain novels that are read in English, there are certain things that must be covered in science and in math. Some districts require the use of the same 6 wk tests!
Why should teaching Vergil each year be any worse than teaching from the same beginning textbook? HEck, the more I teach from CLC, the more I like the little things that were put in by the original author(s). The repetition isn't necessarily bad. Anyway, we aren't professors. We aren't in colleges offering a wide variety of courses. We offer the basics--heeeellllllloooooo! We are high school.
And I still think it's funny that people do not want to do prose. I still say people are intimidated by prose.
And what's to say that we can't still stick our favorite things here and there in AP? Aren't we supposed to prepare students to sight read ANYTHING, including PROSE????
Oh, but what do I know? I haven't taught AP yet so I know I'm just speaking from what I imagine. But surely if we are teaching real reading skills and teaching students to read the texts and not just cover the lines, then we should be able to interest them in other authors to read on their own. Yes, it could happen. Students WILL read on their own if they think they are able and feel successful at it. And they will only feel successful if we are NOT covering lines but are teaching READING skills, true READING skills.
Or, hell, introduce them to Loebs.
But back to my point. We as a profession sometimes act like we deserve special treatment--we deserve our 3rd or 4th year classes to make, even if the numbers are too small. We deserve to choose what we teach, even when our other colleagues are having their curriculum prescribed for them. We deserve to have 2 AP courses even when all of the other foreign languages are geing cut back to one pinnacle course.
Has anyone stepped back and thought of what we sound like?
I dunno. Maybe I'm just being a pain in the ass.
WHY should we Latin teachers think we are above other teachers in being able to have a varied curriculum?
The debate continues regarding whether Vergil will remain as is, whether there will be other authors added to it, etc. If so, what authros would we like to see? Etc. Then someone exclaimed that they couldn't stand to teach Vergil and only Vergil until the end of time. (Well, something like that.)
Think about all the other teachers on campus. They don't have choices and opportunities for variety. Everyone else has their own AP curriculum at the pinnacle of their field.
And even if we weren't teaching AP, MOST school districts and schools have set curricula. There are certain novels that are read in English, there are certain things that must be covered in science and in math. Some districts require the use of the same 6 wk tests!
Why should teaching Vergil each year be any worse than teaching from the same beginning textbook? HEck, the more I teach from CLC, the more I like the little things that were put in by the original author(s). The repetition isn't necessarily bad. Anyway, we aren't professors. We aren't in colleges offering a wide variety of courses. We offer the basics--heeeellllllloooooo! We are high school.
And I still think it's funny that people do not want to do prose. I still say people are intimidated by prose.
And what's to say that we can't still stick our favorite things here and there in AP? Aren't we supposed to prepare students to sight read ANYTHING, including PROSE????
Oh, but what do I know? I haven't taught AP yet so I know I'm just speaking from what I imagine. But surely if we are teaching real reading skills and teaching students to read the texts and not just cover the lines, then we should be able to interest them in other authors to read on their own. Yes, it could happen. Students WILL read on their own if they think they are able and feel successful at it. And they will only feel successful if we are NOT covering lines but are teaching READING skills, true READING skills.
Or, hell, introduce them to Loebs.
But back to my point. We as a profession sometimes act like we deserve special treatment--we deserve our 3rd or 4th year classes to make, even if the numbers are too small. We deserve to choose what we teach, even when our other colleagues are having their curriculum prescribed for them. We deserve to have 2 AP courses even when all of the other foreign languages are geing cut back to one pinnacle course.
Has anyone stepped back and thought of what we sound like?
I dunno. Maybe I'm just being a pain in the ass.
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Date: 2008-06-23 08:46 pm (UTC)And as for the variety thing...well, one of the reasons I left the profession is I couldn't stand to do the same thing every year. (And I was in middle school, so it was worse.) And it's tricky, when you do have a set body of material you need students to master, so they kind of need to *learn* the same thing every year...But I think the answer isn't to say "oh, what makes Latin teachers so much better", but "how can we change the structure of the profession to better meet *all* teachers' interests in variety and advancement." I think the "do the same thing for decades until you retire or die, and never get a raise[1] or a promotion" thing is one of the most serious things wrong with the field, and while it worked in years when women didn't have a lot of other career choices, and works for people who are chiefly interested in stability, I can't see it working well for my generation or those after it.
[1] I don't consider a yearly cost-of-living adjustment to be a raise. A *raise* is a thing I get because my boss says "hey, we've noticed the work you do is really good, and we think you're adding a lot of value here, and here's a meaningful sign of appreciation." A cost-of-living adjustment is something I get for continuing to breathe and sign my contract. And this would be another reason I'm not teaching any more.
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