The "Future-cation" of Foreign Language - What's your take?

       On Friday, Douglas County Schools brought Marc Prensky to inspire DC teachers to think forward and re-imagine their teaching. Their reactions spanned the gamut from outright indignation to utter boredom, with many thinking his approach was outlandish and others thinking it was outdated.  Leave it to Douglas County Schools to stir the pot.  On the other hand, I imagine there were quite a few who caught a glimpse of the future that Prensky, among many other educators, describes. In case you missed it, Prensky creatively referred to this as "Future-cation." I did spend some time thinking about how Foreign Language has and will be changing in the age of information.  I'll share a few of these thoughts with you, if you are interested.  I guess I'm playing devil's advocate a little because I don't really have any good answers to the questions I'll ask below. (Typical, you scoff. Believe me, I know.) 

1. Google Translate

Who's had this conversation before?

    Me: Hey, Mikayla. You'll have to re-do this project because you used a translator.

    Mikayla: What's wrong with that?

    Me: Well, you didn't really write it. The translator did.

    Mikayla: I did write it, but I don't know how to say that in Spanish.

    Me: You have to focus on the words and structures we've been learning, which means you can't say those things right now. 

    Mikayla: Well, that's dumb. I can just use a translator, then I can say it. 

    Me: (...purposeful wait time while we both decide this argument is going nowhere...)   

          Nonetheless, you'll have to re-do this project without the translator. 

   Truth is, despite the poor delivery, Mikayla has a point.  I know all the arguments against translators.  I beat these reasons into the minds of my students daily. One, translators aren't perfect. Two, there are frequent mistakes that only a human can really reason through. Three, it becomes a crutch that keeps you from using your own mind to create language. Four, you are losing an opportunity to practice the skills we are learning now. Five, no one wants to have a conversation with your iPhone app. And, of course, when it comes to assessment, using a translator is cheating. 

    And yet, while I'm uncomfortable acknowledging it, Mikayla does have a point. At least with writing, she, and everyone else, can just use a translator and while it's not perfect, is able to communicate their idea in the target language. Communication is the goal, right? 

So, does the innovation of a translator change things? I think it probably should.

How does it change things? Here is that part I mentioned where I don't have an answer. 

2. Writing Assessments

     For me, writing assessment are hands-down the most efficient way to evaluate the proficiency level of my students. And, for my sanity, efficiency is important. I keep them open-ended, balance the rubrics with communication and accuracy skills, and get a nice, easily managed pile of papers that I can return with individualized feedback. Well done, language teacher! Except the question begs to be asked: when will my students ever be actually writing this way? Those who do get an opportunity to use real language will most certainly be spitting out an email, not a letter, and they won't be detailing what they ate for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Should I have them do some emailing or create a product and try to assess their proficiency there? Maybe, but they'd have to use a computer to do the typing and get their resources. And, of course, with the introduction of a computer, we are back to the wonders and worries of Google Translate.

3. Vocabulary Themes

    Good language pedagogy says to learn new words within a theme. It provides more context for conversation and the connections that will help the mind to acquire the words. So, like all great teachers, I take the list about personality characteristics from the book or maybe, when I'm being an overachiever, I make a list to fit the essential question and my backwards plan. I hand out the lists. We practice, practice, practice. I scour the internet for authentic resources that use those words. I don't find any with the targeted vocabulary words but I find some others. I put new words on the board so we can actually read the resources I found. A student wants to know how to say "jealous," and I add that to the board. Another student wants to know how to say "bully" so we do some research, (Thank you, wordreference.com) and add that as well, in Puerto Rican, Mexican and Peruvian slang. We end up with an amazingly rich and useful list of words on the board. On Friday, I forget to write "save" and that evening the cleaning staff erases them all. Ouch. At the end of the week, we take an assessment using the original (and less interesting) list that I handed out in the beginning. Then, I am in the trenches of grading assessments and beginning a new unit with no time to reflect, and so, unfortunately, I begin the process over again.

   What if kids made their own study lists, based on what they wanted to say about the essential question?  Would they fail some assessment in Spanish 2 because they don't know the word for "green beans," even though they never eat them? How would something like that be managed? I've seen this happen in elementary school, but, for most of us, there is the complication of 120 extra students. And finally, where will they find these words? I'll have to teach them how to pull them from our resources and conversations. Oh, right, they can also get them from Google translate. 

     These are just a few of the thoughts that have been hovering in my mind this year that, admittedly, kind of make my throat swell up. Like I said, I don't really have the answers yet. Based on the amazing presentations put on by our own teachers, I'm sure there are some folks that have already found great ways to approach these issues, and I'd really like to know what everyone else thinks. So, what's your stance on using translators? Have you played with personalized vocabulary? What's your best way to assess proficiency? What changes do you see happening to our content? Good or bad, I'll take your comments below! 

Assessment and CITE 6 for World Language

 - an Interview with Dr. Syna Morgan

With CITE 6 and the never-ending implementation of educational reforms, I thought I could save some trouble by getting some solid information about how the new assessment model affects me, and you, as World Language teachers. As usual, there is a ton of information floating around but very little concrete communication. To this end, I met with Dr. Syna Morgan, the System Performance Officer for Douglas County Schools. Here's the nitty gritty of our conversation...

CITE 6 is Douglas County's response to the Colorado state mandate that 50% of a teacher's salary be based on the progress of their students. Douglas County is continuing to work out the kinks of how to actually implement this massive and decidedly mucky undertaking. Teachers will be responsible for monitoring the progress of their students through assessments and reporting this progress to the district, which brings me to the questions I had specifically for World Language Teachers.

Will all World Language Teachers be using the same assessment? 

    Probably not, or at least not right away. There is a group of teachers who created an assessment using the EADMS program for Spanish 1. Rocky Heights teachers and some others are using this assessment this year. This will provided a consistent and practical method to manage and compare progress across the district. Anyone can use this same assessment and in the future may choose to create a full line of these standardized-type assessments for all the courses. This will obviously involve a lot of committees and conversations.  

   Another choice is to use a smaller scale common assessment. This could be within a school, feeder or across multiple schools; the more teachers the better. The test should be given multiple times throughout the year to show student growth. Dr. Morgan pointed out that it does not necessarily have to be given at the very beginning of the school year, a common complaint for Level 1 teachers. 

  A teacher could also choose to just use their own individual assessments, although these may be ranked low on the validity scale. 

Does the assessment need to be comprehensive and cover all of the standards? 

  No. Dr. Morgan assured me that these assessments will be considered a "snapshot" of the progress students are making, with the assumption that similar progress is being made across the skills and standards of the subject. In other words, the nightmare of common speaking assessments can be removed from the equation for now. 

If there is no consistent assessment for all WL teachers, how will you generate the CITE 6 ratings?

To allow for the myriad of ways that students learn and provide evidence of learning across the subjects, Douglas County is currently creating a variety of programs and calculators which will rate the validity of assessments and student progress. For example, a teacher chooses to use a writing prompt to assess his students' progress. He goes to the district's calculator program which will ask questions about the type and administration of the assessment to provide a rating of the assessment's quality. Assessments which are common to a group of teachers, scored by a group, authentic, performance-based etc. would receive a higher validity rating. This is only the very first step in the process. That score is combined with a different calculation of the types of assessments given throughout the course as well as, finally, the growth achieved by the students, and the school's growth as measured by CO testing. All of these scores go into yet another calculator which determines the teachers score for the CITE 6 Standard.  My takeaway was that this is unbelievably complicated and not ready at all for this year.

When will our salaries actually be affected?  

  The idea is to have teachers go through the process to rate their assessments and so on this school year but mostly as a pilot. Salaries will not be affected next year as previously promised. However, even piloting these calculators and programs could be pushed back as well. 

It was quite reassuring to speak with Dr. Morgan. She was forthright and helpful in discussing a complicated  know my school has recently put together a committee to work on CITE6 implementation, which means that there will likely be some movement in this area soon. At Mesa we put together a simple writing assessment that we give 3 times a year. There are 4 Spanish teachers, 2 French and 1 Chinese teacher who give a very open-ended writing prompt (modified for culture) with the same rubric. Dr. Morgan and I put this particular assessment through the district's calculator and it scored relatively high. Does your school already have an assessment that might serve this purpose well? What do you think about a common district-wide assessment? I'd love to hear your comments below!

Job-Alike 2013-14

Saludos

  It's 6:30 on Monday and we are just finishing up our Job-Alike Day plans! :)

Job-alike Agenda

January 17, 2013

Castle Rock Middle School

8:00- 9:30  Marc Prensky - At Castle Rock Middle School, streaming and presentation provided by Douglas County School District

9:45 - 10:30 Session 1

Break and Refreshments

11:00-11:45 Session 2

12:00 - 12:45 Session 3  

1:00 - 3:00 Lunch and collaborative work 

The best aspect of World Language Job-alike has always been the amazing and truly useful presentations put on by our own World Language teachers. If you are interested in sharing your ideas about technology use, language learning strategies or even better, critical thinking, creativity, communication or collaboration, please contact Katie Bower (kabower@dcsdk12.org) or Noemi Prusiewicz (nprusiewicz@dcsdk12.org). Include a title, the outcomes and the theme. This is a great opportunity to be highly effective and gather evidence for you Cite evals! Feel free to present with your colleagues or alone. 

Also, check in with our SURVEY so we can make the day even more meaningful for you. 

Touching Base

 

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