Curriculum Redesign Work for Latin III and IV PD Mini Grant

My curriculum redesign grant allowed me to rethink the entire sequence of upper level Latin at CPS. I was inspired by the new curriculum requirements set forth by the College Board for this year's AP Latin course, though at the same time, I was glad that I did not have to adopt all of the College Board's curriculum. I decided to adopt only the texts and passages that seemed genuinely interesting to me.

In Latin III, this means I will teach two of Pliny the Younger's letters about the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius (6.16 and 6.20) but not the other letters required by the College Board, and I will drop my Caesar units entirely (which had been part of the old AP course). I also decided to do a different Ovid unit than in previous years, as Daedalus and Icarus have sadly been feeling a little tired.

In Latin IV, I am going to teach all of the AP required Aeneid passages, which will include new passages from Books VII, XI, and XII, especially. I cut back on some of the passages that the AP no longer requires, and the overall number of lines in my course will be smaller. I think this will allow more room for discussion and deep engagement. I am excited to teach the story of Camilla (especially as a counterpart to Dido) and engage more deeply with the power dynamics between Juno and Jupiter in Book XII. I found some interesting scholarly articles to add to the syllabus, as well.

I spent a lot of time putting together brand new course readers for both of these courses, as I hope that a well-organized course reader will help students stay similarly well-organized.

In the future, what would I do differently? I think I can always be modifying and reassessing my curriculum. It was really nice to be able to let go of units and passages that I felt had gone stale for me and engage with newer material, so I hope to keep this in mind for future redesign opportunities.

I think one takeaway I had early on was that, since we do not have to get students ready for the AP test, I (and other teachers) should really be free to craft the best and most interesting courses possible. And I think this will be such a positive change for the students, too, as we are doing less rapid "coverage" and getting more time to enjoy the language, the history, and the poetry.