Here’s a question from Kevin Clemens:
Hey Ben,
I’ve been thinking a lot about the overall scope of my Latin program, and about what next year needs to look like for me. I’ve been left with the following question:
Should I set aside the books?
This is a question for everyone, but feedback from the fellow Latinists would be particularly helpful. I will preface this by saying that I am in a very unique and fortunate situation, as I am able to determine fully what my Latin curriculum looks like: books, methods, assessment, etc. I don’t have to teach AP, and don’t have any standards/requirements to meet. The perk of being at a small private school. I just get to teach Latin as I desire.
Which leads me to the question: Should I set the book aside, stop letting it drive my vocabulary/structures, and just do CI? Just me, the students, and our stories. Whatever we want to talk about. For all 4 years.
This is my second year with LLPSI: Familia Romana, to which I originally switched (from Latin for the New Millennium) because I wanted students (and myself) to encounter Latin and really use it, not just madly hack at it with a dictionary. That eventually led me at the start of this year to this PLC and the whole notion of CI, and only now do I really understand that this has to be all-or-nothing. I can’t be the Frankenstein-like CI/grammar monstrosity roaming about my classroom confusing students.
I feel that the book is the primary thing pushing me back towards the old ways. Sure enough, I’ve spent plenty of days slipping into discussions about cases, conjugations, the subjunctive mood, and everything else that bores them out of their minds.
So what do you all think? My worry is not having a set direction or goal, or even a set of stories to start from, but perhaps that’s ok. Just Latin, any Latin that is comprehensible. The unknowns are a bit unsettling, but at the same time exhilarating Any thoughts, comments, suggestions would be most appreciated. And to my fellow Latin teachers: Is anybody else already doing this? How do you make it work?
Kevin