Okay. Saturday morning now, and I have my first cup of coffee. Here’s the story a little more filled out. A couple of changes took place in our district this past year. You should know that Gwinnett County Public Schools is the largest school system in GA and compares size wise with the LA School District in CA and Chicago in Illinois.
Two years ago, the district won the Broad Prize Award (www.broadprize.org/) for being the best urban school system in the US. It really is, by all comparisons, a wonderful school district. We have over 167,000 students and are the largest employer in the state.
Last spring, our long time Director of Foreign Languages announced that he was leaving to take another position. This was crushing to everyone as he was incredibly supportive of our various languages and efforts, including setting things up before he left so that I could teach a CI workshop for Latin teachers in the District. He arranged money for all the participants to receive a stipend for going, and gave us whatever we needed for the four day workshop.
At the end of the school year, I was asked to be the Dept. Chair of the FL department of my school. I refused multiple times, and then finally used their insistence for some leverage. I would become the Chair if they hired a new Latin teacher to join the two of us already on staff and allow me to decide who to hire. They agreed without blinking, so I brought on board another teacher who does CI.
There are now 3 of us teaching Latin via CI in a department of 13 teachers. There are two Spanish teachers and a German teacher also on board with CI, so at the beginning of the school year, I offered that as a department we devote our meeting time each month to show and tell work on CI. The five of us who do CI will each present twice during the year so that the whole department is sharing CI work and demonstrating how to do it. They all agreed. I was thrilled.
This past week, I attended the first district meeting for FL Dept. Chairs with out new Director of FL. He’s a guy most of us knew as he was the State Director of FL and left to take this post which he describes as his “dream job.” He is charismatic, dynamic and really a good guy to have on board. During our meeting, he made it clear that he wanted the ACTFL 90% in target language rule to be our district goal that EVERY teacher was working on. He then gets up and with a power point slide says: There is only one way to make that happen. He clicks on the screen and in huge letters it says:
COMPREHENSIBLE INPUT
There ensues conversation about what CI is and why it’s important. After the meeting, I told him that I was currently teaching a graduate course at UGA on CI in particular. Blew his mind. Now he wants me to be on the agenda for our next meeting to share work on CI from the course.
Folks, when the stars align, it’s just amazing. Last night, Latin teachers from around the metro Atlanta area gathered at a restaurant for Cena Latina, Latin Dinner. It’s what we do to give ourselves Latin speaking time. As I’ve said before, we have to create immersive experiences for ourselves since there is no single place one can go to do that. There were about 20 folks who showed up from across 4 metro counties. It’s the largest group that we’ve ever had at a Cena, and all the talk was about how teachers are using CI in their classrooms, many for the first time.
It’s very exciting.
Bob