I believe that high-quality World Language Education is an essential aspect of a 21st century education; therefore, all students deserve access to this programming and the life-changing opportunities it provides. In addition to the cognitive benefits and future career opportunities afforded by bilingualism, world language education offers learners the opportunity to engage with cultures meaningfully and develop their intercultural proficiency. With the support of their educators, learners may reflect and think critically about their own perspectives and learn to engage respectfully with those whose world-views may differ. This skill is crucial in our increasingly globalized world.
The Social-Emotional benefits of learning a new language are incredibly valuable. Language Learners build communicative skills, exercise patience with themselves and others, persevere through uncertainty, negotiate meaning, embrace uncertainty, and develop empathy for those moving through the stages of Second Language Acquisition. Language learning can feel very vulnerable. For many students, this feels like a daunting task. I normalize these feelings with my classes and share about my own language learning journey to offer a model of how to navigate these feelings. We work together in my class to set realistic and achievable goals given what SLA research indicates are appropriate for the students' proficiency levels. This allows learners to set individual goals and celebrate their progress along the way. Growth mindset is at the core of this practice. Throughout the 3 years students are in my class, they routinely upload their work to an individual Google Site, which serves as an online portfolio. It is incredibly powerful when learners look back to see how much they have progressed since Day 1 of French at the end of their middle school experience. Growth mindset is also embedded in how I evaluate assessments. As a member of my department's Standards Based Grading Pilot, I provide holistic, asset-based, descriptive feedback on learners' performance, while targeting individual areas for growth for each student.
As a core contributor to my department's curriculum development team, I approach unit and lesson design following the tenants of Backwards Design and Universal Design for Learning, with an emphasis on the Social Justice Standards from Learning for Justice. I design lessons and curriculum informed by the ACTFL World-Readiness standards. In my classes, I teach at least 90% or more in the target language and use carefully-selected authentic resources as sources of culturally-rich comprehensible input. I encourage learners to listen and read with the intent to understand, while coaching learners on strategies to build their interpretive proficiencies. I scaffold interpersonal tasks to ensure communicative target language use that challenges students to speak with increasing detail, variety, and complexity. I distinguish between polished and unpolished speaking and writing while evaluating learners' presentational communication. Since arriving in Brookline, I have coordinated an ePal exchange with St. Germain de Charonne, a Parisian middle school, allowing my students an authentic peer audience for their language output. I have worked to weave this exchange into my curriculum and it has developed into a rich cultural exchange between our communities.
I am always looking to improve my practice and stay up-to-date on Second Language Acquisition research and World Language Methods. I was fortunate in 2019 to attend the MAFLA Proficiency Academy, Summer Institute, and Fall Conference. In February 2022, I attended the NECTFL Conference on a scholarship, followed by the MAFLA Core Practices weekend in March. I left these events inspired to learn more. In 2022, I wrote a grant to the Brookline Education Foundation for 32 of my colleagues to go to the 2022 ACTFL Convention in Boston, followed by 6 hours of funded collaboration time. I am always eager to collaborate with and learn from my professional network, and seek out this professional development whenever possible.