Much of what we focus on here in our group is our mental health – it is a major topic. A big aspect of protecting our mental health on a daily basis is dealing effectively with “concerned” parents.
In one situation happening this week with one of our PLC members, a CI teacher whose kids not surprisingly prefer stories to worksheets received an email from a parent who fears that her child will not be ready for the challenges of level 2 (i.e. grammar).
Below is the response that this teacher crafted just this morning to this parent. You will see that some of it is taken from a post here about a week ago in which a teacher needed to justify using CI with another “concerned” (means ‘I-want-my-little-memorizing-darling-to-not-feel-so-stressed-about-your-requests-that-he-act-like-a-human-being-and-not-a-robot-in-your-class) parent:
Good afternoon [name of parent],
Traditionally, language classes consist of learning certain vocabulary words, grammar points, conjugating verbs, memorizing dialogues, worksheets for homework and classwork, quizzes and unit tests.Then the students are given assessments that basically test what they’ve memorized.
However, in the online setting, memorization and all the things mentioned in the first paragraph above just don’t work. Again, the new online setting is forcing us to teach more in alignment with the research than we have in the past.
The change is to a more participatory, reciprocal, back and forth experience of the language where the teacher and students communicate in the target language, with the students doing large amounts of rigorous listening in level 1 and then begin to speak (amazingly!) from level 2 onwards. This is in alignment with the recommendations of the national parent organization for language educators, The American Council of Teachers of Foreign Languages – ACTFL. The national standard is communication.
Therefore, I teach for communication (the Standard) and community building (a necessary ingredient) so that each child can actually learn the language. I do not put a premium in my classroom on the best memorizers., but on those who are willing to try to communicate in meaningful ways with me in the classroom. If I didn’t do that, I would not be doing my job as described by my national parent organization.
Rule #1 in my class is to listen with the intent to understand. Therefore, I constantly assess [your child] by his engagement, meaning his observable, non-verbal or verbal responses.
[Your child] has been earning his grade in class by showing his engagement and understanding. Again, what I look for from my students in class is not success on a test or worksheet (we as adults learned our first language without being tested and without doing homework). [Your child] must interact with me via yes/no signals, doing the gestures, facial expressions – just like people do when communicating in any language.
I understand your concern about [your child] being unprepared for the test. I am confident that once he sees the format of the test, he will also be confident in his ability to be successful. Because of the test, however, and since my colleagues still teach using memorization, etc. I will continue to teach primarily using the model that the current New York testing model requires.
Sincerely, etc. etc.