As I begin to prepare for the coming school year (something which I should've really started a month ago), I'm getting a bit frustrated and overwhelmed by how much I clearly don't know and have been doing wrong.
I finished up my second year of teaching Latin in June and for the most part it went well, I thought. I had a few serious discipline cases that I let get out of hand and then couldn't control, and I know there were a few months in the middle where I was making everything up as I went along, somewhat poorly, but my students were generally excited about Latin and appeared to enjoy the class (and my teaching).
So far this summer I've read The First Days of School by Harry Wong, something that I probably should have read a long time ago, which gave a lot of good ideas for maintaining routines in my class. I know I blame my lack of routines on traveling between each classroom, but Wong definitely gave me some ideas to think of for this coming year.
And then I read The Homework Myth by Alfie Kohn. It was a bit annoying to read, since he spent the entire book refuting the need for homework, but left very little to go on. Is anything allowed as homework? If I set up a Quia page with practices for my students and encourage them to do that, is that helpful as long as I don't require it? How about studying for quizzes and tests?
I know that I've definitely fallen into the trap of "I must give homework, what should I give, how about this worksheet from the book," and then failed to really follow up and adequately even go over the worksheet, so I truly understand many of his arguments. And really, it would make my life a lot easier to just drop homework. I just wished that he gave more clear-cut advice as to how to proceed. At any rate, I plan on starting out the year with little-to-no homework, so we'll see how that goes.
