March 2000 — Features
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Breathing New Life into a Dead Language: Teaching Latin Online
Of course, one learns by her mistakes. I realized very quickly that students want more structure. Every week I received student e-mails asking me where they should be. Also, many of The Florida High School students travel with their families or are involved in activities such as professional sports or musical performances, which conflict with more traditional classes. Providing them with a week by week assignment schedule will help these students to schedule schoolwork around these activities. Students are supposed to make weekly contact with the teacher. However, just as in the regular classroom, some students do need occasional prodding or encouragement. Phone contact and e-mail are used to encourage these students to catch up and stay on pace. Another incentive for staying on schedule is monthly progress reports. Since progress grades depend not only on quality of work but also quantity of work, activity in the CourseRoom, the area in which students post their assignments, increases considerably during the week of progress reports.
How Different IS Teaching Online?
Before I accepted the position at FHS, I worried about being isolated from students. I wondered if I would be content not to have face-to-face contact with my students. I realized within the first week of teaching that my contact with these students would be very satisfying. Just as in the classroom, students are anxious to communicate. I was really surprised by how much a teacher can learn about her students through their e-mail. Of course, instead of “the dog ate my homework,” the excuse that I get most is “my computer crashed.” Remember that technical problems do happen. However, just as in the traditional classroom, adjustments may have to be made to make allowances for those unexpected interruptions.
Since I would be working mostly from my home office, I also worried about being isolated from other teachers and staff. However, the FHS staff is great. Communication through e-mail and phone calls keeps me in touch. Monthly staff meetings and training sessions also help to make everyone feel like a part of the school. If I have a technical problem or a question about how to do something, the answer is usually only an e-mail away. This kind of communication is essential to developing a great distance education program.
Teaching online requires different skills than teaching in a traditional classroom. Unlike many other distance education programs, Florida High School classes are not taught as a supplement to textbooks. Almost all materials are online, and many lessons are taught using Web sites. For example, the curriculum for the Latin course uses translations from a Latin textbook, but the instructor develops most of the exercises and lessons. Lessons are designed to help students discover answers for themselves. For instance, rather than give students a chart of the Olympic gods and their domains to memorize, students are given a list of mythology Web sites and asked to create their own chart. In my Latin class, most of my actual teaching is done as I review students’ work before it is submitted for a final grade. I try to make comments, ask questions and give hints, which will lead students to discover the correct answers. In some cases, if a student is having a problem with a particular point of grammar or translation, I will talk them through it over the telephone. Whether over the phone or in writing, distance education requires that teachers be able to communicate their ideas very clearly.
