Monthly Archives: May 2014

Lead poisoning, Roman solider running a 5K, and more: Links for 22 May

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Lead Poisoning in Ancient Rome. (via @DrKillgrove)
Before and after pictures of a Roman soldier who ran a 5k in full kit. (via @ancientblogger)
An article on Roman toilets. (via @UniRdg_Classics)
Tools for Classicists. (via @dbamman)
Classroom described in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Sanskrit; food and utensils in the same. (via @markandeyaka)
Reading Latin Poetry is a new podcast. (via @stephenjenkin)

Leaving a Latin Job in good order

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I. Replacement

Your administration, especially if they haven’t advertised for a Latin teacher recently, may not know the best places to advertise. If you can have a brief official paragraph written up about the job and post it to LatinTeach, local sites and e-mail lists, Facebook, and so on, you can boost the signal and make it more likely that the next Latin teacher will be a good fit. Check out the post about where to look for jobs for ideas. Also, mention it to your friends and colleagues. They may know of a former student looking for a job or someone else who could be a good fit.

II. What to leave

Think about what you were given at the start of the job and how useful (or useless) that was.
I’d suggest leaving at least the following:

  1. Course descriptions (the official ones or more detailed, unofficial ones. If you went beyond the official end or, because of snow days, didn’t get to where you usually do, leave a note. )
  2. Outline of a typical day (So that when students come in and ask ‘Are we doing the squirrel?’ the new teacher knows what they’re talking about. This also gives the teacher some idea of what can fit into the day and a scaffold for the start of the year if he or she wants it.)
  3. List of important events (When is the NLE form due? Is there a big field trip that you do each year that needs to be confirmed by a certain date? The new teacher doesn’t have to do these things, but, if there’s a list, he or she can make decisions instead of being asked about something too late.)
  4. Contact info (This is a personal decision. I tend to leave an e-mail address so that the person can check in if there are questions about how much a particular class covered or placement of new students.)
  5. Notes on special circumstances (This gets into a personal choice. I’d suggest not leaving detailed notes on every student, but leaving ones on big details that will have an effect on how the new teacher teaches. For example, saying that So-and-So transferred mid-year and has been doing independent work because of starting a semester behind the other students, or that Thus-and-Such is planning to be privately tutored over the summer and take a placement exam to get into Latin II instead of being put into Latin II.)
  6. Emily Lewis says to consider “Is the school JCL active? Is there stuff you have to do with Activities office/forms/paperwork. You’d be AMAZED at how often this is overlooked.

Beyond this, you might want to leave a flash drive with your handouts, quizzes, and tests. Seeing what the expectations were can be nice, and the new teacher may want to pick up where you left off. I also like leaving a few of the supplies that everyone needs but that the new teacher often isn’t told where to get (a box of chalk/handful of dry erase markers, paper if you have to bring your own to the copier, any official forms or passes). Elliott Goodman said that he “left a copy of the scope and sequence as well as three huge binders filled with all my materials in order. Most important: a table of contents with annotations.”
Also, as a note from personal experience: when you leave on your last hot day in June, make sure that you take your coffee with you. Coming into a new room at a new school to set up on a hot day in August, noticing an odd smell, and finding a full coffee mug that’s been under a desk for two months is not a great start for the new teacher.

Announcements for 18 May

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CANE

  • The CANE calendar, which covers the 2014-2015 academic year, is available from Amazon. Or, if you’d rather, you can order it directly from CANE Press for $16.
  • If you missed a chance to get earrings, notecards, or the Caesar posters from the Emporium at Annual Meeting, they are now available on Etsy.
  • The theme for the 2014 CANE Summer Institute is “On the Shoulders of Giants”: Greco-Roman Giants and their Modern Emulators.”  Register now!
  • It isn’t too early to pay membership dues for the 2014-2015 school year.

BEYOND CANE

Conferences/Meetings

  • The Classics Program at the University of New Hampshire is pleased to issue a call for papers for its first Rouman Symposium for Research in Classics and the Humanities, to be held on the Durham campus from October 17–19, 2014. The Symposium is sponsored by the John C. Rouman Classical Lecture Series and will run from the afternoon of Friday the 17th until the early afternoon of Sunday the 19th. For more information, or to send in an abstract, contact R. Scott Smith.
  • The Academy Vivarium Novum is offering ten full tuition scholarships for high school students (16-18 years old) and ten full tuition scholarships for University students (18-24 years old) of any part of the world. The scholarships will cover all of the costs of room, board, teaching and didactic materials for courses to be held from October 6, 2014 until June 13, 2015 on the grounds of the Academy’s campus at Rome.The goal is to achieve a perfect command of both Latin and Greek through a total immersion in the two languages in order to master without any hindrances the texts and concepts which have been handed down from the ancient times, middle ages, the Renaissance period and modern era, and to cultivate the humanities in a manner similar to the Renaissance humanists.All the classes will be conducted in Latin, except for Greek classes which will be conducted in ancient Greek.Application letters must be sent to info@vivariumnovum.net by July 1st in order to receive consideration. You can also use that email to ask for details on how to apply!

Meetups and Certamina

  • CLIPEUS is running several Latin speaking meetups in Boston. Check the link for more information.
  • THE BROOKLINE CERTAMEN has been canceled.

Summer Opportunities

  • The Cambridge Latin Course is offering a three-day workshop in Boston, August 5-7. See their announcement for details!
  • Registration for this summer’s American Classical League Summer Institute in Williamsburg, VA is now open.
  • McGill is offering a summer course in Classical Studies in June and July. Check out their flyer.
  • The American Institute for Roman Culture (AIRC) has a 2014 schedule for its Summer and Fall study abroad programs, and include Media Studies, Art History, and Field School Excavations.
  • Do your students ask you how they can improve their Latin? Do they ask you about summer opportunities in Latin or ancient history? Calder Classics invites students entering grades 9 through 12 to join us in Rome in July 20 – August 3, 2014. Over the course of a 2-week program, the Classics will come alive through the study of Latin, exploration of ancient and modern sites and immersion in daily Italian life. Calder’s small, personalized programs of 6-8 students allow us to provide individual instruction to each student in both Latin and ancient history.
  • Do you have a passion for Classical, Medieval, and Renaissance Latin? Would you like to improve the speed and fluency with which you read Latin? Then join the immersion program at the Conventiculum Bostoniense, taught by experts in Classical and Neo-Latin from both Europe and the United States. You can also earn graduate credit, by taking one of our two week-length courses. Find more information and application materials here: https://sites.google.com/site/conventiculumbostoniense