Here is the letter that Danielle and I crafted, which you are of course welcome to copy and paste and rewrite if you are finding yourself in this kind of situation in your own teaching:
Good evening (name of parent),
Happy New Year! I appreciate that you communicated your concerns with me. I understand why you would be concerned.
Traditionally, language classes consist of learning certain vocabulary words, grammar points, conjugating verbs, memorizing dialogues, worksheets for homework and class work, quizzes, unit tests, etc….
However, those things are proven to be ineffective in the new online language educational setting. They don’t work online. They don’t align with the Communication Standard. They don’t align with the research. And to speak honestly, they have never worked in a regular physical classroom.
It’s unfortunate how this point lacks the proper recognition by others in my field in this school district. Why? Because it is a point of constant discussion in our field nationally, and has been for the past 20 years.
The new online teaching situation has forced a change to a more participatory, reciprocal, back and forth experience of the language for our students. This is in alignment with the requirements of the national parent organization for language educators, The American Council of Teachers of Foreign Languages – ACTFL. The Standard is Communication, not worksheets.
If you look in the ACTFL web pages and read especially about the Interpersonal Communication Skill of ACTFL’s Three Modes of Communication, you will see how in my instruction I align with those standards, whereas teaching verb conjugations and giving the kids countless worksheets, etc. doesn’t align with anything but the corporately-supported textbook and therefore should and is each day receiving more and more intense scrutiny by informed parents and administrators.
So, I teach your child for Communication (the Standard) via community-building (a necessary ingredient, if you think about it) so that children can actually enjoy learning the language. This is because language learning involves skills that cannot be memorized and tested on for mastery.
The child must hear and read and interact with me and his peers in the language, primarily in their first two years. ACTFL does not once in their extensive web pages mention the word “grammar”. Daily interaction in the language – whether it be in person or on Zoom – is what is needed.
I might add that the primary form of assessment in my classroom is via an ACTFL-aligned rubric, which I would be very happy to share with you. I can document all this and explain how it aligns with existing research. I would like to show you the research that supports using grammar and worksheets and heavy testing in foreign language education, but none exists.
Your son, of course, understands how he is being assessed in my classroom.
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 responses to simple yes/no questions in class, ergo no homework, which is a proven waste of time in a language class. (How many tests and how much homework did we have to take and do when we learned our first language?)
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, and every single American, as a result and not surprisingly, no matter what their ability to memorize verbs is and no matter what their I.Q, reached fluency in English, all at their own unstressed pace.)
Most of the students in my class are well on their ways to making the switch to this new, 21st c. way of teaching languages. I would welcome a conversation with you and your child on this topic – I know he can make the switch to a more discussion-oriented classroom if he just understands why he is being asked to behave in class according to the Communication Standard.
Since ACTFL requires interpersonal communication, I do not even want my students memorizing a bunch of words from a list, some examples of which are semantic sets, high frequency verb lists, thematic units, lists of words in chapters in textbooks, etc. When my students know that they are being asked to interact with me in class about what is being said, it helps them very much. Why?
Here are the rules in my classroom:
- Listen with the intent to understand.
- One person speaks and the others listen.
- Support the flow of conversation]
- Do your 50% (i.e. hold up your half of the conversation, not with words, which you cannot do yet, but with your eyes).
- Actors and artists – synchronize your actions with my words.
- Nothing on desks unless told otherwise (we don’t learn languages by writing them first. First, we have to listen and read A LOT).
Let’s be honest. These rules – which require reciprocal, back and forth communication are not easy for children who have been taught heavily with the memorization /textbook /homework model, which isolates kids. Worksheets, lots of high stakes testing based on memorization, don’t help children in learning a language. They may help in other subjects but not in languages. Few classroom-taught language students have ever become fluent in Spanish.
Our students won’t be asked to fill out worksheets and take tests later in life, but they will need to learn communication skills. ACTFL knows this and thus requires language teachers to teach for communication. Our students’ professional futures depend on it.
So (name of parent) this is why you aren’t seeing what you would expect in my class. The change is happening so fast right now and many teachers are just now opening up to it. What many parents and administrators now expect from their language teachers is simple communication. It’s interesting that Covid is behind all this, and that the old way of teaching languages lasted as long as it did.
In order to make the change less difficult for my students, I will continue to implement limited worksheets, targeted vocabulary, grammar-based tests and quizzes in order to make sure that my students are ready for the high school curriculum. Count on that and count on your son being ready for what the high school wants from him. I realize that change can’t happen overnight. But as a language professional I will slowly be moving away from those things in my own career.
I might add that teaching in this way allows me to keep my job, which these days is no small point.
Looking forward to your response,
Danielle
I should apologize for writing such a long letter, but I wanted to hammer this parent with proven research-based FACTS. I could have written – and have – written books on this topic. It’s time for worksheets to bite the dust.
I am glad to be involved with and pushing this needed change. The kids need it, and Danielle, who is so gifted at CI, shouldn’t have to be bullied by her colleagues into doing things that don’t really help her kids, but rather waste their time. I wrote an email to her:
Danielle,
When it is time (it is not yet time in many schools), you want to let your admins see this letter. Some parents may forward it onto your bosses. What will this do? It will force a kind of reckoning, a conflict, between our colleagues who still believe the “big lie” of the past century in WL education and the new corps of CI teachers who align with the research. I think it is time for CI teachers to stop kowtowing to people. It is time for us to stand up behind the research and the standards and speak our truth. It is time to make it clear to all that we are the ones who have been hired to teach our students and it is we who must teach according to the research, as any professional would be expected to do in their own fields. This will force your colleagues hands. YOU will be the change in that school. This has not been the case in the past. It wasn’t time. But the time for these kinds of conversations to happen has arrived. Just don’t let them dominate your school year. Always, focus on the kids. Go forth in confidence and faith in what you are doing. You happen to be on the right side of this work because you have the standards and research on your side. Want proof? Look into your kids’ eyes when you are teaching them. The proof is there.