I got an email from a colleague today. It describes the game of Gotcha! that some teachers put on their kids, as in, “Your work is to memorize lists and verbs – you must do your work at home! – and I’m not really going to speak the language in class or do any meaningful (i.e. in-depth and constant) reading, but I’m still going to hold you responsible for decoding listening and reading texts on the final. Gotcha!
Hey Ben,
It is now the second semester, in a row, that I have been asked to tutor some HS kids who are approaching finals and, since they are not cut-out for Spanish, just want to pass the class so they don’t ever have to take it again.
And their parents buy it! They say to me: “I know that she/he just isn’t a language person, but could you just teach them to study better? He must not be studying well enough. School comes so easy to him, that I don’t think he has developed good study habits.”
The worst part of this is that he knows TONS of vocabulary and can conjugate with the best…so he has been studying. He IS doing the work! He cannot read and comprehend the passages, though…and he feels stupid when he gets to a word that he does not know. ARGHHH! It is so frustrating to watch.
I asked, “What did you do in class today?” He replied, ‘Well, we started with activity 13, no 12, then we did 13, watched a video, and then we did activity 14.” In a 90 minute class. I would kill for that much time.
SOOOOOO, he is doing all of the work at home … and being tested on it at school … and the only comprehensible input he receives is from the video. Despicable. All the kids in the district start with Spanish in kindergarten and now there are 12 TOTAL students in Spanish IV and V.
Anyway, I have been tossing and turning thinking about how this kid will quit Spanish and might not ever take it again. After working so hard … on his own.
Thanks for listening … I just wanted to vent so the tossing and turning might cease.
Then this follow-up email:
I have already talked to the Mom. She is a good friend of mine. She understands, now … but that doesn´t stop the tossing and turning thinking about activities 12, 13, and 14.
It is simply insane.
Again, thanks for listening … How can they be allowed to make kids learn all that vocabulary on their own time … and then give tests that are survivable, at best … if you only did your homework. UGH!
[ed. note: This kind of language instruction is currently being and will continue to be further exposed. There will be a big stink. A really be stink. Count on it.]