The Cardinal

College and Career Preparedness

By Robert Ballinger, Worthington Kilbourne High School (retired), OFLA Past-President 2000-2001

After having taught French in both public and private high schools for 34 years, I have been able to observe how successful students learn. Everything about teaching students who wrestle with acquiring a facility in a World Language I have learned from many hours of discussions with my wife, Dr. Virginia Ballinger, herself a Spanish language educator for over 32 years and from many trusted colleagues who care passionately about student success. So, listen up, folks, and let me tell you a story.

Four years ago, I started volunteering in our local public high school because of a newspaper article that said that 45% of incoming freshmen at The Ohio State University needed to take remedial classes over material they should have learned in high school. I was shocked. Of course, remedial classes don’t count toward their college degree and are not free. So many of these students get discouraged, drop out, and often find themselves saddled with student debt. At a community feed-back meeting on our local public school district’s proposed strategic plan, I found out that the district’s administrators had no idea what percentage of our district’s graduates had to take remedial classes. The moderator of the meeting said he had heard someone from a local college refer to remedial classes as a “cash cow.” That made me mad. I asked, “So are you suggesting that the college is profiting from our inability to prepare students for college?” The silence was embarrassing. After several weeks of research, I learned that the Ohio Board of Regents does have data showing the percentage of graduates who take remedial classes in public colleges in Ohio. The latest data for our school district indicated that 31% of our local high school’s graduates attending public colleges were required to take remedial (sometimes called “developmental”) classes. So, that’s when I decided to volunteer to see if I could motivate students to make better use of their high school experience.

Now, let me digress a moment to ask a question that, for us World Languages teachers, begs to be answered: How do we know when our students are ready to continue their study of a World Language at the college level? We have the OFLA Vision which states that students will be proficient in a World Language by the time they graduate from high school. But how proficient should they be as they enter college? Perhaps we need to consider the distinction ACTFL makes between “proficiency” (the command of a World Language in most situations, which is a very high standard) and “performance” (the ability to function in many but not all situations, which is a significant yet achievable goal for students. After scores of hours of discussions with trusted colleagues, I would suggest that high school students should be able to perform in a World Language at the Intermediate-Mid level by the time they graduate from high school. I am talking about the Intermediate-Mid level as defined by the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines.

If Intermediate-Mid is the goal, how do we know if students have achieved that goal well enough to succeed at the college level? Educators I have spoken with would agree that students earning A’s and B’s in courses where “performance is the criterion” (not “extra credit” or “bonus points” or “showing up on time” and the like), will be ready to do college-level work. Those educators begin to hedge their bets with students who are getting C’s because those students will have to work harder at the next level to keep up. Students getting C’s and D’s shouldn’t even get credit; they haven’t learned enough to succeed at the next level. I have found that World Languages teachers, as well as Art, Drama, Construction Technologies, and Music teachers are in tune with Performance-Based education.

So, let’s get back to my experience helping students to make better use of their time in high school. I billed myself as an “academic coach.” So, I wasn’t surprise when a student stopped me in the hallway between classes. “Hey, Mr. Ballinger, can you help me?” He said his name was Isaiah and that he had heard my presentation about A B Ready in Study Hall and about being prepared to do college work by the time students graduate from high school. “I got mostly C’s and D’s during my freshman and sophomore years, but now I’ve decided I really want to go to college. Can you help me?” Isaiah and I met to see how I could help him to be more successful in school. He said his first quarter grades were C’s and D’s. I pulled up his current second quarter grades on a computer and noticed he had two B’s which surprised me. I asked him how he managed to raise his grades in those two classes. He said he started doing all his homework and that he asked more questions in class. I complimented him on his added effort. He smiled shyly and said he wanted to do better. We looked at the breakdown of how his teachers figured his grades. In one class he needed to study harder for quizzes; in another class he had to clarify the teacher’s expectations. I noticed one grade was a 78% and asked Isaiah if he thought he could nudge that grade up to a B. He said he would try. By the end of the first semester he had three B’s. During the third quarter, I asked him which of his three B’s he could raise to an A. He said he had never received an A in any class in high school. With more coaching, he did raise one B to an A. By the end of the year Isaiah had three B’s and two A’s.

After three years, I had worked with students individually as well as in small and large groups. I also worked with parents so that they could take on the role of “academic coach” with their own children. At that point, we launched a website version of the A B Ready program (abready.com) so that students, parents, and educators can freely access this useful tool. The A B Ready website has short videos that explain the program including the A B Code, a list of ten habits of successful students. There is even a free e-book for World Language teachers on how to create a proficiency-based curriculum, a program of study which includes the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines, the New Ohio Learning Standards for World Languages, Integrated Performance Assessments, and the NCSSFL I Can Statements. You can see and hear Ginny as she introduces each section of the book.

Ginny and I hope that students, parents, and educators will visit us at abready.com. Our contact information is on the website. We welcome your comments and suggestions. We look forward to hearing from you.

Core Practices of World Language Teaching

Lucas Hoffman, Sylvania Southview HS, OFLA President-elect

How do we help our students become proficient as fast as possible?  Would you like to help lead in world language teaching?  How do we help bring all Ohio teachers and students on board with communicative language teaching?  Check out what happened at LILL 2015.

This summer, several OFLA board members and Ohio world language teachers attended LILL (Leadership Initiative for Language Learning) 2015, the first national institute for language leaders, held on the Ohio State University campus in Columbus, Ohio.  LILL is a collaborative project of ten national and regional organizations, including  ACTFL, CSCTFL, and the TELL Project.

The focus of LILL 2015 was two-fold: to grow new leaders in the language learning profession, and to foster growth through effective language teaching.  At the heart of the week’s work was to present and reflect upon six core practices of world language teaching.   Dr. Eileen Glissan described these core practices, also known as high-leverage teaching practices, as being a set of “activities that are essential for skillful beginning teachers to understand, take responsibility for, and be prepared to carry out in order to enact their core instructional responsibilities (Ball & Forzani, 2009, p. 504).

It is important to stress that these core practices are not necessarily innate skills by current world language teachers.  Given the major shift to communicative language teaching away from isolated grammar and vocab, teachers should be mindful to purposely learn, rehearse, and adopt these practices.  Dr. Glissan warns teachers that these practices cannot be learned by observation alone.  These research-based practices drive forward student learning.

In this fall Cardinal article, I’ll begin by sharing about core practice #1.  This first core practice is at the heart of our job as language teachers: teaching students to use the language.

Core Practice #1: Use the target language (TL) as the vehicle and content of instruction 90%+ of the time.

What does this mean for you?

Teach students to use the language; we’re no longer teaching about the language! Create learning experiences for your students that are authentic and meaningful.  Also, know that simply using 90% TL is not enough.  It is essential that you use comprehensible language.  Our goal as language teachers is to create meaning-making.  Dr. Glissan reminds you to avoid English translation.

What does this mean for your students?

ACTFL’s position statement on the use of TL in the classroom challenges both teachers and students to shoot for the 90%.  Students should interact with both you and other students in the TL; of course, this requires you to create regular experiences where students can interact with each other in meaningful ways.

Some examples or resources to consider:

Use a Language Pledge

Greensburg Salem School District “Survivor” Game

Señora Speedy’s TL Contest

Strategies by #LangChat participants

In the upcoming Cardinal newsletters, I’ll share about the five remaining practices.

Core Practice #2: Design and carry out Interpersonal Communication Tasks for pairs, small groups, and whole class instruction.

Core Practice #3: Design lessons with Functional Goals and Objectives using the Backward Design model.

Core Practice #4: Teach Grammar as a Concept and use in context.

Core Practice #5: Implement Interactive Reading and Listening comprehension tasks using Authentic Cultural Texts of various kinds while scaffolding to promote interpretation.

Core Practice #6: Provide Appropriate Feedback in speech and writing on various learning tasks.

If you are interested in learning more about these core practices,  check out the ongoing conversation on Twitter.  Other fellow LILL participants have started the work of sharing out about the six core practices.  For example, see Wisconsin LILL participant Andrea Behn’s thoughts here.

More information on the LILL Institute can be found here. Stay tuned for more information if/when a LILL 2016 may be announced.

References:

Ball, D.L., & Forzani, F. M. (2009).  The work of teaching and the challenge for teacher education.  Journal of Teacher Education, 60(5), 497-511.

Glissan, Eileen.  “Leadership Initiative for Language Learning.”  The Ohio State University.  Ramseyer Hall, Columbus, OH.  21 July 2015. Presentation.

SHS German students make their mark in Germany!

Niki Sage

German Teacher and GAPP Leader
Springfield High School
Springfield, Ohio
sagena@spr.k12.oh.us

Fifteen Springfield High School German language students spent the first three weeks of their summer vacation living in Gräfenhainichen, Germany, as part of a student exchange program. The Springfield High School students are members of the German American Partnership Program (GAPP) that is sponsored by the Goethe Institute in New York and facilitated by their German teacher, Niki Sage. This program is intended to strengthen cross-cultural relationships cross-cultural relationships among students learning German and English.

The students and Mrs. Sage were greeted in Berlin by their German host families and lead teacher, Uta Boettcher, and then they embarked on a journey of cultural and educational wonder.

The Springfield High School students lived with their individual families and experienced home-life in Germany first-hand. They also attended classes at the GAPP partner school, Paul-Gerhardt Gymnasium in Gräfenhainichen, where they each gave a twenty minute PowerPoint presentations to the German students about American culture. The SHS students also participated in a variety of German and English class activities. In addition to home and school life, the SHS students also toured Berlin, Dresden, Leipzig, Wittenberg, and Wörlitz, where they spent hours learning about German life: history to present. In Berlin, at the German Federal Building (Bundestag), the SHS students were able to meet and speak with a house representative and discuss German and American
relations; it was indeed a privilege and momentous experience for the students. The three-week GAPP exchangewas an enormous success for both the American students, who were true ambassadors of Springfield High School, and their German counterparts. SHS GAPP students are now going to prepare for a three-week visit by the Germans in Fall 2016, when the American students will reciprocate the overwhelming hospitality of the German students and the administration and staff of the Paul-Gerhardt school.