What about...

This afternoon, while students readied themselves for a cooking show segment they would narrate for classmates beginning on Monday, I realized what progress they have made thus far in Spanish 3. Tenth graders who could create formal commands, juggle cooking and culinary vocabulary worthy of that of any chef, and dub a Paula Dean or Rachel Ray recipe from start to finish--the year certainly didn't start that way, and their hard work in collaboration with classmates and me has increased their confidence and intuition. Complete with a list of ingredients, measurements and deft manipulation of commands and subjunctive, I am confident that their narrated recipes would yield edible, if not delicious, dishes.

What I have learned in the process of transitioning from higher education to secondary students is that the latter abound with optimism and love of discovery. In higher education, cynicism and 'fulfillment of requirements' begins to set in, and a pursuit of money--or at least other disciplines better-disposed to "utility"--rears its ugly head. High school students think it's fun to create, play and work together in creative, playful ways. Isn't it best to work together to have a good time? to exchange ideas? to make inroads in your understanding of the world in all fields of human inquiry? Sometimes all of this means giving over some amount of charge to the students themselves. After all, if you don't ask them what they need or want, how can you expect to mete out goals of the course?

Fostering student choice cannot happen at the expense of indispensable methodologies or banks of knowledge. For the specter of these anarchic possibilities, choice can be controversial, of course. What teacher, after all, doesn't consider at least to some degree him or herself the proverbial master of the house once the door closes and the period/block/class begins? We're all interested in ensuring that students acquire the necessary tools to express their ideas in a meaningful, respected and respectful way according to the standards of each teacher's discipline. The happy medium is for students to inform our choice of activity by which we ask them to show us proficient language skills. Memorizing scripted exchanges hasn't been accepted methodology for over thirty years. Likewise, pure expression over precision is so very 1995. It seems the pendulum has swung away from purely communicative and back toward a balance: teach grammar--not in isolation, clearly--with a grounding in real-world (or as close to real world as possible) experience.

At my school, we use a video-based curriculum which is very good at grounding vocabulary and prefiguring grammar. Nevertheless, a soap opera-style curriculum has its limits, and students even at this age, sense its lack of authenticity. They cook, eat, download, upload, record and delete with abandon. A language curriculum without these hallmark vocabulary words is "dead to them." Texting is central to their existence--for real (said in a distinctly Ke$ha accent). I am proud to report that some of my colleagues have created an entire tech-centered unit around an out-of-date unit whose most advanced tech-centered vocabulary fails to even mention the 'fax machine'.

If you're a language teacher, you love your students (or "kids," as so many of us call them), you're reading this because you want innovative ways to teach a living language within the confines of the classroom walls. It's not like teaching the disciplines of science or math or even history or English. We are more like art educators than any other colleague--ours has real-world implications: As foreign language educators, we address the question: "can you really (really?) talk and connect with those around you in a way that is culturally relevant, appropriate and meaningful to your interlocutors? Sculptors, painters, ceramists and illustrators do much the same. Believe me, I learned much from educators in other fields, but rare are those those teachers outside of foreign language or the arts, teachers who understand the many-faceted moments that construct our existence across human experience. We are the new Liberals and anarchists of education. We language teachers disobey the borders between disciplines: we teach Mayan math in Spanish; metaphysics and philosophy in French; war- and love-making in Latin; art and religion in Chinese.

Is there anything we cannot do or will not try? I challenge us all to reach outside of our comfort zone: talk to your history colleagues, art, religion, philosophy, literature, politics, psychology, mathematics, physics, chemistry, calculus, biology--we all believe these are areas worthy of human discovery and pursuit. Why can we not complement each other's teaching and become more holistic and inclusive in our fostering of knowledge? Linguists of the world..."UNITE," por favor, s'il vous plaît, qingwen, gratias tibi ago.

Come on now, parent/s...admit it

This start of new year sees yet another rant. My apologies in advance. Fiscal cliffs, debt ceilings, looming nominations hearings and the like pale when compared to the crisis caused by parents who abdicate the responsibility of teaching their own offspring. Sorry--I said it. And it embarrasses a lot of parents because they know it's true of them. Sometimes when others see irresponsibility and name it in a rare moment of honesty and directness, said party reacts angrily and tosses the blame on another. When parents complain that "teachers aren't doing their job in school" and use as evidence the "two hours of homework their fourth-grader" has received I shudder with anger. I even sweat and flush a bit. You want to know why? Sadly, and in probably too many cases, teachers are assigning homework in this amount because parents haven't done their job at home before the child hits school age. Too many admittedly time-strapped parents are abdicating their responsibility to educate their own children in the basics: reading, writing, arithmetic, and the appreciation of the habits of the mind. As anecdotal proof that this is happening, I know a too many parents who delay teaching the ABCs until far too late. Parents would prefer to crack a beer and watch a hockey game--hey, who wouldn't??--while their kids sit by, heads buried in personal gaming devices, smart phones (texting and viewing God only knows what), or even watch, banished to their rooms by daddy's sports game, the high-definition TV complete with a tricked-out cable package and--likely as not--an X-Box to boot? Just because I don't have kids doesn't mean I don't know what goes on in homes with kids--hell, I teach kids for a living, and they tell their teachers a lot. Believe me. I know. ...and your secret's not safe with me. I'm going to shout it from the rooftops.

What would it cost parents, and what satisfaction might they actually derive from it (if the offspring were conceived for the "right" reasons in the first place) the first time their child correctly makes change with them, or strings together a sentence from just sight reading from a page in a new book that you both picked out at the library or Barnes & Noble. Pride? Happiness? I imagine these moments would be real highlights in the raising of a theoretical--in my own case--child. Sitting and rhyming just for the heck of it, making silly poems together, writing music, teaching him or her what notes mean, talking about the importance of being an expressive, loving, kind, and generous person. These are all lessons in short supply at home for too many of the children I love seeing and teaching every day. So instead of complaining that your child "has too much homework," a simple thanks will be enough--I might just be doing your job for you. And no, you don't pay me for it, you pay me to teach them a foreign language, to be proficient in it, to travel and discover the world wide on their own. The rest you get for free. Got it?

Wherefore Holiday Cheer?

When a school needs to be reminded what is important in the everyday workings of its administration, it signals a crisis of conscience which may not be readily apparent to itself. The malaise which wafts from and among hushed conversations in the hallways and in teachers' classrooms should be detectable by even the most dulled of olfactory resources. By virtue of some interesting epidemic of selective sensation, however, leaders are oblivious to serious doubts about the course of the institution. What is the compass reading? What are the institutional musts? When leaders hole up, not to be seen for the eight-hour workday, when teachers grumble from period to period wondering, "When is break again?", when students start asking where the principal is, you have to know that things are amiss...or do you? If one is never really present, then there is no reason whatsoever to know that things are amiss or even going swimmingly. The reactive nature of my school's leadership is appalling--it sniffs crises, jumps on them, exhausts the issue and those working to resolve it, and puts them all into a refractory period which allows for increased distance, and then the whole system re-initiates. Lurching from moment to moment without meaningful, constructive interaction with those whom you purport to lead, with those whom you purport to teach--albeit on a part-time basis and, admittedly, not your own focus or area of concern, so your preparation for class lags behind that of colleagues--can lead to nowhere but a black hole. Come out from behind the curtain, let us all see you, take stock in the strength of those around you. Leaning on someone close by isn't a sign of weakness--it's a sign of trust. Mutual trust breeds stronger relationships, which then self-perpetuate and breed a stronger school. Take note: our workplace is not Machiavelli's Prince...for a "nobler" metaphor, look to Le petit prince instead.

Al Andalus and Me: A Love Affair

Spain has been a treat this time--a homestay that makes anything else pale in comparison, spectacularly blue skies (not once have I seen rain), soaring temperatures, low humidity, thrilling vistas of medieval towns, seaside resorts, succulent sea-born goodies, refreshing brews, good friends, willing students, winding alleyways, trailing geraniums, diverting mosaics, and soaring steeples. As I near the end of my month in Andalucía and turn wistful I also turn nostalgic and can't help the comparison with past visits. I am stunned to realize that this is in fact my 5th time here: as a mere 17-year-old in 1990, again in 1993 as a semester-long study abroad experience, not again until 2003, then again the next year in 2004 as the director of Washington and Lee University's Spring semester in Spain, then not again until 2011. This pattern of two on, ten off is interesting. Does this suggest that I'll be back again next year (when both Spain and the US have national elections)? I would certainly be foolish to resist the pull of this dynamic peninsula. I think the best way to experience it next time, though, is with the one I love.

You see, showing the one you love a part of the world that has spoken to your soul is sharing a piece of who you are. That part of the world has, after all, shaped me into the person I am today. Since my partner and I wake up to each other everyday, it seems nonsensical that he has never been here with me. The languid, gesso-worked, Arabic scroll of the Alhambra wends its way over walls and through fountain-sprayed rose gardens.

Its tendrils tempt you and twist their way around the corners of your being as they do the corners of narrow, breeze-filled passageways.

The stalactite vaults above your head finally convince you that these 13th-century artisans really could harness the essence of nature and enthrall your psyche.

Orange trees mingle with periwinkle, jasmine with juniper and cedar. The heady aromas transport and lull. The call of the muezzin may be absent, but I can hear faint echoes all throughout Granada, Córdoba, and Sevilla. I have glimpsed the panoramas of all these cities through horseshoe-shaped windows and polylobulated arcs. How has my love not shared in these moments?

The heat never stops. The sun constantly beats on your skin. Sweat beads, and disappears. Knife sharpeners hawk their services, and silverware tinkles from the many sidewalk bars and cafés. Andalucía changes slowly on a millennial time scale--I am grateful that it also miraculously changes people.

Blame It on the Rain

I'm feeling restless. Yes, the end of the year careens toward me, but it's not the cause of my ennui. We've had rain ceaselessly for 5 days in the DC area, some of it torrential, some of it necessary, but most of it unwelcome. It has caused an unusually high level of introspection and career examination in me. My advanced seniors have left, and so this may also be a contributing factor, as well. Nevertheless, I wonder constantly at the opportunities there may be waiting around the corner. Specifically, would it be possible to obtain a paid leave for a year in order to participate in a classroom teacher exchange program? It is such a temptation to embark on an adventure--from the perspective of a language teacher, especially! A new language to learn, new people to meet, new foods to try (and cuisines to learn to prepare), new students to teach, new systems to learn. A life-long learner enjoys such challenges, and I think it may be restorative and at the same time challenging. I'm going to be doing research these options, and I'll post my updates!

Go Away, Sweeties...No, Wait, Stay!

I remember--however hazily--when I was a senior in high school. We attended classes till the sour, bitter end of classes. We were still students, after all. It was ostesibly our job, right? My friends and I worked hard for our final grades, laboring under the pretty frail threat of the revoking of college admission "if our grades fell." The catch was that we seniors didn't actually know way back then just how very frail this threat was, so we made sure to finish strong on our last round of finals--yes, finals, just like everyone else. In fact, we were somehow proud to be able to show our stuff, go out with the proverbial bang, and allow our parents to be proud of a report card and teacher remarks yet one last time before moving to the dorm and out of our homes forever.

The monumental, "finale" conception of senior year has lost its luster. At the school where I teach, everything which happens starting on April 1st becomes a prolonged anti-climax worthy of the most angst-fraught drivel written by early-thirties American writers who descend through the quotidienne and serve to stultify and nullify efforts to even just awake every morning--yes, Dave Eggers, I mean you. Please understand that we have some real A-plus personality types who are as eager as those "A" (and even just "A-minus") personality types of my high school days. There are eighteen-year-olds in my literature class who still read with aplomb, attention to detail and (now, muted) zeal. These are the grandest exception of recent senior classes, however. What is it about a college acceptance letter that sends them into a spiral of cynicism and banal dismissal of all intellectual pursuit? They are better than this: more capable thinkers than most who suddenly fall off a cliff and into paroxysms of "whatever" or "lol" when faced with a task of even the least challenge saddens me as an educator.

I am professionally and personally responsible for maintaining enthusiasm and involvement until the last day. I sure hope I do a good job.So many of my colleagues, though, are even capable of falling prey to the abuliac (see: "abulia," nineteenth-century Spanish literary reference) eighteen-year-old heads lolling before them like bladders on a stick. How do we keep them plugged in? Showing a film can be enlightening: reading guides, comprehension questions (especially for a foreign language film without subtitles, in my particular case), small group debates, character sketches, a diary page from the antagonist, etc., can all be great follow-ons to viewing a film. Showing 5 in three weeks, though? You should be fired. If you go out with a whimper, why shouldn't the students? If you keep teaching--and I mean teach, teach like there's no tomorrow, folks--students keep learning. It's amazing. We are powerful. We are meaningful. Our students have spent most of the last 365 days with us and love us. We love them, too. Why do we let each other down, year after year? We're bound to stumble, but get back up. If you stay on the ground, you can get trampled.
-(1/lol)

Language on the Periphery of the Academy?

Independent schools do talk about five core academic areas: science, history, mathematics, English and foreign language. Nevertheless, at least at my school, history and English are of paramount consideration. I'd like to know at what point veering away from the study of the Classics--Greek and Latin, foreign language, at their heart--happened. I suspect that it was around the end of the first World War. To what it may owe is still beyond me. In the end, what is expected of math and foreign language teachers is to assign a small battery of exercises able to be completed in approximately twenty minutes at the lower-level language acquisition course. In history and English, however, an hour of homework in each class is not uncommon. Of course these courses require reading, goes the old saw, and this takes longer. Foreign language learning is at its core reading-intensive and should "take (just as long)er," too. I cannot tell you the number of times my measly drills or practice worksheets fall to mighty English or history. Teachers essentially compete with one another for each student's finite pool of time, thinking, of course, that theirs is the more important (or even most important) discipline. This is a false and inefficient way to envision what is supposed to be a holistic curriculum, appropriate by each age group.

As I have stated in an earlier blog, independent school teachers fancy themselves masters of the house once the door closes. Even department chairs exercise relatively little authority over what is taught once the rubber hits the road. I have come to fear that 'independent' in the independent school moniker has come to mean 'lazy.' In public school systems that radically espouse the much-touted (and très en vogue) "backward design model," there is a coherence across grade levels: teachers meet as a grade level team to discuss how broad themes and specific modules (i.e., individual lessons) interweave and reinforce that year's goal, as defined by that grade level, etc. Creating coherence is hard work, head work, done by many, during and after regular school hours. If you're a teacher, you don't want this job. If you're an educator, you're thrilled by the prospects...and the possibilities for saving time and cementing once and for all learning about a singular concept. This is massive team work, openness and transparency--independent schools struggle with all three of these elements.

You may be asking, "What role can foreign language play in this kind of complementary curricular structure?" Since this is a structure in which literature written in English, history, science and math work in concert, foreign language is the perfect glue with which to bind the disciplines. No textbook in foreign language is assembled this way. They are so predictably thematic it's saddening. Honestly, if you've seen one, you've seen them all. You've taken foreign language? Your textbook was like this, too: "En el supermercado," "Las relaciones interpersonales," "Los pasatiempos," etc. Students and teachers alike tire of these fraudulent situational curricula. What we need is a course which enriches teaching centrifugal force or environmental science. A course which compliments Shakespeare with a little Lope, a little math with Mayan representational systems. What does this look like? It looks like Spanish and French and Chinese and other foreign language teachers are going back to school. Isn't this exciting? To get to be a student of Romeo and Juliet or basic trigonometry again? Foreign language teaching has always been in the forefront of innovation: we can continue the trend by working within the frustrations of the 24-hour student day, teach foreign language, and wow our colleagues when they say, "Why do my students know the vocabulary of revolutionary movements around the world?" Just smile, and say, "Spanish class is awesome, right?" They'll want more of what you got, and just maybe get them to come to some Spanish classes once in awhile and see where they can complement your teaching.

The best scenario, obviously, is a school whose leadership embraces--nay, exhorts--this kind of interplay among its teachers and complementary teaching tactics. We just have to be a little less "independent," a little less "lazy," and a lot more team-minded.