Let’s try Panel 8:
Seek ways to include meaningful culture content in every lesson and
every unit.
It is not clear what language they mean for the Georgia teachers to use here, L1 or L2. If they are asking teachers to teach about the target culture in the target language to children, that ain’t gonna work. This is impossible to actually do in a real classroom. Maybe at the upper levels with good storytelling skills and good L2 discipline. They probably mean L1.
There is a subtitle on panel 8 that shows some kids surfing the internet. It says “web searches on target language cultures”. Great. Take a class of 30 kids, put them on computers, have them find texts online, many written in L2, and have them process all of that successfully, with good discipline. Again, not in the real world of real classrooms is this possible.
And they said to to include culture content in every lesson we teach. Like, we have to remember to teach some culture in each class to be effective language teachers. Be real! I am of the opinion that discussions about culture naturally emerge from good CI – they emerge in classes, and are not imposed on classes. There is a difference. Blaine has done a wonderful job of integrating culture into his novels.
It’s like jazz, cultural themes emerge into the class from the content of the class, and cannot be legislated or imposed on the kids. We don’t force education on our kids. The era of lesson plans and forced learning is over, really, at least for us in our field. My story script is my lesson plan, and my students and their imaginations provide the content for my lesson.
If my love of Baudelaire muscles its way into a lesson because the expression penche vers la terre/leans toward the ground comes up in a story in talking about a tree and that reminds me of Charles’ poem, Enivrez-vous/Get Drunk, then I do bring it in, because it fits right then.
But I don’t ruin the enjoyment of my work with “now we do this and then we do that and after that we do that and then we fit in this culture capsule and then we turn to page 43 and then we have a stupid test on stuff that the kids don’t really know which makes the majority of them hate the language and then we tell their parents that their kids don’t do their homework and we attach their grades and their success and their lives to whether they did some inane project at home or not which gives us an excuse to not be held accountable for what we are not doing in our classrooms and it is just a big sham and a tricking of kids and parents and an entire nation with almost no CI ever and when are we going to start really sharing the language for real and generating real CI for our kids in our classrooms…”.
2 and 6. I won’t be teaching in GA if in fact these tenets are still applicable.