Help!

We here in Carbondale (SIUC) are trying to get a certification program
going in Latin. We've just encountered what could be a fatal
Catch-22: you can't certify Latin teachers without already having
Latin teachers. That is, we need to find someone to place our
students with, and these teachers need to be "highly qualified" (which
apparently means they need a BA in Classics or Latin) and they need to
be teaching Latin full time (otherwise our students might have to
student-teach for more than a semester). There are some people
teaching Latin locally, with whom we'd been assuming we could place
our students; but none we know of are both full-time (or even close to
it) and "highly qualified".

Here's how you might be able to help . . .

1. Do you know of any teachers in Southern Illinois who may be
"highly qualified" and full-time, or at least close to it? Define
Southern Illinois as I-64 and south, perhaps, including the St. Louis
area (at least the Illinois side--I'm doubting we'd be allowed to
place students out of state, though I'm looking into this).

2. Do you have any experience placing students with part-time
teachers? Given the paucity of full-time Latin teachers, surely
someone has come up with a work-around for this before, if there is one.

3. Finally, alas, do you have suggestions for programs to which I
ought to send a current undergraduate student who is interested in
becoming a Latin teacher, assuming we fail to solve this problem?

That may not exhaust how you could help. As is shown by my ignorance,
before today, of the details concerning student teaching requirements,
I'm no expert in how high school Latin teaching works. So any advice
is welcome. I do know that we need more teachers, that we are trying
to help out in our way--and that we do have a couple of good kids
who've expressed interest in becoming teachers, but are much less
likely to do so if they can't do it here.

Thanks for any help you can provide. Reply off-list if you'd like:
mjohnson@...
.

Dave Johnson
Associate Professor
SIUC