| Summary of Teaching Experience at Brown Univeristy |
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Intermediate Greek: Grammar Review and Composition (Fall 2004)
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This course presented a special challenge as there was only one student enrolled, and the class met only once a week. In each meeting we reviewed one topic of Greek grammar, by drilling paradigms orally and on the blackboard and by composing Greek sentences illustrating the week's grammar lesson. Since I had only one student I was able to give him extensive help with his homework, which usually consisted of translating around 20 simple sentences from English to Greek. Weekly quizzes helped me confirm that the grammar review was working. In what was essentially a private tutorial, I gained valuable experience in tailoring assignments to a student's individual learning style.
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The Romans (Summer 2004) |
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This intensive three-week summer course for college-bound high school students gave me the opportunity to design a civilization course from the ground up. Since the class met for three hours a day, five days a week, I was able to introduce the 15 students to a wide range of topics in Roman civilization. Each class began with a lecture supported by PowerPoint presentations, usually on historical topics or on art and architecture. The longest portion of each day's schedule was devoted to discussion of the day's reading assignment (authors included Livy, Cicero, Catullus, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Tacitus, Suetonius, and Petronius, among others). With each assignment I included several questions to guide the students' reading and to help them prepare for discussions. The last part of the class session varied daily, but often I used it for writing tutorials, since I required daily response papers on the readings. These short papers helped me assess how well the students were understanding their reading, and often provided a spur to discussions. I also assigned a longer paper, and introduced the students to college-level research, including a tour of the library and its research tools. In group presentations the students were able to teach each other (and me) about areas we could not cover in class - a musical about rapacious provincial governors was particularly memorable. There were also two field trips to area art museums.
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Intermediate Latin: Introduction to Latin Literature - Virgil's Aeneid (Spring 2004) |
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In this class I gave 15 second-year Latin students their first exposure to Roman poetry by teaching Book 1 and part of Book 4 of the Aeneid. The majority of class time was spent on translating daily assignments, which started at about 25 lines per class and grew to about 45 lines. I also taught students to scan the hexameter and read aloud in meter. To help students gain proficiency in scansion and reading I had the class memorize the first 11 lines of the Aeneid and recite them to me privately. When it became clear from the short weekly quizzes and from in-class translation that some students were finding the daily assignments difficult and others were insufficiently challenged, I began to offer two weekly, optional sight translation sessions to help those having having problems and to provide an extra challenge to the more advanced. To respond to widespread mistakes in translating certain words I developed a handout and lesson on potentially confusing words. To help students begin to appreciate the poem as a work of literature and not simply a word puzzle to solve, I devoted part of each class to discussing poetic and rhetorical figures, and I assigned one book of the Aeneid to read in translation each week. While I initially felt that this extra assignment could be an undue burden, the students enjoyed it, and I found that it greatly enhanced classroom discussion.
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The Idea of Self (TA for Professor Joseph Pucci - Fall 2003) |
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For this large (ca. 50) literature-based class, I led several discussion sections and taught one full class session on Boethius. I also held writing tutorials with several students.
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Essentials of the Latin Language II (Spring 2003) |
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I taught six students in the second semester of a year-long beginning Latin course. Since the class had gotten somewhat behind the previous semester (during which I was the TA), I had to adopt an accelerated schedule. The students rose to the challenge and all of them were ready for intermediate Latin classes by the end of the year. In addition to assigning traditional grammar study and translation of simple sentences (using Wheelock's Latin), I developed a website with online discussion groups in which students worked together to translate sentences and extended passages. These exercises helped the class members work out their own difficulties with the material and built a sense of class unity, while also giving students some flexibility in their homework schedule and saving class time. In the last two weeks of the semester the class read short but unmodified passages of Cicero and Catullus, and each student gave a brief presentation on a Roman author.
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Essentials of the Latin Language I (TA for Professor Preston Edwards - Fall 2002) |
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As a TA for this class I taught one or two sessions each week, graded homework, quizzes, and exams, and held well-attended office hours and review sessions.
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Mythology (Fall 2001) (TA for Professor David Konstan) |
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For this course I had full responsibility for two sections, one of about 15 students and one of about 30. The full class of about 175 students met twice a week for lectures by Professor Konstan and each section met once a week. Section meetings were devoted to discussion of the week's readings, which included numerous Greek tragedies and comedies, substantial portions of the Odyssey, Theogony, Aeneid, and Metamorphoses, and shorter selections from Catullus, Apollodorus, the Homeric Hymns, and other works. Students wrote a reading-response paper for each section meeting, and also wrote three longer papers. I was responsible for grading all the papers for my sections, and for assigning final grades.
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