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After 5 years of teaching students their way through Athenaze in an online environment, I’ve become very familiar with the book and its main narrative, and I’ve taught a lot of people all the way through both volumes now.

In 2025, as part of a number of other changes going on around SeumasU (which I’ll talk about in some other posts and in a video sometime coming up), I’m going to be streamlining the courses that currently comprise Greek 101-106.

The Old Way

Up to now, I have taught Athenaze over six terms of 10-weeks a-piece, for 60 hours of instruction. 101 gets through 6 chapters, and then each term goes through 5 more chapters. In the final 106 class, I take students up to ch 28 of the regular English edition, and then through a few sections from late in the Italian edition. The whole sequence takes 1.5 years to complete. I think this has been good, it does require students to put in some hours on their own to really succeed, but I’ve been pleased with the results given the constraints of the online format.

The New Way

In 2025, I’m going to streamline this sequence down to four terms (101-104), and increase the weekly session to 90 minutes. That does make the course move at a slightly more intense speed. Each term will cover half a volume. And I put it that way, because 101 will do chapters 1-8 and 102 will cover chapters 9-16. This aligns with the video support materials that I have available on Teachable (which can be purchased independently). 103 and 104 split up the contents of volume 2, along with the additional three sections from the Italian that I teach at the end.

Importantly, for each ‘quarter’, I have taken the main narrative text and divided it up across the ten weeks, so that I don’t have the current problem of having readings that are longer/shorter. The overall “words covered” stays more consistent each term, though you do cover more words in the second half.

This also means that, at the faster pace, you can cover all of Athenaze I and II in a single calendar year.

What this means if you’re an existing student

If you’re a current student in the following classes, I’ll be emailing all of you to offer some modifications (either a short bridging course, or delayed start) for adjusting to the new sequence.

What this means if you’re a prospective student

It means 2025 is a great year to take up Greek with me! I’ll be spending some of the Australian summer reviewing my past classes, and seeking to optimise and streamline my teaching for each part of this course, to hit the right bases at the right time, address the pressure points, and keep the class going in Greek. It means you can do the whole intro sequence in a single calendar year. And, even though the instructional time remains the same (60 hours throughout), it’s going to free me up a little to be working on some other great projects that I’ll be telling you about shortly!