Classics
2022–2023
Jorge Wong-Medina
My capstone project seeks to address three issues: 1) the lack of ready-made curricula and assignments for TFs teaching Ancient Greek in the department; 2) the variable degrees of student engagement with our textbook, Reading Greek, outside of the classroom; 3) the lack of exercises targeting reading comprehension in Reading Greek. I have drafted reading comprehension questions for the first 13 sections of Reading Greek, which covers the first year of instruction. These reading comprehension questions written in Ancient Greek emphasize the vocabulary and grammar of each section, ensuring that the students get repetition with the grammar and vocabulary that they are practicing. These questions are archived as Canvas quizzes that will be cloned into subsequent course pages for Greek 1 and 2. They can be assigned before or after the reading is covered in class to diagnose student progress and what areas of the text and grammar may require more attention.
2021–2022
Sarah Eisen
I am developing ClassicsWrites, a resource for Classics concentrators and TFs working in writing-based classes, particularly the curriculum’s sophomore and junior tutorials. The resource goes beyond general techniques that one could learn from the Writing Center, and addresses how writing specifically works in the field of Classics. I cover topics including: What is a close reading of a text? What is a commentary and how do I use one? How do I cite an ancient author? This guide also explains how to write about artifacts, and includes tips on finding and using appropriate research resources for the field.
2020–2021
Julia Judge
My capstone project is an ongoing Canvas page that serves as a gateway to information, resources, teaching materials, and communication for graduate student TFs in the Classics department. Because Classics is an interdisciplinary field, our TFs teach a range of courses, and therefore require a lot of different tools and resources to teach effectively. The challenge has been to organize all these resources into a centralized, accessible place. The new Canvas page aims to be a one-stop-shop for all the information and resources that graduate student TFs need to meet any challenge they may face throughout their teaching careers at Harvard.
2019–2020
Suzanne Paszkowski
Pedagogy by Design is based on pedagogical methods like "backwards design" or "understanding by design," whereby you identify your goals and then plan accordingly. It also captures the notion that seemingly simple "design" elements--for example, when a course meets, how long it lasts, how it is organized--can have a big impact on course success. Combining these two ideas, I had the goal of making the Classics Teaching Colloquium more useful and I accomplished this by implementing some seemingly small design changes, but those changes ended up having a big impact on the G3s' experience of the colloquium this year.