Hi Ben,
I just read the updates and other posts about Tina’s situation. I’m really glad that the ending is more positive than the beginning, even though I think the struggle is far from over.
As a bit of counterpoint, I would like to share some good news from my neck of the woods.
In anticipation of ultimately retiring some day, I have been working for years to find a way to ensure the continuation of the German program at my school. Previous experiences in my district have shown me that they are willing to shut down a program when the teacher retires. During my 20+ years in the district I have seen two part-time German programs close, as well as a Latin program and a couple of French programs. (I won’t go into the politics behind some of those closings; not all were due to retirements.) My district is promoting Spanish and Vietnamese because there are significant numbers of heritage speakers for both of those languages in the district. Other languages have suffered as a result.
So, even though my program is strong and growing (we now have six sections of German), I have worked to make certain it doesn’t simply end with my retirement. To accomplish that, I identified a potential successor in the district, a native Austrian who teaches Spanish but also has German on her credential. Beginning about seven years ago, I began working toward getting her onto our campus. That bore fruit two years ago. Her teaching has been pretty traditional/„communicative approach“ for Spanish, so I knew that I needed to help her see the difference that TCI can make. I did not want, however, to come across as authoritarian or do something to alienate her, so I have just shown in my own classes what I do and shared something whenever we had collaboration days.
This year „Frau O“ took the sixth German section, a first-year section, and I have been enjoying working with her. She knows that my approach is completely different and that she will be feeding into my program, so she committed to making adjustments in her teaching. Of course, I did not and do not expect her to simply jettison everything she has done, but I am very encouraged by her openness to trying new things. A few weeks ago she went to a workshop presented by Jason Fritze and came back very excited. Then she borrowed my Sabine und Michael books by Michael Miller, but I think they overwhelmed her. Next I loaned her Anne Matava’s scripts, but she wasn’t really certain what to do with them.
So, Friday after school (yes, we both stayed late on a Friday), she and I sat down to work on a script. I talked about the structures, circling, student engagement, student jobs, and a number of other aspects of teaching. Frau O was very open to all of this. In about 45 minutes we put together the following story:
plays (a musical instrument – review vocabulary)
rides (an animal – newly introduced vocabulary)
removes (cuts off – new vocabulary)
There is a boy. His name is Steven. Steven plays guitar, but there is a problem. Steven has a third hand and does not play the guitar very well. Steven wants to remove the third hand.
Steven goes to CHOC [Children’s Hospital of Orange County] and asks, „Will you remove my third hand?“ CHOC does not remove Steven’s third hand because CHOC removes only third feet. Steven is sad and goes away.
Next, Steven goes to Memorial Hospital and asks, „Will you remove my third hand?“ Memorial does not remove Steven’s third hand because Memorial removes only second noses. Steven is sad and goes away.
Then, Steven goes to Guitar Center and asks, „Will you remove my third hand?“ Guitar Center does not remove Steven’s third hand but gives Steven a guitar for three hands. Steven is happy and plays the guitar for three hands very well. He is a star and has many fans. He is happy to have a third hand.
Then we talked about student jobs, so Frau O will introduce the following jobs:
– Story writer (2 students)
– Story artist (2 students)
– Professor (1 student)
– „Who?“ person (1 student)
– „Where?“ person (1 student)
— Note: „who? (were?)“ and „where? (wo?)“ are extremely easy to confuse, and I have struggled with this for years. Seeing Sabrina use them in Agen last summer gave me the key to helping students distinguish them. I am using the question-word jobs for the first time this year, and it is very helpful.
– Rejoinder prompters (3-5 students; they have „cue cards“ that they hold up to prompt the class to give rejoinders)
I also encouraged my colleague to explain to the students beforehand what is going on, why, and what the „rules of the game“ are. She took lots of notes.
While we were working, Frau O made the following comments:
– „This is so much fun“
– „I’m really looking forward to doing this next week“
– „This is so much better than the textbook“
– „I should just start doing this in my Spanish classes as well“
– „The district ought to just get rid of the textbook and have everybody teach this way“
– „I think my students are really going to like this“
We also worked out the following multi-day lesson plan:
Day 1: introduce the words; establish meaning; create the story
Day 2: review/re-tell the story using the drawings from the story artists
Day 3: read the story in German (Frau O writes up the story from the story writers’ notes); discuss any grammar points necessary
Day 4: using sentence frames and guide words on the board, students write their own version of the story
I am not so foolish as to think this will go forward in a straight line, just because that is the nature of acquisition. There will be, as we all have experienced, steps forward and steps backward, but I am extremely encouraged by what I see happening and have greater hope for a strong German program continuing than I did a couple of years ago. In addition, I think what the two of us are doing can be used as a model of both collaboration and transition for my district. I am getting ideas from my colleague, and she is getting ideas from me, and even though we started from very different places, we are building a program that will benefit all of our students.
Thanks for reading.
Robert