Locutiones Latinae

I have found in my journey in Latin speaking that the most difficult thing for me (other than, good heavens, convoluted clauses within clauses) has by far been speaking Latin. We tend, especially as tirones, to start speaking English but using Latin words. It's a really easy thing to do, and it's a harder thing to do to start acquiring real Latin. I don't mean to sound like a broken record, but hours and hours and hours of input is the only real way to do that - for us or for our students. Sometimes, though, a list of nice idioms can help, so I'm putting forth a small list here of idioms I've found to be useful, ways we can start saying things more Latinly, if you will - either with our students or simply ourselves.

Tables and Chairs

I am in the process of acquiring card tables. Last year I decided to get rid of my desks and was very happy with the decision. My feeling at the time was that desks encourage kids to feel restrained, as though they have to be right all the time and as though they must stifle their creativity. We train our students that the goal is to be correct, rather than to make progress, and to do it right rather than trying out a lot of different ways. Students have learned to ask teachers the question 'how do you want me to do this?' rather than asking themselves 'how many ways can I do this?'. Desks, for me, were a symbol of that manifesto, so my goal in getting rid of the desks was to create a community learning feeling where students did not feel restrained behind a wood desk, but rather were immediately in contact with the rest of the classroom community. Furthermore, I wanted room in the middle of the classroom where students could practice plays, run relays, and do large group activities that hadn't been possible when there were desks.

Parent communication

I like to communicate with the parents of my students not just when I'm concerned or am informing them of an event of some variety (test, convention, competition, etc), but also when a kid has done something particularly well. Sometimes the parents of these students hear from teachers all the time that their kid is fabulous, and some of them never hear these things from teachers. I had a student this year who was severely autistic and fails all his classes, and one day, he did a great job in class, so I called his mother to let her know. I told her what the student had done, and she said, "You must have the wrong student." It was heartbreaking, particularly when I assured her that I did not have the wrong student. I've been doing this via email, but this year, I acquired postcards very cheaply (250 of them from VistaPrint for 17 dollars).

Posters for your walls

Anyone who has known me for a decent amount of time will be able to tell you pretty quickly that I can't draw. Really at all. All my stick people have giant eyes and look the same, my third period spent twenty minutes coaching me to draw a box so we could have a gift drawn on the board, and I generally have to 'hire' students to be artists, rather than just doing it to give them a job. My handwriting is a disaster, and my kids come in at the beginning of the year, see my decorations and say, "Aww, that's so cute! Here, let me re-do everything for you." It's thoughtful.

Enter postermywall.com. I am not being hired or paid to do this, and in fact, I don't think they know I'm writing this, so take it in that spirit.