Classical World, vol. 106, no. 1 (2012) Pp. 103129.

Teaching about Classics Pedagogy in the

21st Century
The following papers originated in a panel, co-organized by Ronnie
Ancona and Eric Dugdale and sponsored by the Education Commit-
tee of the American Philological Association, which took place at the
2012 APA Annual Meeting in Philadelphia. All have undergone some
revision for publication. We would like to thank CW editor, Matthew
Santirocco, and CW associate editor, Judith Hallett, for encouraging
us to submit them. The lively response to the panel made us realize
that the topic was one of interest to a wide group of classicists.
Introduction: Whom Do We Teach about Classics
Pedagogy and Why?
RONNIE ANCONA
Two panels at the 2011 Annual Meeting of the American Philological Association
generated considerable interest in classics pedagogy: a panel on the Standards
for Latin Teacher Preparation, sponsored by the APA Education Committee,
and one on Ph.D.s who pursue classics teaching at the secondary-school level,
sponsored by the American Philological AssociationArchaeological Institute of
America Joint Committee on Placement. This panel was organized by the APA
Education Committee to capitalize on that interest in pedagogy, and to address
specically how Ph.D. programs can contribute to training classicists as teachers
for the twenty-rst century. It is the committees belief that successful teaching is
essential for our Ph.D. students careers in graduate school and beyond, and for
the survival and enhancement of the classics profession as a whole.
I would suggest that there is a common core of pedagogy relevant to teach-
ing at any level (although we might argue about what that core should entail)
and that we owe it to our M.A./Ph.D. students to help prepare them for teaching
while in graduate school and for teaching in their future careers. While clearly
there are differences between college-level teaching and pre-collegiate teaching,
and Ph.D. programs will reasonably emphasize the former, the overlap is broad-
er than one might imagine.
It is the aim of this panel to address the issue of pedagogical training, espe-
cially in Classics Ph.D. programs. The following papers approach the topic from
different, yet complementary, angles. The authors include an experienced gradu-
ate student who teaches (Michael Goyette), two professors involved in teach-
ing pedagogy courses in a classics Ph.D. program (William Batstone and Anna
McCullough), one professor teaching in a liberal arts college (Eric Dugdale), an
expert in classics and technology (Andrew Reinhard), and an expert in the eld
of textbook editing and publishing (Laurie Haight Keenan). Our inclusion of
the last two perspectives underscores the fact that teaching involves more than
students and teachers, and that the boundaries separating teacher, textbook,
paedagogus
Classical World 104
student, and on-line resources are blurring. If we want to educate our current
group of Ph.D. students for teaching in the twenty-rst century, we may need to
update our own pedagogical knowledge as well.
What should we offer our graduate students to help make them excellent
teachers, as well as scholars, in the twenty-rst century? What do they know
when they rst start teaching? What should they know? What do they know
about teaching by the time they receive their degrees? Do we make a conscious,
systematic effort to introduce graduate students to the pedagogy relevant to our
eld or do we just use them to cover the teaching of classes full-time faculty
cannot cover, expecting them to pick up on how to teach through their own
on-the-job experience, as many of us did? I suspect that the days of introducing
a TA to teaching by merely handing him or her the textbook and room number
are over (a procedure many of us may recall), but what we do beyond that likely
varies from institution to institution and what we should do may lie beyond what
is now typically done.
I would like to offer just one example of a disjuncture in graduate training
that I nd jarring. My Hunter College M.A. students training to be secondary-
school teachers of Latin are required in a Latin Teaching Methods class to learn
about the major methods for teaching Latin in current use (reading approach,
grammar-translation approach, oral-aural or direct method, etc.), knowledge ex-
pected of beginning pre-collegiate teachers in the recently published APA-ACL
Standards for Latin Teacher Preparation.
1
Why, then, do we not require at least
this much knowledge about pedagogy of our Ph.D. students, who will become
teachers of Latin, as well as Greek and classics, as well? I think still lurking in
the profession, especially in Ph.D. institutions, is the notion that to be a good
teacher merely involves possessing outstanding knowledge of the subject matter
of classics. I think the papers from our panel suggest otherwise.
HUNTER COLLEGE AND CUNY GRADUATE CENTER
rancona@hunter.cuny.edu
1
S. Little and L. Pearcy et al. American Classical League (2010). http://www.
aclclassics.org/uploads/assets/files/Standards_for_Latin_Teacher_Preparation.pdf
(accessed August 24, 2012). For discussion of why college professors should be aware
of the Standards, see R. Ancona, College Professors and the New Standards for Latin
Teacher Preparation, Teaching Classical Languages 1.2 (2010) 15761, http://tcl.camws.
org/spring2010/TCL_I_ii_Perspectives_Ancona.html (accessed August 24, 2012).
Quis docebit ipsos doctores? A Graduate Student
Perspective on Learning to Teach Classics
MICHAEL GOYETTE
The eld of classics has traditionally prepared many of its college- and universi-
ty-level teachers by more or less directly plunging them into the classroom, hav-
105 Paedagogus
ing them learn on the y.
1
Most professors enter their rst full-time teaching
positions having obtained teaching experience as graduate students, but rarely is
this experience accompanied by formal training in pedagogy. As a current Ph.D.
student who has taught various undergraduate courses in the elds of classics
and English literature in the City University of New York system over the past
ve years, I would like to reect upon some of the challenges that come with be-
ing cast into the teaching role with little to no prior formal educational training.
By outlining some of my personal experiences as a classics instructor, I will pro-
vide a lens through which to examine some of the problems and growing pains
a graduate student instructor might experience when trying to gure out how
to teach, and I will also suggest that some aspects of my experience may reect
an ongoing shift (for the better) in how the profession is training new teachers.
Many of the issues I will share are common to the general experience of gradu-
ate students or recent Ph.D.s teaching classics, while others are more specic to
teaching in a large urban university system.
In the fall of 2008, I started teaching my rst undergraduate course in clas-
sics, a core-curriculum course called Classical Cultures intended to expose stu-
dents to works of Greek and Roman literature in English translation. A couple of
months before the course started, the department in which I would be teaching
provided me with a sample syllabus that an instructor had used to teach the
course previously. I was told that I had the freedom to adapt this syllabus as I
saw t, but I was not totally sure what to do with this information. Having never
designed a syllabus and having never received any training in this, I was nervous
about making too many alterations to the sample syllabus. To be sure, the de-
partment offered a three-hour orientation session a few days before classes for
the semester started, and has continued to do so prior to each semester I have
taught there, and these sessions have been very helpful in elucidating depart-
mental policies and planting the seeds for certain teaching skills to be developed.
At the same time, a three-hour session is perhaps not enough, especially for
someone going into their rst semester of teaching classics.
To return to my rst syllabus: I had never even selected or ordered text-
books for a course, making me still more hesitant to adopt sweeping changes.
Regarding the course policies on the sample syllabus, I could see that expecta-
tions for aspects such as attendance, participation, and submitting work late
were not specied, but I was not really sure how much specicity was necessary.
Feeling as if in a state of aporia, I naturally turned to my own past learning expe-
riences as a way of reecting on these issues. Typically, the syllabi I had received
for both my undergraduate and graduate courses gave little explanation about
the criteria in question. While such ambiguity might sufce in certain learning
environments, I quickly came to believe that the lack of a precise and detailed
policy about such matters, at the school where I was now teaching, could unin-
tentionally give rise to a set of problems and complications.
1
Many of the reections expressed here have come up in conversations with faculty
and fellow graduate students at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
I am grateful for all of these conversations, and in particular I would like to thank CUNY
faculty members Ronnie Ancona and Craig Williams, and Eric Dugdale of Gustavus Adol-
phus College, for welcoming discussions of pedagogy with me and for providing thought-
ful comments on drafts of this paper.
Classical World 106
In fact, I soon realized that my entire learning experience had occurred in
environments dramatically different from the one in which I was now employed.
While I was greatly excited by the opportunity to work with students from a
diverse range of backgroundsin terms of race, ethnicity, religion, educational
experience, age, and disability statusI was not sure how to handle myself as
a teacher in such a dynamic situation. Since I had not yet established any prac-
ticed or favored teaching approaches, my rst instinct was to emulate my fa-
vorite teachers, and to try to avoid being like the teachers I disliked or learned
little from during my own academic experiences. I soon grasped, however, that
modeling my pedagogy after my favorite teachers would not be the most effec-
tive way to teach this course, which, as a core-curriculum requirement, was
comprised of many students who, at least initially, did not necessarily have great
interest in the subject matter. For instance, no teacher in my own college- or
graduate-level courses ever had to ask class members to bring the current read-
ing with them to class, and I would have found it almost absurd for them to do
so. But I soon learned that if I did not specify this as a requirement in my present
classroom, more than half the students would come to class without the text to
be discussed, which astonished me since the course was manifestly designed to
promote close textual analysis. In part, this astonishment stemmed from expec-
tations based upon my own undergraduate learning experiences, in which small
classes almost always involved close interaction and dialogue between students
and the instructor. In addition, I had not taken into consideration that teaching
at a commuter campus might make students less inclined to haul their books
to and from home and/or work. Such aspects of this teaching experience made
me wish that I had at some point been familiarized with devising policies and
strategies appropriate to a wider variety of teaching situations, rather than just
having to adapt to different situations through my own improvisation.
2
Another issue I struggled with in those rst days of teaching classics was
how to handle myself as an authority gure in the classroom. As a then twenty-
four year old graduate student, I was not disposed to view myself in these terms,
and I wondered at times how I could ever command respect from my students.
Certainly I could never gain their respect in the same sense as an accomplished
instructor with more than thirty years of teaching experience. Psychologists such
as Pauline Clance have described an impostor syndrome in which it is not
uncommon for graduate students to feel that they do not belong intellectually
among peers in their Ph.D. program.
3
This concept can be applied to how I felt
2
In using the term improvisation here, I am referring to the notion that, without
any training, beginning teachers may feel like they have to gure out on their own how to
do certain things fundamental to teaching, such as designing a syllabus, forming a lesson
plan, or writing a quiz. I do not mean to devalue the sort of improvisational skills that will
always be necessary for teachers to succeed in the classroom itself. Indeed, good teaching
is a constant improvisation that adjusts to evolving situations and does not fall into a
completely preset mode of operation. In this sense, learning to teach must be an ongoing
process of adaptation throughout ones career. Without training novice teachers in certain
pedagogical skills, however, it will be more difcult for them to develop this kind of ability
to improvise effectively in the classroom. For further thoughts on the role of improvisa-
tion in teaching, see the article by William Batstone in this issue.
3
P. Clance, The Imposter Phenomenon: Overcoming the Fear That Haunts Your
Success (Atlanta 1985) 25. See also C. Harvey and C. Katz, If Im So Successful, Why Do I
107 Paedagogus
about my rst few months of teaching classics, as I saw myself as an impostor
of a teacher, with only a B.A. degree, a little graduate school, and no formal
pedagogical trainingand thus not too far removed from the very students I was
currently teaching. These feelings were exacerbated by the fact that I was teach-
ing large groups of students, instead of having small, seminar-style classes as I
had been accustomed to throughout my graduate and undergraduate careers.
Due to the issues I had viewing myself as an authority gure, I was at rst
very tentative in responding to disruptive classroom behavior, such as sending
text messages during class. I had few precedents to draw upon, as it was ex-
ceptionally rare for a teacher to have to correct a students behavior in my own
undergraduate and graduate course work. This, however, was not the case in my
current teaching environment, and I was a bit uncertain about what to do. Simi-
larly, during those initial years of teaching, I was taken aback by a few students
who challenged my course policies. On such occasions, I could not help but wish
that I had received some focused training in how to respond to such situations.
As my comfort level in the classroom gradually began to grow, I started to
experiment more and more with different ways to engage students and found
that PowerPoint slides could be a very useful tool, especially for showing images
of art in mythology courses. When I started teaching, however, I did not know
how to use PowerPoint, for I had never had to use it in any course I had taken
as a student. Even today, after much trial and error, there are still aspects of the
program that I wish I knew how to use better. While many graduate students are
already familiar with such technology, many would also benet from instruction
in how to use programs like PowerPoint more effectively for pedagogical pur-
poses. Only through my own experience in the classroom have I come to learn
that PowerPoint can encourage more thorough note-taking in certain kinds of
courses, but that putting too much text on a single slide can overwhelm some
students and cause them to stop taking notes altogether. These are only a couple
of examples of what I have learned about the importance of presentational skills.
In my teaching of large, core-curriculum courses on the Great Books and Clas-
sical Civilization, I have found that having creative techniques to engage stu-
dents in the classroom has been just asif not moreimportant as knowing the
facts and knowledge of the eld.
The value of using PowerPoint is just one example of the need for the eld
of classics to foster the development of pedagogical technology skills as a way of
connecting with students who are only more and more technologically minded.
Largely on my own, I have had to gure out how to administer a Blackboard
site, how to create an Excel spreadsheet for grading purposes, and how to use
online plagiarism detection software. Some of these programs and skills took
me a while to learn or even to nd out about, so it was not until a few years into
my teaching career that I felt even somewhat up to speed with current trends in
teaching technology. Below I will offer some ideas about how such issues could
be addressed, but at this point I would like to state that I do not think that it is
necessarily realistic to expect graduate programs in classics to provide training
in all of these skills. At the same time, a course on the pedagogy of classics could
at least begin to make sure graduate students are aware of such resources and
how they can be implemented in the classroom, while I.T. support and university-
Feel Like a Fake: The Imposter Phenomenon (New York 1985); L. Laursen, No, Youre
Not an Imposter, Science (Feb. 15, 2008) 14.
Classical World 108
wide training workshops might provide hands-on training and opportunities to
develop such skills.
There is, as any experienced teacher knows, an art to crafting an effective
writing assignment. Throughout my college years, the paper topics I was as-
signed were usually very open-ended, with big, general topics, and they were
often simply announced in class with no formal write-up of the assignment.
Sometimes, no topic restrictions were placed on the paper, and the only rule
specied was a page requirement. For my graduate-level courses, this complete
open-endedness was almost always the case. While these were the exempla I had
at my disposal, I could tell that this lack of specicity would not do for my un-
dergraduate teaching circumstances. I tried to be specic about my expectations,
but I now know that I was not nearly specic enough for the rst few classes
I worked with. In retrospect, the early writing assignments I gave now make
me cringe a bit, and I realize that my disappointment with the work that some
students submitted is to some degree a reection on my ill-devised paper topics.
The art of writing an effective paper assignment is a skill I am still honing, but I
had not even begun to hone this skill before I had to put it to use. I could say the
same about making a lesson plan, writing a quiz or exam, and discussing work
with a student during ofce hoursall important aspects of teaching that I have
had to learn almost exclusively through experience.
Having described some of the issues that may face the new teacher who has
had little pedagogical training, I would like to outline two recent developments
which suggest that my university (like many others) is beginning to approach the
training and mentoring of new teachers in more focused and more self-conscious
ways. In the spring semester of 2011, the undergraduate department in which
I was teaching began to hold meetings every other week for some of its less
experienced instructors, as part of a larger reform in the ways in which the
department delivered its general education course on Classical Cultures.
4
At
these meetings, which were led by an experienced instructor, various elements of
pedagogy were discussed, each time focusing on a different chapter from a book
on pedagogy we were expected to read.
5
During each meeting we were asked to
reect upon the chapter at hand, discussing how we might implement the ideas
in our teaching approaches. We were also encouraged to put these reactions into
writing, so we would have these ideas on hand for later reection. The instruc-
tor who led these meetings mentioned that these reactions could be drawn upon
when one was asked to construct remarks about ones personal teaching phi-
losophy for future job applications or interviews. I gained many insights from
these sessions, including different strategies for generating discussion, methods
of appealing to different kinds of learners, and ways to cultivate critical think-
ing skills while simultaneously reinforcing comprehension of course content.
These opportunities to exchange ideas with fellow members of the department
essentially came to form a mini-seminar on pedagogysomething that I wished
4
In the newly developed model, students attend a weekly lecture by an experienced
full-time instructor in a large group, plus one weekly, twenty-ve student discussion sec-
tion led by an adjunct instructor or graduate teaching fellow. Regular meetings between
the full-time lecturer and part-time discussant facilitate the mentoring of less experienced
instructors.
5
W. J. McKeachie and M. Svinicki, McKeachies Teaching Tips: Strategies, Research,
and Theory for College and University Teachers (Boston 2006).
109 Paedagogus
I had experienced sooner. This opportunity was made possible precisely because
the department had introduced the lecture/discussion format for its general
education course, and in fact one of the reasons why the department developed
this format was to enable and nurture the formation of faculty/graduate-student
teaching mentorships, which were not likely to be realized under its old model
of fully independent, stand-alone, core-curriculum classes. Each classics depart-
ment has, of course, its unique set of institutional and learning needs, and a lec-
ture/discussion section format is clearly not always possible, but my experience
suggests that building the possibility of mentoring into a pedagogical format can
be extremely helpful to new teachers.
Finally, I would like to advocate for graduate students to receive some train-
ing in pedagogy before they enter the classroom as instructors. At The Graduate
Center of the City University of New York, some students in the classics program,
including myself, have advocated strongly for the teaching of a pedagogy course
by a senior faculty member in the department. Such a course will be coming to
fruition in the academic year 20122013, and I am hopeful it will include op-
portunities to observe the teaching of experienced instructors; the possibility of
guest-teaching in a course taught by an experienced instructor who can provide
criticism; development of PowerPoint presentations; and a pedagogy project in
which students might be asked to develop their own teaching philosophies.
By describing my experience as a graduate student learning to teach, I hope
to have raised consciousness about some issues that can be faced by the begin-
ning teacher, and to have noted and encouraged recent signs of growing insti-
tutional attention to the training and mentoring of new college-level teachers. I
hope to have shown some reasons why it is necessary to nd more opportunities
for graduate students to receive training to develop teaching skills, especially for
teaching in various kinds of learning environments, including both language-
and non-language-focused courses. This will benet not only the beginning
teacher, but also future students of classics, thus strengthening our eld over
both the short and long terms.
CUNY GRADUATE CENTER
MGoyette@gc.cuny.edu
A Graduate Level Latin Pedagogy Course in a Classics
Ph.D. Program
WILLIAM W. BATSTONE
This report will offer a brief history of the course on Latin pedagogy at The Ohio
State University, its development, and current concerns. I think it is important
to emphasize at the outset that this course is a work in progress. I also want to
begin by noting that it is typical that pedagogy at research universities tends to
become the concern of one faculty member and, when that person leaves, it falls
into desuetude. This will not be the case at OSU. Two years ago my colleague
Anna McCullough stepped in to teach the Latin pedagogy course while I was on
sabbatical. In future, we will teach the pedagogy course in tandem, insuring both
Classical World 110
that there are different interests and emphases in the two-year sequence and that
the departments commitment to good teaching on the part of its graduate stu-
dents will continue when either of us should leave. In her own report, Professor
McCullough will outline both her interests and emphases and the new directions
that are possible for pedagogy at OSU. My report here has three parts: begin-
nings, curriculum review, and the teaching certicate.
I. Beginnings
Before 1997, so far as I know (and I was hired in 1985), the efforts of the Clas-
sics Department to take seriously the need for pedagogical training (or advice or
mentorship) were negligible and random, certainly not formal. In 1997, when
I became involved in curricular reform, the College of Humanities (now reor-
ganized under the College of Arts and Sciences) was offering language TAs an
introductory two-week workshop in Language Pedagogy before autumn quarter.
Some of our students, feeling the need for some training before the faculty real-
ized that such a need existed, attended these courses but were dissatised by the
emphasis on conversational models of language learning. They felt, rightly so,
I believe, that this course was of little use for them, but they still wanted some
guidance and instruction. As an alternative, I, who was chair of the department
at the time, created a noncredit, volunteer roundtable discussion for Latin TAs.
Due in part to the perceived authority of the chair, this discussion group was
well attended. I decided against a two-week session in large part because I felt
that I had no special knowledge to impart or authority to teach others how to
teach. I did not believe that good teaching was the product of knowledge under
the model of things to be learned and then practiced. I thought that teaching
was really a kind of improvisation, recreated (or not) in every class, and that
we served new teachers best by helping them to pool the resources of the de-
partment, and encouraging exibility, invention, and self-awareness.
1
So, I had
roundtable discussions: I would ask the TAs how their classes were going, what
problems they wanted to discuss, and what had been particularly successful in
their classrooms. Others would comment, offer suggestions, and so on. This
meeting was simultaneously a community resource and an ongoing conversa-
tion. In fact, I have often felt that the primary function of these discussions
was to encourage further discussion outside of the classroom. Consequently, to
1
The term improvisation had, at the APA panel where this report was given, dif-
ferent valences. I think it is important to say that we cannot remove improvisation from
the classroom, and, in my opinion, it is the single most important ingredient in successful
teaching. This does not mean that I think TAs should be thrown into unfamiliar circum-
stances without any guidelines, mentoring, and best practices. It only means that, for
all of that, we still need to cultivate the kind of condence and self-awareness that allows
for fruitful improvisation. And I would like to add that it is not necessarily a bad thing to
be thrown back on ones ignorance and ability to improvise. It is a bad thing if that is the
only place to fall, and if there is no support system. But it is also a bad thing to imagine
that teaching is simply a matter of learned skills, or even to imagine that if we hold our
TAs hands long enough they will be as good at teaching as we are (God forbid!). When
it comes to teaching, safety and security are not part of the package: self-awareness and
compassion are.
111 Paedagogus
encourage such conversations, I required our TAs to visit each others class-
rooms, and to return to our group with specic examples of techniques, at-
titudes, or responses that they had found either particularly effective or poten-
tially useful for their classrooms.
This is not to say that the course was without specic content. From the
beginning I would offer mini-presentations on various aspects of the Latin class-
room and Latin grammar, in part because I believed that there were some use-
ful best practices (even though I did not believe either that adopting certain
techniques constituted in itself good teaching or that good teaching necessarily
entailed the techniques I advocated). Furthermore, the underlying purpose of
these modules was less to impart techniques than to encourage an attitude to-
ward teaching that emphasized the question, How do I help my students make
progress? and How do I get out of the way of the progress they are capable
of making?
Most TAs, and in fact most young professors, attempt to teach the best,
most knowledgeable course for the kind of student they were. They are con-
cerned with looking good as Latinists in their own eyes and in the eyes of the
senior faculty who will judge them. This is not a bad impulseit means that
most of us enter the classroom determined to do better as teachers than our
teachers did. But we fail to realize that most of our students are not like us: they
do not learn the same way we do, they do not live in the same world of values,
demands, past experiences. For these students, and for most of our peers back in
the day, looking up the origin of the ablative or the comparative history of labio-
velars does not help. The path to successful teaching begins, not with specialized
knowledge, but with questions like, What is it they dont understand? How
do they understand language? and How can I make this seem important?
In discussing how to conduct a drill, for instance, I emphasized simple
guidelines: Dont be tricky. (Students do not care how clever you can be . . .
especially if it is at their expense.) Dont ever write incorrect forms on the board.
(Learning involves a noncognitive element of familiarity; every time you write a
wrong answer on the board, you have made that a possible answer.) New forms
should vary in only one dimension of the paradigm. (I almost never say things
like, I like, no, I mean they like. We tend to think and speak in dimensions that
vary number or person, not both at the same time.) Ask the question before you
call on the student (unless you want the rest of the class to stop paying atten-
tion, because for the moment they are off the hook). Commit to a complete drill,
ending with all the forms written in a paradigm on the board. When the entire
paradigm is on the board, step back, describe it, read it out loud. Always keep in
mind the fact that people have different learning styles: appeal to the oral learner
by reading and chanting, the visual learner by using colored chalk or underlin-
ing, to the analytic learner with an analysis and summary of the rules, even to the
social learner by group chanting.
Over the years we have developed a number of modules, including Learn-
ing and Teaching Styles, to emphasize the variety of ways students assimilate
information and to encourage TAs to address as many styles as possible; Using
the Quiz, as a tool for focusing and scheduling the students studying, or even
for isolating the one thing you want them to learn (Tomorrow a quiz on princi-
pal parts: you will be asked to give the principal parts of fero); Different Ways
to Write a Handout, and so on.
Now, without going into more detail about these modules, I would like to
emphasize the liability inherent in this approach: it pretends that teaching is a
Classical World 112
matter of knowledgeknowing what to do, having the right resources. But in
doing this, we are slipping from a model of the schoolmaster as the master of the
material and master of the class to the TA as master of pedagogy. This seems to
me to be a huge error. Successful teaching is to my mind a continual improvisa-
tion that assumes the teachers ignorance: ignorance of who her students are,
what they need, how they think, why they are there. We have to think about what
we want them to learn and why. We must continually adjust to their assumptions
while at the same time trying to adjust (or getting them to adjustit is not clear
who is the agent in these complex interactions) those assumptions. And that
dialogue is, it seems to me, key: we cannot teach them without adjusting to
their assumptions, but we cannot teach without adjusting them to our goals and
aspirations (for them).
The advantage of the roundtable conversational format and the use of mini-
lectures or modules is that the pedagogy class responded to real issues as they
came up. More experienced TAs played an essential role in all of this, sometimes
offering solutions and at other times commiseration. Some TAs were good at
getting the students to do group work, others at creating a nonintimidating class.
New TAs were sent to observe the more experienced TAs. The class was not for-
mally required, but it was clear that TAs in the Latin sequence were expected to
attend the meetings, and for the most part this worked very well. Occasionally
there was an authoritarian TA who was horried that I would suggest that you
tell your students what will be on the quiz, or that I opposed pop quizzes, or
that he should visit some inferior TAs class. I felt that we were all better off
when such TAs found excuses to be absent.
2
For the rest of us, including myself,
teaching about teaching meant learning about teaching, and that meant learning
about ourselves: our teaching and learning preferences, the problems we might
be creating, the solutions that no longer work, and the pleasures of improvisation.
II. The Deans Ofce and the Curricular Committee
Sometime around 2002 or 2003, the Dean of Humanities decided that Language
Pedagogy courses should be required of all TAs, and that the required courses
had to pass the standards of the curricular review committee. At rst this meant
we had to explain why we did not want our TAs taking the language pedagogy
course already organized by the modern language departments. Then we had
to win approval for our course. The Dean did not understand why a pedagogy
course should last a full year: modern languages do what they need to do in two
weeks at the end of summer; why cant Greek and Latin get the job done at least
in a quarter? Nor did he understand why TAs needed to take the course for a
second year, as if they were the same teachers in their second year, and as if they
had nothing to offer that was not in the bibliography or already in the mind of
the masterful professor. We tried to formulate the course as a practicum: that
meant formal review of teaching and the presentation of a teaching dossier. This
2
I still feel this way, but when a course like this becomes required, all the problems
of teaching Latin to students who come in with unhelpful biases and assumptions recur. In
some ways the best thing about teaching a course in pedagogy is that it makes one more
aware of how difcult it is to teach . . . a course in pedagogy.
113 Paedagogus
seemed like an impossible increase in workload for all the faculty who would be
asked to mentor individual TAs. And, looking to the model of education courses
in the School of Education, the Dean still did not see why we needed a two-year
long practicum. The misunderstanding is itself interesting, and it is a conceptual
one. It was as if teaching was something you learned, like plumbing, and once
you learned it, you did not need to learn it again.
I was never able to convince the administration of my point of view, but
fortunately we were able to write a syllabus with bibliography and assignments,
segments to be completed, items to be passed and passed over. This gave the ped-
agogy course a specic curriculum that could be approved and reviewed. Then,
for a period of two years, we considered making the transition from Wheelocks
Latin to the Cambridge Latin Course. This required both theoretical reading and
discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of the two approaches (grammar ver-
sus reading); comparison of the strengths of various available texts; and, when
we eventually adopted the Cambridge course, the production of supplemental
material. All of this activity satised the administrations need for dened con-
tent, and has become a useful part of the curriculum, as we try to nd ways to
supplement the reading course with more grammar and to supplement Moreland
and Fleischers Latin: An Intensive Course, which we still use for an accelerated
Latin course, with more reading.
III. The Teaching Certicate
The need for a formal syllabus with assignments and evaluation has had an un-
expected and positive outcome. I still teach the roundtable course, but with
more structure, as required by the syllabus. But now the department, partly at
the encouragement of the TAs, is considering offering a Certicate in College
teaching. This Certicate will require a course on college teaching taught by the
Center for Teaching Excellence, the Latin pedagogy course, and a full semester
of mentoring by a member of the regular faculty (a version of the practicum).
This mentoring will require discussion and supervision of a course syllabus and
of assignments and exams, as well as classroom visits, video recordings made for
purposes of review and self-criticism, a dossier, and a nal report. One of the
advantages of this Certicate is that a TA who specializes in Greek could choose
to emphasize Latin teaching, while another could emphasize teaching in lecture
courses or curriculum development. Another advantage is that, by taking two
electives outside the department, a TA could qualify for a Graduate Minor in
University Teaching, which would appear on her transcript.
This has yet to be approved, but the pedagogy course is and always has been
a work in progress. Good teaching, I believe, requires presence, self-awareness,
improvisation, and exibility. Our students and our graduate students are always
changing, and, to some degree, we need to change with them. Currently, we are
proposing to work with the Digital Union (a center that provides resources and
training in digital technologies that may be used in teaching at OSU) to develop
courses and course supplements that will deliver to elementary and intermediate
Latin students materials that respond not just to the departments or the col-
leges curricular needs, but to the variety of students we nd at a large state uni-
versity with a mission of educating the citizens of the state. This is an admirable
mission, and, within the framework of elementary and intermediate Latin, we
Classical World 114
hope to explore and expand the resources that will address a variety of teaching
and learning styles as well as a variety of life circumstances.
OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY
Batstone.1@osu.edu
From Graduate Level Latin Pedagogy Course to Classics
Pedagogy Course
ANNA MCCULLOUGH
In 20102011, the Ohio State University Latin pedagogy course was altered
to cover topics beyond those specic to Latin pedagogy issues. These topics
included general pedagogy theory and technique, as well as issues pertaining to
the teaching of classics courses. There were a number of reasons for the shift
to a broader coverage of pedagogy, some specic to the Department of Classics
and others inspired by larger academic trends. Within our department, due to
more limited faculty availability, TAs are increasingly the primary instructors in
lower-level classics courses such as Greek/Roman Civilization or Introduction
to Greek/Roman Literature. Given that these are the rst non-language courses
many TAs have taught, wider pedagogical training is useful for them, especially
in course structure, syllabus writing, and lesson planning. This broader train-
ing is also meant to remedy an overreliance among the graduate students on a
narrow, literature-based approach to teaching classics courses. In other words,
some TAs were unable to articulate a clear plan for teaching a history or culture
course that did not involve sole reliance on ancient literature in translation.
General trends in academia also demand a more sophisticated pedagogi-
cal approach from instructors. Anecdotal evidence, as well as studies such as
Academically Adrift by Arum and Roksa,
1
reveal todays typical undergraduate
to be emotionally immature, lacking in basic academic skills, and possessing a
low degree of personal initiative. The average student now devotes far more time
to his/her job and extracurricular and social activities than to studying or going
to class, and often expects to be told what to do (and how to do it) at nearly
every stage of a course. This trend is showing no signs of reversing itself, which
raises the question, of how an instructor should address this situation in his/her
curriculum, exams, and mentoring. Traditional teaching methods do not neces-
sarily work with this new breed of student, and simply saying students should
study more (or more effectively) does not make it happen. Additional pedagogi-
cal training in new theories and techniques will provide graduate students with
tools to more effectively impart the knowledge which both the above-mentioned
study and personal experience are telling us is not being retained. In short, in
order to better prepare graduate students for their teaching assignments as
TAs, the job market, and future academic teaching duties, a broader training in
pedagogy is necessary. Changes to our pedagogy course were thus in the best
1
R. Arum and J. Roksa, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Cam-
puses (Chicago 2011).
115 Paedagogus
interests of undergraduate and graduate students alike, as well as the profession
at large.
I began to experiment with a broader thematic format for the course in
fall 2010 in part because of my own observations regarding the graduate stu-
dents partial lack of awareness of larger pedagogical issues, and partly to ll
what I saw as a hole in our departments pedagogical trainingwhy should
only the Latin TAs have a dedicated pedagogy course, and not our classics
TAs for courses such as mythology or introduction to Greek literature? Af-
ter all, not every faculty member teaching such a course is willing, available,
or conscious of the need to explain the pedagogy behind his/her curriculum.
Indeed, during the rst quarter of the altered format, I observed both a need
and desire for these kinds of broader topics amongst the Latin TAs. I there-
fore raised discussion at the end of that quarter with the department chair
as well as the other faculty regarding the possibility of permanently institut-
ing a broader pedagogy course that could either enroll classics and Greek
TAs as well as Latin TAs, or run separate meetings for Latin and classics TAs.
(A departmental decision was subsequently made to broaden the existing peda-
gogy program beyond its former focus on Latin TAs, but the exact form of this
expansion is yet to be determined; a nal decision will most likely come once the
universitys switch from quarters to semesters has been completed in fall 2012.)
However, during my experimental year of teaching pedagogy, changes I
made were directed at content, rather than enrollment, which remained restrict-
ed to Latin TAs. The new structure of the course was exible, combining the
prior format and some other earlier elements with new topics. Meetings were
once-weekly, and each graduate student was observed in class at least once per
quarter, with a second observation if needed. Videotaping during observation
was offered, although only around a third of Latin TAs utilized this option. Those
who did watched the videos independently and met with me afterwards to offer
a self-assessment of their instruction. The fall quarter was the most structured,
with assigned readings and topics for discussion, and was partially diagnostic in
the sense of determining which additional pedagogical topics were needed and
desired by the graduate students. Some topics in the fall were pitched to Latin
specically, such as the use of technology in Latin language instruction, while
others addressed broader issues, such as basics of classroom management. We
read most of Gruber-Millers When Dead Tongues Speak,
2
along with articles
such as Hansens Teaching Latin Word Order for Reading Competence.
3
Win-
ter and spring quarters were less planned, and a Latin component was retained
to continue support for the Latin TAs. Discussion topics for meetings ranged
more widely to cover current issues in university teaching, and were introduced
through articles from the Chronicle of Higher Education on problems such as
grade ination and the academically underprepared freshman undergraduate.
4

2
J. Gruber-Miller, ed., When Dead Tongues Speak: Teaching Beginning Greek and
Latin (New York 2006). Other readings included selected chapters from R. A. LaFleur,
ed., Latin for the 21st Century: From Concept to Classroom (Glenview 1998).
3
W. S. Hansen, Teaching Latin Word Order for Reading Competence, CJ 95
(2000) 17380. Other articles read included D. P. Carpenter, Reassessing the Goal of
Latin Pedagogy, CJ 95 (2000) 39195.
4
An example of one article read and discussed was C. B. Whelan, Helping First-
Year Students Help Themselves, Chronicle of Higher Education (Apr. 17, 2011) http://
chronicle.com/article/Helping-First-Year-Students/127168/ (accessed August 24, 2012).
Classical World 116
With Ohio States imminent switch to semesters, graduate students also wrote
sample syllabi for our new CL 1101 course, an introduction to Greek and Ro-
man literature in translation which combines two prior courses. This exercise
was particularly effective, as it included detailed discussions of issues such as
chronological vs. thematic approaches to structuring classics courses, the idea of
a canon, and pitching a course to a particular audience, e.g., a general educa-
tion course vs. an upper-level course for classics majors. Even for those graduate
students who had previously TAed a classics course, these lessons on curriculum
preparation were welcomed and introduced new ways of approaching classics
courses.
Unfortunately, despite numerous discussions of how to address different
learning styles, incorporate varied activities which emphasize active learning,
and implement other changes to traditional Latin pedagogy, some graduate TAs
still displayed a resistance to change and a reluctance to vary their teaching
routines beyond very modest adaptations (such as occasionally playing Latin
Pictionary as an exam review tool). That is, graduate students were actively ac-
cepting of new pedagogical techniques and ideas in our meetings, but, more
often than not, this lip service did not translate into actual substantive changes
in their methods of Latin instruction.
This failure, rather than indicating problems within our pedagogy course or
any deliberate obstinacy on the part of the graduate students, may perhaps in-
stead be attributed to other reasons. For instance, the larger academic culture of
classics which has produced these students may also be producing this conserva-
tism through the enforcement of a rite of passage approach. So, a resistance to
change exists because this is the way I learned Latin, and so should you. Suf-
fering through boring explanations, rote memorization of grammatical charts,
and translation by one person at a time thus is idealized as the required price to
pay for becoming members of the elite club of Latin readerswe happy band of
Latin brothers are tougher and smarter because we persevered. A relative lack
of faculty oversight and reinforcement of good teaching behaviors may also be
indicative of this attitude: i.e., I learned to teach this way, and so should you.
In addition to these conservative attitudes on the institutional level, individual
graduate students may also still be developing a vision of Latin and classics in
their broader contexts. In one assignment, writing a sample teaching dossier,
many TAs struggled to clearly articulate what the objectives of Latin or classics
instruction should be, or the overall value of learning Latin and classics. Given
that they are at the very beginning of their professional lives, this lack of clarity
is certainly understandable, but it also underscores the need for early and sub-
stantive discussions regarding these questions which relate to the future of the
discipline: Who is classics for, and why? The answer cannot and should not be
a small elite that survives unimaginative teaching to reach the promised land of
unabridged Catullus or Cicero; a eld cannot grow, after all, without some shifts
in paradigms.
Within this context of unintentional or unconscious inertia, introducing a
potential Certicate in College Teaching would be more welcome than ever.
5

Exposing Latin and classics TAs to a more diverse world of university teaching
through courses in, for example, linguistics or womens studies pedagogy, would
5
See W. Batstone, A Graduate Level Latin Pedagogy Course in a Classics Ph.D.
Program, also in this issue.
117 Paedagogus
help break them out of the insularity classics has often suffered as a profession,
and accelerate the rate of change and adaptation. For such training would not
only expose TAs to expectations of better teaching, but it would also provide
mentors and models for the implementation of new techniques and ideas, as well
as provide more occasions for classroom observation and feedback on their own
teaching. A broader pedagogy course like the one implemented in 20102011, in
combination with or, as an element of, a Certicate program, would almost cer-
tainly equip a teacher to efciently approach any topic in Latin, Greek, classics,
etc., and to effectively teach that topic to the twenty-rst century student. It can
only be a positive step forward for the discipline as a whole to bring Latin and
classics teaching into the twenty-rst century, and to create teachers who will
be better advocates for the eld by maximizing the impact of classics teaching.
OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY
mccullough.185@osu.edu
Textbook Pedagogy: Some Considerations
LAURIE HAIGHT KEENAN
Experienced teachers realize that textbooks function as a co-instructor and bring
to the classroom their own pedagogy that can turn a teaching experience from
rewarding to burdensome, or vice versa. The thoughts I offer in this paper come
from a dual perspective: from having taught a variety of classics undergraduate
courses for many years, and from having worked as an acquisitions and develop-
ment editor at a classics textbook publisher for nearly as long.
When I rst started in publishing, I was a total greenhorn, an idealist, and a
strong advocate for any proposal that sounded like a book from which I myself
would want to teach, or any whose subject or ancient author was underrep-
resented, or whose approach was out-of-the-box. I cringed at the thought of
writing rejection letters for exciting proposals, but I soon became used to doing
exactly that. My rejection letters earned thank-you notes from rejectees. Why?
Because I could explain why excellent proposals stand little chance of being
published.
It will benet both textbook publishers and the teachers they serve to put
into words what anyone learns after working in publishing for a few years: why
it is that the selection of available textbooks seems predictable and limited.
Publishing is nancially risky and little understood from the outside, in part
because publishers rarely take time to explain what it is they do. Many highly
educated people assume that publishing is book printingjust about the only
thing publishers do not do. It is the publishers job to help authors develop
books that will be nancially successful enough to payat leastfor their own
development, production, promotion, royalties, and distribution. Until Warren
Buffet decides to pour billions into academic publishing, every publisher needs
to cover costs. A successful textbook publisher keeps in close contact with the
end customer, teachers. What teachers know works in the classroom is what also
sells in quantity, year after year. This is what at Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers we
Classical World 118
call the multiple, repeat sale. Such a product, though, is usually not cutting
edge, because veteran teachers know too well how long a term can stretch when
using an innovative textbook that does not work.
And so both teachers and publishers are risk averse: they favor proven for-
mulas. For classics textbooks, risks are: ancient authors not high in the academic
canon; subject areas not taught in most programs; newer, untested methods; and
unfamiliar textbook authors. There is an additional limit on choice, something
that one hopes classics and other disciplines eventually will address: publishing
a textbook is not professionally rewarded in the same way that publishing a
scholarly book is.
The bad news, then, is that textbook choices are limited. The good news
is that both publishers and teachers are looking for the same thing: a book that
works competently if not brilliantly in the classroom, over many years. Longevity
benets teaching scholars: it lessens prep time and increases time for research; it
likewise benets publishers: it reduces costs and allows for investment in other
projects.
The criteria publishers use for acquisition of textbooks may, then, provide
a checklist to help teaching classicists choose textbooks more mindfully, and
decrease odds of being stuck with an unworkable book. Ill suggest ve consid-
erations when choosing a textbook: teacher prole, author prole, content and
organization, design, and, nally, ancillaries. Ill also suggest ways that these
considerations can be communicated to young classicists about to enter teach-
ing.
The rst consideration when choosing a textbook is the prole of the
teacher. This means that teachers should know their own ways of thinking and
learning, and how these may inuence their choice of textbooks. An excellent
place for teachers to begin to think about how they (and their students) learn
and think is Andrea Deagons Cognitive Style and Learning Strategies in Latin
Instruction.
1
From research on learning style in language instruction, Deagon
cites as her fth of ve commonly agreed-upon points that The teachers cogni-
tive style can play a part in how students learn and how they are evaluated.
2

But the teachers cognitive style also plays a rolesometimes unrecognizedin
textbook selection. In short, what looks excellent and helpful to the teacher may
not be suitable for some students. Similarly, what may not appeal to the teacher
may be crucial to some students success.
A telling example from my own rst year in publishing: We received a pro-
posal for an ancillary to a popular Latin textbook, one from which I myself had
many times taught. The ancillary struck me as profound overkill. Why would a
student want to plow through belabored, additional explanations of grammar
points sufciently explained (or so I thought) in the original textbook? Fur-
thermore, the books informal tone grated on me. I voted for rejection, but our
company president saw potential in the book, which subsequently became a top
sellernot because teachers ordered it, but because students did, in droves.
Years later, after reading Deagons summary of cognitive styles and learning
1
A. Deagon, Cognitive Style and Learning Strategies in Latin Instruction, in J.
Gruber-Miller, ed., When Dead Tongues Speak: Teaching Beginning Greek and Latin
(New York 2006) 2749. Deagons article is invaluable; she gives a concise overview of
the research and applies it specically to learning and teaching Latin.
2
Deagon (above, n.1) 33.
119 Paedagogus
strategies, I was able to pinpoint the source of the blinders that kept me from
seeing this ancillarys value: I could identify myself as a comprehensive, deep/
elaborative,
3
and active learner; a risk-taker who is both impulsive and com-
fortable learning from errors as well as tolerant of ambiguity. Furthermore, as
an introvert who appreciates what is called an authority-oriented approach, I
inched at the chummy tone, one that students who thrive on the opposite, a
peer-oriented approach, would nd encouraging.
4
The prole of the author is a second consideration many teachers use when
choosing a textbook. Its natural for a teacher to feel condent in a textbook
by an author who is well known, but many authors are unknown to a teacher,
and often initially to the publisher. One of the rst tasks we undertake in the
textbook publishing industry when we receive a proposal is to research who the
author is within the profession. Is the subject area one in which the author has
published? Is the author experienced in the classroom, teaching the subject at
the level for which the book is intended? What is the authors intent in writing
this book and how does that inform content? These are facts anyone can easily
discover from faculty web pages, online CVs, and the authors preface. Although
one assumes the publishers due diligence, the authors prole can help to guide
a teacher in how carefully to examine certain aspects of a potential textbook.
The third consideration when choosing a textbook is content and organiza-
tion. Obviously, content needs to be accurate, but it needs to be much more.
What is not included is as important as what is. Does the book overload the
student with material that is beyond the instructional level for which it is in-
tended? Does it assume more knowledge or retention than a student is likely to
have at this level? Does it skip review that is essential? Does it reinforce new
(or recently reviewed) knowledge? Or does it give assistance where it should
instead expect knowledge? Will over-simplication annoy the student working
at that level?
How can teachers assess such things? In our acquisition process, we read
and work through one chapter from the beginning, one from the end, and imag-
ine students at both levels: Are they oundering or bored silly? Have they been
started at the right place, and do they end up at an advanced, but achievable
level? Here is where organization is critical: Look at the table of contents. Is
there a logic to how information is presented? Is the book designed for only one
way of proceeding, or can teachers pick and choose without losing content nec-
essary to later chapters? Are there illustrations that help clarify content and are
they sufcient in number for visually oriented students? Is there a bibliography,
and is it as helpful to teachers developing the course as it is to students wanting
to go beyond its scope?
Design is the fourth consideration when choosing a textbook. What I mean
by design is not aesthetic considerationsthough these are of course impor-
3
Deagon (above, n.1) 32 (a one-page chart of cognitive styles and their signicance)
denes deep/elaborative learners as those who aim for a more complete comprehension
of the material, in opposition to shallow/reiterative learners, who focus on mechani-
cal, surface learning.
4
Authority-oriented learners, according to Deagon (above, n.1) 32, are students
who learn better in classrooms where the teacher overtly provides all information and
direction; peer-oriented students are those who prefer group work and communica-
tion with peers.
Classical World 120
tantbut how the book works, the technology of books, something of which I
was only vaguely aware before I began working in publishing. Design is some-
thing for which the publisher, not the author, is primarily responsible. If the
book is meant to be read beginning to end, does the design of headers and
headings help students recognize where they are in the space of a chapter and
within the space of the whole book? Is the use of font style (bold, italic, under-
lining, small caps) distinctive and consistent so that students get that certain
information belongs to a certain category, without being told? Are page spreads
effective, or will students have to page-ip? Are addenda easy to locate and use?
Are visuals effectively placed?
The fth and nal consideration in choosing a textbook is to check what an-
cillaries are available, whether from the textbooks publisher or another source.
Experienced teachers know that there is no one textbook that is perfect for every
student, but what teachers may not recognize is that using a textbook that is not
100 percent suited to the students own learning style and cognitive strategies
may not be the worst experience for them. Deagon suggests that
. . . all students need (1) to be presented with material in a form that they
can readily and naturally understand at least some of the time; and (2) to be
challenged by tasks that are at variance with their natural approach to learning,
and that combat their characteristic errors. We must therefore restructure
teaching methods and materials so that they are more exible and diverse.
5

Teachers are adept at adding and subtracting materials to suit learning styles and
to adapt to varying levels of student competency. This is where ancillaries can
be useful. For students who are operation or reective learners,
6
or who like
structure and are reluctant to respond to in-class drills, workbooks and ashcards
allow them to attain the solid command they prefer before they can comfortably
proceed. Portable paradigm charts and standard grammars appeal to many stu-
dents. Those who respond best to oral/aural presentations will benet from CDs
and DVDs with recitations or oral exercises. Visually oriented students will enjoy
visiting sites like Perseus or VRoma. Ancillary readers will appeal to comprehen-
sion learners.
7
Make students aware of available ancillaries by listing them as op-
tional materials and briey explaining what each is; many students instinctively
gravitate to ancillaries that will help them. Or challenge students to go beyond
their own natural approaches to learning by using a variety of ancillaries in class.
These ve considerations can not only help guide teachers in textbook
choices, they can also be taught, informally and easily, to students at the front
edge of teaching. If a schools program does not include a formal pedagogy
course, teachers can initiate a class discussion of how they made the textbook
choices for each course. Teachers may choose to ask students to submit an end-
of-term critique of the textbook, and to specify how they would choose materials
5
Deagon (above, n.1) 34.
6
Deagon (above, n.1) 32: Operation learners prefer to apply rules and build an
overall picture of the topic from details (vs. comprehension learners, who prefer to get
a feel for the whole topic before approaching details); reective learners prefer to reect
and work until they are condent in their answers, in contrast with impulsive learners,
who are inclined to impulsive choices, often learning effectively from their errors.
7
See above, n.6.
121 Paedagogus
to teach this subject matter to undergraduates or at the secondary-school level.
Teachers can further ask students to investigate what materials are available
from which they can choose textbooks and ancillaries, and to explain what fac-
tors went into their choices. If I had been asked to conduct such an investigation
and to write this kind of critique, I would likely have made better choices when
I ordered books for my own rst classes.
BOLCHAZY-CARDUCCI PUBLISHERS
Laurie@bolchazy.com
Classics Pedagogy in the Twenty-First Century: Technology
Andrew Reinhard
Technology and teaching is nothing new, even for classics, but there has yet to
be any standardized approach to teaching the teachers what technology to use
and how to use it. It is still very much every-teacher-for-himself-or-herself when
it comes to selecting what technology to deploy in a classroom setting. For those
readers actively teaching Latin and/or Greek at any level, this paper will serve
as an introduction to free technologies that are actively used by your colleagues,
and to online networks of peers who have already incorporated digital resources
in class. It will also dene strategies as you adopt one or more of these for your
own courses. For readers currently enrolled in graduate programs for teaching
Classical languages, this paper will show what is available digitally for teaching
while encouraging both creativity and discretion in implementing these tools and
games for the rst time.
As you consider using technology in your classes, you should evaluate your
students (and your own) technology IQ prior to introducing technology into
lessons. Find common ground and a shared comfort level in what you think
will work, be it something as simple as using PowerPoint slides to recording
Latin pronunciation to share on your course management system, to creating
and sharing Latin questions on spaces like Quia.com. Having a shared level of
technical vocabulary will prevent technology from getting in the way of teaching
and learning; technology can facilitate it. Make absolutely sure you know how
something works before rolling it out in class; the last thing you need is to waste
precious class minutes dealing with technical issues instead of actively using
technology in class. Exploring technology during the course of Latin teacher
training will help prevent these kinds of missteps from happening, or at least will
prepare teachers for what to do in the event of a technical glitch.
Once you have determined your own level of technical literacy and that
of your students, you can begin to suggest and implement technology in your
courses to reach different kinds of learners, or to work different sets of language
muscles. Different students respond differently to modes of Latin instruction
ranging from reading/translating to original composition to oral/aural practice.
Consider using all of these approaches throughout each semester to add variety
to Latin education via technology, mirroring traditional teaching methods with
new media.
Classical World 122
It is perhaps of foremost importance to understand that, even though the
media have changed (and will keep changing), the Latin language remains the
same, and the goals of teaching the language remain largely unchanged. Students
still enjoy competitive board-work, games, and creative composition, being able
to inject some fun into review while attempting to attain a level of prociency
with the language. Now teachers are able to use technology for these tasks as
their students employ everything from YouTube to Skype to computer games to
augment their traditional Latin education.
Because of the increased daily presence of technology in the lives of students
(and many of their teachers), it is important for instructors to keep current with
technological literacy. One needs to know what is being used by students be-
tween classesfor education and for entertainmentin order to create a menu
of choices to offer students for studying, reading, and practice both on- and
off-line. Open up these avenues for student projects to give the students space
for creativity and exibility within a rubric that you create. This technological
openness should be mandatory for any teacher at any level, and by incorporating
technology into the Latin classroom, it helps to hold students (and teachers)
interest, and keeps Latin competitive with modern languages, helping to im-
prove enrollment and retention numbers.
For teachers new to modern technology, especially in the current era of do-
it-yourself (DIY) entertainment (self-created music and movies posted online),
it is conceivably daunting and discouraging to try to gain a quick understanding
of how students can merge pop culture, technology, and Latin together for a
rewarding educational experience. The best thing to do is to reach out to those
teachers who have already taken the plunge with their students, see what other
teachers and students are doing, try what interests you, and adapt to what in-
terests your students. Your online colleagues will be your best teachers of how
to use technology in teaching. A methods course must introduce students to the
technologies being deployed in the classroom.
These early-adopter teachers can be found in a number of places on-line,
and two of the most popular platforms are Twitter and Google+. Twitter (twit-
ter.com) is a micro-blogging website where millions of users worldwide tweet
their thoughts to an audience of followers in snippets of 140 characters or less.
Searching for Latin teacher on Twitter yields dozens of instructors who tweet
everything from words-of-the-day to homework assignments. Create your own
Twitter account (keep it separate from any personal account you might have)
and follow these teachers to see what they are doing and how they (and their stu-
dents) are using Twitter for language-learning. Ask questions either individually
(using @ followed by a Twitter name) or to a user group (using a # followed
by a more general topic, e.g., #latinteaching).
Google+ (plus.google.com) debuted in 2011 as a competitor to Facebook
and gives its users the ability to create hangouts for groups of people with
similar interests. There are dozens of Latin teachers on Google+ whom you can
add to your Circles, following them as they discuss Latin pedagogy on this
social network. Other social networks like eClassics (eclassics.ning.com) are
dedicated to classics pedagogy and technology and have a robust core of users
who post content regularly to the site and who are eager to answer questions
about integrating technology in the classics classroom, sharing successes as well
as horror stories.
There are thousands of Latin end-of-semester projects posted on YouTube
by college, high school, and junior high school students which can be found
123 Paedagogus
by searching for Latin class project. Latin teacher Charles Umikers (Tatnall
School, Delaware) Latinology YouTube channel features Latin interpretations
of White Winter Hymnal by the Fleet Foxes, God Only Knows by the Beach
Boys, and Mama Mia by ABBA. Other videos include everything from original,
student-created Latin-language plays to Latin machinime (movies lmed within
virtual worlds and computer games such as Second Life and World of Warcraft).
YouTube does allow viewers to contact the creators of videos, so if you have
questions or comments, write to the lmmaker(s) or owner of a channel for
information on how the videos were made, how they were assessed, if the stu-
dents enjoyed (and got something from) the project, and if the instructor whose
students completed the project would do something like that again.
Quia.com, lookingatlatin.com, and other online quizzing sites (some of
which are tied to individual textbooks) allow students to drill/practice at their
own pace. In some cases, these sites allow teachers to review student progress
and to determine if certain elements of vocabulary or grammar need to be re-
viewed either individually or as a class.
Students can practice conversational Latin and pronunciation with free tools
like Skype and Audacity. Skype enables students and teachers to have real-time
conversations with anyone on the planet, and it could be practical to schedule
Skype sessions with other Latin classes worldwide. Skype can handle both audio
and video connections and can record conversations for playback and review.
Audacity is free, truly easy-to-use audio recording software for Macs and PCs
that can be used to record anything from music to reading aloud to recitation.
Students can record their own Latin readings and can share them with others
in class for feedback via course management systems or with free, le-sharing
tools like Dropbox. Instructors can listen to the recordings at their convenience.
For variety or as a break from traditional grammar and translation, occa-
sionally assign translation and composition exercises using songs, videos, and
computer games. Many students have opted to translate pop songs into Latin,
either adding Latin subtitles to music videos, or by actually performing the songs
in Latin, recording them as MP3 audio les or as music videos. With popular
video games such as The Sims or Skyrim, students can create Latin videos set
within the game-worlds, can actually quest together in real time in Latin, or can
create mods (modications) to the games using simple tool-kits to create Latin
translations of in-game dialogue.
For many Latin teachers, the question of technology is not whether but
when to use it. For some instructors, using more traditional technologies such
as PowerPoint, smart whiteboards, and course management systems (e.g., Black-
board) is enough, and these technologies are used daily. Other, more creative
technologies are often saved for university classics clubs, but are sometimes used
within a class period. Latin teacher Anna Andresian (Lawrenceville School, New
Jersey) shows cartoons in class, but with the sound turned off. Students take
turns narrating the cartoons in Latin to describe the action that is happening
on-screen. Teachers like Charles Umiker have saved the fun stuff of movie-
and song-making to the end of class, making sure the students complete the
days traditional coursework and review prior to moving on to the more cre-
ative aspects of the class. Good performance is rewarded by creative project
work. Students enjoy their Latin movie-making so much that all strive to excel at
grammar, vocabulary, reading, and composition so they can maximize their re-
maining creative class time.
Classical World 124
Classroom technology is by no means limited to secondary-school teaching.
Twitter alone features dozens of university classics professors and departments
including: @harvardclassics, @HamColClassics, @oxfordclassics, @ECUClassic-
sProf, @RogerTravis, @tronchin. Dr. Laura Gibbs of the University of Oklahoma
is probably the most prolic (and procient) user of Google+ for classics peda-
gogy. Universities are also leading the way in podcasting (digital Latin and Greek
recordings available for free online), a few common examples being Haverford
College (www.haverford.edu/classics/audio/), Dickinson College (blogs.dickin-
son.edu/latin-poetry-podcast/), and the Society of Oral Reading of Greek and
Latin Literature (SORGLL) (www.rhapsodes.l.vt.edu/) hosted by Virginia
Tech. Students from Haverford College also won the university-level Terrence
Award for Excellence in classics Student Filmmaking in 2010.
It is of critical importance that classics teachers-in-training receive instruc-
tion in classroom technology, regardless of whether they will be teaching at the
college or secondary school level. Understanding how to create useful and in-
structive PowerPoint presentations, how to use course management software,
how to create online quizzes and tests, supplemented by units in working with
audio recording, making a video, and using Latin in games, will all greatly pre-
pare new Latin teachers for increasingly savvy students, many of whom who use
technology day-to-day, minute-to-minute. If these students are using personal
technologies (e.g., smart phones, portable media players, mobile gaming sys-
tems), then every effort must be made to place Latin there for practice, keeping
that practice practical, convenient, mobile, and interesting.
THE AMERICAN SCHOOL OF CLASSICAL STUDIES AT ATHENS
areinhard@ascsa.org
Classics Pedagogy for Teaching in a Liberal Arts College
Eric Dugdale
Before they can join the ranks of the professoriate, students in classics Ph.D.
programs across the United States must pass through a rigorous array of cours-
es, reading lists, and qualifying exams, all intended to deepen their knowledge
of their subject matter. But many programs still fail to offer more than minimal
training in teaching methods. Novice teachers are often thrust into the classroom
with little more to guide them than their hazy recollection of exempla tuenda
and exempla monenda from the practices of good and bad teachers in their
past. The notions that mastery of a subject will automatically equip someone to
teach it to others or that effective teaching cannot be learned have long been de-
bunked. But many graduate programs continue to underestimate how important
pedagogical training will be for the career prospects and professional success of
their students.
1

Given the number of public universities that are downsizing their classics
programs, an increasing proportion of our graduating Ph.D.s may nd them-
1
For earlier treatment of the need for broader pedagogical training for classics
graduate students, see R. Ancona The Effectiveness of Graduate Training,CJ 82 (1987)
24245, as well as those by R. W. Cape, Teachers at the Helm or Teachers Adrift? Results
125 Paedagogus
selves looking to teach at liberal arts colleges and high schools. This trend makes
it all the more urgent that our graduate programs take seriously the task of pro-
viding a robust pedagogical training for all their graduate students, not just those
enrolled in MAT programs. This paper considers what aspects of pedagogical
training might best prepare students for teaching at a liberal arts college.
Teaching is a major aspect of the professional responsibilities of almost all
classics professors. At liberal arts colleges, however, teaching excellence is usu-
ally the single most important criterion in hiring and tenure decisions, reecting
the centrality of student learning to the mission of these institutions. Here are the
four criteria for tenure at my college:
2
(1) Excellence as a teacher as reected in quality of, and enthusiasm for, work,
effectiveness of methods, interest in subject matter, concern for student
learning, effective advising of students within and outside the major, and
continued academic preparation and improvement.
(2) An emerging pattern of professional activities as reected, for example, by
publications, presentations at scholarly meetings or conferences, and, in
the arts, by manifestations of creativity demonstrated through exhibits or
performances; another example may be involvement in professional and/or
public organizations, boards, and commissions related to ones academic
elds or college assignments.
(3) An emerging pattern of involvement in the activities of the College.
(4) Continuing evidence of sympathy with the aims and purposes of the Col-
lege as stated in the Mission Statement.
As readers will note, excellence as a teacher heads the list. If we parse the
wording, we notice that criteria 2 and 3scholarly production and service to
the collegeare categories in which an emerging pattern of involvement must
be demonstrated. Criterion 1 is more exacting. Having served on the personnel
committee, the committee that evaluates tenure candidates, I can emphatically
conrm that teaching excellence is indeed the sine qua non requirement for
gaining tenure.
Teaching excellence is also the quality that liberal arts colleges are looking
for in job candidates. Whereas at research universities the lynchpin of the on-
campus interview is the job talk, a scholarly lecture pitched at faculty, at liberal
arts colleges it is usually the teaching demonstrations that are front and center.
At my college, for example, each of the three on-campus nalists are asked to
teach the genitive absolute to a beginning Greek class as well as to give a lecture
to a large myth class. Students in those classes then gave feedback evaluating
the performances.
The faculty in liberal arts colleges enjoy a wealth of opportunities to en-
gage in further development as teachers. At my college we gather fortnightly
for lunchtime presentations called Teachers Talking in which faculty mem-
bers present on a variety of issues related to teaching. A parallel series called
of the APA Survey on T.A. Teacher Training, R. P. Pittenger, Navigating the Shoals at
Home: Establishing a T.A. Training Course, G. Houston, The Ideal of Teacher Train-
ing within the Reality of the Ph.D. Program, and K. Kitchell, Quis docebit doctores?
Proposed Models for Change, in TAPA 132 (2002), the published versions of papers
delivered at a panel at the 2002 APA/AIA conference.
2
From Gustavus Adolphus College Faculty Manual Section 2.4.2.1, https://gusta-
vus.edu/facultybook/ (accessed August 24, 2012).
Classical World 126
Teachers Talking Technology showcases ways in which technology can benet
student learning. Yet another is devoted to issues concerning the teaching of
writing. These and many other events provide regular opportunities for us to talk
about pedagogy with colleagues across the disciplines. Classicists learn from the
practices of modern linguists and vice versa. Pedagogical training equips us to
handle a range of issues. We expand our repertoire of teaching methods. We gain
an understanding of different learning styles and of teaching approaches that
accommodate them. We become more reective teachers. We become sensitized
to the varying needs of our students and learn what resources we can draw on
to help them.
A classics pedagogy for the twenty-rst century should provide graduate stu-
dents with a training in the foundations of teaching and learning that goes far be-
yond the crash course in lesson planning that most TAs receive in the days leading
up to their rst teaching assignment. This training is at least as important to their
success as professional classicists as is a reading knowledge of German, French,
or Italian, and belongs in the requirements for graduation of every Ph.D. program
in classics. Here are a few examples of specic issues that might be addressed:
Ioi a giowing numLei ol college-Lound sludenls, Inglish is lheii second
language. How should we approach language instruction in Latin and Greek
for ESL students?
How Lesl do we accommodale lhe needs ol sludenls who aie dilleienlly aLle,
whether due to physical, emotional, medical, attentional, or other learning
challenges? Can we, for example, assign group work to a student with
Aspergers syndrome?
How do we leach lhe sludenls who aie lailing oui classes? We naluially iivi-
lege methods that worked for us when we were students. What alternative
methods might we use with students who cannot simply look at a declension
chart and memorize the forms?
As graduate students, we no doubt received a solid grounding in the meth-
odologies of our discipline (textual criticism, literary theory, historiography, etc.).
But did we ever examine these methodologies from a pedagogical perspective?
Did we ever stop to consider what habits of mind and approaches to texts we
value? Every discipline carries with it a host of assumptions and predilections.
What ways of knowing do we privilege, and why? These questions are particu-
larly important if we are truly committed to an inclusive discipline, if we want
classics in the new millennium to expand far beyond the white, upper-class elite.
Understanding underlying methodologies and heuristic principles will in
turn help graduate instructors articulate the value of studying classics. What do
students who study the ancient languages come away with in terms of learning
outcomes? What about those who take classical civilization courses? Many clas-
sics graduates may be convinced that classics teaches transferable skills such as
critical thinking; but do they know what basis there is for such claims? Are they
aware of research such as the Teagle Foundation study assessing the develop-
ment of critical thinking in classics majors?
3

3
Details of the Teagle Foundation study on the development of critical thinking and
postformal reasoning in classics and political science majors at: http://www.skidmore.edu/
classics/marnush/teagle/ (accessed August 24, 2012).
127 Paedagogus
A classics pedagogy should give graduate students an overview of how
teaching methods in classics have changed over the years. They should under-
stand the context in which the inductive approach to language acquisition rose
to challenge the deductive approach and understand the theoretical underpin-
nings of each. They should understand how these methodologies continue to
inuence language textbooks, and they should be given formal opportunities
to evaluate the merits of different textbooks. They should become conversant
with pedagogical terminology and know how to access relevant resources. These
would include journals with pedagogical content in our discipline (e.g., CJ, CO,
CW, TCL) as well as journals in related elds such as second-language acquisi-
tion and non-discipline-specic pedagogical journals.
4
They would also include
blogs, listservs, and the many other resources discussed by A. Reinhard in this
issue.
Among the topics that a teaching methods course might cover is SoTL
research. The term SoTL (the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning) was de-
veloped by the Carnegie Foundation and grew out of Ernest Boyers inuen-
tial book, Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate (Princeton
1990). It refers to scholarly inquiry into student learning. SoTL research differs
from anecdotal write-ups of best teaching practices in that it usually involves
assessment, often through longitudinal studies. A Latin instructor might, for
example, measure the effectiveness of computer-assisted language drills in im-
proving vocabulary retention.
If students in our graduate programs were given training in designing and
executing SoTL projects (and a certain amount of training is necessary: in how
to design a project that generates data that are statistically meaningful, how to
create an informed consent form for study participants, etc.), this could have a
number of benets. It would equip graduate students to engage in collaborative
SoTL research with faculty, hopefully resulting in joint publications.
5
It would
provide an additional way for classics departments to demonstrate their com-
mitment to teaching excellence. It would create a new generation of classics
faculty interested in pedagogical issues, who would likely become innovators,
early adopters, and inquisitive and collaborative teachers. And graduates would
enter the job market with a set of highly marketable skills.
A classics pedagogy should also provide preparation in what Boyer referred
to as the scholarship of integrationthat is, scholarship that makes connections
across the disciplines to generate new insights. At rst blush, this might seem to
be something that we already do. After all, classics is by nature an interdisciplin-
ary eld. In fact, however, most graduate programs offer a rather narrow version
of interdisciplinarity that stays primarily within the connes of classical studies
and the departments reading lists and course offerings. Imagine I were planning
4
For a list of the main pedagogy journals with brief descriptions and details of their
acceptance rates and time to review, see http://www.fctl.ucf.edu/ResearchAndScholar-
ship/SoTL/journals/ (accessed August 24, 2012).
5
For an accessible introduction to SoTL in higher education, see K. McKinney, En-
hancing Student Learning through the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (San Fran-
cisco 2007). See also P. Hutchings, M. T. Huber, and A. Ciccone, The Scholarship of
Teaching and Learning Reconsidered: Institutional Integration and Impact (San Francisco
2011). The APA Education Committee organized a panel on SoTL at the 2009 APA/AIA
conference in Philadelphia.
Classical World 128
to write a dissertation on ancient drama. Is there a graduate program that would
require that I engage in a truly interdisciplinary study of this eld that included
courses outside the department, courses that exposed me to modern theoreti-
cal approaches to drama and to applied studies? Is there a program that would
expect me to attend lectures, brown-bag discussions, workshops, and perfor-
mances put on by the universitys theatre department or by professional theatre
companies? Or require that I gain experiential knowledge of drama through
participation in it? This is not to advocate a pedagogy that replaces depth with
breadth. But graduate programs would do well to require students to develop
one interdisciplinary interest and do so in a way that is broadly interdisciplin-
arythat is, one that goes beyond the normal parameters of classical studies.
This kind of training would certainly help prepare graduate students to
teach within the context of a liberal arts curriculum. At my college, all classics
department members have teaching interests that range beyond the traditional
classics curriculum. One colleague teaches an Introduction to Peace Studies
course. Another teaches a course in the Gender and Womens Studies program.
Another teaches a course for rst years on Mindfulness and Meditation. An-
other just offered a capstone seminar on Memory and Commemoration in the
ancient world, while yet another is currently co-teaching a travel course in Italy
on ancient and Renaissance art. Many of our students are double-majors who
are attracted to classics in large part because it converses so readily with other
disciplines.
6

Our scholarly work is regularly presented in an interdisciplinary forum. To
give a recent example, last May we put on a faculty symposium to bid farewell
to our college chaplain. The title of the symposium, Coincidentia Oppositorum,
refers to the phrase coined by the Renaissance humanist Nicholas of Cusa to
describe the ultimate reality that is reached when opposites come together. A
classicist was presenting alongside colleagues from art history, religion, philoso-
phy, English, and physics. In the liberal arts curriculum, classics has historically
occupied a privileged position as the fons et origo of the liberal arts system. Its
ability to maintain that position will depend largely on the degree to which our
graduate programs develop a next generation of faculty who can articulate the
disciplines continued relevance in the liberal arts conversation.
One way classics can do this is by speaking to the issues of today. There
are already plenty of examples of this kind of activity in our eld. To cite just
one example, the NEH-funded project Ancient Greeks/Modern Lives is bringing
classics to a hundred libraries and community centers across the country. It uses
readings from Homer and Greek tragedy to explore contemporary issues such as
the experiences of veterans and immigrants. It brings together actors, scholars,
and citizens in what it terms a national conversation.
6
The liberal arts model of an integrated, holistic, and inquiry-driven approach to
education offers an alternative to the fragmentation and commodication of learning that
often accompanies increased specialization in higher education. A provocative essay on
this tension is L. K. Adler, Uncommon Sense: Liberal Education, Learning Communi-
ties, and the Transformative Quest, in B. L. Smith and J. McCann, eds., Reinventing
Ourselves: Interdisciplinary Education, Collaborative Learning, and Experimentation in
Higher Education (Bolton, Mass., 2001) 14959. See also P. J. Palmer and A. Zajonc, The
Heart of Higher Education: A Call to Renewal (San Francisco 2010).
129 Paedagogus
The institutional philosophies of many liberal arts colleges embrace an ex-
pansive understanding of education that ts this model of a scholarship of en-
gagement.
7
What about our graduate programs? Do they promote a pedagogy of
engagement? The ancients believed that poets had important things to say about
society, that they were the teachers of the polis. Almost every ancient author
treats issues that can be broadly dened as ethical concerns. Are these the issues
that we discuss in graduate seminars, that graduate students write papers about,
that they are pondering as they work through Ph.D. reading lists? I would argue
that these concernsquestions about the good life, about how to live in com-
munityhave largely disappeared from our study of classics.
A pedagogy of engagement would reverse this trend. Academia would enter
into dialogue with the community at large.
8
Presentations in schools and librar-
ies, editorials in newspapers, creative reinterpretations of classical works would
all count as professional activities betting a classicist. In his thought-provok-
ing book, The Grammar of Our Civility: Classical Education in America (Waco
2005), Lee Pearcy articulates his vision of a reorientation of classics in America
through which classical scholarship and classical education will complement
each other, and through which American classical education will connnect
with one essential aspect of its tradition by remembering that it must be a way
of becoming human and humane (118). It would be foolish to prescribe how
graduate programs should build this into the training of their students. But it
should be part of the graduate experience to ponder, discuss, and write about
why classics matters today.
GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS COLLEGE
edugdale@gustavus.edu
7
Moral, civic, and spiritual development are seen as important learning outcomes
at many liberal arts colleges: see G. Prince, A Liberal Arts College Perspective, in T.
Ehrlich, ed., Civic Responsibility and Higher Education (Westport 2000) 24962. For
broader context, see A. Colby et al., Educating Citizens: Preparing Americas Undergradu-
ates for Lives of Moral and Civic Responsibility (San Francisco 2003) 2348 and 13166.
8
b. hooks (Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope [New York 2003] 4149)
issues a compelling challenge to democratic educators to bridge the divide between aca-
demia and the so-called real world.