The Teacher Talks
Problems Faced by New Teachers
Last summer, since I was a new teacher in my school division, I was required to attend new teacher orientation. When the superintendent gave us his obligatory salutation, he told us the division had hired very qualified teachers for whom he had high expectations. He told us it was not his job to help us teach or to ensure that we were successful teachers, and that he had no qualms about not renewing the contracts of substandard teachers.
Of the approximately 550 new teachers hired by my division, three of us were Latin teachers. The two other Latin teachers, recent college graduates, reminded me of myself 26 years ago when I was a new teacher. Their panic was discernible. Because our division, like many others, has a shortage of Latin teachers, each of us had been assigned to teach at a high school and a middle school, the only Latin teacher at each school. We all had multiple preps, combined classes, and no experience. One of younger Latin teachers, 22 years old and fully licensed, told me that she knew her Latin, but did not even know how to write a lesson plan and was already feeling overwhelmed.
For three years I worked as an instructional coordinator at a high school where 75% of the staff had less than five years’ experience. One of my primary duties was to supervise the mentor program. The story of the Latin teacher above is typical of most beginning teachers. They know and love their content, but have very little knowledge of instructional design, classroom management and instructional strategies. Those who teach social studies, English, math, or science usually have one or two preparations, and say that they only begin to feel confident about their lessons around the third time they repeat them.
For Latin teachers, inexperience is compounded by multiple preparations and combined classes. What is difficult for beginning core-subject teachers may be nearly insurmountable for beginning Latin teachers, who seldom teach the same lesson twice. The day I wrote this paper I taught passives in Latin II, scansion in Latin III, and led a sight reading of 20 lines of Virgil in AP Latin. I used direct instruction, practice drills, oral assessments, question and answer sessions, seminar discussion, and, color coded charts. I used the textbook, the white boards, overhead transparencies, workbooks, highlighters, crayons and worksheets. We had so many tardies because of our icy parking lot that our school decided no one would be counted tardy. That morning we had school lockdown for a drug search. I have over twenty years of experience teaching Latin and I enjoyed meeting this challenge, but if I were a first year teacher I might have quit that day.
