Leaving a Latin Job in good order


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.

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