Mila has a question for the group:
Hi Ben,
This is Mila, we’ve been emailing since I started a new job in January, replacing a teacher that left. I’d love to hear your advice on this, as an experienced foreign language teacher.
I’ve been adding CI to my French 1, 2 and 3 classes and it’s been going great. I haven’t added it to my French for Germans classes for 2 reasons: 1) the classes last 34 min, too hard to cut them in half to add CI on the 2nd half. 2) the parents of the kids seem too worried that they won’t have a good level of French when they go back to Germany, where French is required. If I added CI, I thought some of them would be mad that “they are not learning anything”. So, I’ve been using the book the previous teacher was using, but I’m following the students pace and not rushing through the book just to get x amount of lessons done. I’m allowing them to use what they are learning in class by helping them with speaking (they are actually quite fluent).
Sure enough, today I received the email below from a German parent (whom the child has already described as strict and who teaches him French at home):
“…happy to have you as our son’s new French teacher.
We would like to contact you today because we are in need of your help regarding the status in French class:
The book “bleu 1″ consists of 7 units, subdivided in 28 lessons. We understand the book is good for two school years at most. Per the contents, this also roughly matches with the subjects of two comparable school years in Germany.
Looking at our case, we have to say however that Nicolas has been having French classes for one and a half years now – and some of his fellow class-mates even two and a half years – but the progress currently stands at lesson 13 out of 28 while it should be at calculated 21 at least. In addition, the progression since Dec. 15th, 2017 was only 6 pages (195-201) within the same lesson…
We become more and more nervous every day. Time is running out and the gap between the pace back at the Bavarian schools and SFCS is getting larger every day.
You may know from the time you spent in Europe that our kids do not just learn French for vacation or to order a drink at a bar, but as a 100% prerequisite for any (!) graduation at any type of school (besides Mittelschule but which is not relevant here). A re-integration of our kids will be literally impossible without mastering a second foreign language. And we have not even half a year left (referring to grade 8)…
We need a plan how to catch up so the 28 can at least nearly be achieved by the end of the school year. If more than 3 classes per week may be required for that, please talk to Mr. Thompson.
At the beginning of the school year, he tried to calm us down when we asked him to turn time from other less important subjects into additional French classes, but we now don’t see things working out at all.
We trust that you want to successfully accomplish the goals of the school-year as well as we do and that you can help to resolve the issues rather sooner than later, but we can’t wait any longer to speak up and mention our huge concerns.
Also don’t we know where all the tutoring and time should then come from to catch things up later and later…
As a first step, it would from our perspective be very helpful to assign homework to the students to accelerate the needed progress and also to give them more opportunities for practice.
It is all not your fault, but please let us know how the recovery plan looks like and how we can support it, thank you very, very much.
We could for example lend you the Bavarian books for reference if this helps…”
He’s worried that we’re not getting a certain number of lessons done, as if that meant that they are not learning …
I kind of know what I want to say to them but if you have any practical advice it would be appreciated.
Thanks!
Mila