Teaching

I have developed a relatively elaborate teaching portfolio while teaching at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, West Springfield High School (MA), the University of Texas at Austin, and Yale University. This experience allows me to help graduate students as they teach both language courses and courses in translation and as they prepare for the job market.

My Job

Due to the idiosyncrasies of my particular job at Yale, I don’t teach the standard 3/3 course load. Instead, a normal semester looks like this:

• One introductory Greek or Latin course that I co-teach with a graduate student Teaching Fellow
• A weekly intensive grammar review and sight reading meeting with the first-year graduate students in Classics
• A weekly one-on-one sight reading meeting with each graduate student preparing for a PhD qualification exam the coming summer (so typically all the second-year students and maybe a first-year student or two)
• If anyone needs a crash course in Greek or Latin to catch up, I will give them one
• Most semesters I have given a independent study / directed reading to individual students who want a course that we are not currently offering
• A weekly teacher meeting in which the current graduate student language instructors and I work through challenges we are facing in class that week
• Regular teacher observations, vetting of assignments over 10% of the final grade, and other administrative tasks related to directing a language program
• I serve on various committees at Yale and beyond
• Each Spring, I offer a teacher workshop for graduate students expecting to teach Greek or Latin the following academic year and to undergraduates interested in high school teaching

My Teaching Background

I discuss my approach to teaching in my Philosophy of Teaching statement:

Here is a summary of the courses I have taught:

Language Courses: I have taught introductory Greek and Latin using a range of approaches—from a the grammar-first approach (in Greek: Hansen & Quinn, Mastronarde, Luschnig; in Latin: Wheelock, Keller & Russell) to the reading approach (in Latin: Oxford and Ecce Romani) to the linguistics approach using my own Greek textbook, Gareth Morgan’s Lexis. At the intermediate level, I have taught (in Greek) Euripides, Herodotus, Homer, Lysias, and Plato and (in Latin) Caesar, Cicero, Petronius, and Vergil. In upper-division undergraduate / graduate courses, I have taught (in Greek) female poets, romantic comedies, and Thucydides and (in Latin) Augustine and Senecan drama. I have also taught some high school Latin (two sections of Latin I and one section of Latin III).

Courses in Translation: I have taught large introductory lecture courses on Greek Civilization, Roman Civilization, Mythology, and the Ancient Mediterranean World (including Mesopotamia and Egypt in addition to Greece and Rome). I have taught small Freshman and Honors seminars on Greek Civilization and Mythology. I have taught a range of upper-division seminars: Moral Leadership in World Drama (a writing course on dramatists from Sophocles to Shakespeare to Ibsen to Danai Gurira), Alexander and the Hellenistic World, Who Cares about Antiquity? (a Calderwood Seminar in Public Writing), Death and the Afterlife, and Africa and Rome: History, Memory, and Identity (cross-listed with African and African Diaspora Studies, Middle Eastern Studies, and History).

See this document for overall instructor ratings from my time teaching at the University of Texas at Austin (Spring 2008-Spring 2021):

And see this document for my course ratings at Yale (Fall 2021 to present):

My Projects

I am producing supplementary materials for my textbook, Gareth Morgan’s Lexis (Greenbelt Press, 2021). In its current form, the book lacks appendices. This page will host them.

Accompanying Gareth Morgan’s Lexis will be an Animated Audiobook of Greek Word Formation, available here. These videos are largely demos—proofs of concept—of a final, polished audiobook useable by students and teachers of any textbook, and it will also include Latin. This final audiobook will be incorporated into a project currently under development called Reading Morphologically.

I host an access-restricted online repository of teaching and PhD exam prep materials for Yale graduate students in Classics (and targeted access for those using my textbook). With David Welch I built Classics Every Day, a blog that delivers a short passage of Greek and Latin to your inbox each morning. I am also spearheading the development of a teaching resource for Language Program Directors across the country available (eventually) at http://www.classicsteaching.com.