Gluttons for Punishment?

Just some personal thoughts…

So, I know that a number of kids in my school complain because the Spanish program is too easy. I can react and say, “Well, that’s just ’cause I’m doing my job well. I make it easy for them to learn.” But I’m in a private college prep school and many kids don’t respect a teacher who has an easy class. And my pride doesn’t like to hear these comments.

Yesterday, I asked them to list the teachers whose classes were their favorites and most interesting. I noticed, in their responses, that the favorite classes were the many of the classes that they listed as their most difficult classes. I think this is because these are accomplished teachers who can effectively help their students arise to the challenges they give them.

I feel like I want to make my class more challenging. But is it just because I want my class to be more challenging, so that the kids will respect my class? I don’t feel like that’s all. I feel like kids don’t engage or pay attention enough in class because they aren’t worried about their grades. I also feel like they feel bored when it’s not challenging enough.

Maybe this is all because I need to work on my teacher skills with circling, personalizing, etc. It may be that if I were a better teacher, they wouldn’t care about how challenging the class was. But right now, my intuition tells me that many students are unhappy with the challenge level.

On the other hand, I have some students still who are struggling even with the current level. I fear that by moving ahead too fast I will leave them in the dust.

I think in my school, 40% of the students may be “4%ers,” and this presents me with some issues in the curriculum I offer and my assessment.

I guess, as a second year teacher, I’m still really processing a lot of what I do, and what I believe about teaching.

Authentic Text Idea

So, last week I had the random idea of using a conversation from Facebook chat as a text for my class. I copied and pasted part of a conversation with a friend of mine in Argentina, and then printed it out for my students to read. Then we discussed it. My friend didn’t use much capitalization or punctuation and used the common text abbreviation for “que” which is “q.” The previous week we had talked about communicating via texts and chat, and how they may interact with non-standard Spanish. I could have “fixed” my friend’s Spanish but I thought it would be more authentic as it was, and be a good real example of how Spanish is used between friends.

The conversation is found below. My students seemed to like it, and it made for good conversation. I am now thinking of printing out a facebook photo with all the Spanish comments under it, as another text for a class. I’ll post again whenever I do that.

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Yo: Eli, estás?

Eliana: hola! como estas?

Yo: Bien, ¿y vos?

Eliana: bien, recien llego del trabajo. asi q venis a la Argentina?

Yo:¡Sí! En diciembre. La semana de la Navidad.

Eliana:q bueno, igual te vas justo para mi cumple, yo cumplo el 31

Yo: ¿En serio? ¡Qué lástima! Mi madre también cumple el 31 de diciembre.

Eliana: y donde vas a estar para esa fecha? tu familia ya debe estar acostumbrada a que viajes…

Yo:Sí, mi familia ya entiende. Será la tercera navidad que paso en otro país. Voy a estar en Bogotá, Colombia el 31.

Eliana: q bueno, ya conoces colombia?

Yo: No, ¡será la primera vez! ¿Vos conocés Colombia?

Eliana: no, lo mas lejos q fui de la argentina fue uruguay, jaja. estoy esperando las vacaciones para ir a brasil!!

Yo: ¿O sí? ¿Cuándo vas? ¿Con la familia?

Eliana: el 14 de febrero. voy con mi hermano, la esposa y mi novio, en auto….

Yo: En auto? ¿Y a dónde llegás?

Eliana: la verdad q mucho no se, maneja mi hermano. igual creo q vamos a pasar la noche en algun hotel por la ruta. es casi un dia entero de viaje. creo q vamos a florinopolis

Yo: Ahhh. ¡Qué bien! Yo no conozco Brasil.

Eliana: dicen q es muy lindo

Yo: Sí, seguro que es.

 

Frustration With Assessment

A few days ago, I wrote my FLED professor from the university about some of my frustrations with assessment, and I thought I’d share part of the letter here. It shows some of what’s been on my mind:

For me, language learning, more than anything else is a skill. As a foreign language teacher, people expect my students to learn this skills. And I believe that most of these skills are learned unconsciously when truly “acquired.” They can’t develop the skill by simply studying “how.” They have to get input in the target language, and then they will learn as their brain does the work.

So, my problem with assessment is that I don’t see that students actually have tons of control over their learning. Some of them are going to learn to produce at different times, rates, and levels of accuracy. If they all dive into the reading and engage in the classroom conversation, they are still going to learn at different rates. So how can I give them a skills based grade? If a kid is really trying his best, why should he receive a C or D or an F, just because he is a slower learner and probably just needs more exposure to comprehensible input?

I hear over and over, “I’m not a foreign language learning person.” “I can’t learn foreign languages.” And I just think it’s so not right. I believe that almost everyone can learn a foreign language, but some will not be as natural at it. Just like riding a bike or swimming. But with time they CAN learn.

Skills based assessment is great for me as a teacher to see how effective I am. It’s a good way for me to assess MY accomplishments. But I don’t like giving the students grades based on that. I think it could be okay for placement of students in levels, to try and keep the input at the appropriate levels. But how can I hold students responsible for their output?

So, then I could consider giving participation grades. I take the responsibility of the learning upon myself. They just have to be engaged and do what I ask them. But I don’t like this either for two reasons. #1, I don’t like to feel like I am manipulating or punishing my students into participation with their grade. I don’t know that that is good for the classroom environment or student/teacher relationship. I want genuine participation. And #2, then the grade isn’t reflective of their skill level. Then they’re getting A’s which would seem to indicate a certain level of proficiency, but then when they go on to the next Spanish class, they may not be ready.

I suppose I could also teach them lots of culture and grammar, and make my grades based on those things. I know that culture is part of the standards, and that research shows that it helps the language learning process. But if a kid knows the history of Spain forward and backwards but can’t hold a conversation, he’s missing the point. I guess, to be honest, I’m not convinced of culture as an outcome to be assessed. I believe culture enriches the classroom experience and aids the acquisition process, but if foreign language teacher jobs are put on the chopping block, I don’t think people are going to care about culture. I think they are going to want to see kids who can talk. As for grammar, I think that grammar is useful much like culture is. I think grammar can help make language comprehensible at times, and sometimes speed the acquisition process for some students. But I guess I see grammar and culture as the means to an end, and not so much ends in themselves. So why test those things? Why should these things be reflected in their grades?

I told you this summer (while at the Concordia Language Villages) how I liked the portfolio idea. I really do. And I just didn’t get my act together to implement that this year. And maybe that’s my answer. Portfolios. Students record and reflect on their experiences with language and culture. — Yep. portfolios.

Except that with portfolios… even with those, I still have the problem of the kids possibly finishing with grades that are not reflective of their skill set in the language.

Any thoughts, suggestions, or comments would be appreciated!

What difference does it make?

I’m doing some lesson planning tonight, and I’m kinda processing how similar my Spanish II and Spanish III classes have become. I use a lot of the same stories and a lot of the same discussion prompts and worksheets. And although I began the year using a lot of present tense structures with the Spanish II class, they wanted to work on more past tense  structures. And I’m working on past tense structures with my threes, so it was just easy to start doing some of the same vocabulary with each.

Maybe this wouldn’t work if I had had the Spanish III students when they were in II. And maybe it won’t work next year. But really it’s working well for me right now, I just don’t expect quite as much output from my Spanish II students as I do from my threes. And I talk a little slower and sometimes a lesson will take two days with them when it takes one day with the threes.

But then I was thinking about how Blaine Ray mentioned combining levels in one class, and how that had worked for some teachers.

I don’t want to do this just out of laziness or because it’s easy. But it really does seem to be working well. Thoughts?