What exactly is our job? What happens if we don't do it?

What exactly is our job? What happens if we don't do it?

     Foreign Language teachers, today I start with something you don't often hear from other consultants and advisers who visit you, talking about how one might develop our profession and our students. A dear friend once opened my eyes to the fact that at the end of the day, teaching is a JOB. We get paid, which is to say, we are not volunteering. We do not wait for disaster, then swoop in out of a spirit of community service, but instead mind the store every day.  Passion and a commitment to helping the community are definitely part of what make us special as teachers, but one can only run on adrenaline so long.

     When I was a full-time teacher, I got tired of being guilted by whoever was supervising or consulting as they tried to question my willingness or intention to make every student successful.   For various years while I was a teacher, we were during that particular year “in a crisis” that would culminate in late May if we didn't achieve monumental changes.  Those changes asked of me in my classroom almost always took me away from my gut and SLA research.   At times it felt like “Lean on Me” mixed with “Groundhog Day.” If the requirements for teaching fry a teacher like an egg on a New Orleans sidewalk, those requirements only help the few kids who got the benefit of the overdrive, high-burn period. Whatever we discuss as a better method of and purpose for FL teaching must be sustainable so that you keep wanting to teach and the school can leverage your experience as you get better.

Getting Them to Step Outside Themselves

     Why are you a FL teacher? What motivates you to try to convince those outside of your language to attempt to learn it? I suspect you have a passion for the “beyond” of the student's immediate world. I taught students who were both surrounded by and also themselves members of an incredibly diverse, worldly community. I had students from west Africa, the Caribbean, the Middle East, Russia, Brazil, and Mexico, and their descendants, all sitting next to each other.  You probably teach in a somewhat more homogeneous classroom than that, but I can safely tell you that both you and I have been surprised at the oversimplifying, ignorant (no pejorative intended), stereotyping language and behavior of our students. My students would speak vapidly and erroneously about a people who were in fact only a few feet away. Being around people who are not like you is a great first step, but unless and until a student is asked to set foot outside the comfortable, questioning his assumptions, positive change is mere luck and not part of achieving an education.

     Do you like that part of your job?  I do.  I LOVED it, for example, when a student said, “Why don't 'Spanish people' have a word for 'like'? Why don't they just talk like US?” A ha!   Not everyone is like you, young one!  Not everyone is even like everyone that you know!  This leads to conversations about how others have different, valid points of view, that one cannot take for granted that presuppositions are shared by all parties, and to suspending judgment; all marks of a worldly person.  This is my first “favorite thing” about our job.

     Other courses teach these principles, as well, of course.  That in a foreign language class you can actually teach them to talk and listen to those who differ in their worldview makes ours the greatest job in the world, and is my second “favorite thing” about our job.   That they get to see how difficult it is to do well leads to empathy for those who must do it more than the 48 minutes a day they spend in your classroom.  Getting a young man or woman to imagine and pretend to be a visitor when they are used to being host is my third “favorite thing” about our job.

     This is worth preserving, dear reader, I tell you.  So, how's it going where you work?  Are these three critical skills the ones that are climbing in prestige year after year while you march towards retirement?  Are you laughing out loud right now?  During my tenure, I was approached repeatedly, nay, I confess that I even volunteered, to try to use foreign language class time to try to BOOST SCIENCE AND MATH END-OF-COURSE TEST SCORES.   I was there, I was told, to teach the “whole” student, and if I did not care about helping them in these areas with these particular skills, then I was in the wrong profession.

     We are not in the wrong profession, but sometimes I think we cede parts of our identity as a profession to others because we lack a cogent definition of what we expect, as well as, significantly, the success rate to show that our expectations produced value.  The choices we make as FL teachers must make FLED memorable and relevant for the students by leveraging their cognitive processes, and not in fact working against those processes.  

Working Against the Current is Tiring

     It is the second part of this point that informs my concern about teacher burnout.  Working against the students' psychology and natural growth processes is a recipe for exhaustion and disillusion.  If we do a good job of defining what we expect of our students, others will have less of a chance to do so.   If how we define our expectations in a way that addresses how second language learners proceed through the learning process, we will develop more enthusiasm via success, less dropout after second year, and greater advocacy in the future.  Further, we ourselves may feel more refreshed in the process and churn on for more years.

     Around what flag do we rally, then?   You could write this paragraph, too.  What is clear to me is that students must be able to use the language in a level-appropriate manner after taking my course, and want to do so.  Whatever distracts from that, no matter its tradition, ease of administration, or its complementary nature to other departments, must be cast aside.   Later on I'll examine the research that tells us exactly what that means.

     Next, the “cognitive” component.  We must assess students in ways they can be successful given what their brains go through in the time that we are with them.  Give them, their parents, and anyone else an alternative to the idea that we are principally in the business of helping them to understand English grammar (the age-old classic) and getting them another crack at multiple choice questions about math and science, but in a different language.   These things are important, but if a fraction of those who had taken FL classes came away from the experience with a skill they could use and get nowhere else, I feel we could fight this idea that our job is to help the “important” subjects.   If 5% of state legislators had received a critical, unforgettable experience from their FLED, what would be different today (1)? Would there be more FL classes in elementary schools, for example, like there are in the classrooms of rising nations?

They Vote With Their Feet

     Why the alarm?  I'll tell you.  You are already feeling the pressure of a shrinking tax base for the last several years (although things here in my state seem to be coming around, if slowly) and increased pressure from NCLB, along with its temptation for “step-to-the-beat-of-my-drum” administration from stressed-out, pressured officials.   I felt it, too.

     I do not feel that our profession is safe, but not just because of the inflated importance of students' test scores.  My fear stems from the fact that those outside our profession, including and especially our graduates, overwhelmingly vote with their feet, stating emphatically that what we do is not particularly valued or understood in most schools.

     I will never forget that night years ago walking to my FLED class at Kennesaw State University and seeing the newspaper clipping on the bulletin board.  In it, the reporter detailed how our governor at the time was proposing to save money by absorbing two sets of preparatory courses into one requirement.  The courses that would be lumped together stunned me, and still do.  Because they were both “languages,” he wanted to allow foreign language courses to substitute for computer programming, or vice versa (2).

     Are you laughing, crying, or perhaps whimpering right now?  Can you imagine the vacuum of information that must have been present for him to think such a thing?  But, I ask you with utmost respect, would our students have felt the same jolt or disgust upon hearing his suggestion?   I hope so.  What might we do that we don't do today to present a clear alternative to his interpretation?  Opinions and experiences differ, of course.

     I feel like a pastor asking us to open our hymnals, but I refer you to the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines for some opportunity for reflection. Here are the proficiencies that a level II student should achieve for listening and speaking, in the state of Georgia:

Listeners at the Novice-High level are able to understand short, learned utterances and some sentence-length utterances, particularly where context strongly supports understanding and speech is clearly audible. They can comprehend words and phrases from simple questions, statements, high-frequency commands and courtesy formulae. At this level, students may require repetition, rephrasing and/or a slowed rate of speech for comprehension.

...(Novice-Mid) Speakers at the Novice-Mid level communicate minimally and with difficulty by using a number of isolated words and memorized phrases limited by the particular context in which the language has been learned. When responding to direct questions, they may utter only two or three words at a time or an occasional stock vocabulary or attempt to recycle their own and their interlocutor’s words. Because of hesitations, lack of vocabulary, inaccuracy, or failure to respond appropriately, Novice-Mid speakers may be understood with great difficulty even by sympathetic interlocutors accustomed to dealing with non-natives. When called on to handle topics by performing functions associated with the Intermediate level, they frequently resort to repetition, words from their native language, or silence (3), p. 2 (italics mine).

The ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines are not a foregone conclusion, but merely a suggestion. Students may achieve what they may achieve in our classes. What does the record suggest, however, regarding where students fall at the end of the classes that so many of them take?

     The evidence is astounding that the “prescription” on my state's website is highly represented in research. You may have seen this evidence back when you were in school. In Shrum and Glisan (2005) (4), the authors summarize six studies (well, they present a table from Tschirner and Heilenman (1998) (5) that does so) that all assessed students' Speaking proficiencies at course end. After 2 years of German, French, or Spanish, the various authors found the mean proficiency for speaking (via the OPI) to be either Novice-Mid or Novice-High (4).  After three years, which is often the pinnacle of the motivated students' language experience, the four of these studies that measured their proficiency returned means of Novice-High, Intermediate-Low (2 studies), and Intermediate-Mid!(4)

     Do we teach to these proficiencies in the 2^nd- and 3^rd-year courses?  Do you emphasize memorized phrases and two- to three-word utterances?  Only you can answer that for your classroom.  But if we don't, we are asking for students to feel dissatisfied.  For what it's worth, here are three sets of suggestions for higher retention that I would like to submit for your discussion at your departmental lunch table.   If I came to your school to talk about retention and growth, here are the main points I'd ask to be pondered:

Slow Down Enough to Keep Recycling

     I was always amazed as I compared myself, my department, and other departments in my county with regard to pacing.  Some teachers flew through the curriculum (from my perspective), covering new vocabulary and of course new grammar at a pace of 2 or 3 chapters faster per semester than I was.  To what end?  It is possible, to their credit, that the teachers who do this are more rigorous, have higher expectations, and are preparing students for the next class in a superior fashion to those who aren't.  The main advantage that I see, however, is that the handful of students who go on to take a Clep-like test at the university might be able to get more multiple-choice/cloze/conjugation questions correct and therefore skip a freshman- or sophomore-level class of the FL.   Do students who are pushed to learn faster want to continue to learn the language, build more friendships with those of the TL community, and go on to use the language as adults?  Do they have a better understanding that the entire world is not like theirs and more often do they readily try to see things from others' points of view?   Not in my experience, but you are invited to cite research in the comments below in disagreement.

     The tradeoff for rapid pacing, I submit, is that you lose the time to recycle older concepts in the classroom due to the numbing, rapid emphasis on the new.  Do your students forget how to communicate in the present tense around November or December of their second year?  Mine did, sometimes.  What tense will they use if they make friends from the other culture, immediately?  Commands?  The Imperfect Subjunctive with the Conditional?  No.  The present tense, and eventually the simple past for some, with some subjunctive for others (but eventually everything, and beyond, of course!).  If we rarely recycle, mixing in the new vocabulary and themes we encounter via new chapters, those skills not only “get lost,” they never get to develop to begin with.  The student is not comfortable with the tenses she needs in almost any conversation, even as her more advanced grammars are developed, and when she see opportunities in the lunchroom or at the bus stop to take risks and to try to communicate, I submit that she is more likely to leave the affective filter up and therefore then either freeze or avoid altogether.
     In an ideal class, then, what would that recycling look like?  I do not mean that old tenses get re-conjugated and re-drilled, although that might be a good warmup.  I mean that students are asked to think, speak, and write about newer topics and themes using older grammar and themes.  If a student in year three has learned camping and nature this month, in a grammatical context of the past perfect, ask her to talk about meeting some new friends (a theme from year one) while sitting around a campfire, and describing what they will do the next day (a grammar from year one and two).  Permit the neural and dendritic networks of the brain to bridge new connections between the old knowledge and the new.  

Give Value to What is Valuable!

     Spanish is my area, which uses a Latin-derived grammar and orthography that your language may not.   What message do we send to the students about what is important in Spanish?  At times, it is the cold importance of accent marks.   Tic, tic, tic. Minus 1, minus 1, minus 1.  Other times, the gravity of choosing a “c” instead of a “z" (which are not pronounced differently in the cases where they are confused).  And, most commonly, I see that we (and our curriculum developers) value the ability to conjugate in a context-free environment for any of six “persons, ” using prompts with a most tenuous connection to real life ( “Yo / empezar a / la escuela a las ocho.”   Very familiar to all Spanish teachers).  Can you communicate and enjoy Spanish without mastering these things?  I believe that you can.   What if students communicated confidently and freely, full of these kinds of errors, but took more risks?  If you learned English as your second or third language, is that not what you did when you were growing accustomed to it?  Assessing students in an authentic, yet lighter, scaled-down manner to how an actual listeners perceive actual speakers is something worth pursuing.

Reading, Listening, and Performance

     I was always amazed at the discrepancy between what my students could understand versus what they then could say and write. This is well understood in our discipline, but inside the bubble of the “semester crush” that we all have felt, it is easy to forget.  What if we assessed reading and listening at a higher standard than speaking and writing?   Is that not prescribed by SLA research?  How much reading and listening do you get a chance to evaluate in your week?  For many, I'm betting it is a fraction of what is expected to be produced.  It is hard to stratify these expectations between r/l and s/w if the bulk of our work is spent in premature production.  In Spanish, that often means tons and tons of practice on context-free conjugation.

     Recall from my intro that I hold in high regard our ability to transform the student from host to guest, and to ask her to think outside of her own perspective and comfort zone.  If this is a goal in my (and perhaps your) classroom, what kind of production do we assess?   Conjugating verbs for all six persons is not likely to foment this transformation all by itself.  I was lucky enough to work in a county that provided a high-quality, useful alternative to the "context free,", and it changed the way I taught and tested.

     In Fulton county, GA, USA, we worked to create a set of common assessments for the entire system, between 17 high schools!  In heavily debated sessions, we demarcated that a certain chunk of that assessment be evaluated via production-oriented, contextualized tasks. We wanted our students to be able with little rehearsal time to speak and write in various scenarios, mimicking what might happen to them when having to speak or write in real life.  We set about to create those scenarios in a way that was tied to the curriculum.  In the end, we tried to place value in assessment on what we valued about being in a FL classroom.

     I don't want to stray off topic too much by talking about these assessment tasks in detail, but I commit to developing an essay about them in a future blog.  These "Performance-Based Assessments" have been researched and published since the last century, and you likely do some of what we did already.  It was fascinating to learn how to create them well (and thanks, in no small part, goes to a well known FLED consultant named Greg Duncan for showing us the way).  What I will mention is that these assessment tasks allow a student to focus on his strengths because they have no one single right answer.

     How do you then score something like that??  I benefited tremendously from this part of our collaborative development, as we department chairs and other interested parties sat in meetings well ahead of the common exam date, with an overhead and a Word table, and hashed out how to score these performance tasks via a multi-component rubric.   Passionate debate flowed as we discussed pronunciation, grammar, risk-taking, use of idioms, and the like.   In my store (“He has a store?” Yes, yes I do.), I have developed rubrics that heavily leverage my experience doing this, if you don't want to wait for the ensuing article and care to see them now (see end of article).

     To close this section, I'll put out this hypo: We all learned in school to do the kinds of things that I mention here, but we don't consistently incorporate them into our classrooms, although you as an individual may. Why not?

Certainly, I Like Certainty

     I think the answer is complex, but I'll address one issue, ease, here. Teaching is not easy, and grading is in my opinion its hardest and most daunting task.  We instinctively search for certainty, comfort, and process in what can be overwhelming and hellish at times.   Each status quo practice above, however, can be accompanied by its own seductive form of ease.   It's easier to teach lessons every day when the material keeps changing rapidly, because the lessons write themselves.  Just keep putting the new conjugation or vocab list on the overhead and chug on.   Recycling takes more effort, because most textbooks don't encourage it beyond a quick review exercise at the beginning of a new chapter.  Novel combinations of more familiar forms and themes mixed with new can be hard to create.   Further, it is relatively simple (in Spanish) to spot accent marks or context-free conjugation errors, and it is certainly easier to give value to error than to give it to proficiency when grading a stack of tests.   Students don't conjugate well at first, so more practice appears almost certainly necessary, and is then implemented.   Listening and reading, therefore, get relegated to levels that do not mimic our behavior in the acquisition of our first languages. This is all reinforced heavily by the focus on good “test-taking” strategies that we can rehearse with our students as they prepare for the battery (double entendre intended!) of tests they take outside our discipline.  It's a perfect storm.

     What is the effect of all this? I think we peel off from what we know to be good SLA practice, and most of the students, who have no interest almost to a person in the technical fineries of our craft, become both bored with it but also frustrated, because the emphasis on those technical matters doesn't foster well their ability to talk with new friends or relatives in the new language.

Hold on a Second, Greg!

     I am not suggesting, by any means, that no one should ever drill, use cloze, count off for technical errors or try keep pace with colleagues.  However, I feel that if we do not create courses that complement the process of the young human brain, that then we are going to have more and more “important” skills from other courses thrown at us as part of our job and continue to lose bright students who started off in first level because they were curious about speaking the language but stopped as soon as they were permitted to because they wanted to take dance, do science fair, take research methods, etc.. As I witnessed in my own state legislature, there will be few outside of teaching who remain to advocate for us as bilinguality (even a rudimentary billinguality) will not be the common result of our practices.

     What is more, I return to my introduction here, that we want to teach in such a way that we our ourselves feel refreshed and are able to soldier on for many years, doing the “job.”   Slowing down, recycling, and stressing contextual communication yield less “pushback” from the students themselves based on what we know about SLA and the four proficiencies.  Keeping out the test-taking pressures in favor of creating basic communicators will also produce less exhaustion for us.  Everyone wins.

     In the end, it is not fruitful to get a bunch of short-term memory crammed into my students' brains so that they can finish the pacing guide and “do better” on stuff outside our walls, and in the process lead us to a burned-out, angry, exhausted state.   Instead I would ask that as a profession we listen to what the students and the research are telling us, for generations now.   Going too fast, grading legalistically, and forcing premature, bloated, and context-free production, even when these practices are perhaps mentally easier or more comfortable for us than doing what comes naturally to the young ones, are not good for either the students or the teachers.   Like you, I want students and colleagues who wish to continue!  Thank you for reading, and for trying to make the world a better place via your FL classroom.  I invite your comments below.

Greg Sanchez is a FLED consultant and vendor, as well as a former department chair/Spanish teacher at a Title I school in metro Atlanta.  Contact him at CobbSpanishTeacher@gmail.com.

This blog is located at FLEDFocus.blogspot.com
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Works Cited:

1. For a blunt assessment of how we are doing, read http://voices.washingtonpost.com/class-struggle/2010/04/why_waste_time_on_a_foreign_la.html, and the comments below it.
2.  I am embarrassed to say that I cannot find a citation for this. I really tried!
3.https://www.georgiastandards.org/standards/Georgia%20Performance%20Standards/Modern%20Languages%20Level%20II.pdf
4.  Teacher's Handbook, Eileen W Glisan - Judith L Shrum - Boston - Janet Dracksdorf - 2005 - 3rd Ed.

5.  Tschirner, Erwin, and Kathy Heilenman, L. (1999)  Reasonable Expectations: Oral Proficiency Goals for Intermediate- Level Students of German. The Modern Language Journal, 82.

"I Have a Dream" and this Foreign Language Teacher's Path to Bilingual and Bicultural Advocacy

This is an edited version of a Facebook post from my personal page earlier today.  I wonder aloud how much your experience as a FL teacher has led you to the same conclusion as I, that to teach others to engage cultural outsiders in respectful communication that honors their identity and that does not assume... is a wonderful part of our profession.


So, it is FIFTY years ago today that this country first heard "I Have a Dream?"  That's amazing.  Although I was born just a bit after King, Jr.'s assassination, I was profoundly affected by him and the Civil Rights Movement, generally.  If you were my friend or classmate back in school, you're going to hear things today of which you likely had no inkling. If you are a former student of mine who now can see me on FB, that goes double.  One day, you will talk about how you witnessed history while you were going through the halls of your school, too, just as I did.  Thank God you had graduated before Miley Cyrus stuck out her tongue at the VMAs.  You'll get to talk about something else!

You see, I've come to realize that growing up in the "post-Civil-Rights" era meant that I got see and feel things that those in other eras didn't and it has shaped me powerfully.  When I was a Mississippi first grader, in 1975, desegregation had only made it out of the courts there for about five years.  I'm sure the shock was still there, although I was six and therefore oblivious.  But by the time I walked through all the hallways, we learned "I Have a Dream," and Booker T. Washington, and Richard Wright, and walked by the Black History Month posters, proudly constructed by girls with little scrubbed faces and braids in their hair set off by colored marbles on the ends of stretchy little bands.  I had Black teachers (we didn't say African American yet) who HAD to become teachers, with no other choice, because, they explained, that segregation had prevented them from having any other career choice as college students (Try to imagine, North Springs graduates, being told that you CAN'T pursue a certain career.  I DARE someone to try to tell you that!).  My English teacher in the 11th grade taught us first how she had only two dresses for school, and that each day she washed one and wore the other, and then second, spoke with so much pride about her Alma Mater, Tougaloo College, in Jackson, but then also about the beatings that people of her generation suffered while trying to get the right to vote or go to a school where the roof wasn't falling in.  And she spoke with pain about The Invisible Man.  I thank her for giving me a chance to learn from her.  Without King, I would never have met her.

If not for desegregation, some very important moments in my own life could not have occurred.  I never, ever felt "in place" in my school, as the son of an immigrant who, although he was by then long American and most certainly "white," had grown up far from the South and did not pass much on to me in the way of manner of speaking, appearance, religion, sensibility, or anything else that made me feel plain or average amongst other White kids.  I did not make many friends. But, by some miracle, probably junior high band, I don't recall, I found a group of sweet kids who hung out in the loading area by some dumpsters behind the cafeteria at Hawkins Jr. High.  And they let me join their group, and we spent breaks there talking and laughing and dreaming.  Every one of them was black, except me.  And they didn't care.  That time was critical for me, as I sit here talking about it, 31 years later, let me tell you!  I still need that moment to have occurred just about every day.  And it would not have except for the price in blood paid by those in the generation before me.  It would not have been possible!

Now I am this unusual adult, a male American Southerner who wants schoolchildren in 2013 to learn Spanish or Korean or Arabic starting in elementary school, or earlier, and who dedicates his days happily to advocating for the cause of getting us to be more accepting of others and to suspend judgment of them so that in our mixture something new and wonderful may happen.  In my twenties working in ethnic Atlanta (read:  the undocumented-Mexican-along-with-Southeast-Asian corridor known as Buford Hwy) I threw myself into at first learning a language that my father had not passed on to me, and then meeting and engaging with halting, first-time phone conversations and awkward emails with my family in Mexico that had not known that I existed, for the most part, .  And I still speak Spanish now, everyday, in my home with that cumbersome quality that I will always have, in the hopes that my children will not.  Because I want them to live IN THE WORLD, and not behind a wall.  The walls must come down!

And I rant and Like on FB about causes about which some of my Friends feel me at best naive and manipulated and at worst stupid and dangerous.  But I do not come across those opinions carelessly or in some academic, detached manner, although I happily recognize that my thoughts are just one valid facet of many that have been hard won.  Mine were encountered because of a handful of kids who befriended me and those who came after, with whom time passed easily in long lines at McDonalds on band trips or on the "black bus" listening to records scratching on cassette tapes (do you remember?) on the way to earn high marks at competitions.  YOU engaged ME, the "other." Later, that helped me engage with what so many would consider an Other, too; dozens and dozens of cousins from whom I was cut off as a child due to divergent migratory streams and a language barrier.  I can now introduce their children to my own in a bond that will perhaps not break from this point forward.  That will be up to them, of course, but you gave me the chance to give THEM the chance.  And so did King.

I get angry when I hear about how "black" issues are wearing on folk who aren't of color.  That's not how I see it.  Disenfranchisment occurs everywhere, and trying to alternate between being tough, getting over it, and ignoring it is not enough. It wasn't for me, and I certainly can "pass," heh heh.  If someone who is of color tells you that others not of their hue or background are enjoying privilege, you don't have to vote a certain way just to listen to them and perhaps soften your heart and suspend your judgment long enough to see things from another point of view.  I ask the same thing of them.  When our president says Trayvon Martin could have been his son, and you are so angry when a White baby baby gets killed by someone who also looks like Trayvon Martin and that then Obama doesn't say go on TV and say the same thing about that baby looking like his own, assume with me that he's not just playing to his base but perhaps reflecting on the many moments of pain he had and may continue to have because he was not given the cultural benefit of the doubt.  It wears you down, I promise you, even though I look like you and may not always suffer it just like you don't suffer it.  You who are angry are members of many groups other than those which are enfranchised.  I know that because I am a member of them, too, with you.  I ask you, most deferentially, to reflect on your pain and shock at the ways of others when assumptions are made about you, and how it quickly draws your ire.  You then go to ground to fight against your misrepresentation, as you should, but rare is the person who then thinks that you look savage and like an "other" just because you express rage.  And that is NOT the case for others.  I know I've lost some of you in this last paragraph, but I still ask for your friendship and love and openly give you mine.  I promise to keep on listening to you, too, even though I am clearly in a different camp.

"Sit down at the table of brotherhood," oh, how many times have I thought of those words, when "little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers."  Thank you, Dr. King, for inspiring is so many others the courage to withstand the bombings and lynchings and the gouging of eyeballs and the hoses that my sweet sweet friends never had to endure, and the whispered-in-close, cowardly threats to the protesters' children, which I shrink and shudder from all the more now as a father, sitting here safely, a White man in 2013 on the "right" side of both culture and time.

Nonviolent protest likely turned the hearts of many of those who were aiming their hatred at you, but more importantly finally put all this madness on television in order that your people could be seen as humans and citizens and not as lampoons or stereotypes, images controlled by others.  At the table of brotherhood, we really see each other, perhaps for the first time, like Dr. King demanded that others see his people.  And fifty years later, I want that table made bigger, no, I, too, demand it!  And I will forever be thankful that amongst empty chocolate milk cartons and paper napkins blowing in a sweltering Mississippi breeze that a handful asked me to sit down at it with them.  It has guided and shaped me every day hence.  Thanks for reading.

Greg Sanchez is a Foreign Language Education consultant out of Georgia who thinks that part of getting a good education means learning to sit down at the table of brotherhood.  If you'd like him to visit your school to discuss authentic assessment, music as CI, or using technology to engage learners, please contact him at CobbSpanishTeacher (at) gmail.com or 404 388 62 zero 2.

Inaugural Article, FLEDFocus.blogspot.com: You, the World Language Teacher, are the best person in your entire school to do this...

by Greg Sanchez, July, 2013

Greg lives in the state of Georgia, USA, where most students who take a foreign language take it from the ninth grade, and then for two years.

      Good day, new readers! This is my first posting of a blog devoted to the practitioners of teaching foreign language. Once a month (or more?) I'll review articles about FLED and summarize the themes that may arise.

     My purpose is twofold. First, I find that as teachers we get squashed, yanked, and contorted by desires coming from administration, the patterns and practices present in our textbooks, and the inertia that comes from re-teaching a prep year after year. In my case, I often felt lost about what good FLED teaching was supposed to look like, and my memories of Second Language Acquisition courses and my passion for getting started in the first place were being buried under other layers of bigger class sizes, meeting the curricular goals of other departments, and the like. I hope you'll come back here from time to time, refresh your memory on a few topics of interest to you, and discuss them with your department at lunch, during a Professional Learning Community meeting, or over drinks. My second goal is to keep myself fresh and articulate as I weave my own passions in and out of the research that I'll do here. I offer workshops to schools and counties about FLED and want others to know where I stand. I also sell original songs, assessments, and interactive lessons (via PowerPoint files). More about that at the very bottom of this entry.

I'm Furious!

     Before jumping into research in future articles, however, I would like to begin by screaming that <<I am SO ANGRY!!>> at some of my fellow citizens right now here is the US. We are at this writing five years into the great collapse of 2008, about two weeks' out from Zimmerman's verdict of “NG,” and mere days out from the Marc Anthony solo at the All Star Game. Many are closing ranks, looking for some sort of artificial boundary of purity and separation between “them” and “us.” Twitter and Facebook allow us a fairly filter-free look into others' hearts, and I am in a dour mood in response, as many of you likely are. Watching others' call for some kind of circling of the wagons pains me as an American.

     From adversity comes opportunity, however, and I want to shout for all to hear that WHAT YOU FL TEACHERS DO IS IMPORTANT, like no time I have witnessed in my adult life. In this essay I hope to make the case that in order for this incredible country to “exceed expectations” (heh heh, teacher joke), that we as a citizenry must embrace the realities of our current economy and the dynamics of opportunity, investment, and reward that present themselves. Not to do so surely means loss of our way of life, I venture.

Material wealth = Best Chance We Have

     I'll start with the premise that although material wealth and first-world prosperity have their costs (obesity, stress, environmental degradation), that they offer the best hope for peace and comfort for a people. Having your personal safety and physiological needs met by making more money than you spend and not being surrounded by desperate, hungry neighbors are two goals that cannot be second-guessed. I come to this conclusion not lightly, having been educated by friends who come from places where these two blessings could not be taken for granted. Talk to someone from Cuba or Venezuela sometime about what it was like to live there if you feel really down on a market-driven, demand-based economy.

     How can Americans ensure that this way of life be preserved? We en masse need a model where we can find innovations, see opportunity, and seek connections between ideas where none has occurred before. Where there is innovation, capital flows in and work ensues. Where invention and imagination create solutions, jobs follow.

Two Cultures = Invention!

     History is full of examples of this sort of innovation, and it has often happened at the crossing of two cultures. I'll mention a couple of examples of this, arguing that 1. the assimilation that is initially feared ultimately becomes identified as part of the culture, and 2. FLED teachers are the best-equipped folks in the *WHOLE SCHOOL* for fostering these ideas in the heads of future innovators.

     Let's start with an idea borrowed from our colleagues in Social Studies, that of syncretism, or “the combination of different forms of belief or practice" (1).  Where two cultures meet, there is an inevitable tendency for one to be affected by the other. Check out this American example from one of my favorite books, Lies My Teacher Told Me. Here the author discusses how American colonists (as well as New Yorkers a bit later) appropriated the dress of Native Americans to represent poltical ideas that were unique on the American continent:

When colonists took action to oppose unjust authority, as in the Boston Tea Party or the anti-rent protest again Dutch plantations in the Hudson River valley during the 1840s, they chose to dress as Indians, not to blame Indians for the demonstrations but to appropriate a symbol identified with liberty. Of course, Dutch traditions influenced Plymouth as well as New York. So did British common law and the Magna Carta. American democracy seems to be another example of syncretism, combining ideas from Europe and North America (2, p. 112).

Why were Native Americans associated with a concept of liberty? Native Americans were seen as conducting themselves differently both in their communities and in their relationship with the land they occupied. As an example of this distinction, there is evidence from multiple sources (3, 4) that the Iroquois, or League of Five Nations, profoundly influenced the formation of the US form of government, although not all scholars agree(5). As evidence, for example, one South Carolian delegate to the Constitutional Convention is said to have uttered the phrase, when citing Iroquian law, "We, the people, to form a union, to establish peace, equity, and order..."(5) a phrase familiar enough to any American!  In 1988, The US Congress even acknowledged their influence upon our form of government via resolution (4).

     I feel certain, however, that the short-sighted and close-minded wagon circlers who produced the images at the front of this blog would not view this contribution as “American.” But would they dare argue that the US Constitution or the original Boston Tea Partiers are to be criticized for having “unAmerican” influences? These modern-day “nativists' ” very existence depended on this syncretism.

Hershey's Chocolate:  UnAmerican?

     What's seen as foreign in one generation becomes a bulwark of its existence in the next, I argue. For my next example, let's take on something more light-hearted...chocolate. To make Hershey's chocolate bars, for example, one must mix cocoa and sugar. Did Americans invent these? Certainly not, nor even their European ancestors. The large-scale production of sugar came to the West via Arabs, who received it from it from their east, where it had slowly spread from New Guinea (6). From Europe to the Americas on explorer's ships, agricultural production of sugar became a world-wide phenomenon.

     And what of cocoa? Any Spanish teacher can tell you that it comes from the regions of the Olmec and then the Aztec and the Maya, in what is today called Mexico (7) (and Guatemala, Belize, and other Meso-American neighbors). Interestingly, the “inventors” of chocolate didn't mix it with milk and sugar, but the Europeans who took it back with them did so. Thank you, syncretism, for keeping my belt so tight!

     Imagine someone arguing with Hernán Cortés, somewhere near Veracrúz, México: “Hey, sir, these locals are savages and have nothing to offer us. I am NOT eating some filthy bean they grow here nor learning Náhuatl to hear about its nasty recipes.” If you've ever read any de las Casas (8), it has already occurred to you that there WERE folks like that among the conquistadores, and worse. Hershey, PA has profited mightily because they didn't win out.

     Now imagine someone trying to argue the preposterous notion that Hershey's chocolate is not American. It would not exist, however, if individuals at several points in history had not appropriated the practices and products of cultures foreign to them via syncretism. What is exotic today is part of cultural DNA tomorrow.

     To conclude this section, I will state what is not exactly news – to innovate, one must combine one's practices with those from outside. The process of getting an education, in a classical sense, allows the student to learn about those things which are from the outside and combine them with what is already had in one's possession. To be able to take in new information, without prejudice, and act upon it in a constructive way, is critical in the history of humanity. To react to uncertainty by assimilating that which is useful with what is already there is a powerful notion that has propelled us through the centuries. It occurs where two cultures bump, by definition.

We Must Teach Them To Embrace Change!

     You know, there is no one else in your school like YOU, the World Languages teacher, to make the argument for syncretism, and that ultimately, this must become a burning desire in the minds of our citizenry if our way of life is to survive. Further, demonstrating syncretic “agility” in a Foreign Language classroom should become one of our Standards to an extent that it is not, currently.

     If you are like me, you are already passionate about this, although we may have used different words to describe this for our entire careers when talking about why it's cool to teach another language. The ACTFL governing body reflects that passion. Our National Standards touch on this same idea in the Culture component of the “5 Cs” (9):

          Standard 2.1: Students demonstrate an understanding of the relationship between the practices and perspectives of the culture studied

          Standard 2.2: Students demonstrate an understanding of the relationship between the products and perspectives of the culture studied

Inevitably, the question will arise from a parent or legislator regarding these: Why? Why should I give money or time to these pursuits when we are in crisis? Why does it matter if a sixth grader or a freshman begins to understand the relationship between the practices, perspectives and products of (a) different culture(s)?

     The answer to this must not be the tautological “Because it's good for you” that compels no one but the already converted. Learning about a new culture allows the student to begin innovating the ideas that she already has, splintering off what does not work from what has value in a given situation. Something new is then born. We are the cohort that can impart and then assess this best. Asking students to identify the assumptions that they bring to the table is easier when you are demonstrating Standards 2.1 and 2.2 in your classroom every week.

     Who else can do as well as we do? The Social Studies teacher comes closest, I suppose, and many likely do it well. However, as a survey of many different societies and time periods, the level of familiarity in the foreign context cannot be present in those courses like it can in ours. What is needed is a mixture of both the uncertainty that is created by being around a new culture but also the familiarity that comes with staying within it semester after semester. The FL classroom is a crucible for this very mixture. However, if the FL teacher never or rarely asks that the student reflect on and innovate his practices based on what has been introduced, everyone suffers. The very nation suffers!

     Who else but you puts the student outside her home space? Who else in your school has traveled as much, to say nothing of having come from a place with highly different cultural, economic, and even meteorological assumptions?  In the vast majority of schools, I venture, you are the best living witness to syncretism. And its best advocate.

My Friend, You Are Upset About The Wrong Thing!

     As a teacher, I constantly ponder the question “What does it take for a learner to be successful upon entering adulthood?” As both an educator and before that, an entrepreneur, I've seen my share of the “successful,” in the materialistic sense that I defined in the introduction. What makes them different, and how can I help more students to be like them?

     Many successful people I have known find an innovation, handle well the risk associated with bringing it to market, and then make themselves available to those who might need it. It deeply bothers me, for example, that the wearer of the hateful patch above may believe that schools teach Spanish to Americans in order that undocumenteds don't have to learn English! I want to grab his shoulders and say, “No, brother, I teach Spanish because your children should be able to pursue customers, clients, and vendors in Spain and Latin America!”

     The misty notion that my country is at the center of it all reveals a Marshall Plan-era thinking when the competition was in rubble and the rest of the world was our customer as we emerged from World War II with little territorial damage.⁹ It was a world where the syncretism primarily occurred elsewhere-- “out there,” somewhere, in Europe and Japan. To pine for those days reminds me of the Hem character in Who Moved My Cheese?:

Hem and Haw were unprepared for what they found. “What! No Cheese?” Hem yelled. He continued yelling, “No Cheese? No Cheese?” as though if he shouted loud enough someone would put it back. “Who moved my Cheese?” he hollered. Finally, he put his hands on his hips, his face turned red, and he screamed a the top of his voice, “IT IS NOT FAIR!” (10, p. 33)

To be angry that undocumenteds don't need English like you think that they once did is misplaced rage.  Better to be furious that your children are not learning Mandarin, Portuguese, or, might I suggest, Spanish from the age of six, and fight to change that. Put that on a patch and stick it (on your jacket)!

We've Got To Innovate, Too!

     You are part of the solution, colleagues, although you may not be teaching for syncretic awareness. I suggest that you begin, overtly! What do you get in return? Relevance. 
     How many times have you been talking to an acquaintance in the grocery, or a parent, only to hear, “Oh, you teach Spanish/French/German/Russian/etc.? I took four years of that in high school and I can't remember more than how to say 'hello.'” This perturbs me to no end, and with all my energy, blogs, products, consultations, and advocacy I will fight to diminish this, making the use of the language for our students as attainable as possible.

     I'll be talking about proficiency in my next entry in August, but for now, I'll just say that I fear for our profession's future. If useful communication in the Target Language is not a reasonable goal for the majority of high school students, then I would offer syncretism as a partial alternative. You don't need reminding that budgets and scheduling are driven by results after the killer combination of both NCLB and then the financial crisis of 2008, and we can use the competencies that young people bring to class when combined with what we teach to demonstrate innovative, evolved thinking to demonstrate those results. We are in a unique position to ask students to reflect on their practices, compare them to others', and solve problems with something in between. 
     Imagine a new technology, innovation, or technique coming about, and the inventor saying, “I first came up with this idea because in my Spanish class we learned about how each town has a Zócalo, where families and friends gather around a plaza, and I asked myself, 'Why don't we do that in my town?' and that when I came up with the idea to _____...” Colegas, they would be knocking down the doors to fund us earlier and often if we could foster results like that!

Thanks for reading, and I invite your comments and questions.

-->Next month's topic:  Do ACTFL's Proficiency Guidelines line up with your curriculum and your teaching?

Citations:

¹http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/syncretism

²Loewen, J. W. (2004). Lies my teacher told me: Everything your American history textbook got wrong. New York: New Press.

³http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/iroquois.asp

⁴http://www.fnx.org/blog/iroquois-confederacy-foundation-united-states-constitution

⁵http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Law_of_Peace#cite_note-2 (see notes regarding Elizabeth Tooker if looking for a rejoinder)

⁶http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/08/sugar/cohen-text

⁷http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chocolate

⁸Casas, Bartolomé de las, 1474-1566. A short account of the destruction of the Indies. London: Penguin, 1992. Columbia University Libraries Virtual Reading Room, 2002. Based on edition of 1552.

⁹http://www.actfl.org/publications/all/national-standards-foreign-language-education

¹⁰Johnson, S. (2002). Who moved my cheese? An amazing way to deal with change in your work and in your life. New York: Putnam. 

Greg Sanchez is a former Spanish teacher and department chair at North Springs High School near Atlanta, GA, and was educated at the University of Southern Mississippi, the University of Georgia, and Kennesaw State University.  He wants to visit your school or county to talk about results-driven pedagogy via music, Performance-Based Assessments, and a host of other strategies.

His store:  http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Picantepractices
His teacher Facebook page (Like or Subcribe, please):  https://www.facebook.com/PicantePractices