Sunday, January 10, 2016

Angst of a Greek teacher

PHILOLOGY: Beginning Greek, Again and Again (JAMES ROMM, NYT).
WHEN I moved my Beginning Greek course, last year, from the spring to fall semester, I did not reckon with the impact on my psyche of diminishing daylight. As the days grew shorter, my thoughts about the course grew darker. When the semester concluded, just before the winter solstice, those thoughts had also reached a nadir, giving way to the fear that I had failed, once again, in my 30-year quest to turn bright and eager undergraduates into readers, and lovers, of ancient Greek.

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My experience of teaching introductory Biblical Hebrew and Biblical Aramaic has been very different from this and generally very positive. Perhaps I am just fortunate in having such good students.