improving, always improving

[ginlindzey]

Do other teachers think this way?

I'm always about how to do it better next year.  NEXT year.  I guess that's an improvement from beating myself up over having only done so much THIS year.

Next year.... dum spiro spero, ya know.

But first, what did I accomplish this year?  It's good to remind yourself, especially if you are a new teacher or a teacher at a new school building a new program of what you DID do!  Go ahead, take a bow!  The Romans weren't shy.  They definitely tooted their own horns!

So, what did I do?

1) had my first year in Drip' with a FULL LATIN PROGRAM!  My 3rd year and I had 100 more students than my first year there.
2) had my first AP VERGIL class.  And my gosh was it enjoyable. Ok, it wasn't as rigorous as it could have been but I think the girls (2 of them) enjoyed it.  I could have had them work harder, do more, but I couldn't keep up with the work myself!  They survived, and learned.  And now, they are enjoying learning a bit about calligraphy. So cool!
3) taught Latin 3 for the first time out of Cambridge. My goal was to get to stage 40 and we made it there handily.  I didn't get a chance to teach conditional clauses, but there are worse things. After all, when did you ever meet one in context that followed the pattern of the textbooks?!?!   
4) created quia material for Latin 3 and AP Vergil, though I still need to make some more for Vergil.  For every 100 lines assigned, I probably only got 60-80 lines of online quia quizzes done.  But it was ok.  It was good.  That stuff is *there* for next year, and it will be good enough if I have another year from hell as a parent.  Wow.  It is all there.  That's something.  You wanna see?

www.quia.com/pages/drippinglatin3.html
www.quia.com/pages/drippingvergil.html

5) I think my illumination project is going ok.
6) I think my Ovid project was ok, though I need to finish grading it.
7) I SURVIVED THE YEAR--with the work of 4 preps, 2 of them "new", as well as my special needs son's transition (such as it was) to middle school, and my elder son's transition (such as it was, ha) to high school.  Let's just say there's a reason why I have a double scotch on ice sitting next to me as I type this.

Students did well enough on NLE, though only one got a gold. The principal complimented me on the accomplishments of my students today (after this week's underclassmen awards assembly). Nice.  And she knows it's been a hard year.

So that's where I've been.

FUTURE PLANS:

1) interactive grammar notebook, good for all four years with me.  That is, I want to plan it out this summer so that I have pages left for ALL the grammar a student could possibly accumulate in four years of Latin with me.  Perhaps more on this later.
2) quia.com exercises that are *challenges* in composition and transformation, for the students that want more.  I have enough there to train up a student to do well on one of my tests or quizzes, but why not MORE?  Maybe there won't be too many students using the *challenge* materials, but maybe there will. 
3) making some tar heel readers.  :)  Here's a good one:  
   http://tarheelreader.org/2009/05/22/canis-meus-furcifer/
and another good one
http://tarheelreader.org/2009/05/08/de-leone/
These are soooo cool!  Oh oh oh, I cannot WAIT to make one!  But how can I make one truly *brilliant*?  :)  No matter; I will think up one.
4) More projects for AP.  Of course, this means finding TIME to grade such beasts and I will have at least 10 more students next year than this year, and I've barely survived this year.  CRAZY!  EEK.

And I just *have* to find a way to get the Latin 3's to reread more. And AP for that matter.  I never reread in college; but then no one suggested I do so either.  I do remember that it was all such incredibly hard WORK then--but now, it seems so much easier. Well, I guess 10 years of teaching it and 15 years of thinking about how to be a better reader will do that.  I've had 10 years of getting to know the basics INSIDE OUT.  A student doesn't have that.  Back in college I remember a prof telling me that the way to become better at reading Latin was to read more Latin--yet that was such a slow and painful process!  I couldn't imagine reading MORE!  But he never said this: you should read for pleasure at a lower, easier rate.  After all, isn't this what we do with English?  I can read technical journals in educationese or even something detailed about Latin pedagogy or archaeology, etc.  But for pleasure I'm reading something that my brain can coast through.

I got those readers-but only 15 (eheu!)-Lingua Latina.  The question is, HOW will I use them next year?  HOW can I possibly find time to incorporate them INTO my classes without losing precious class time needed to get through the text?  BUT I *must* use them; I must show students HOW to develop reading skills.  Should I wait and just do them with the Latin 3's?

That's another thing. I intend to boost homework a bit in Latin 3 next year (ha...will she really do it?!?!?!) .  The 2 year credit to pass kids will be gone, and if they want 3rd year credit, they can damn well work for it.  Conjugating and declining all vocabulary.  All degress of nouns and adjectives.  I better have a couple of aides to help me grade such stuff.  God knows *I* won't keep up with it! hahahhaha.  Too busy grading tests and quizzes.

The ultimate goal is to make a student that's better prepared for Vergil.  A student that is ready to cope with details of case or tense or voice or mood.  This year I've done a MUCH better job of teaching passive voice. That will be a BIG help with next year.  I think I've also been better at teaching perfect passive as opposed to perfect active participles, ablative of agent vs ablative of means, ablative time when vs accusative duration of time.

I'm still to slack about some things.  This will cost me in the end, I realize.  But I always develop 5 year or 10 year plans--because we aren't teachers 24/7.  We're also wives and mothers and human beings with lives.  Or wanting to have lives.

But if you are a teacher and it's May, like it is now, and you aren't actively taking stock of what you did well and need to improve on, then you just have a job.  You don't have a vocation.  I am called to teaching.  odi et amo--I hate it and I love it.  I know my sleep deprivation is ruining my health (not to mention the stress of my family situation), but I think I'm good at what I do and I enjoy the students.  I'm doing something right, and that feels good.  And the thought that I can improve upon what I do feels even better!

Here's to noble causes!

Comments

tarheel project

[(Anonymous)]

You've got to tell me... what is a tarheel project? I've googled it, wikied it.... no idea! Mind you, the furcifer thing was nice.

Re: tarheel project

[ginlindzey.livejournal.com]

It's a literacy project. If you click on the stories, there's also a link to the home page and I think there's more info there. Honestly, I haven't had time to explore it myself.