I got a life-lesson in low expectations this week.
Well, let me explain first.
I don't have low expectations in that I don't work in my classes or that I don't expect hard work from my students. I mean that sometimes I need reality to bring me back down from my lofty ambitions.
I am the only Latin teacher at my high school, and we only offer 2 levels, because I am also the only French teacher and I teach 5 levels of French. So I neither need to pass my students on to another teacher, nor do I need my Latin II students to be prepared for further study. I teach loosely from the CLC I and II. We have 70 minute periods and are on a semester schedule, so my instructional hours are fewer than those on traditional, 45-minute schedules or 4x4, 90 minute block schedules. But I digress.
My Latin I classes finish CLC I and I pick up CLC II in Latin II. Latin I is primarily a mix of TPRS/CI, cultural information, a little bit of word studies, an itty bit of grammar (mostly pop-up style) and a lot of reading. I try to use the book as a backbone to my TPRS stories and CI, but because my students are interested in more than slave-dealers, dishonest merchants, and elections, I branch out liberally as the mood strikes. When we do read in the book, I scaffold heavily because by the time the students reach stage 11 or 12, there are many words to which they just have never been exposed.
Fast-forward to Latin II. This class is tiny for whatever reason, 5 students. I envisioned the aforementioned lofty ambitions, with the 6 of us in a cozy coffee-klatch, reading and discussing Latin every day for 70 minutes.
Screeeeeeech. 3 days into the semester the wheels fell of of that bus.
How can I expect students to read from CLCII and discuss the texts and grammar when they've not been prepared at all for this type of environment? I lost them fast. Suddenly my class of five had more classroom management issues than my class of 29. HOW is that EVEN possible? The students were bored and confused. They just weren't all that engaged by the story of the hairdresser. Or about the iron mines.
So this past Friday, for the last 25 minutes, I told them to put away the books. I listed 4 REVIEW structures on the board and announced "Erat vir". They took off with that story. We didn't write anything down but I circled every structure and asked them lots of questions in Latin to elicit the story. When I felt that they were off on a tangent, I brought them back and made sure to include the review structures. There were no discipline issues. They were all engaged. It was weirdly magical.
This brings me to my low expectations. I expected them to speak in Latin, respond to questions, participate, and contribute to the story. I did not expect them to give me the gender, number, case, and reason of every noun-adjective pair in the reading. I didn't quiz them on the specific use of the ablatives and accusatives. We created a story together. For this 25 minutes, I had my group of students in a circle, discussing Latin in Latin. And it was exactly what I had envisioned.
Sometimes it pays to Keep it Simple.
