Reflections of 2018/2019

It was hard. Switching from teaching nothing but Spanish for 28 years to French and German was a major challenge. Yes, German is my native language but that doesn't mean one can automatically explain the language to students. 16 ways to express "the" depending on its position in a sentence? I am amazed they were able to grasp 12 of those. Apparently the genitive case is not used much anymore so we only covered nominative, dative and accusative. Reading the classics such as Der Struwwelpeter and Max und Moritz was just too funny. Well, then there was Der Erlkönig, scary...And then there were my French classes. These were highly motivated for the most part and developed the most lovely accent. It made my heart jump from joy to hear my students speak French. We just loved The Little Prince. Acting out the scenes was so cool. I never got that with Spanish. I'm not sure why it didn't seem too important for my Spanish students to develop a good accent. If I ever teach high school Spanish again, I will see to it that they roll those r's and use the language in their daily lives. With the goal of passing the biliteracy qualifications, I am guessing more students will try harder next year. When the first two students actually qualified for French I was floored. Most students in other school systems take 4 years and then try to test for it. My principal remarked that perhaps the test is easy. No so by a far stretch. I'm actually not sure how high I myself would score on the French AAPPL test. At any rate, the potential testing component will definitely serve as an additioanl motivator it seems to me. I found it delightful that my students were able to engage with eachother and myself in French outside of the classroom. Going to Food City and having the cashier engage with me in French is pretty awesome. Then there was the courtyard and our efforts to help the environment. We planted a Monarch garden, made bird feeders and set up a bluebird box. Why? It added to the atmosphere in my classroom. Looking out onto the courtyard became pretty entertaining. The gallon jugs used as bird feeders were a daily reminder to reduce plastics in our lives. They truly made an impact on my students. On one of our food days someone bought in bottled water in small bottles and the students clearly did not like to throw them out. Many kept the bottles to reuse them. Lessons learned this year: German, French and take care of your environment.