Anyone else underwhelmed by Spanish instruction in mcps?
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Anonymous
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I can’t tell if we’re just unlucky in terms of teachers, but I have to say our experience has been very underwhelming. Thus far, most teachers have not been native or bilingual Spanish speakers. (Think: Senora Rosenberg.)
The quizzes and assignments I’ve seen at the high school level are ridiculous. I’m bilingual (studied Spanish k through 12 at private schools and earned a BA in Spanish), and the instruction and metrics seem ridiculous. Care to comment on your kid’s experience? Care to share your school or pyramid? I will if you will. |
Anonymous
| It’s typical, unfortunately. MCPS has great difficulty hiring competent language teachers. |
Anonymous
| We’ve been very happy with TPMS. Both my children had the same teacher all three years. One was not a good FL student and she did well enough. The other loves foreign languages and was already bilingual in English and a second language. |
Anonymous
| Bish, buy some Rosetta Stone and find something real to worry about. |
Anonymous
+1,000 
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Anonymous
| Horrible at our MS, and one good teacher at our HS. Yes, a complete clusterf*ck. |
Anonymous
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I thought half the county is now Hispanic! And no one in it can properly or effectively teach Spanish?!?
Yikes. |
Anonymous
| Maybe the ESOL teachers can do it, aren’t there like 5-10 of those in each school in silver spring? |
Anonymous
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For 18:56 and 18:57 trolls
Not all Hispanics actually speak Spanish. Some do so as a second language to English or an indigenous language. Others may not speak Spanish at all. My great-grandmother intentionally never spoke Spanish to her children so that generation only learned English, except a son who learned Japanese in the navy. ESOL teachers must be able to teach students from a variety of language backgrounds. In this County, we have ELLs who speak Hebrew, Korean, Amharic, Arabic, Japanese, Urdu, Haitian Creole, Mandarin, Portuguese, etc as well as Spanish. |
Anonymous
| Spanish, how about any foreign language teacher in the county. Seriously though, if you were fluent in a foreign language I'm guessing you could make more money doing something else. I have to say that all of my kid's foreign language teachers were not terribly good teachers so I'm not surprised to hear this. |
Anonymous
| I became pretty fluent in Spanish taking it 7-12 grades in MCPS, plus a couple month-long study abroad programs during the summer. Not all of my teachers were native speakers. I don’t think a teacher has to be a native speaker to be a good Spanish teacher. And LOTS of US born Latinos/Hispanic heritage speakers are not fully Spanish literate. When people say it’s impossible to mis-spell in Spanish they are WRONG - I’ve met a lot of native/fluent speakers who were never educated in Spanish and their writing is illegible unless you read it aloud. |
Anonymous
How about foreign-language teaching in the country. There's a reason for the "what do you call a person who speaks one language" joke. Learning a foreign language is not, overall, a US priority. |
Anonymous
Actually, only 33%, according to the MCPS website. Interestingly though, I get all my ES kids' lessons written in English and Spanish. Even his English lesson this week came in both English, plus the option to read the book and answer the questions in Spanish. So, they must have some people who can teach in Spanish? |
Anonymous
They teach English, moron. E stands for English. |
Anonymous
You speak English, right? So, does that qualify you to teach English? |