AbleMedia LLC

Needham, MA - February 2, 2005 Attrition is the dark side of the new teacher experience, and Latin teachers are especially vulnerable, according to the crusaders-without-capes: Hedrick and Hedrick. They expose the often humorous perils of “Nellie Newbie” today on the Classics Technology Center on the Web (CTCWeb, http://ablemedia.com/ctcweb). “Whether it is the teacher in the classroom next door or one on the other side of the globe, helping teachers help each other to achieve success in the classroom is a prime tenet of the Hendricks’ award-winning primer on CTCWeb,” said Wendy E. Owens, CTCWeb Editor-in-Chief.

Hedrick and Hedrick are this week’s AbleMedia Bronze Chalice winners for The Latin Teacher: A Primer for Survival and Success published on CTCWeb. In this practical primer, Dr. James Hedrick, a teacher, administrator, and current principal at Millbrook High School in Frederick County, Virginia, and Camille Hedrick, a Latin teacher with over 20 years of classroom experience, share survival techniques for the first-year teacher based on their own experiences and research.

In The Latin Teacher, Hedrick and Hedrick rely on humor and experience to outline the problems of new teachers, and they proffer concrete solutions to make the first-year teaching experience easier. They use the characters “Nellie Newbie” and “Vera Veteran,” to exemplify the naiveté of the new teacher and the wisdom of the veteran. Through these characters’ interactions they demonstrate successful strategies for professional mentoring relationships. “Preparing teachers is a multi-step, multi-year process involving a partnership of college instructors, veteran teachers, and administrators,” Hedrick and Hedrick said. “Latin teachers are especially vulnerable to new teacher attrition, since they are often the only ones in their schools who teach their subject and are more isolated than core-subject teachers.”

Suggesting a community-focused model made up of college instructors, school administrators, and veteran teachers, Hedrick and Hedrick delineate the components that contribute to retaining teachers in the field. Success is difficult when teachers feel isolated, but when supported by their school communities, those teachers can help themselves and their students have an outstanding year.

Each week AbleOne’s sponsor, AbleMedia, salutes contributors for outstanding submissions to the AbleOne Consortium (http://ablemedia.com/ctcweb/consortium/), the CTCWeb Showcase (http://ablemedia.com/ctcweb/showcase/), and CTCWeb Netshots™ (http://ablemedia.com/ctcweb/netshots.html). Each receives the Bronze Chalice award. AbleMedia awards Silver Chalices for the outstanding submissions of the month. At the end of each year, AbleMedia awards Gold Chalices for the outstanding submissions of the year.

AbleOne serves millions of educators, students, and other users in over 100 countries and the number of users is tripling annually. AbleOne’s CTCWeb is a repository of practical tools, for classicists and other educators, to enhance the use of computer technology in Classics education. At CTCWeb, students, educators and others find the free dissemination and open exchange of practical educational materials, systems, and applications by individuals and organizations involved in the Classics community. AbleMedia sponsors CTCWeb as part its AbleOne Education Network.

The AbleOne Education Network (AbleOne) is an online educational resource for millions of educators and students at the K-12 and post secondary levels around the globe. For seven years, AbleOne’s has used the Internet to provide quality teaching and learning materials to its rapidly growing corps of dedicated users: educators, students, and other curious minds worldwide. For more about AbleOne go to http://ablemedia.com/ableone.

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AbleMedia LLC is a global management and technology consulting firm. For over a quarter of a century, we have served the best, the brightest and the biggest in business, technology, and education. AbleMedia can be found on the Web at http://ablemedia.com.