Note: Feel free to pick and choose from what follows; some things will appeal or seem helpful to you, others not so much. When it comes to teaching, given the personal nature of it, you yourself will develop best practices from your own readings, explorations, and experience. Long story short, what follows is not prescriptive.
1) introductory remarks re the ethos of teaching, emphasizing the role of the personal in the teaching persona
2) brief outline of responsibilities in student safety/wellbeing (title IX, immigrant students); be sensitive + mindful with your language
- for a student in crisis, send them (or walk them to) BU Student Health Services: SARP (Sexual Assault and Prevention Center) = 930 Commonwealth Avenue, 1st Floor, Boston, MA 02215; 9:00 am-5:00 pm, 24/7 on-call counselor: 617-353-7277
- resources: a number of very good articles on Eidolon, and everything on the Classics and Social Justice Blog (there will be a C&SJ Panel at the 2019 SCS)
3) a basic structure of a “lesson” plan; suggestions how to plan a lesson, how to create discussion; how teaching languages requires different kinds of planning and structure
- for language instruction:
- handouts for Wheelock: http://www.wheelockslatin.com/wheelocksteacherguide.html
- have specific daily lessons dictated by the textbook; e.g. one chapter of Wheelock a session is a good pace
- first part of class introduce new material, second part of class use practice sentences with students to solidify that material
- for language instruction testing is an important and useful way to make sure students commit to memorizing vocabulary/internalizing constructions; I usually do two a week:
- one short quiz just on vocabulary/principal parts [an example];
- one more substantial test on material covered in class that week [an example] (both egs from Latin 2 class taught 2015).
- take at least one session a week to read a longer passage with your students so that they can get used to longer translation
- try to foster a good group dynamic with your Latin students; one idea is to make them a facebook group, so that they can arrange study sessions together (I did this and it was very successful)
- if you can, it can be nice to offer extra credit reading sessions outside of class, where students can come and sight read Latin together with you in an informal (but rewarded) setting
- here is the structure I use for beginning Latin language instruction (can be adapted for different schedule)
Monday: vocab quiz (10 mins) + go over homework (a longer passage from Wheelock, or from 38 Latin Stories)
Tuesday: chapter of Wheelock
Wednesday: chapter of Wheelock
Thursday: weekly test (15-20 mins) + read a longer passage from Wheelock
- for discussion section:
- set the tone for discussion sections by setting up rules and expectations up front (don’t take for granted that students know how to disagree respectfully!)
- structure the class around specific questions which have arisen out of the course lectures
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but don’t be afraid to bring in external material from outside the classroom to generate discussion
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try to engage all students by having a variety of possible formats (small group, pair, written)
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ask individual questions, specifically varying Bloom’s taxonomy
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offer support for developing paper assignment ideas
- have a handout/powerpoint with specific texts or images which you discuss together with your students; giving your students material to respond to which is immediately in front of them can help break the silence
- split your students into groups to discuss specific passages of text or images
- have your students submit questions to you ahead of time for discussion
- have your students use an online forum format to discuss the week’s material in advance (an example: Miranda Butler’s use of tumblr and blackboard)
- have your students do short (5 min) presentations on primary materials
- show your students excerpts of other media (audio, video) which relate to ancient material; can be helpful for helping imagination and creating inroads, e.g. this video taken by someone walking to the Purpose Built Lupanar in Pompeii demonstrates the narrowness of space; or this video of the Nikandre Kore demonstrates the surprising slimness of the statue, and what it looks like in its museum context
4) brief overview of digital tools/resources:
- Pleiades project: find ancient locations on a map (students often respond to maps + other visualisations)
- Wikimedia: for finding images of ancient objects etc. in the public domain/creative commons license (Flickr/youtube can also be helpful)
- draw on the work of public classicists like Mary Beard, Sarah Bond, Donna Zuckerberg; Eidolon
- Diotima has a very large breadth of resources for teaching gender/women in the ancient world; likewise VRoma
- University of Reading’s Virtual Rome project.
- online version of Allen + Greenough Latin Grammar via Dickinson College Commentaries
- create a course blog (e.g. cl102.blog — cl206.blog) and/or twitter hashtag (#worldofrome #womenancient)
- podcasts: I like BBC In Our Time, e.g. episodes on Sappho ( with Edith Hall, Margaret Reynolds, Dirk Obbink) and the Etruscans (Phil Perkins, David Ridgway, Corinna Riva)
- use + browse the #teachancient hashtag (used to collect, curate, and generate on twitter materials for teaching the ancient world), e.g.:
- apps/website for Latin or Greek drills for beginning students
- memrise, can be used to create drills or use drills made by others, e.g. this one for Wheelock
- Eton Greek project
- Open University Latin
5) brief overview of pedagogy bibliography/other resources:
- When Dead Tongues Speak, John Gruber-Miller — this is specifically written for classicists teaching languages
- From Abortion to Pederasty,
- Creating Significant Learning Experiences, L. Dee FInk
- Engaging Ideas, John Bean
- Teaching to Transgress, bell hooks
- What the Best College Teachers Do, Ken Bain
- How Learning Works, Susan Ambrose
- Itinera podcast by Scott Lepisto, in which he interviews classicists on their teaching and research; guests to date include: Alex Purves, Ellen Finkelpearl, Alexis Whalen (on living Latin), Helen Morales, Christelle Fischer-Bovet
- also an excellent piece in Eidolon by Lisl Walsh on feminist pedagogy, and the fact that being a woman in the classroom will make it harder for students to assign authority to you: https://eidolon.pub/giving-it-up-in-the-classroom-14c1afcfd69.
- and some good articles in the Chronicle:
o pietas animi 