asking students who have flexible deadlines accommodations to work ahead?

[mamselle]

Good grief!

While I'll be the first to agree that you can't get far in Cicero without understanding the ablative absolute, a good smattering of the vocabulary, conjugations, and declensions of the period, saying you need 'mastery, not mediocrity' makes no sense--in my case, mastery includes translating 13thc. liturgical texts (with all their gnarly abbreviations) and 18th c. gravestones (there are 3 Latin stones in my current paper) plus a legal Latin document granting a midwife her license in London before she emigrates to the colonies ('neo-Latin,' as it's now called).

Conversely, I could no more agree with you about the disjoint sets of (soit 'American,' soit 'any other kind of') history you've carved out for yourself than fly: you can't teach the Civil War without carrying forward the integration  of the US Armed forces from the 54th Regiment at Sumpter to the code-talking Native Americans in WWII, nor by ignoring the "heal ourselves first" isolationism, and the Golden Era's high self-regard (purchased on the backs of both black and white sharecroppers, and Asian railroad builders, among others) that delayed the US entry into both the League of Nations and finally, WWI itself.

My high school history teacher (a retired Marine colonel who'd taught military history at West Point, first) would've flunked you. He specifically developed a globally-aware series of handouts we had to fill in at the beginning of each new chapter, showing exactly how the previous chapter articulated with the new one.

With your approach, you'd have been dead in the water the first day.

M.

[jerseyjay]

If the argument is you don't have to know anything about the (American) Civil War in order to know about the (European) Great War, well, sure. You do not need to know about the question of expansion of slavery in the Southwest in order to understand about the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. But this is apple and oranges. You do not need to know how to decline (Latin) nouns in order to conjugate (Spanish) verbs. This would especially be true if your view of history is to memorize a bunch of names and dates.

All that said, I do not think you can understand Woodrow Wilson without understand that he was a historian of the American South, that he was both a progressive and a stone-cold racist, and that both of these informed his global vision. Nor could you understand partisan divisions in the US at the time of the First World War without understand the Civil War, nor the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, nor the debate over isolationism, etc.  All of these informed the role of the US in the war, and its role afterward. So you cannot absolutely understand the US actions during the war without understanding the period that came before (i.e., the Civil War and Reconstruction period). And you certainly cannot understand the role of black troops in the war, the Great Migration, and the postwar race riots, without understanding the Civil War. You cannot understand Russia's role in the war without understand the rise of narodism, the emancipation of the serfs, the rise of liberalism and socialism, etc.

I would assume that a knowledge of Latin grammar would also be useful to really "master" Spanish grammar. It is possible to have a functional knowledge of one without knowledge of the other.

To be honest, to claim otherwise in service of the argument that it is impossible to make a plan for teaching an introductory Latin class, and posting it online, seems strange.

[mamselle]

+1^

Latin is an agora, not a temple.

M.

[Caracal]

Good grief!

While I'll be the first to agree that you can't get far in Cicero without understanding the ablative absolute, a good smattering of the vocabulary, conjugations, and declensions of the period, saying you need 'mastery, not mediocrity' makes no sense--in my case, mastery includes translating 13thc. liturgical texts (with all their gnarly abbreviations) and 18th c. gravestones (there are 3 Latin stones in my current paper) plus a legal Latin document granting a midwife her license in London before she emigrates to the colonies ('neo-Latin,' as it's now called).

Conversely, I could no more agree with you about the disjoint sets of (soit 'American,' soit 'any other kind of') history you've carved out for yourself than fly: you can't teach the Civil War without carrying forward the integration  of the US Armed forces from the 54th Regiment at Sumpter to the code-talking Native Americans in WWII, nor by ignoring the "heal ourselves first" isolationism, and the Golden Era's high self-regard (purchased on the backs of both black and white sharecroppers, and Asian railroad builders, among others) that delayed the US entry into both the League of Nations and finally, WWI itself.

My high school history teacher (a retired Marine colonel who'd taught military history at West Point, first) would've flunked you. He specifically developed a globally-aware series of handouts we had to fill in at the beginning of each new chapter, showing exactly how the previous chapter articulated with the new one.

With your approach, you'd have been dead in the water the first day.

M.

Well, I teach both halves of the American survey. 1865 is the dividing line. The social studies teaching majors need to take both surveys, but the other majors only have to do one, and there's no requirement that you do them in order...so I could hardly require lots of knowledge of the Civil War when I teach WW1.

I can assure that you can teach about the Civil War and not teach about Navajo Code Talkers, because well...I don't teach about Navajo Code Talkers at all. I don't think I've ever mentioned them in a class. That's not some judgement about their importance, the problem is lots of things are important and if I try to put them all into my lectures, there won't be any recognizable through line. I certainly wouldn't have a problem with someone who taught a through line about the US army that you describe, but I just don't teach any through lines about the US military. You have to pick and choose your themes.

One of the problems with textbooks is they try to do everything and the result is usually pretty boring and doesn't help students understand historical thinking. You're right in a sense. Everything relates back to everything else and forward to everything else. A student who has taken a Civil War class might have interesting and important insights they otherwise wouldn't have about material on WW1, but so would a student who had taken a modern Europe course.

[Caracal]

I'm still sort of confused about the idea that there's less flexibility if you post readings online. I change my readings all the time during the semester. Sometimes, it's because I have to cancel a class, but other times students have a lot to say about some reading or topic and we end up a little behind and I rejigger the readings so they'll fit with where we are. Students don't generally mind as long as you're pushing back things.

[mamselle]

Of course, surveys get subdivided: when I was coming up through art history as a BA student, one useful piece of advice to those considering the MA, which required a declared major and minor, was to "Major on one side, and minor on the other side of the 1400 CE dividing line, so you can teach both halves of the survey."

That's how I ended up with a French medieval major and an American colonial minor.

And I've taught the first and second halves of art and architecture history as a result...but we do a recap/crossover discussion the first week of the second term, anytime something comes up for which they need to know background development on a topic: the Renaissance didn't spring full-blown from the brush of Giotto or the chisel of Michelangelo and not showing developmental stages reinforces the falsely periodized view of art history, left over from the 19th c., that there were "good" and "bad" periods,  practitioners,  etc.

It also keeps them aware that I don't buy the, "Oh,  we learned that last semester,  I don't remember that stuff," line of excuses.

M.

[kaysixteen]

I did not use the term first, but 'good grief' sounds about right.

I said nothing about Latin being needed to learn anything about Spanish (which I do not even know).  And I said nothing about a generalized knowledge of the CW being perhaps helpful in understanding the various issues associated with WWI.  Obviously.   But 101-style survey courses, let alone hs 'US History' classes are very basic, generalized things, and, yes, it should be obvious that one need know virtually nothing about the CW in order to do very well, *at this level of course*, on the WWI unit.   This contrasts mightily with how one needs to approach the learning of Latin, even if one personally does know enough Latin to read medieval texts.  Try teaching beginning students of Latin, and if you do as mamselle suggests, and unless you are teaching at an uberelite prep school or college, many of your students will end up demonstrably subcompetent.   I have seen this, and you haven't.   And I am trained to know what I am talking about, and you aren't.  And further, since my responsibility as their teacher is to. ahem, actually teach them, I will do that to the best of my ability-- the half-mortarted push through x number of chapters per year approach just ain't that.

[Hegemony]

I teach Latin, and I am able to keep to a predictable schedule laid out in advance, while giving extra help to those who are struggling. If I had to change the schedule for some odd reason, it would be easy enough to revise the assignment due dates on the LMS.

[jerseyjay]

I said nothing about Latin being needed to learn anything about Spanish (which I do not even know).  And I said nothing about a generalized knowledge of the CW being perhaps helpful in understanding the various issues associated with WWI.  Obviously.   But 101-style survey courses, let alone hs 'US History' classes are very basic, generalized things, and, yes, it should be obvious that one need know virtually nothing about the CW in order to do very well, *at this level of course*, on the WWI unit.

This is apples and oranges. My point is that if that the U.S. Civil War and the First World War in Europe are two different courses, just as Spanish and Latin. They do not belong in the same "history" course any more than Latin nouns and Spanish verbs belong in the same "grammar" class. Thus the original comparison is disingenuous.

If a course has both wars in the same semester, it is likely that they will be linked together. It is, theoretically, possible to get an A on the midterm of a course and fail the final (or vice versa), but this is rare, and in a well-taught course the units are connected. It is hard to do well on the twentieth century without knowing the eighteenth century.

Again, this seems like a lot of effort to argue that it is impossible to plan out, at least roughly, the course of an intro Latin class. In fact, given the necessity of sequence in such a course, it would seem easier to map out than in a history course where there is some more flexibility.

[MarathonRunner]

My issue with accommodations is they are rarely tailored to student needs. You think someone in the accommodations office really has the knowledge and/or time to tailor to student needs?

Yes, they do, at least at many universities. At both my undergraduate and master's universities (I'm currently a PhD candidate) the accommodations people had suggestions for things that even my physiotherapist didn't know about, but that helped me immensely after two severe concussions, one in fourth year undergrad, and one in first year masters. The accommodations staff all had advanced degrees at the masters level at a minimum. I would not have been able to finish my undergrad and complete a master's without accommodations and the help of the accommodations staff.

[Puget]

My issue with accommodations is they are rarely tailored to student needs. You think someone in the accommodations office really has the knowledge and/or time to tailor to student needs?

Yes, they do, at least at many universities. At both my undergraduate and master's universities (I'm currently a PhD candidate) the accommodations people had suggestions for things that even my physiotherapist didn't know about, but that helped me immensely after two severe concussions, one in fourth year undergrad, and one in first year masters. The accommodations staff all had advanced degrees at the masters level at a minimum. I would not have been able to finish my undergrad and complete a master's without accommodations and the help of the accommodations staff.

I'm sure it's not the same everywhere, but our accommodations folks are also great! Faculty should not see them as the enemy, they can be a tremendous resource and ally for faculty supporting students in their classes.

They don't just hand out accommodations like candy-- they help students get evaluated, figure out what reasonable accommodations are for them, and work with them on skill building. They will also work with students who don't qualify for accommodations but still could use some skill building. They have also been very reasonable and respectful when I've talked to them about how some accommodations need to be modified for particular class contexts.

They are quite evidence-based. For example, they won't give accommodations like remote access or alternatives to presentations accommodations to students with social anxiety, because they know that enabling avoidance is exactly the opposite of how to help someone with social anxiety.  I just helped them with resources for a time management training (since they know I teach these skills in one of our non-credit life skills courses) and they not only wanted the tips and teaching materials but also the research behind it to read-- just really fantastic services for students and engagement with their own professional development.

[kaysixteen]

I did not just make up this philosophy of fl pedagogy out of thin air-- it was standard operating procedure at all three schools I studied classics in, up through the doctoral level, and it is more or less what the pedagogical linguist colleagues I had as an adjunct also thought wise.  It would be *much easier* for me to write out a syllabus with fixed dates and assignments ahead of time, and just stick to it.   But easier does not mean better.

It is also not the same thing as 'not having a date for test x, etc'.  You can certainly (and in college classes it is expected) say that the midterm will be on date x.   What may change in your own mind, and thus in what you have taught the students, would of course be exactly how much stuff will be on the test by that date.

[jerseyjay]

I have a question for KaySixteen, which is not meant snidely or rhetorically.

If, as you state, Latin is taught in a rigid order so that unit A is necessary for unit B which is necessary for unit C, etc.;

And, you can not say in advance what material ("exactly how much stuff") you will cover in a course (say, Latin 1) ahead of time;

Do you not run the danger that students in Latin 2 will not have learnt all the material that they will need to master the material?

I can see this approach working in one of two circumstances:
(1) There is a cohort of Latin students who progress together through all stages of Latin with the same professor so he or she can adjust all the courses adequately.

(2) You are having a 1:1 tutorial.

(1) Is possible, perhaps, in some high schools, in which Latin is an elective that only a small number of people take and there is one Latin teacher. It does not seem to work in a university where there are several different sections going on with different professors with students starting and stopping their studies at different levels. Perhaps in many universities the Latin students are few and far between, but this approach certainly would not work with Spanish, or French, or a language with many students, sections, and professors.

(2) Is how my own attempts to learn languages with private tutors have often worked, but the key here is private tutors whom I pay. 

[Mobius]

What is the criteria for 1.5x normal time for tests compared to 2x? When folks say "evidence-based," I do not see evidence on a disability services website. You would think it would be helpful to post some literature on how accommodations help students, but I just don't see it at many institutions.

Came across this article, "Double Time? Examining Extended Testing Time Accommodations (ETTA) in Postsecondary Settings" that discussed how accommodations are not meeting student needs.

https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1153576

[Puget]

What is the criteria for 1.5x normal time for tests compared to 2x? When folks say "evidence-based," I do not see evidence on a disability services website. You would think it would be helpful to post some literature on how accommodations help students, but I just don't see it at many institutions.

Came across this article, "Double Time? Examining Extended Testing Time Accommodations (ETTA) in Postsecondary Settings" that discussed how accommodations are not meeting student needs.

https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1153576

Accommodations are determined individually, after evaluation by appropriate healthcare professionals (generally a neuropsychologist). If a student has 2x rather than 1.5x extra time (which is rare in my experience) it is because their disability was determined to require it--why is private health information that we as faculty have no legal or ethical right to see. That is why the letters just list the accommodations and do not tell you what the disability is.

I did look at the abstract of the paper you linked to, and it seems to have the strong assumption that if accommodations are "working" students should use them less over time. To me that is very much the wrong criteria. It's like saying that if wheelchair ramps are "working" they will be used less over time. The point of accommodations is to more equal access for students to succeed, not to make their disability go away.