Teaching K-12

Becoming Qualified to Teach

Many students are so taken with the beauty, challenge, and intellectual stimulation offered by the study of the Classics that they choose to spend the rest of their lives involved in the field by teaching it to others. If you hope to teach at the pre-collegiate level, there are some things you should know. While some Greek is taught at the pre-college level, the vast majority of K-12 jobs will involve teaching Latin for the majority of your time. When Greek and other subjects, such as mythology or ancient civilization, are taught by a Latin teacher, they are normally added to an existing Latin curriculum.

Thanks to a concerted and united effort by the profession and a renewed perception among the public of the value of Latin, Latin enrollments have climbed in recent years and are now fairly steady. Increasingly, Latin is being offered in a wide variety of venues at elementary and middle schools, at special magnet programs, for gifted students, for at-risk students, and for others. In fact, in some parts of the country, the problem is a scarcity, not of Latin programs, but of qualified Latin teachers.

^{Source: American Philological Association’s Careers for Classicists in Today’s World.}