One Down, Two to Go

At 3:00 this afternoon, my first year of graduate school came to an end. It was a great year. I really enjoyed being back in a collegiate environment. There were many differences (some good and some bad) between life on a campus of 30,000 and what things were like at Valpo with 3500 students.

But right now, I would like to focus on my teaching experiences. The program I am in will give me a Masters in Latin with Michigan High School teaching certification, and the goal is to prepare us to be teachers. This involved starting out teaching a Latin 101 class in my first semester. I was given a lot of suggestions about how to run an effective class, and after a week's worth of seminars, I was turned loose on a class of unsuspecting undergraduates. I didn't doubt my ability to teach Latin, I took four years in high school and four years in college, so I have a pretty strong grasp of the language, but I certainly was nervous about standing in front of and lecturing to a group of strangers. Despite the nervousness I felt, I appreciated this aspect of the program because I knew that it would give me a pretty good idea of whether teaching was what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I thought teaching would be good, but I wouldn't have any idea until I had some actual experience.

As it turned out, teaching was so much more than I ever expected. There were many days where I dreaded going to the classes where I had to do learning (although in fairness I did learn a lot of interesting things over the course of the year), but I always looked forward to teaching. I taught two different sections of Latin 101, and the dynamics of each class were very different, but both classes were a joy to be around. Both classes had their cast of characters, but there wasn't a single person I didn't look forward to seeing each and every day. And the best part of all this? They even learned a little bit of Latin. I certainly am glad to have four months for summer vacation because this year has been draining, but I certainly will miss not teaching for the next four months. In that respect, anyway, September can't get here soon enough.