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I was replying to a comment but my reply got so long I thought I'd move it up to a real entry.... (see http://ginlindzey.livejournal.com/38894.html?nc=2)
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Well, all I can say is that over the last few years I've realized that our biggest problem with Latin in this country is NOT ignorant administrators, NOT the ignorant public, but rather the teachers. Not all of course. Truly, not all. Perhaps not most? But too many. Too many use morphology to weed out kids so they teach just the select top kids in the school. What a luxury! This also means they often weed out the kids who do NOT learn like the teacher and thus never stretches the teacher to understand more about TEACHING.
The art of teaching/pedagogy is not taught extensively before certification, as one would like, because most professors really aren't into it themselves. Like so many teachers, they just want the students who have already mastered forms and are willing to do whatever it takes to puzzle together meaning, never once checking to see if students are hunting/pecking meaning or reading in word order.
Teachers are not trained to teach AP and unless one takes the time to go to an AP workshop they are left to figure it out on their own. Often it is seen as just too much work or the teacher really has no desire to push the pace or whatever. Or their students aren't up to the task, or so they say.
So, how do you get students that are up to the task? What was done in the past? Well, in the past it was memorize forms your first two years and do tons of stupid, mind-numbing exercises and then in third year you would meet with PASSAGES. Now we have readings up front and teachers who don't know how to use such books well or don't know how to reinforce morphology without going back to old drill and kill.
When I teach I always have in my mind's eye that these students might one day be in AP (however unlikely it was for my previous students--but then, half did end up in an AP class that was really not AP at all). I've vowed to teach pronunciation at the beginning of EACH YEAR so that by the time they are actually IN an AP class dividing words into syllables and figuring out accents before one scans will nto be any big challenge whatsoever. That's simple. BUT I have to be doing that EACH YEAR until they are in AP.
Combined classes are common. That isn't really anyone's fault, just how scheduling goes. But why not have different goals for each group? Extra work for one, research or whatever? Essays? Something.
Oh, and speaking of essays... why not start training them to write essays where the supports are found in the Latin sooner than AP? I have a writing exercise that admittedly I haven't used in a couple of years because of the students I had (bad excuse) and running out of time/shorter class periods. (When you go from a 50 minute hour to a 45 minute hour you lose 18 days worth of class...it does add up.) But I had this writing exercise about why the student liked a particular character in the book. I had the FUNNIEST answers one year.
My point is that there is so much about AP that you could work into your earlier Latin courses so it doesn't all come as shock and overload once you are actually teaching AP.
If you want to build up more confidence in reading passages at home, for instance, then teach different ways to tackle reading passages on one's own. What would you tell your AP kids? Do you want them to keep a running vocab list? Make a note of problem lines? Only write out an English translation for a line that gave them particular problems? Never to write out a translation? To write a summary? To write a summary in Latin??!!! Then you should be training students to do this when the Latin is EASY in book 1 of the course.
Having problems with students doing the assignment early on? Then figure out WHY. Are they scared to make a mistake? Do they get stuck on one word and give up? Are you demanding perfection? Are they demanding perfection of themselves? WHAT?
I keep thinking that if we train our level 1 students well enough, understanding ALL of their disconnects, everywhere they go off the track while the natural A students move on smoothly, we can bring more students up the the advanced levels, and if we do that, we won't have a problem with filling AP classes or having split level classes.
We need to teach intensive and extensive reading skills. I firmly believe that. I truly, truly do. We need to teach disambiguation skills. We need to teach better ways of expanding vocabulary, and I don't know what those are yet, but I've been working on ideas. I do know one thing for sure: all the review games in the world, all the quia.com drills we can write, etc, will not improve the way kids learn and retain vocabulary. I think there are more answers in Rassias and TPR for vocab.
And I'm reminded that I've been relaxing "too much" (haha) this summer when I've never even taught out of Ecce before and should be thinking up where I'll be taking the level 2 kids (and level 3?). Level 1 I'm going to use CLC. But.... the Ecce kids.... heck, I don't even have a file of materials. I know there are vocabulary issues with Ecce because there are no master lists... so which words? Heh! All of them...
Just food for thought....
****
Well, all I can say is that over the last few years I've realized that our biggest problem with Latin in this country is NOT ignorant administrators, NOT the ignorant public, but rather the teachers. Not all of course. Truly, not all. Perhaps not most? But too many. Too many use morphology to weed out kids so they teach just the select top kids in the school. What a luxury! This also means they often weed out the kids who do NOT learn like the teacher and thus never stretches the teacher to understand more about TEACHING.
The art of teaching/pedagogy is not taught extensively before certification, as one would like, because most professors really aren't into it themselves. Like so many teachers, they just want the students who have already mastered forms and are willing to do whatever it takes to puzzle together meaning, never once checking to see if students are hunting/pecking meaning or reading in word order.
Teachers are not trained to teach AP and unless one takes the time to go to an AP workshop they are left to figure it out on their own. Often it is seen as just too much work or the teacher really has no desire to push the pace or whatever. Or their students aren't up to the task, or so they say.
So, how do you get students that are up to the task? What was done in the past? Well, in the past it was memorize forms your first two years and do tons of stupid, mind-numbing exercises and then in third year you would meet with PASSAGES. Now we have readings up front and teachers who don't know how to use such books well or don't know how to reinforce morphology without going back to old drill and kill.
When I teach I always have in my mind's eye that these students might one day be in AP (however unlikely it was for my previous students--but then, half did end up in an AP class that was really not AP at all). I've vowed to teach pronunciation at the beginning of EACH YEAR so that by the time they are actually IN an AP class dividing words into syllables and figuring out accents before one scans will nto be any big challenge whatsoever. That's simple. BUT I have to be doing that EACH YEAR until they are in AP.
Combined classes are common. That isn't really anyone's fault, just how scheduling goes. But why not have different goals for each group? Extra work for one, research or whatever? Essays? Something.
Oh, and speaking of essays... why not start training them to write essays where the supports are found in the Latin sooner than AP? I have a writing exercise that admittedly I haven't used in a couple of years because of the students I had (bad excuse) and running out of time/shorter class periods. (When you go from a 50 minute hour to a 45 minute hour you lose 18 days worth of class...it does add up.) But I had this writing exercise about why the student liked a particular character in the book. I had the FUNNIEST answers one year.
My point is that there is so much about AP that you could work into your earlier Latin courses so it doesn't all come as shock and overload once you are actually teaching AP.
If you want to build up more confidence in reading passages at home, for instance, then teach different ways to tackle reading passages on one's own. What would you tell your AP kids? Do you want them to keep a running vocab list? Make a note of problem lines? Only write out an English translation for a line that gave them particular problems? Never to write out a translation? To write a summary? To write a summary in Latin??!!! Then you should be training students to do this when the Latin is EASY in book 1 of the course.
Having problems with students doing the assignment early on? Then figure out WHY. Are they scared to make a mistake? Do they get stuck on one word and give up? Are you demanding perfection? Are they demanding perfection of themselves? WHAT?
I keep thinking that if we train our level 1 students well enough, understanding ALL of their disconnects, everywhere they go off the track while the natural A students move on smoothly, we can bring more students up the the advanced levels, and if we do that, we won't have a problem with filling AP classes or having split level classes.
We need to teach intensive and extensive reading skills. I firmly believe that. I truly, truly do. We need to teach disambiguation skills. We need to teach better ways of expanding vocabulary, and I don't know what those are yet, but I've been working on ideas. I do know one thing for sure: all the review games in the world, all the quia.com drills we can write, etc, will not improve the way kids learn and retain vocabulary. I think there are more answers in Rassias and TPR for vocab.
And I'm reminded that I've been relaxing "too much" (haha) this summer when I've never even taught out of Ecce before and should be thinking up where I'll be taking the level 2 kids (and level 3?). Level 1 I'm going to use CLC. But.... the Ecce kids.... heck, I don't even have a file of materials. I know there are vocabulary issues with Ecce because there are no master lists... so which words? Heh! All of them...
Just food for thought....
