A lot has changed since 2007—not only in my teaching practice and my relationship with the French languge and culture, but also in our increasingly global society. A full decade into my career, I am a more confident and effective teacher than the untested twenty-two-year old who first scribbled, “Je m’appelle Madame…” across the blackboard. My teaching style and methods have evolved as I have realized that good teachers never stop being students; they constantly self-assess and redefine what constitutes excellent teaching. Through self-reflection, student and peer evaluation, professional development, mentorship experiences and advanced academic study, I have consistently sought to improve my teaching practice and the experience of my students. Still, the goals that I carried into the profession have changed little: I set out to prepare my students to lead rich, productive lives as citizens of the international community. Now, more than ever, that means providing them the tools and opportunities they need to develop the real-world, culturally conscious language proficiency and 21st century communication skills that will drive positive change and open up new possibilities in school, career and life.

Learning a second language teaches us about ourselves and about the world around us. In exploring the francophone world, I want my students to recognize and celebrate their own diversity while embracing and engaging the unfamiliar. My first teaching job challenged me to realize these goals. I was substitute teaching in the San Francisco Bay Area when I received a call one day from a local high school in need of a French teacher. The former teacher had left to take a job in a more affluent district and her replacement walked out one day and never returned. The school had a reputation for being “rough.” It had a very diverse student body with high percentages of socioeconomically disadvantaged families, English learners, and students with disabilities. Gang-related activity, transience, poor attendance, and low academic achievement were the norm, not the exception. It was time to put everything I had learned from my teacher preparation courses to work.

The expression “baptism by fire” comes to mind when I reflect back on my first few months there. It was a challenge to gain the students’ trust and respect. There were days when I wanted to cry walking from the car to my classroom. I would fall asleep at night wondering, “How am I going to make these kids care about learning French?” Time, patience, persistence and a defiant optimism helped answer that quesiton. After being abandoned and experiencing frustration and failure in their previous French study, my students needed reassurance that I was there for them and that I believed in their ability to learn another language. I had to learn who they were, what they were interested in, and who and what was important to them before I could motivate and engage them. Fostering relationships and creating a classroom bond through humor, interaction, and weaving a classroom narrative dramatically changed the climate and lowered the affective filter for language learning to take place. While I still had many obstacles to overcome in my first year, this first victory gave me heart.

Studies show that language acquisition occurs through the regular interpretation, expression and negotiation of meaning within social contexts. Indeed, I found that real language learning takes place when indivual voices are heard, acknowledged, and supported. No dialogue, in French or otherwise, can take place before building a sense of community and cultivating a learning environment where students not only share and access information from one another in the target language, but also feel encouraged and safe taking risks.

Social interaction is only one half of the recipe for language acquisition. The other vital piece is input, the authentic language that learners are exposed to. Outdated models for language teaching enforce verb drills and rote memorization while robbing students of opportunities to stumble, struggle, experiment, act, and think through the second language as we do naturally when we learn our first. I see my role, therefore, not as the expert in the room, but as the facilitator of an input-rich environment. I choose an immersion teaching style in which language is made comprehensible through a variety of scaffolds including gesture, facial expression, visuals, diagrams, intonation, rephrasing, repetition, modified pace and syntax, and realia. Together we use the language to respond to relevant and engaging content across curricular and cultural boundaries. In second-year French, for example, while learning to talk about food, beginning students are able to discuss in a general, though meaninful way, French and American perspectives on food ; to compare school lunch menus from the United States, Canada, France and Algeria ; and to plan healthy menus after reading excerpts from a French-language blog about superfoods and the health benefits of a colorful diet. Students gain confidence when they are able to draw from their preexisting knowledge and make connections to their real life. It is through making these personal and interdisciplinary connections that French becomes another point of access to the world.

When it comes to curriculum design, my process has come full circle since my early days of lesson planning. I have adopted a backwards design model where I start with an end goal in mind. I break the summative assessment down into its component parts to meet students where they are while constantly pushing them on to the next level. I rely less heavily on the textbook to guide instruction, opting instead to present vocabulary and grammar in a more personal, natural way as our communication tasks and objectives require. Regular checks for understanding and formative assessments inform my response to individual student needs through differentiated lesson plans, modified language tasks and student choice in summative assessments. Part of learning another language is learning to be a good listener, and I strive to model good listening through my respect and responsiveness in the dialogue between students and teacher.

I have come to recognize the strength in my rapport with students through my easy, warm, encouraging presence in the classroom. I bring energy and passion for both the teaching and study of the French language and culture which is evident in my committment to life-long learning. In my most recent experiences as a Graduate Teaching Fellow at the University of Oregon, I have come to more deeply appreciate the “why” behind learning languages and perhaps most importantly, to understand the “why” behind my teaching. Knowledge of a second language is about much more than conjugating verbs and memorizing useful travel phrases ; it is about opening yourself up to a much deeper human experience, learning empathy and fostering understanding between “us” and “them”; developing critical thinking, cooperation and problem-solving skills to confront the challenges of a complex, globalizing society. I teach French not only because it enriches my own life, but also as my contribution and investment in the future, theirs and ours. Long after they have left my classroom, I hope that I will have made a difference in the way my students engage and affect the world.

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