Latin Teacher Certification: Training Future Secondary School Teachers

7/25/2019 Latin Teacher Certification: Training Future Secondary School Teachers

1/6

Latin Teacher Certification: Training Future Secondary School

Teachers

Ronnie Ancona

Classical World, Volume 102, Number 3, Spring 2009, pp. 311-315 (Article)

Published by Classical Association of the Atlantic States

DOI: 10.1353/clw.0.0094

For additional information about this article

Access Provided by Bristol University at 11/16/12 10:47PM GMT

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/clw/summary/v102/102.3.ancona.html
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/clw/summary/v102/102.3.ancona.htmlhttp://muse.jhu.edu/journals/clw/summary/v102/102.3.ancona.html


2/6

311

PAEDAGOGUS

TEACHERTRAININGPROGRAMS: MEETINGTHE

CHALLENGESOFTHENEWCENTURY*

LATINTEACHERCERTIFICATION: TRAININGFUTURE

SECONDARYSCHOOLTEACHERS

ABSTRACT: This article outlines why one might want to get certified toteach Latin at the secondary school level as well as the steps involved in thecertification process. Its intended audience includes current secondary schoolteachers, prospective ones, and those individuals involved directly or indirectlyin the professional and/or academic training of current or future Latin teachers.

The author draws upon her experience directing the M.A. program in LatinAdolescent Education at Hunter College in New York City.

The following discussion provides an overview of the process by whichindividuals become certified to teach Latin at the secondary school level inthe United States. My intention is to offer useful information to potentialLatin teachers, to college classics faculty interested in helping potential Latinteachers to get certified, and to current secondary school Latin teachers,certified or not, who are seeking a broader picture of Latin teacher trainingthan their own specific experience might have produced. My remarks comefrom the perspective of someone who has directed a graduate level Latin

teacher training program for twenty years.As most readers will know, there is currently a shortage of Latin teachers

at the secondary school level. Unless there are people ready to teach Latin tothe next generation at this educational level, our profession may not survivein the form we know it. Teacher certification, of course, is a requirement forteaching in public schools. While it might seem that knowledge of subjectmatter would be all that is necessary to teach Latin, my experience in Latinteacher training has shown that knowing how to deal with adolescentsand

parents and administrators and colleaguesis just as important to teachingsuccess at the secondary level as knowledge of the subject (or content) area.Fortunately, the requirements of certification help the potential teacher tolearn both parts of his or her jobteaching Latin and teaching adolescents.

Why should someone who wants to teach Latin get certified? While manyprivate schools do not require their teachers to be certified, certification isnecessary for teaching in public schools, and some potential teachers knowthey want to become part of public education while others at least want tohave that kind of career available to them. In addition, some private schoolslike to have a certain percentage of their teachers certified. Still further,some public school teachers are paid more than some private school teachers,which provides added financial incentive for a potential teacher to acquirecertification. One teacher I know had her salary almost double when she

* These papers are revised versions of talks given on a panel, Teacher TrainingPrograms: Meeting the Challenges of the New Century, organized by Prof. ElizabethKeitel for the Committee on Education of the APA and given at that organizationsannual meeting in 2006. The panel was given again at the annual ACL Summer In-stitute at Philadelphia in 2006. For the second panel, Judith Hallett spoke in place ofLillian Doherty; they have since combined forces to produce the paper published inthis collection. The papers were prepared for publication by Elizabeth Keitel.

311


3/6

312

moved from a parochial school job in New York City to a public school jobin an affluent New York suburb. (I should add that she now makes closeto $100,000 per year.) Therefore, even the person who might be planningto teach in a private school should consider getting certification in order

to have other options open. With the No Child Left Behind legislation, thepublic schools are now under real pressure to have qualified teachers in theclassroom. While a clever district may manage to hire someone, for example,as a substitute teacher without certification, especially if it has difficultyfinding someone certified, not all districts will do this. If a district cannotfind a certified teacher, a Latin program in a particular school may be shutdown; therefore, our profession as a whole has a great investment in getting

potential Latin teachers through the process of certif ication.In the M.A. program in Adolescent Education in Latin at Hunter College

in New York City, students get a masters degree andNew York State sec-ondary school Latin certification by the time they graduate. (In New York,a masters degree is required for permanent certification.) For the studentinterested in preparing for a Latin teaching career at the secondary schoollevel, such a program offers the advantage of combining advanced trainingin the language and culture with the necessary pedagogical courses, all in a

program that guides the student through the sometimes elaborate and tedioussteps to certification. In New York, at least, the trend is towards gainingcertification through such a state-approved teacher education program. Even in

New York, however, one can still get initial certification to teach by fulfillingcertain specific requirements outside of such a program. In addition, somestates have so-called alternate route certification programs, which allow for

getting certification in an accelerated fashion. Two graduates of Hunters M.A.program were able to pursue New Jersey alternate route cert ification whenthey got public school jobs in that state while still completing our program.

For the novice, the process of gaining teacher certification can seemoverwhelming. It is necessary to check frequently various requirements asone moves along the path to certification. The prospective teacher must takethis in stride. He or she eventually will acquire all the necessary informationand will accomplish the requirements, despite the many bureaucratic details.On the path towards certification, learning about both Latin and teaching willtake place. While knowledge of subject matter (Latin) is of course essentialfor successful teaching, getting certified entails mastery of other features

of secondary school teaching as well that will only enhance the potentialteachers preparedness for the classroom.

The requirements for certification vary from state to state. These require-ments are always being updated. For an excellent survey of requirements forcertification in Latin as of 2004, one can consult the material compiled byMary Pendergraft for the Joint American Philological Association/AmericanClassical League Committee on Classics in American Education which appearson the APA website at: http://www.apaclassics.org/education/teachcert.html.For accurate and up-to-date material on certification in the United States,it is essential to contact the Education Department of the state in whichcertification is desired. Individual states will also make available informa-

tion on whether reciprocity (that is, recognition of one states certificationby another) is offered to individuals cert ified in other states. What followsis a description of the steps towards certification likely to be encountered,using as a model the State of New York.

Certification typically involves coursework in the content area (Latin),coursework in Education, supervised teaching experience in the schools, and

CLASSICALWORLD


4/6

313PAEDAGOGUS

examinations. Perhaps the most obvious requirement is coursework in the subjector content area. While fulfilling this requirement may seem straightforward,

potential teachers and those who advise them need to know that complet-ing a Latin major as an undergraduate does not automatically mean one is

considered to have had enough coursework in the content area for certifica-tion. In New York State, for example, teachers must have 30 semester-hourcredits in Latin to obtain initial teacher certification. (An M.A. is requiredfor permanentcertification.) Therefore, the student aiming to teach may haveto take Latin credits beyond those of a typical undergraduate major in orderto begin teaching. College department advisers should become aware of theirown state requirements so they can encourage their potential Latin teachersto take additional Latin credits before graduation, if needed.

Coursework in Education entails a variety of classes on topics such as thehistory of education, educational psychology, assessment, literacy, drugs andalcohol, child abuse, and teaching methods. In these courses, students learnabout educational theory, adolescent development, and classroom strategies,such as how to handle discipline, how to organize ones time and the stu-dents time, lesson planning, and test writing. The classes may also involveobserving actual classroom teaching and testing out material with real sec-ondary school students. These courses are, in general, taught by EducationDepartment faculty. They are typically not related to the students content areaconcentration, except, for example, when a Latin student might choose to doa particular assignment, for example devising a test, in his or her content areaspecialty. Some Education programs, for a teaching methods class, will groupall foreign language students in one class. In the program at Hunter College,

Classics faculty with background in Latin pedagogy, rather than Educationfaculty, teach the two required Latin teaching methods courses. This allowsfor focus on pedagogical issues in the context of Latin, including discussionof such matters as grammar-translation versus reading-approach textbooks,technology for the Latin classroom, Advanced Placement Latin, and so on.The Methods 2 class requires many hours of classroom observation and alsoincorporates projects involving computers and Latin and teaching Latin todiverse learners. The students benefit greatly in these classes from discussingwith their fellow students and a faculty member who is knowledgeable about

both Latin and Latin pedagogy at the secondary school level what they areobserving or what they are already doing in the Latin classroom.

Supervised teaching is also part of the certification process. The kindof supervised teaching with which people are generally familiar is studentteaching. In this supervised activity, students are placed in a school withan experienced teacher for a semester. The student observes, helps out, andfinally does some independent teaching. He or she receives feedback from theexperienced (or cooperating) teacher as well as from the supervising facultymember from the teacher preparation program. An alternate way of fulfillingthe supervised teaching requirement, and one that has been used by the vastmajority of students at Hunter, is the two-semester teaching practicum. In the

practicum, the student is observed by the supervising faculty member whileteaching his or her own regular classes in a paid teaching job. The benefit

of this alternative is that the student is already working as a Latin teacherwhile being observed. Most of the students at Hunter need to or want toearn a living while taking their graduate classes. (The M.A. classes are allgiven in the early evening to accommodate working people. Some studentsalready teach Latin, for example, in a private school. Others work at variousnonacademic jobs.) Through the practicum, the self-supporting teacher does


5/6

314

not have to take time off from an income-bearing job in order to studentteach. In fact, most of the students at Hunter get Latin jobs while still inthe graduate program and are therefore able to substitute the practicum forstudent teaching. Even those with jobs in public schools may be able to fol-

low this route. New York State recently adopted an Internship Certificate,which allows teacher certification candidates who have finished half of ateacher preparation program and have met some additional requirements to

be hired as regular classroom teachers in public schools. The control overthem is that they must take the practicum class (that is, supervision of theirteaching) each semester until they complete their certification. A few Hunterstudents have started teaching in New York State public schools under thisnew certificate.

The final component of the certification process involves the taking andpassing of certain standardized tests. These are intended to ensure that thefuture teacher is broadly educated, literate, and knowledgeable in both peda-gogy and the subject to be taught. In New York State, for example, certifi-cation candidates must pass the Liberal Arts and Sciences Test (LAST), thesecondary version of the Assessment of Teaching SkillsWritten (ATSW),and a Content Specialty Test (CST) in the content area of the certification(Latin). Similar exams may go by other names in other states. The PraxisExams, from Educational Testing Service, are a popular alternative. Oneof the requirements for admission to graduate teacher training programs atHunter is a general education core in the liberal arts and sciences, includingcollege credits as follows: 6 credits in English, 3 credits in the arts, 6 creditsin social studies (to include at least one course in United States history and

geography), and 12 credits in math/science/technology (a college calculuscourse counts as 6 credits).Students are encouraged to take the first of the required tests, the LAST,

which consists of multiple-choice questions and a written assignment, beforeentering the program. Passing it before the completion of 12 credits in the

program is required. The liberal arts core and test are designed to produceteachers who are broadly educated, not only educated in the field they will

be teaching. The second exam to be taken is the secondary school versionof the ATSW, also in multiple-choice and written format. This exam tests

professional and pedagogical knowledge for secondary level education. Thesefirst two tests, of the liberal arts, and of professional/pedagogical knowledge,

are required for initial certification in New York State, as is the third test,which covers the content area. (Until recently, this final test was not requiredfor initial certification.)

For Latinists, the third test, CST, is called Latin and Classical Humanitiesin New York. It, too, has multiple-choice questions and a written assignment.In addition, it has an oral component requiring the student to read aloud a

passage of Latin that appears on the exam. This test assesses knowledge andskills in the subject area to be taught. It is of this sort of exam or its Praxisequivalent that Classics educators should be aware. The skills it tests areones that the student should be able to acquire in the college setting. Forexample, if the content area test requires proficiency with oral Latin, that

skill may be something that college teachers will want to require routinelyof their students in college level Latin classes, if they do not already. Ifsight-reading skills are necessary to pass the exam, likewise, they may wantto incorporate this experience into their college level testing, if they do notalready do so. While faculty need not suddenly turn their undergraduate andgraduate level Latin classes into content area test preparation courses, they

CLASSICALWORLD


6/6

315

will benefit future Latin teachers if they are, at a minimum, aware of therequirements of such exams and perform some activities that may enhance

potential teachers performances on them. College Latin teachers can play asignificant role in helping to ensure that future secondary school teachers of

Latin have the requisite skills for certification to teach Latin.The potential secondary school Latin teacher should find out the require-

ments for certification in the state or states where he or she might want toteach as early as possible. Getting certified is something for future teachersto consider, even if contemplating private school teaching, for they will learnsomething about pedagogy in general, which, in my opinion, is as essentialfor successful teaching at the secondary school level as knowledge of thesubject area. College teachers should find out what certification entails intheir particular states so that they can assist potential Latin teachers throughtheir Latin classes and their advising and career counseling. In addition, theyshould educate themselves about the standards for teaching languages otherthan English in their own states to see how their college Latin teaching mightincorporate some of those same standards, so that the students they teach intheir college classrooms will learn and know the material they are expectedto teach eventually to their own students. For example, if oral communica-tion is a standard that the secondary school Latin teacher must have hisor her students meet, college Latin teachers should consider whether suchthings as required reading of Latin aloud in the college classroom might helpto prepare future secondary school Latin teachers. (For New York StatesLearning Standards for Languages Other than English, including Latin,see: http://www.emsc.nysed.gov/ciai/lote/pub/lotelea.pdf.) Those already cer-

tified and teaching Latin at the secondary school level can help to spreadthe word about current certification requirements in order to help potentialfuture colleagues join them in teaching Latin at the secondary school level.

The certification process helps to ensure that Latin teachers have metcertain standards of general knowledge, pedagogy knowledge, content areaknowledge, and classroom experience. This provides an excellent basis forhelping the potential Latin teacher to begin his or her career with a solidfoundation. The next generation of secondary school students deserves qualifiedand confident Latin teachers in the classroom who can make the learning ofLatin the best it can be. Indeed, with the demand for certified Latin teachersand the current shortage, the continuing success of Latin at the secondary

school level may depend upon all classicists helping in various ways toadvise and train the next generation of Latin teachers.

Hunter College and The Graduate Center, CUNY RONNIE ANCONAClassical World 102.3 (2009) [email protected]

PAEDAGOGUS

Documents

Latin Teacher Certification: Training Future Secondary School Teachers