The following is from group member Andrew Graff. It’s something that, if we can get some serious responses with substance to them by Friday, would help him greatly in a pretty big meeting coming up for him. It would be a shame to not use the combined brain power of this group to give answers that we could then file under “Administrator/Parent/Teacher Re-education” and use when we might need these answers ourselves. But we only have until Friday so let’s do our best with this one. Even if you choose to address just one of these points, that would be helpful:
Hi Ben:
I am asking for advice in advance of a meeting [as a department] with the 2nd-In-Command in the district about Curriculum Renewal and perhaps WL curriculum in general. I would like to solicit advice in any form, including:
Set A:
- 1) Articulating a Comprehensible Input approach when speaking with a higher-up administrator.
- 2) Dovetailing with the above: specific “talking points” to keep myself on-message.
- 3) What you [you fellow educators] would expect from such a meeting.
- 4) Scope and Sequence, German or French – especially in terms of “relevance for modern times”.
- 5) Writing Curricula which will be relevant in a decade.
- 6) Dare I suggest that we should invite a curriculum-writer into the district and/or how do I tell I group of people that designing everything around a textbook is not really writing curriculum?
- 7) How would you handle inquiries about Cyber-Classes? [Whether it is “Apex” or more “making your own Cyber curricula” with a platform like: https://anvill.uoregon.edu/anvill2/
- 8) Relevance of German and French. [We also have a GAPP Exchange, which helps there immensely.]
- 9) Research done re: starting Middle School foreign languages in 6th or 7th as opposed to starting in 8th grade.
This meeting will be complicated by:
Set B:
- 1) The fact that German and French had come up to the chopping block this year.
- 2) Our CRT wants Spanish to be added to the Core Curriculum and have everyone take it.
- 3) The Assistant Superintendent will likely ask about our “Action Plans” for increasing enrollment, as well as what we want to put in place now which will still be relevant to learners in 6-10 years.
- 4) Majority of the department is not CI-friendly let alone aware. My German colleague and I, as well as a Spanish colleague whom we brought to Laurie’s Washington workshop, will have very different answers to my point #3.
- 5) The CRT has no real clue what the meeting will be about. She mentions everything and nothing, depending on when you talk to her. And she is very hard to read, one does not know “was sie im Schilde führt”, “ce qu’elle vise”.