Life was hectic after ACTFL. I flew home late and went back to work the next morning. There was little time to sit down and process what I had learned besides reviewing and reorganizing the 20 pages of notes I took on the way home.
But I have some reccuring thoughts that are a result of what I have learned.
1. A foreign language classroom should not be a quiet place
Since I started teaching a few years ago, classroom management has always been my biggest challenge. I want students to be quiet and attentive when I review activities, go over answers, call on students to share, and when I explain new vocabulary or grammar.
I heard a teacher say that "a quiet foreign language class has some problems." A true foreign language class should be a loud place because students should be speaking. Students might learn a little by correcting homework and warm-ups but they will learn so much more by negotiating meaning and attempting to communicate with their classmates. I should spend much more time listening to them than I do talking at them. Yes I can play "walking dictionary" if they circumlocute missing words...why not?
2. What are they going to remember after the class?
There were so many great quotes about teaching grammar:
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We are not training them to work in conjugation factories."
"We [teachers] are the survivors of grammar and the road is littered with dead bodies."
One thing that foreign language teachers hear constantly is "I took three years of Spanish in high school and I don't remember a thing." I am so tired of hearing that.
I think one thing we can do to prevent that is to teach students things that will serve them later in life. Teaching students to conjugate a verb is not going to help unless they take Spanish in college. Teaching students to have informal conversations on the street, ordering food, paying for things, arguing, flirting, negotiating, asking questions...these are all things that will be useful, serve them well, and be more memorable for them in the future.
I spend a lot of time talking with my students about why I learned Spanish. I started working in a seafood restaurant when I was 18. All the cooks and dishwashers in the back of the house were Mexican and spoke little English. If I needed anything from them, I had to learn to ask in a way they would understand and respect me. I tell this story every year. My students don't believe me. They say things like "well I am not going to work in a Mexican restaurant." Finally after three years of this, two students came to me halfway through the year to tell me that they work in a restaurant and they are the only ones that can talk to the dishwasher because he speaks Spanish. Validation.
3. ACTFL has culture standards and we all need to be incorporating culture into everything we do.
Often I procrastinate teaching culture because I feel incompetent. I have traveled to Spanish speaking countries and I lived in Mexico for two short programs but I constantly feel doubt about what I have to offer when I teach about those cultures. I need to remember that any first hand experience I have in Spanish speaking countries or with Spanish speaking people is something that most of my students have never had. Anything I have to offer, even if it is one small fact, is important to teach them and may help them some day.
4. Remember who our audience is.
I didn't hear this from anyone but this always comes up for me and I found myself thinking about a lot during the conference. Spanish is the most important subject to me. I will argue that it is more important than higher level math and science in a lot of ways. But students have a lot going on and Spanish is often times last on their priority list. As much as I don't want to have to be an entertainer and I want students to come to class already interested in Spanish, it is probably not going to happen. I need to find ways to make Spanish interesting and relevant for students. This means that everything I do will constantly change to meet the evolving interests of our students. This is exhausting and daunting. It means that I will never be one of those teachers that shows up in the morning and pulls out a lesson plan from last year five minutes before class starts. It means research, hard work, and creativity. I think the challenge will keep me motivated.
All of this means that I am slowly abandoning a lot of my preconceived notions about teaching a foreign language. I was the strange student that loved memorizing vocabulary on my own time and I liked filling out verb charts and playing conjugation games. I represent 2% of our current students. Yes I will always teach grammar but I am going to approach it in a new way. We need to spend a lot of time in class developing vocabulary - both from my list and generated by students. I need to spend a lot less time "teaching" and a lot more time coaching. My students need to talk - a lot. I also need to design my class in a way that students can feel successful while stepping out of their comfort zones.
I have a lot of work to do.
