Freedom from the grind of tap dancing for teenagers and finding some way to make them care about Latin. Time to fix the blog, which had somehow gotten buggy, wasn’t displaying properly, and needed some doctoring on a php file (whatever that is.) Time to read books for pleasure, play video games for nostalgia, get married.
Get married?
Oh, man … that’s only about a month away.
But even with the wedding (and receptions on two coasts) I’ve got lots to read and plan, both for myself and for the next school year.
For AP Latin: Vergil next year, I’m asking all students to read both Stanley Lombardo’s The Essential Homer and his Aeneid. He’s thoroughly readable, lively, and inexpensive. Parents will surely appreciate the last. My Latin III students will have to pick up their own copies of Wheelock and do a bit to stay fresh over the summer, but I’m still debating the course content. Last year I had envisioned centering Latin III on the Republic (focusing on the Late Republic) and Latin IV on the Empire (focusing on the Principate), but I’m having a great deal of difficulty with finding authors and suitable texts. Any advice would be appreciated.
I’ll be bringing a ton of paperback translations to school in the Fall, each of which I paid no more than 50 cents for, and will assign ‘enrichment’ papers/presentations to the students in Latin III. Each students will read and report on a different piece of classical literature in translation, and we’ll use that as the basis for learning a lot about literature and culture that we otherwise couldn’t fit as neatly into the curriculum. In Latin IV everyone will read Charles Martin’s translation of Ovid’s http://www.amazon.com/Metamorphoses-New-Translation-Charles-Martin/dp/039332642X/, which I’m really looking forward to.
Oddly, though, June has been cold so far. So much for global warming, eh? I guess that’s why they changed it to ‘climate change.’