CAMWS & TCA

This page is devoted to issues that directly relate to CAMWS goals for the promotion of Latin in each state. If you have any questions about this page, please contact ginlindzey@lindzey.us. The CAMWS home page is at  http://www.camws.org.

The direct link to membership (and remember, new members only pay $15!) is http://www.camws.org/about/indform.pdf.

• Expert Teachers
  This is a list of secondary teachers who are willing to speak to college students about careers in education.
• Teacher Training
  This is a list of universities across the state who are involved in teacher training.
• Teacher Placement and Job Openings
• Committee for the Promotion of Latin
• 2002-2003 State VP Report to CPL

Expert Teachers

The following is the current list of expert teachers who are willing to speak to college students about careers in education. If you would like to volunteer to be on this list, please contact me at ginlindzey@lindzey.us. 

AUSTIN

• Gaylan Dubose, FFrank1060@aol.com
• Jo Green, lalage@att.net 
• Samual Marshall, samhagermarshall@msn.com
• Deborah Laake, DLAAKE@worldnet.att.net
• Ginny Lindzey, ginlindzey@lindzey.us 
• Jennie Luongo, Jgluongo@aol.com

ABILENE

• Rose Williams, rwill627@camalott.com

DALLAS Area

• Angela Fritsen, afritsen@juno.com
• Karen Villarreal, lynx@fastlane.net
• Julie McConathy, j.mcconathy@worldnet.att.net
• Ann Price, fawpd@juno.com

NORTH TEXAS

• Patricia Rektorik-Sprinkle, elknirps@gte.net
• Larry Martin, lmartin@texoma.net

HOUSTON

• Tish Dilworth, tdilworth@academicplanet.com

SAN ANTONIO

• Doris Kays, dkays@neisd.net 

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Teacher Training

The following colleges and universities in Texas have Latin teacher education/training programs. I am still waiting to hear from a couple of universities, so this list may change or grow.

• Austin College in Sherman near Dallas
  Contact: Jim Johnson and Bob Cape
• Baylor University  in Waco 
  Contact: Alden Smith
• Rice University in Houston
  Contact: Kristine Wallace
• Southwestern University in Georgetown, north of Austin
  Contact: Hal Haskall 
• Texas A & M in College Station 
  Contact: Elise Garrison (classics) and Kathleen May (School of Education). 
• Texas Tech in Lubbock
  Contact: Ed George
• Trinity University in San Antonio
  Contact: Joan Burton
• University of Dallas in Irving, north of Dallas 
  Contact: Grace Starry-West
• University of Houston  
  Contact: Richard Armstrong
• UT Austin  
  Contact:  Tim Moore
• UT San Antonio (*new program)
  Contact: John Rundin

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Teacher Placement and Job Openings

If you are looking for job openings in Texas or would like to list a job opening, please consult all of the following pages:

• The Latin Placement Service acts as a clearinghouse, matching applicants with Latin teaching positions in public and private schools all over Texas and nearby states. It is housed at The University of Texas at Austin
• The American Classical League National Latin and Greek Teacher Placement Service acts as a clearinghouse for the nation.
• The National Committee for Latin and Greek has a placement page which lists national and state placement pages.

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Committee for the Promotion of Latin

CAMWS's Committee for the Promotion of Latin has much to offer teachers:

1) Promotional Materials include the following titles:

• "Classica Africana"
• "The Classical Languages and College Admissions" 
• "Latina Resurgens"
• "Latin for Students with Learning Disabilities"
• "The Latin Teacher Shortage: A Call to Action"
• "Latin. Try it-You'll Like It!"
• "Reflections of a Casual Classicist"

2) CPL Funds are available for your projects and activities.  Here's what has already been approved this year:

• honorarium for speaker at Tennessee Foreign Language Teaching Assn. Conference $200.00 
• promotional mailing and website development $200.00 
• tour of Legion XIIII in Illinois, February 19-23, 2001 $400.00 
• Roman Presentation for recruitment of 6th graders $200.00 
• publicity and costumes for production of Plautus' Casina $259.60 
• postcards of Classical Detroit (for use by CAMWS vice presidents) $318.00 
• Chicago Public Schools Latin Olympics $250.00 
• Statewide persona presentation for high school students $200.00 
• Presentation on VRoma to high school teachers at WAFLT

Read how YOU can apply for funds!

3) CPL Award for Best High School Promotional Activity

In order to support high school programs and activities in a positive way, the CAMWS Committee for the Promotion of Latin (CPL) annually recognizes with a trophy and a certificate the high school group which develops the most outstanding and effective activity for promoting Latin in CAMWS territory during each academic year (including the preceding summer).  The winner of this award is announced every spring at the annual CAMWS meeting.

Any group wishing to compete for this award must be sponsored by a current CAMWS member and must submit a letter of application to the CPL chair by March 15th of each year. The application letter must include the following: a 100-word summary of the project and a more detailed project description not to exceed 500 words in length. Applicants are encouraged to attach supporting materials such as photographs, flyers, pertinent newspaper articles, etc.

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2002-2003 State VP Report to CPL

Promotional Activities

The only application for funds this year was for a certamen machine to restart a JCL program at a school north of Austin.

Publicity

Advertisements for CAMWS, reasons to join, promotional funds available, scholarships, etc, were advertised in the last issue I edited of Texas Classics in Action. “A Word from your CAMWS State VP,” which I wrote for the new editor, has yet to appear in print.
I continue to maintain the website for the Texas Classical Association and keep a page devoted to CAMWS on it.

Latin Teacher Placement; State of Latin

Unfortunately, I was unable to obtain data from the Texas Education Agency as I have done in the past. But the state of Latin in Texas is generally the same: we have more of a demand than we do teachers. If a program closes, it is probably not from funding cuts but from the simple, sad fact that a qualified replacement could not be found. Even as early as last spring, as principals began to email me for information regarding potential teachers, I realized the problem was not going to get any better unless we actively did something significant.

It was from this realization that the idea for National Latin Teacher Recruitment Week came about. As the parent of this brainchild, I naturally felt obligated to nurture and raise it, developing the NLTRW website and creating downloadable materials (brochures, flyers, bookmarkers, etc) for anyone to be able to use. With luck, Texas and many other states will be able to benefit from these efforts in years to come. I finished two brochures with a list of regional universities with teacher training; more will be completed by next year. The two that I did finish covered the states of Alabama, Florida and Georgia on one and Colorado, Kansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas on the other. The website and materials can be found at www.promotelatin.org/nltrw.htm.

Recruitment

Word of CAMWS is out there and has been for since the beginning of my term. I believe we will always have difficulties attracting secondary teachers in Texas as long as CAMWS and the Texas State Junior Classical League Convention are scheduled on the same weekend. I will continue lobbying for different dates, but unfortunately the spring calendar is full of UIL band festivals, competitions and more, thus it becomes difficult to find a free weekend for JCL. As long as Texas secondary teachers do not comprehend the value of CAMWS I fear that the situation will remain the same. I recommend wholeheartedly to future Texas State VPs that this be a focal point with regard to recruitment of new members.

Scholarships & Awards

I have always printed information about and encouraged people to apply for scholarships. Unfortunately, not enough people apply even still.

I have decided to suggest, based on decisions made at the recent GCA meeting, that TCA needs to a) initiate their own teaching award for Latin/Greek teachers (instead of relying on TFLA) and b) the recipient(s) should be automatically nominated by the awards committee for the CAMWS teaching award as well as TFLA (if they are members) and even SWCOLT and ACTFL. This year, the second year in a row, Latin will go without a Teacher of the Year from TFLA for lack of nominations. Latin goes unnoticed because we don’t brag on our own good folks enough. We are modest about our tremendous accomplishments at a time when we need to let the world know just how incredible our Latin teachers are.

General State of Latin in Texas

Texas is divided into six areas because our state is so vast. (Even still, El Paso finds it more convenient to compete in New Mexico’s JCL than to travel across west Texas to join the rest of us!) Most areas hold their JCL convention in mid to late February or early March. The Texas State Junior Classical League convention is usually held the first week in April. Last year Texas boasted the largest ever state JCL convention with over 2000 students participating. That is larger than the number of students allowed to attend this summer’s National Junior Classical League convention at Trinity University in San Antonio. (The ACL Institute was held at Trinity two summers back.)

JCL is always worth mentioning in Texas because it is the driving force for many programs that keep numbers high and the demand for teachers strong. Texas regularly sends highly talented and competitive certamen teams to nationals. Certamen is almost as serious a sport here as football and definitely worth watching.

Our universities are active too. UT Arlington regularly holds a Homerathon in the spring. Baylor University in Waco has started up a new departmental newsletter that is also of interest to teachers called Diurna Ursorum. Trinity University in San Antonio, as I said, is doing its part this summer in the role of host for the National Junior Classical League convention. UT Austin will be hosting its annual ExCET Prep Review workshop this spring—which is of great value to those who are seeking certification in our state. AP workshops are regularly hosted in the summer by the University of Dallas (sometimes on their campus in Rome). Other College Board sponsored AP workshops are offered in Austin as well. Austin College in Sherman hosts a major foreign language immersion workshop in the summer that includes Latin. Several universities offer courses in the summer designed for teachers (UT Austin and Baylor come to mind), and in fact, Baylor offers a terrific “Baylor in Italy” summer program that is very popular. In other words, classics has lots of vitality in Texas.

The adoption of LOTE materials by the State Board of Education will occur in November 2004, and in early 2005 school districts will choose for themselves the instructional materials they will use beginning in August 2005. The last time we had textbook adoptions only two series were submitted for the process: Latin for Americans and the Cambridge Latin Course. We are hoping for more choices next time (even though I personally never want to switch from CLC).

And that’s all the news from Texas, where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all of the children are above average (with apologies to Garrison Keillor).

Respectfully submitted,
Ginny Lindzey
Texas State VP for CAMWS

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Last update March 17, 2003. This site was re-created August 1998 by Ginny Lindzey, Webmistress, Texas Classical Association. All text and graphics are copyrighted. Original photo of arch by Roger Robison. To report problems and to get permission to reprint articles, please contact Ginny at ginlindzey@lindzey.us