How Do We Grow as Teachers and as Professional Classicists? How Can CAAS Better (Re)Engage K-12 Educators and Other Classicists Interested in Pedagogy?
About a decade ago, a CAAS Leadership Initiative Grant (LIG) lent support to fifteen K-12 Latin teachers who represented all geographical areas of CAAS. That grant culminated in a very well attended and enthusiastic session at a CAAS Annual Meeting. Through a new LIG, this panel will look at how five teachers from that original group and one additional K-12 teacher, with wide Classics experience, view the nature of and sources of their own professional development and lifelong learning over the past decade.
The aims for the panel are threefold: (1) to create an awareness of the importance of K-12 educators and pedagogical issues to the Classics profession, (2) to model for new (and for more experienced) teachers at any level of instruction various pathways to professional growth, (3) to propose several ways in which CAAS, specifically, can increase the support it gives both K-12 teachers and other educators interested in pedagogy.
Panel format: Introduction, Brief Individual Presentations, Sharing of Draft Bullet Points for CAAS, Discussion.
The panel will begin with an introduction by the panel organizer, situating the issues to be raised by the panel in a larger context. The 2023 Guidelines for Latin Teacher Preparation provides four guidelines: (1) Content Knowledge; (2) Pedagogical Knowledge, Skills, and Understanding; (3) Other Areas of Responsibility; and (4) Professional Development and Lifelong Learning. The panelists will address facets of their individual trajectories for Guideline 4. In addition, features of their professional development intersect with pedagogical issues addressed in the Guidelines and also in the 2017 Standards for Latin Teacher Preparation, including active Latin (using speaking and hearing, as well as writing and reading in second language instruction), diversity, equity, and inclusion in the classroom, and expanding the range of type and time period for finding Latin texts, and the use of Latin novellas. See, for example, Carlon (2013), authors in Ancona, ed. (2019) and Ancona, ed. (2021), and Lloyd and Hunt (2021). Individual Presentations will follow. Each speaker will be addressing the same questions about professional development and lifelong learning. We will then share with the audience a draft of bullet points developed by the current LIG for their input and discussion. A final version of the bullet points, developed after the panel, will be shared with the CAAS Board in hopes of making some structural changes that will increase the recruitment, involvement, and retention of K-12 teachers in CAAS as well as other educators interested in pedagogy.
(Note – This proposed session is a cross between a panel and a workshop. There will be brief presentations by all panelists to the same set of questions. It most closely resembles a panel, for which 2 ½ hours is requested, and the Program Coordinator has ensured that if accepted, it will be on the Saturday, as many panelists could not otherwise participate.)
References:
Ancona, Ronnie. Editor. The Classical Outlook 94.2 (2019), papers by Keeline, Shirley, Anderson, Bailey, Stringer on active Latin.
Ancona, Ronnie. Editor. The Classical Outlook 96.1 (2021), papers by Kouklanakis, Taylor, Sassenberg, Samson and Sypniewski, Bracey on Race, Classics, and the Latin Classroom.
Ancona, Ronnie and Cynthia White et al. Guidelines for Latin Teacher Preparation, (SCS/ACL, 2023).
Carlon, Jacqueline M. “The Implications of SLA Research for Latin Pedagogy: Modernizing Latin Instruction and Securing Its Place in Curricula,” Teaching Classical Languages 4.2 (Spring 2013) 106-122.
Elifrits, Kathy and Mary English et al. Standards for Latin Teacher Preparation, (2017).
Lloyd, Mair E. and Steven Hunt eds. Communicative Approaches for Ancient Languages. Bloomsbury 2021.