Quelle heure est-il? Time for some realia!

The curse of having been an ESL/EFL teacher is that I am still compelled to collect and keep examples of American culture and English language in context and comic strips and advertisements and newspaper articles and funny pictures (not to mention all of the textbooks I used as a grad student, the textbooks I taught out of, the class set of paper clocks, the flashcards, the bingo markers, the fly swatters, the puppets, the picture files…you teachers know what I'm talking about!)

Yes, that is indeed a stuffed Eiffel Tower.  Smiling broadly and sporting a beret.  Kitsch much?

And the curse of having started my teaching career in 1996 means that I'm still fighting the mindset of "I can't get rid of this--I might need it again some day!"  My email account was still a toddler at that point; I didn't have internet access at home (and probably wouldn't have known what to do with it if I did); I certainly couldn't consult with teachers across the world via listservs and blogs, or type, say, "how to teach the conditional past" into a search box on Google or Teachers Pay Teachers, and my Pinterest addiction wouldn't hit until my late 30s.

In other words, I became a teacher who believed strongly in hard copies.  If you excavate my home office, the strata go from "French with elementary students" to "French with preschoolers" to "French with toddlers" to "French with babies" (as my children grew) to "French with college students" (my job before starting a family" to "ESL with college students" to "Masters degree in TESL/TEFL" and "Masters degree in French" to "ESL with high schoolers in France," with assorted private tutoring leftovers scattered throughout (study skills!  note-taking!  SAT vocabulary! freshman composition! and my favorite tutoring story, about the two Korean boys whose parents fired me because I made their sons laugh too often when teaching them English).

This is the teaching souvenir of which I am most proud: the director's chair signed by all the actors in one of the French plays I produced at Colorado State University

Anyway.  I am trying to hang on to fewer articles and worksheets and pictures--especially since I can save them to Pinterest rather than printing them out--and especially now since our basement flooded TWICE last month on separate and unrelated occasions and I easily could have lost two decades' worth of lesson plans, worksheets, plays photocopied from Interlibrary Loan materials and carefully glossed by hand so that they'd be accessible rather than overwhelming to my students….Thinking about it makes my skin crawl.

the rusty residue of one of my three metal filing cabinets

Where was I?  Ah oui, realia.  The term refers to examples of real stuff from a country where the target language is spoken--directions for operating a hair dryer, the box that the hair dryer came in, the magazine ad promoting the hair dryer, the receipt from the store where you bought the hair dryer, the warranty card for the hair dryer.

Okay, so those are not very exciting examples, but you get the picture.  Think movie listings, driver's license applications, museum brochures, restaurant menus, chocolate wrappers, cereal boxes, classified ads, personal ads, lost pet flyers, and all those items that track the minutiae of daily life and simultaneously present language in a rich context and reveal information about what the culture considers interesting or important.

The 11-year-old boy that I've been tutoring (he's a home schooler who wants to learn French) has been learning the days of the week, the months of the year, and how to tell time ("You mean that to say 7:45 pm I have to add 12 to the 7 and subtract 15 from 8:00?  Geez.  French is weird!").  I found such a fantastic piece of realia for him that I just had to share it:

A blank schedule page?  What's the big deal?

So this emploi du temps is a nice example of a school schedule template that a French learner can fill in to practice time, days of the week, and the class names.  But that's not all!  Here are some other elements that an astute student might notice (with some guidance from le prof):

• The week begins on lundi (Monday).
• Time is listed according to the 24-hour clock.
• Lunch is such an ingrained part of the day that it is included every school day at noon as a given.
• The school week ends on samedi (Saturday--though I understand that few French schools still hold class on Saturday mornings any more)
• The days of the week are not capitalized
• French cursive handwriting is different (and cuter?) than American cursive.
• The digit 1 begins with a pre-stroke like an upbeat or a tiny wing, while the 7 features a horizontal stroke that just makes it look cooler than an American seven.
• The drawings at the bottom don't depict football, pennants, or technology.
• But they do include the ubiquitous and very French trousse (a pencil case that sits at the top of every desk to enable students to rotate between pencils, fountain pens, and ballpoint pens of various colors as well as to underline key points with a straight edge at a moment's notice).
• The bird icon is speaking English! 

And these are the sort of things that we teachers (should) want our kiddos to pay attention to.  If you're learning a language, it doesn't happen in a vacuum.  Verb conjugations are fine and dandy, but they don't do you any good if you show up for dinner on the wrong day at the wrong time because you misread the calendar or assumed that 18h was the same thing as 8:00.

What are some of your favorite pieces of realia, as a student or a teacher?  (And do you have any souvenirs as tacky-but-delightful than my Tour Eiffel en peluche?  You know you do.  Go ahead, tell us about them!)

an unexpected result of a parent-teacher conference

I hate soccer. Je déteste le foot.

Griffin, par contre, adore le foot.

No, wait, that's too strong.  Rather, I am ambivalent about sports and I dislike the commitment that playing on a kids' soccer team requires--two practices a week, right at dinner time (which means that we can either eat early without my husband, who is still at work, or eat later, which throws off the kids' bedtime routine), plus a game on Saturdays which can be as early as 9:00 or as late as 4:00.

On soccer afternoons, Griffin has to walk home from school, decompress from his 7.5-hour school day (he craves time by himself most days), eat a protein-heavy snack, do his homework (20 minutes or so), practice his music (10 minutes), find his shin guards and cleats and water bottle and hat, and walk to practice, all in two hours.

This would, of course, be a piece of gâteau to a grown-up, but not for a lollygagging seven-year-old.  And not for the seven-year-old's mother and his little sister who must accompany him for all these steps.

He loves her very much, of course, but sometimes he just wants her to leave him alone.

So I feel confident in blaming le foot for the fact that it's been hard to get Griffin to do anything in French at home with me lately.  He's a busy little boy, and I don't want to push him to read and write in French if he doesn't want to; he'll resist and resent it.  (Fortunately, he still willingly snuggles and listens to me read aloud in French at bedtime.)

At his first parent-teacher conference of the year, as we discussed how to keep him engaged and challenged in second grade, I had a brainstorm: I asked the teacher if I could come in a couple of times a week to do French lessons with him during the school day.  And she agreed!

So far, so good.  He's thrilled to skip the school breakfast and calendar/circle time for half an hour at the beginning of the day while spending time one-on-one with maman. We sit at a table just outside his classroom and take turns reading aloud, then we discuss what we read, then he writes a little about it, and--his favorite--sometimes we play word games. It's low-key, and lovely.

It makes me so, so happy to spend time helping him explore this language that I love.  And not having to coax or cajole him to interact in French, not having to ward off and wrangle his inquisitive, imperious sister, not having to squeeze our lessons in between snack and soccer, or chores and bath, or homework and dinner--that makes our time together all the sweeter.

my smiley garçon, showing off the chameléon he made in art class

l'alphabet français II : répétez !

Okay, so now you have listened to more French alphabet songs than you'd ever thought possible.  Enough listening!  You won't learn the sounds and the names of the letters until you get comfortable pronouncing them.  So clear your throat, take a long drink of eau, and try these out:

"Military-style French Alphabet": An English-speaking French teacher walks you through her version of the alphabet, set to the rhythm of a familiar military cadence ("I don't know but I've been told…").  This ten-minute video is very thorough and offers opportunities to practice single lines at a time slowly and then build up to saying the whole chant more quickly.

Watch this quick example first:

But this guy's cuter: Tom from easytolearnfrench.com is a young Frenchman who earnestly teaches Anglophone viewers how to say the French alphabet.  Do watch this too so that you hear a native speaker pronouncing the letter names:

Want to keep practicing but don't want to keep watching these same two videos over and over?  (Oui!)

These websites have simple pronunciation activities:

From Chillola.com, click on the letter and repeat:

From About.com, words that start with each letter to listen to and repeat:

This page from the BBC focuses on the trickier sounds for anglophones, including nasal vowels.  Strangely, it neglects to include U.  (My high school French teacher always told us to "round your lips as if you're going to say "ooooo" but then say "eeeee" instead.")

And, finally, here's another activity that reinforces on the vowel sounds, courtesy of hello-world.com:

Coming soon: l'alphabet français, part 3, which will feature games and apps about the alphabet….

l'alphabet français I : chantez !

It's time for my tutees to learn the French alphabet (and for my four-year-old to stop mumbling "elmo-elmo-pé" when she gets lost in the middle of the song)!  Let's start with some chansons (songs)...

First, some traditional alphabet songs with Mozart's familiar melody:

La chanson de l'alphabet, featuring a man's voice accompanied by a calm acoustic guitar:

The letters appear on screen, along with the lyrics at the end of the song: "Maintenant je les connais/Toutes les lettres de l'alphabet."

This one, from the website Le monde des petits, has a child's voice singing the alphabet and gentle synthesizer music; it's the one Gwyneth likes best (she actually sings along, and she's very picky about that sort of thing):

The lyrics end a little differently: "Maintenant je les connais/Chante avec moi s'il te plaît."  This 20-minute video continues with a catchy animated song about the numbers 1-10, assigning a rhyming characteristic to each of them ("le sept aime les chaussettes"), and then includes a second alphabet song after the numbers, this one like a lullaby.

My favorite French version of the traditional alphabet song, however, is the accordion-spiced ABC & 123 Cajun from Michael Doucet (founder of the popular group Beausoleil).  Unfortunately, no one has made a cute animated video of it or posted a live version on YouTube, so for now, listen to the promotional clip (#7) on Amazon (and consider buying the album, Le Hoogie-Boogie, Louisiana French Music for Children--it's delightful).

But why limit ourselves to the usual versions?  You might like some of these fun, less-traditional French alphabet songs:

Alain Le Lait's L'alphabet en français, funky and animated:

The lyrics are simple: multiple repetitions of the alphabet, each followed by "c'est l'alphabet en français."

You will probably recognize this next melody for the alphabet song: it's the aria "L'amour est un oiseau rebel" from Bizet's Carmen.  I think it's genius!

A nice change from the major-key alphabet songs is this one; it's simply a different melody with those same 26 letters:

Ditto (the exact song, but this video features barnyard fowl rocking out):

This next video introduces each letter of the alphabet, accompanied by a drawing of an animal that begins with that letter.  The singer/narrator pauses just long enough for the viewers to repeat after him.  I like that the animal names appear onscreen, and especially that not all of the creatures are the ones you'd expect.  (Cigogne for C, for example, rather than the more common chat, chien, or cheval; and not an éléphant but rather an écureil for E.  And who doesn't appreciate a good "N is for narval"?)

And if you like learning a word along with each letter, then you should check out Les Alphas, a video introducing the alphabet via characters shaped like the letters.  Each one represents the sound(s) that the letter makes.  Some are cute (the dame and her extremely ample derrière) and some confusing (you'll think the C looks like a chenille, but it's actually a cornichon, while the N, which is supposed to be a nez, looks like the love child of a champignon and a crotte).  I also can't help thinking that the jet d'eau looks too much like a sperm.

(Did you notice the limace for L?  Whose idea was it to make its mascot a slug?!)

I do wish each of the words were written onscreen--especially since it appears that this video is part of a program for teaching (French-speaking) children to read.  Curious to see more?  Check out this clip that focuses on the vowel sounds and this one that introduces the back story of the planète des Alphas.

Now, take a trip back to the 1980s with Chantal Goya and her live-action on-stage spectacular featuring  little girls in matching sailor suit dresses; larger-than-life chickens, cats, and an egg with limbs; and Madame Goya herself with such a sweet voice and such large shoulder pads, gently encouraging us to "Apprends l'alphabet en chantant" :

(This video is simultaneously horrifying and enthralling, isn't it?  I bet you couldn't look away from the singer and her sprightly, singing, head-tilting minions.  I'm so sorry for inflicting this earworm on you!)

So…which one is your favorite, and why?  Which one(s) would you be happy to never hear again?

Stay tuned for part 2 (practicing repeating the alphabet) and part 3 (playing games online to practice the alphabet).

random Frenchy, teachy things

No time for full blog posts this month!  But at least I can make a bulleted list of some of my recent Frenchy and/or teachy thoughts….

gratuitous shot of G&G at the zoo

• A mom I know who occasionally uses her non-native French with her teen daughters told me that she has discovered a way to cut down on the speed and intensity of their arguments: she announces things like curfew in French, and when the girls protest, they have to do so on French too!
• Grandrabbit's Play, where Carol and I taught two French classes for kiddos, closed last month, so we won't be teaching there again.  :(
• But I now am leading three separate weekly French tutoring sessions: one with a four-year-old, one with a group of siblings ages four through nine, and a duo of ten-year-old boys.  (See those toes down there?  These three very different classes are keeping me on them!)
• The afore-mentioned siblings are already bilingual (from Spanish-speaking homes), and it's sooooo cool to observe how completely unfazed they are when I speak French to them for 30 minutes at a time.  No freaking out, no funny looks, no demands for translation.  It's like they know that they'll get it eventually, and in the meantime, they are understanding enough to have fun.
• I saw the four-year-old at school; she was wearing a t-shirt with an owl on it, and when she saw me, she pointed to it and said "hibou!  hibou, Sarah!"
• The mom of the other four-year-old told me excitedly that she can't wait until she and her daughter can converse in French.  Should I tell her that half an hour once a week won't lead to that anytime soon?
• Griffin is really enjoying the following three resources in French: the magazine "Youpi! J'ai compris!" along with the free animated videos on nonfiction topics available on Brainpop and the geography games on Jeux de geographie. 
• Gwyneth continues to assert that she doesn't know how to speak French whenever I ask her how to say something or other in French.
• Gwyneth also continues to tell her nanny, "My daddy doesn't talk French or Spanish.  My mommy talks French and English.  I talk French, English, and Spanish."
• Her pronunciation (in English) is gradually improving, which means that "Spanish" sounds like "panis" or "panish" now, instead of "penis."  (Oh, the shocked stares I intercepted when strangers heard my three-year-old announce, "I wike penis.  Mommy wike penis too.  Daddy don't wike penis.")
• Gwyn and I attended a classmate's birthday party where we and one other family were the only anglophones there!  I ate spicy salsa, drank hibiscus cooler, and practiced my Spanish.
• I've done three storytimes in French at the library this semester, and they're going well.  Themes: love (in February for valentines day), animals, and Paris. 
• We've had two French playdates so far, each very different, and for the next one this weekend, I'm going to bring more games and puzzles and toys (and thus fewer French learning games).
• Several private schools are offering French camps this summer, and I'm determined to send Griffin to one or two of them.  And there are Spanish camps in the area, too--including one at a farm!  I bet both kids would like those.
• I need to make more time to blog and read the blogs of those I admire!  

Global Village Acad-envy

G&G with the "bonjour" bear outside the French classroom

An hour north of where I live, in the city where I used to teach, a new campus of an immersion charter school has opened.  This elementary school offers classes in Spanish, Mandarin, and French, and if I didn't so love my kids' Spanish immersion school already, I would be tempted to quit my job and spend my days driving back and forth to Fort Collins so that they could go to school in French!

Definitely not practical, non?  But I can still take them there on special occasions, like last week's French International Night:

In a crowded, stage-less cafeteria, Griff and Gwyn watched kids their ages sing songs they know and act out a story they've heard many times, all in French.  So valuable!

The cast of Cendrillon takes a bow

And then some college students acted out Le petit chaperon rouge, which is Gwyn's most favorite fairy tale ever.  (At least this week.)

Most fun, however, was the time afterwards for exploring the French-themed stations:

The kids played Le jeu de l'oie on a huge gameboard marked out in masking tape on the floor,

built castles out of cardboard,

and indulged in French cheese, croissants, and crêpes au Nutella et à la confiture.

(I indulged too, naturally!)

We could probably spread Nutella on a dirty sock full of Brussels sprouts and my children would eat it up. 

I also enjoyed peeking nosing around the classroom to see their materials and decorations in French:

Unsurprisingly, very similar to what I see in Griffin's classroom--but somehow so much cuter in French!

And while I know that my own children will not be attending Global Village Academy, I'm nonetheless thrilled the school exists 50 miles away, which means that 20+ kids every year will start learning French as kindergarteners; some of them will no doubt go on to study French at Colorado State, thus strengthening the foreign language program there, and perhaps some of them will drop into my library storytimes and playdates in French in the meantime!

homework from his Spanish teacher: practice writing in French!

At the urging of his teacher at his Spanish immersion school, my on-his-way-to-trilingual six-year-old son Griffin is now doing homework in French!

The teacher had issued a challenge to the kids at the beginning of the school year: to read 100 books in Spanish and write a couple of sentences responding to them in a sort of reading journal.  She even provided prompts to help the young writers get started--"my favorite part was...", "something new I learned was...", and so forth.

When Griffin brought her his completed journal a couple of weeks ago, she seemed a little surprised that he had finished the 100 books already.  She thanked him, took it from him, and said that she would keep it until she had collected the other students' journals.  

Just as she turned to go and Griffin started to dance with glee about having finished all his homework for the rest of the school year, I realized that not being required to read or write in Spanish at home until August was a bad idea.  I mean, he's a smart kid who loves to read, but he wants to read what he chooses and nothing else.  And as soon as he finishes a book, he's off and running to the next one--he's not going to take the time to write about it unless we bribe or threaten (or both).

And there's always a next one waiting.

Desperately, I asked his teacher if she had a new challenge for the students who finished their 100 books, like maybe to try to read another 100 before the new school year begins in August.  Griffin groaned; I winced.

But his teacher, wonderful lady, suggested that this time, instead of doing the 100 books in Spanish, he alternate among books in Spanish, English, and French!  So now, for the first time in his young life, he is starting to read and write in French.  And I get to watch it happen!

Actually, what I'm mostly doing is trying not to interfere.  He picks the text--one of his sister's board books, an easy reader from the Bidule series (downloaded to my iPad), an illustrated article from Youpi magazine--reads it aloud with my help, and then scribbles and scratches a sentence about it (while complaining that writing in French is harder than writing in English and Spanish).

An article from Youpi about a Frenchman who circumnavigated the globe in a sailboat decades ago

I know, I know.  Developing fluency in your third language is such a chore.

(But what a great problem to have, kid!)

While Griffin writes, rendering what he hears when he speaks French into consonants and vowels and the occasional feisty accent mark, creations that vaguely resemble French words, I sit on my hands or keep a mug of hot tea in front of my mouth so as to avoid telling him how to spell things or that he should add a transition word or just give me the pencil so that I can write what I want him to say!

And when he's done, and when I've found something to praise about the content of his sentence, and only then, do I pick out something to explicitly teach him about.  Tonight, for example, he asked how to spell "canoe" in French.  So I told him about the tréma, the two dots over the second letter in a pair of vowels that indicates that the second vowel gets pronounced separately, as in Noël, thus giving him canoë.

Griffin's writing journal entry about the Youpi article "Seul autour du monde": "Ma conexion est que je suis alle den une canoe avec ma maman.  et je vu un lacke."

And while where-to-put-two-dots is perhaps one of the least important rules to bother teaching someone who is learning to read and write in French, it's relevant to what he was trying to describe; he understood right away (comparing it to bilinguë in Spanish); and now he has an "Accents en français" page in his writing journal.  I hope that the next time we read together in French, we'll come across other words with that same diacritical mark, and he can add them to the list.

So I anticipate continuing this way for the next month or so--reading to him in French every day as usual, encouraging him to read to me more, and insisting that he write a sentence about it in his reading journal two or three times a week.  Each time, I'll find one thing to point out about grammar or syntax or spelling.  When appropriate, I'll make a new page of hints and examples and lists for his journal that we can add to.  (For example, "The Gazillion Ways to Spell the Sound 'Ay' in French," or "Consonants  at the End of a Word Which We Actually Pronounce, At Least Most of the Time," or "Hey, Look at That, What's That Adjective Doing in Front of That Noun?")

My notes for him about je vs. j'ai vs. jeu vs. G, which are all pronounced similarly but mean entirely different things

Over the summer, once he's out of school, I will try to increase gradually the amount and frequency that he reads and writes in French.  And the more we read and write together, the more I can point out how my previous teaching points appear in the texts.  And eventually--ideally--it will be Griffin who notices them and pays attention and incorporates them into his own writing.

So, no dictation.  No memorizing lists of irregular past participles.  No expecting perfection (or even coherence, in these early days).  Read what he wants to read, write what he wants to write, talk about it together, and hopefully develop in French the confidence and ease that he has in English and Spanish.  He's just a kid, an on-his-way-to-trilingual kid, and I want him to enjoy the journey.

When immersion doesn't mean immersion: How not to organize a French class for children, part III

In which our beleaguered heroine (part I of this saga) gives in to the pressure from the camp organizer (part II) and creates a play in French that includes the campers' violin accompaniment, and it even kind of makes sense.

So here's how I pulled it all together....

the Pinterest board that I used to collect resources and ideas

I had developed the entire French immersion class for kids around the story Roule Galette, a folk tale similar to The Gingerbread Man, about a cake that rolls itself off the windowsill where it's cooling, through a forest, narrowly avoiding being eaten by the denizens of various fairy tales (the bear, the wolf), where it finally succumbs to the wily fox with a sweet tooth.

The students heard the story a different way each of the five days: first with me relating it in very simple French using pictures of the main characters and main ideas and lots of gestures and movements;

8.5 x 11" print-outs of the salient ideas, slipped into plastic sheet protectors

then by watching this short animated version of it;

by working together to arrange sentences in English telling the tale into chronological order;

I used a total of about ten sentences; the older students read them to the non-readers.

next, by listening to me read the story from the book, pulling out my pictures to illustrate the main characters and main ideas, but not simplifying it otherwise (the video below shows the exact text I used);

by assigning homework to create a very short comic strip based on the story;

I wrote the narration in each box in French, figuring that the kids knew the story and had heard the key words repeated often enough; their job was to illustrate each panel

and finally, by reading and acting out the simple play I had written based on the story.  The narrator speaks English, but the action takes place in French: the child playing the old man who wants to eat says "J'ai faim" (I'm hungry), the galette introduces itself politely to each animal, asking "Comment t'appelles-tu?" and "Comment ca va?" (What's your name?  How are you doing today?").  Plus, the galette sings a little song each time, which all of the actors could chime in on.

By organizing the class around the story, that meant that I could really exploit its themes: other songs that take place in the forest ("Dans la foret lointaine" and "Promenons-nous dans les bois," for example), simple description words (grand, petit, chaud, froid, vieux, jeune, beau, delicieux), numbers 1-10, and greetings, introductions, and leave-takings.

Oh, I do like contextualized language learning--who wants to memorize vocabulary lists and flip through flashcards when they can play with puppets that threaten to eat each other when they meet?!  (Each kid held a puppet during the class, since that tends to cut down on feeling self-conscious when speaking another language.)

But then being told--after the camp had started--that the students' performance on the fifth and final day of the camp had to incorporate songs that they were learning to play on their violins during the rest of the camp, well, that made me start pulling my cheveux out!

(And in the meantime, the music teachers were panicking too, because almost all the campers were brand new students as young as four who couldn't play much of anything!)

How did we do it?  I decided that there was a river with a bridge over it in the forest that the galette flees through and taught the kids to sing and dance "Sur le pont d'Avignon."  This classic folk song has a familiar, easy melody, plus verses that are easily adaptable to the characters from the story.  (Instead of "Les belles dames font comme ca," the lovely ladies curtsy like this, for example, we had "Les ours font comme ca," giving the campers the opportunity to get in touch with their inner bears, roaring and striking each other with their paws, and so on.)

The violin teachers then picked an easy-to-play phrase that became the galette's theme.

Putting it all together meant pulling the two very cool older boys to the side to play all the theme music and the dancing song (they were too cool to act in a play with little kids, anyway), keeping the narrator and the characters, and then having the galette cross the bridge in the middle of the woods so that the children could join together to sing and dance while the boys played "Sur le pont d'Avignon."

We could have used several more days of rehearsal.

(And that is an understatement.)

But the class was finally over, I had learned what not to do when organizing (and teaching) a French immersion class for kids (especially on the first day), I had developed a nice little set of lesson plans and materials that I was able to use within a couple of months with some private tutoring clients, and I had the chance to see my children (because they came to class with me) dance and do some very cute wolf impressions.

And that's what I learned when immersion didn't mean immersion.

When immersion doesn't mean immersion: How not to organize a French class for children, part II

Now, to be fair, it should have occurred to me to wonder what the campers' parents understood about the first half hour of their children's French-themed violin day camp, if they realized that a separate teacher had been hired to do a series of French immersion lessons with the  kids each morning.

Dear reader, they had not.  According to the shockingly short description of the camp, we would "Celebrate the rich culture of France through music, art, and games."

So of course some of the kids and parents were taken aback when I bonjour-ed them, puppet in hand*, invited them to sit on my Tour Eiffel blanket, and started singing and holding up pictures of les animaux in the song.  And continued thusly, even reading them an entire story, entirely in French.  For a demie heure.

(Note: the camp organizer and the other main teacher were not taken aback because they weren't actually observing my lesson, much less participating in it.  Which made her criticism of my approach especially hard to swallow.)

(Another note: You may recall that she told me over the phone that she had no idea that I would actually be speaking in French for the "French immersion class" that I had been asked to teach.  When I stopped sputtering, I gently reminded her what "immersion" means.  Her response?  "Well, a lot of fields use specialized vocabulary that doesn't mean the same thing to a layperson."  Fair enough--but not teaching.  And not "immersion."  Immersion always means immersion.)

My husband, who is very smart and puts his engineering mind and management experience to work when he sees me in distress, pointed out that had I known that the campers didn't know what to expect, I could have started the class much differently.  That is, the organizer could have introduced me to the group, explained why I was there and what I was doing, and so forth, so that the madame with the marionnette didn't seem quite so freaky.  Moreover, it would have been so much better if we had built in a "debriefing" time afterwards so that I could answer questions in English and highlight what I wanted them to take away from the lesson.

But how does my monolingual rocket scientist** husband know about the importance of debriefing in English after an initial language immersion lesson?  

Because that's what we did on our fourth date.  But that's another story.***

Anyway, whenever I taught French 101, I barraged the students with the language from the minute they walked in the porte with my excrutiatingly-well-prepared lesson designed to show them how much they can indeed glean without any English translations or explanations at all, relying on gestures, drawings, photos, cognates, and context.  And then afterwards, we would talk (in English) about how they acquired their first language via immersion (listening for 2+ years before forming coherent sentences) and how I would do my best to recreate that experience (but speed it up) in my class and what strategies they could use to make it a little easier on them and how to let me know that I needed to slow down or spend more time on a topic.

I should have realized that if I needed to be that explicit with college students, I certainly needed to explain and debrief with these four-to-ten year olds!

So that's what I did first thing on my second day of camp.  I also handed out colorful paper question marks on popsicle sticks that the kiddos could hold up whenever they didn't understand, and I told them that while everything I said while we were sitting on the Eiffel Tower blanket would be in French, I could also step off it and speak English.

Additionally, I swallowed my objections and included non-French games from them on.  With only 30 minutes a day, I wanted to maximize our French time, but the camp organizer insisted that I play familiar games like "Red Light, Green Light" and "Duck, Duck, Goose" in French with the campers. With some creative license, I even figured out how to make them all fit the theme I had picked for the class (based on the story that we were "studying")!

Speaking of that theme, I had already planned to revisit the story each day so that the children would be able to perform it as a little skit on the last day of the camp--the one explicit request that the organizer had made when she hired me.  But during that fateful phone call after my first class, she added that our French skit needed to be integrated with the music lessons that she was doing with the students.  Except that only one of them had ever touched a violin before, so they didn't know how to play anything yet, much less, say, one of the French folk songs that I was already teaching them to sing to accompany the story.

I know I used this image in my previous post about the camp, but it's too perfect not to include again.

Stay tuned for part III of this series, in which I do figure out how to make the play work with performances by the beginning violin students and also vow never to teach this camp again (at least, not for the $75 they paid me for the week).

(Feel like you're missing something?  Read part I of this series here.)

*Whenever I tutor children in French, I bring along a puppet named "Henri" who sings, dances, demonstrates, repeats after me, and (on a good day) makes them laugh.  I highly recommend that you find your own Henri if you're teaching another language to your own children!

**Oh, haven't I mentioned that he's an aerospace systems engineer?

***And one of my favorite ones, at that.

When immersion doesn't mean immersion: How not to organize a French class for children, part I

1.  Be suspicious when a woman you have never met overhears you talking about French, tells you that she's teaching a French-themed music day camp for ages 6-10, and asks if she can hire you to teach the French immersion lesson portion of the camp.

Why?  Because a person who is willing to hire a complete stranger to spend time with your children without even asking for a CV or background check is perhaps not someone you want organizing a camp for kids.  And because if one aspect of the planning makes you go, "hmmm, that seems odd," then you can probably expect more "hmmmm"s (and even a few "WTF"s).

(For the record, in case any future employers are perusing this blog, I should state that my background checks are flawless and my CV and references confirm that I have been teaching or tutoring since age 22.)

2.  When the only directions that the organizer gives you is that you should prepare fun 30-minute lessons with songs that will lead into a little performance on the last day, don't think, "Wow!  She has confidence in my abilities and isn't going to micro-manage!"  

Rather, ask yourself why she hasn't shared more about what she is anticipating, explained how your class fits into the big picture of the music camp, or given you anything in writing.

3.  Don't spend a week's worth of naptimes developing a series of lessons plans centered around a French folktale, finding pictures to illustrate the story, making puppets and cute little activity sheets, and choosing songs that mirror the setting and characters in the story.  And don't bother typing up the song lyrics and making a little packet for the kids to take home.

Because it will turn out that the camp enrollment is so low that the organizer ends up letting in kids as young as four and five.  So all those materials you create under the assumption that participants know how to read?  Well, they don't, so you will need to make changes along the way.  A lot of changes.

4.  Even after your first class, when you go all out with your puppets and songs and stories and time-tested techniques for conveying meaning in the target language without ever resorting to English, getting the campers engaged and participating while the organizer does paperwork and chats with parents, don't think for a minute that you're doing a good job.

Because the organizer will call you at home at 8:00 pm that night and tell you that she has "received complaints" that the children didn't understand what you were saying, that she was expecting you to teach "songs and games and French culture," not whatever it was that you actually did (remember, she didn't actually observe your class, and neither did the parents), and that she doesn't understand why you spoke French the whole time in the class.

Well, you will explain, it's because she specifically hired you to teach a French immersion class.  And you did indeed use songs and a story and a game from France.  Which she would have noticed.  Had she or any of the other music teachers been present.

Then she will protest, "But I didn't meant that you shouldn't speak English!"

But, dear clueless lady, that's what "immersion" means.

5. Dear clueless Sarah, if you ever agree to do something like this again, please get directions in writing and submit your lesson plans for approval ahead of time!  (And ask for more money, while you're at it.)

Coming soon: part II, wherein she tells me to "do French games like 'Red Light, Green Light' and off-handedly mentions that the performance at the end of the week will also need to include music that the campers have learned this week.

Followed by part III, wherein I share the lesson plan for my cool contextualized five-part class about the French folktale, plus some video clips of the campers' performance.

And then we'll conclude with a happy ending: a description of the wonderful French day camp that my son attended at a local private school later that summer!

I just wish I had started volunteering sooner!

This post was written for the July 2013 Raising Multilingual Children Blogging Carnival hosted by Stephen at Head of the Heard; this month's theme is "Hidden Opportunities."  Do go read about other parents' discoveries and surprises on their journey to bilingualism!

In July 2005, my husband Ed and I got married.  I was working as a lecturer in French at Colorado State University, an hour's drive away from my new home in Lafayette, Colo.  With all my co-workers, my book groups, my favorite theatre and restaurants, and so many friends back there, I was concerned that Lafayette would be where I slept but Fort Collins where I lived.

Therefore, in August 2005, when I heard that the local library was looking for volunteer tutors for its drop-in afterschool Homework Center, I applied, thinking that helping out there would help me meet people, practice my Spanish, and maybe even make math and reading more manageable for some of the kids.  Who knew that this volunteer gig would lead to more opportunities for me to pursue my ultimate career goal of teaching French to young children?

Here's how it gradually happened...

2005: At the Homework Center, I worked with a lot of children who were emergent or struggling readers.  I also befriended Estela, the Homework Center Assistant.

Denver Channel 7 News featured the Homework Center as one of its Everyday Heroes (you can catch a glimpse of me and Griffin at the very end of the clip)

2006: Estela was promoted to Reading Buddies Coordinator at the library.  I kept tutoring and, overall, learning more from the kids than they probably were learning from me!  

fall 2006: My supervisor at the Homework Center recommended me to a parent who was looking for a private reading tutor for her child.  I started tutoring this second-grade girl twice a week.  (Also, my nephew was born, and soon after that, this blog about speaking exclusively French to him!)

a happy Tatie and her baby nephew

2007: Realizing that I didn't know enough about how to help a student who was reading so far below grade level, I started actively researching strategies, activities, materials, and methods.  (Developing these lessons got me all fired up about teaching children to read--too bad my nephew was still a toddler.)

For example, modifying board games like Candyland by writing word families on each square so that the players have to say a word that ends with that particular letter combination--great for emergent readers!

spring 2007: The commute back and forth to CSU--especially during snowstorms--was dragging me down and I was losing my enthusiasm for teaching college students.  My husband and I had also been trying to start a family.

summer 2007: Estela's husband got a new job and they had to leave Lafayette.  She suggested that I apply for her part-time position as coordinator of Reading Buddies, a free reading enrichment program in which middle and high school volunteers meet once a week one-on-one with younger students to read together and play literacy games.  And I was pregnant!

fall 2007: I resigned from CSU.  During my Reading Buddies interview, I answered their questions about working with reluctant readers with lots of specific ideas, most of which had developed from my private tutoring and my Homework Center experience.  Volunteering pays off--I got the job!

fall 2007: It dawned on me that many parallels exist between my old job (helping college students learn to read and write in their second language) and my new one (helping teenagers help elementary school students learn to read and write in their first language).  Very cool.

2008: My son, Griffin, was born, and I began speaking to him exclusively in French.

happy Maman and her baby boy

newborn Griffin visits a Reading Buddies session and hears his first Eric Carle book

Little Buddies reading to the "Baby Buddy" while the Big Buddy wonders why exactly his supervisor brought a screaming child to work

2009: Griffin and I joined a French-language playgroup.

2010: Several of us from the playgroup attended a French storytime at a different library and were so disappointed that we decided to create our own storytime!  And since I was already employed at a library, it wasn't hard to get this approved.  (So now I had three different "jobs" there, two volunteer and one paid.)

my friend Mathilde and her two boys at French storytime

2011: I developed more confidence in planning and leading storytimes in my second language, even in front of an audience of native speakers, even while chasing my active preschooler around the room, even during18 weeks of morning sickness while pregnant with my daughter!  (Then I took a little break after she was born.)

pensive baby Gwyneth, two days old, wearing the dress that I sported when my parents brought me home from the hospital

And here she is at her first Reading Buddies session, age 1, watching the big kids play Chutes and Ladders with word families

2012: When local nonprofits solicited donations for their silent auction fundraisers, I offered French lessons for children.

I had already developed some games--but they would be more fun to play with kids than by myself

2013: For the first time, an auction winner actually followed up and brought her children to me for French classes!

spring 2013: A violin teacher overhears me talking about storytime and asks me to lead the French immersion lesson each day in her French-themed summer Suzuki strings camp.

the students' performance of "Roule Galette" on the last day of class; Griffin is the boy in the blue shirt

summer 2013: And it actually happened!  For the first time, I received real money to teach a French class to children, with my bilingual son as my teaching assistant (and my toddler daughter doing all the not-sitting-still this time).

So, you see, after eight years of volunteer work (and countless hugs and "thank yous" from the Homework Center students), I have a job I love which makes me feel connected to the community and which has enabled me to develop and practice the skills which I will need to continue teaching French classes for children (and to motivate me to keep using French with my own kids)!  

some of my Reading Buddies

more Reading Buddies

But first, I'm going to catch up on my sleep.  That crazy koala bear toddler still isn't sleeping through the night.

but we love her anyway