My son Landen, now in high school, had a middle school French teacher a few years ago who taught the old way. He quit the class at the semester that year, telling me he just didn’t enjoy the class and he didn’t feel as if he was learning anything. I didn’t object. Just yesterday out of the blue Landen told me the following story that his teacher had once shared with the class. I wouldn’t have shared this with a class, but apparently she did. It’s kind of a sad story:
This teacher loved French in high school and majored in it in college. She thought she was really good at it. But when she arrived in France on the junior year abroad program of her university, in Paris, she quickly realized that she couldn’t understand anything that the French people around her were saying and so one night she just sat down and cried. [ed. note: that’s the part I wouldn’t have told my class. Oh well, at least she was being honest.]