Jane’s post on World Languages did a great job of capturing the answers to the questions asked for this forum. Rather than simply recreating the wheel, I’m going to try to expand a little bit by researching some other areas and reflecting on some of the reading from our course on FL.
On the website Juggle.com, I found a debate topic entitled Should foreign language courses be added to the U.S. elementary curriculum? While 81% of the responders thought that young children should be exposed to foreign languages, I thought some of the comments of the 19% who disagreed were typical of the communities where I teach Spanish (I think they’re typical of a lot of American communities!)
-
“I do not agree with a foreign language being added to the U.S. Elementary curriculum. This is America and our language is English. People who come here should have to learn our language, not us their language. Not only will it cost Americans more money but I feel it will make others not as apt to try to learn our language. If we keep changing America to meet all the needs of those who come here we will cease to be America. I am totally against this.” (EAntDirty)
-
“I do not think that foreign languages should be included in American elementary schools because it would take the focus away from more important lessons, like reading and math. While knowing a foreign language is useful, American schools are doing so poorly in educating our children in basic skills that it makes no sense to add extra materials that will take time, money, and energy away from teaching the basics. If our children can’t read English, or do simple math, it makes no sense to have them trying to learn another language. By focusing on the basics in elementary school, we will equip students to learn whatever they want, including a foreign language, later in life.” (P4cBran)
Both comments summarize the logic behind the very politically-charged decisions made by school boards NOT to fund early language programs for their students. On the one hand is the big “melting pot” metaphor that is a vestige from the early days of massive immigration to this country: we are Americans and we are supposed to speak English. If foreigners want to come to America, then make them speak OUR language. EAntDirty expresses his/her belief as if speaking English IS the essence of being American. It’s a cultural symbol of patriotism equivalent to that of the American flag. S/he believes that if our nation doesn’t speak English, we will cease to be Americans. And P4cBran expresses the other American attitude that I hear so frequently at budget time and even from guidance counselors and special ed teachers in my schools: foreign language is some kind of luxury course and schools shouldn’t waste resources on teaching it in the early grades.
I’m not going to counter these arguments, which thankfully, represent the minority sentiment for the Juggle.com readers. The reality for rural Maine schools, however, is that these beliefs are not in the minority. As a result, my high school students arrive as freshmen without knowing Spanish, Hispanic culture, or even the language of talking about language. I’m supposed to teach them how to communicate, ask questions, understand cultural phenomena, at the high school level. Imagine trying to teach high school Algebra I to a class of freshmen who didn’t know fractions, decimals, mathematical operations, etc.! The teacher would have to squeeze a lot of preliminary content into her 2 or 3 eighty minute blocks per week, wouldn’t she? Students might be confused if the teacher tried to teach that multiplication is a polynomial equation.
This is the reality I face as a Spanish teacher. I teach rural Maine high school students with low reading levels, poor study and organizational skills, major gaps in their cultural knowledge, and with little background in grammar, the language used to talk about how words are working in a communication process. For me, I’m not struggling with what some national language committee or even what the state of Maine says my kids should be proficient in. I’m struggling with what parts of the 5 C’s (Communication, Cultures, Connections, Comparisons, Communities) will help my students be better students, be motivated learners, learn to enjoy learning, learn to respect themselves and others, develop higher level thinking skills, etc. I know that they’ve been exposed to a lot more opportunities to become proficient learners in K-8, but for some reason the lines between all those “dots” just never seems to connect.
I’ve been spending more time garnering ideas from special education and from English-language learner theories lately. Over the past decade I’ve become fascinated with multiple intelligence (MI) theories of learning. As a result, I’m making the effort to adapt and plan lessons for students with various learning strengths. It’s not always easy to adapt MI assignments to FL because students can barely communicate in Spanish. I’ve tried to integrate a lot of Body Kinesthetic activities into my classes for formative lessons especially. I create team sports games that require students to answer questions together correctly to determine how many “bats”, “kicks”, “tosses”, “bowls”, or “shoots” they get. As a result, students have learned to build their teams with multi-ability peers. The “jocks” who frequently struggle with book learning activities realize that they need the “geeks” to answer (or help them) the questions because, without them, they won’t have as many turns to make their points. The “geeks” know that they need the “jocks” on their teams so that all of their answers don’t go to waste when it comes time to scoring. Winning teams get bonus points that they can use on assignments or assessments. I use paper foreign currency that they have to calculate exchange rate on to determine how many points it’s worth. I hope that by using realia it will help students connect the dots between education and income. For most of my students, they have already realized the maxim “the rich get richer” pretty quickly this year because those students who have the most abilities (riches) do in fact earn the most foreign currency.
As envisioned by Heidi Hayes Jacobs, the 21st century school needs to emphasize global knowledge and foreign languages. This flies in the face of every school board and guidance counselor in northeastern Maine. In her chapter, “A Classroom as Wide as the World”, Vivien Stewart declares, “education in the United States must prepare students for a world where the opportunities for success require the ability to compete and cooperate on a global scale.” (OK, I’m using my Android Kindle app this semester and have no idea how to find which page I’m on to cite this quotation?). Stewart describes how 5 global trends are transforming the 21st century curriculum These trends are related to “economics, science and technology, demographics, security and citizenship, and education.” For kids (and school boards) in rural Maine, these ideas seem so far removed from anything to do with their present day situation that there is a sleepy lack of interest in catching hold of any wave into the future. Ironically, a little more than an hour to the east of Millinocket, in Woodland, another paper mill community has stepped first hand into their future when Chinese and Taiwanese investors bought and rescued from bankruptcy the Woodland Pulp and Paper mill.
The Millinocket school system is currently investing its resources into opening their high school to serve Chinese students from abroad. With its recent Department of Homeland Security approval to receive Chinese students on a one year student VISA, Stearns High School is setting itself up to become the first public high school in the USA to be allowed to charge tuition to foreign students.
Mack, S.K. (2010, December 21). New woodland mill owners investing in mill’s future. Bangor Daily News, Retrieved from http://new.bangordailynews.com/2010/12/21/ business/new-woodland-mill-owners-investing-in-facilityrsquos-future/
Sambides, Jr., N. (2011, March 6). Feds approve chinese exchange students at stearns high school in milinocket. Bangor Daily News, Retrieved from http://new.bangordailynews.com/2011/03/06/news/feds-approve-chinese-exchange-students-at-stearns-high-school-in-millinocket/
Should foreign language courses be added to the u.s. elementary curriculum? (2010). [Online Forum Comment]. Retrieved from http://debates.juggle.com/ should-foreign-language-courses-be-added-to-the-u-s-elementary-curriculum
Standards for foreign language learning: preparing for the 21st century. (2008). American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, Retrieved from http://www.actfl.org/files/public/StandardsforFLLexecsumm_rev.pdf
Deannahouse's Blog 
Leave a Reply