An Activity for Thinking About World Language Programs

On our curriculum day the other week our middle school and high school language departments had a rare joint meeting. It was such a fun chance to spend time with the educators across campus while thinking about our shared purpose and how do we move forward.



This was our plan:
Homework: Read the attached article. Or click HERE to read it online. 
Pay special attention to the author's point #5:
(excerpted here:)


5. The world is much more open, and events abroad affect the lives of Americans more than ever before. This makes it essential that the educational experience breed cosmopolitanism — that students have international experiences, and classes in the social sciences draw on examples from around the world. It seems logical, too, that more in the way of language study be expected of students. I am not so sure.

English’s emergence as the global language, along with the rapid progress in machine translation and the fragmentation of languages spoken around the world, make it less clear that the substantial investment necessary to speak a foreign tongue is universally worthwhile. While there is no gainsaying the insights that come from mastering a language, it will over time become less essential in doing business in Asia, treating patients in Africa or helping resolve conflicts in the Middle East.

In Meeting: 
This article presents a particular world view.  Whether you agree with this or not,  (and there are certainly criticisms to this position) the reality is that the world is changing quickly as are assumptions and perceptions about language study.   We suspect that most of us see it as more valuable than this author. 


Our essential question for the next 90 minutes is:
What are the things that our 6-12 language program needs to do in order to be as relevant as possible in the development and lives of our students? How do we want to define language learning for our students?


Here are our tasks:  
1. (15 minutes)
What are the essential elements of our language program?
What do we want our students to be able to do/ know / understand when they leave our program?
2. (30 minutes) 
Eliminate the current reality of our language program.  Start from the ground up and redesign the ideal 6-12 vision. There are NO barriers.  What should it look like?  What would the "requirements" be?  What would characterize our classes?  Would there be classes?
3. (10 minutes) 
In your group, design a presentation (3 minutes)  of your new program to present to the board of trustees of Punahou School.  Compel them to okay the change from the current reality to your vision.
4. Presentations and questions 


This plan was sent to teachers prior to the meeting and the results were really exciting.  Some folks came to the discussion with a detailed proposal to eliminate the middle school world language program as it is (5 different languages) and replace it with a multi-lingulal world cultures program in which all of the students would participate.  Ideas about de-tracking, increasing emphasis on spoken communication and cross-cultural understanding emerged.  Another recurring theme in the groups presentations was the essential role of travel and in-country living plays (or has played) in language acquisition. Teachers wondered together about the role of technology can play in facilitating cross-cultural exchanges and relationships.


It was a great day of thinking and wondering and imagining big.  Now we have to figure out what things that we dreamed about make sense, and then just figure out how to get there.  That should be as easy (but as much fun!) as Jet Skiing across the ocean.

Escritura (Writing Process)

Been struggling all year with writing in my Spanish 5 class.  How do I get kids to write without compromising themselves or second guessing their linguistic abilities?  Without cheating?  What is cheating?  Do we decide together?  Do I tell them?  Do I require drafts?  Only assign writing in class on paper?

I have toyed with all those things and just today, I think it is finally going well.  Last Friday before break they wrote collaborative one-act plays about two sides of the same person.  (Based on She and Ella in Coser y Cantar by Dolores Prida).  They were all in a circle and in groups of three, each group had two minutes with they play, then they had to pass it on and work on another.  I think in 45 minutes we wrote 4 plays, as a class.  They were a little irreverent (okay-- a lot irreverent, but it was the last day before vacation), but it was fun, and funny, and we were all working together and most of us were writing. 

Then today they started work on their individual projects.  Same idea:  a one act play with two charachters representing two sides of one person.  We made a rubric together then they each began work on a google doc.  They had to invite another spanish speaker (someone in the class or elsewhere) and me.  So while the wrote, I looked over their progress and sent them little notes in the chat feature, or made some collaborative edits and could see their progress as they were writing. 

Another feature we have added is that all words that they look up, or use a translator to find, need to be in red, and then they have to put a definition of the word, in Spanish, at the end of their work.  This seems to be going well too and then we can use the lists as learning opportunities for the rest of the students when we do the peer reviews.  That will be next week.  Then they will perform their plays.  I wonder if they will let me video them?!

An ongoing discussion: Sharing and Learning

We are engaged in discussions at our school about how to best share what we do well in our school to both elevate the level teaching and learning at our own school and also provide a public service to schools in the state and beyond. We would like to create an forum for a illuminating great teaching and practice so that others may see it.

It is kind of like just opening the doors on the classrooms for others to see and this is not, as our head of school points out, a new idea-- there are schools all over the country trying to do this work. Still, this quest towards transparency creates a tension with teachers' tendency towards (and love of) autonomy. Some of the comments in an exploratory discussion today demonstrated this tension.

First there is the classic fear of letting anyone in (literally or figuratively) to your classroom. There are some departments that do a great job fostering an environment where sharing practice is the norm, and many more where this is a work in progress. How can this initiative be presented in a way that doesn't elicit fear from those who fall into this category?

Another teacher suggested a big chunk of time (weeks) that we could carve out of the school year to address this. A neat idea, but it goes against the notion of on-going and embedded on the job learning and improvement. We hope to share accessible, easily digestible and searchable information that can help teachers do their work better.

The discussion then turned to the ease with which younger people (I would say more connected) share the goings on of their lives, and that perhaps this shift to sharing just feels hard to this group (with an average age closer to fifty than thirty, as one administrator pointed out). Couldn't agree more! The simple idea of a social network and leveraging the connections that you have and sorting information based on how those that you trust feel about it is hardly new to those of us engaged at any level in an on-line presence (twitter, Facebook, Ning, etc. . . ). (as pointed out by @dkiang)

Then came the notion that the most valuable stream of information might come from the kids. One teacher suggested that if she could access information from students about what was working for them (or not) in their classes, she would spend the time to read that. I see lots of that kind of data from former and current students who I am friends with on Facebook
(which I know people have a variety of opinions about). And while it sometimes informs my practice, I get much better data from directed and pointed questions of my current students, who I survey often about my classes.

In any event, I am energized by these types of questions on a Monday morning in early October. No conclusions here, just sorting out some ideas. Any thoughts?