Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't know about you guys, but the foreign language curriculum and teachers at my kid's school are awful. The are teaching Spanish in the most nonsensical way. I do not think that these teachers are capable of creating an actual lesson plan, to be honest. Before you all get on me about this, I must add I have a PhD in a foreign language and have taught for nineteen years. They do not teach an immersion pedagogy. It is not communicative. It is not even the Berlitz method! They do not assign homework or a study guide for the students. I have no idea what they are doing in the class unless my kid brings her folder home, and when she did, the "curriculum" was so disorganized and looked like they were flying by the seat of their pants. Who teaches past perfect tenses before you even get to the present tense? I've taught in an immersion environment and you just don't do this. It seems that the teachers lean on the native speakers to pretend that they are actually making some progress with the students, but if anything, when I would listen into my kid's classes when they were doing distance learning, it was completely half-baked. The teacher was basically asking them questions like "What is rojo, Susie?" Susie would respond, "Uhhhh, red?" And then the teacher would respond, "!Muy bien!" That was the whole class for the thirty minutes each week. It is horrible. They should just get rid of it if they can't invest in a real language curriculum

+1, foreign language classes in US high schools are generally not good.

LCPS produced a study several years ago that showed the students that took a Spanish in elementary, were no better off once they got to high school then students that had not.

In addition I think one of the other big differences is that LCPS has 6th grade in middle school. Students get that transition year into middle school and then LCPS strongly encourages students to take a foreign language in seventh grade. I don't have the data but I would estimate that 50% of the students take a foreign language and this is based on teaching with LCPS middle schools for 10 years.

I now teach 6th grade in FCPS. Parents are very reluctant to have them start a foreign language in 7th grade because many of them are already taking algebra and transitioning to the middle school environment. I teach in an AAP classroom and I would estimate that approximately 10% of my students take a foreign language in 7th grade.

This was a lunchroom conversation pre-covid. I teach at one of the immersion ms feeders. We all thought that if FCPS had any sense they would eliminate the program. There are some super committed parents (most of whom are bilingual or have some cultural tie to the language), but it is a “nice to have” that has sailed its course in FCPS. In ES, the immersion class sizes end up being small (to the detriment of the gen ed classes) in the upper grades. The kids don’t actually learn enough grammar to set them up to be any more successful than the kids who start in MS. You have to have people at Willow Oaks/Gatehouse to oversee the program. It often creates a divide among ES kids (the # of times I’ve heard “are you having an orientation just for immersion parents”). Much like IB, it is a way for parents to get out of an ES they deem undesirable . Immersion my have been fine in the robust budget times, but when you aren’t even able to give teachers their steps/cola raises most years, it is time to trim the fat. Immersion is definitely fat.