I’m going to be blatantly honest in this post today.
When I started teaching Core French in Ontario, I was so excited about all the amazing possibilities ahead. I remember I set up my classroom so eagerly. I was so happy to have my own space to teach. I prepared my welcome letter, figured out my long range plans for the year, and began to develop my unit plans and lessons. When the students came to class on the first day, I was going to be super prepared and over the course of the school year, I was going to make sure that I was doing everything I could to help them succeed.
But not soon after I started teaching, I realized the limited value that is placed on learning French as a Second Language. Administrators often did rounds around the school, always spending more time in the LASS or MST classrooms, barely stopping to say hi in the French classroom. Parents came knocking at interview time, always concerned with speaking to the MST teachers or the LASS teachers, but almost never interested in seeing the French teacher. Students would come to class and you could see they were ready to zone out for the next 40 minutes to an hour. They either didn’t participate or they were disruptive. Only a handful seemed to care about French.
When you’re a new teacher, like I was, you have two ways you can take it. You can (1) either become demotivated and not care. After all, it makes your own life easier. Who wants admin or parents to come knocking, anyways? Or (2) you can choose to focus on the children. You can do whatever it takes to make every lesson super fun and every child engaged all the time. You can work so hard to push each child and do your best to encourage them to care about the French language. But let me tell you from firsthand experience, the second route gets exhausting real fast!
So what is it that we can do to make students more engaged in our French classrooms? What strategies can we adopt that will help us, but won’t leave us drained?
Today I’d like to start sharing some strategies with you.
Just remember, there is no easy answer to keeping students engaged. As a result, I would ask that you think of this as a long term process and work towards it all year long.
Strategy # 1: Give yourself some grace.
It may seem very easy to blame yourself for all the things going wrong in your classroom. You plan this great lesson and in your head you know the kids will love it. But when you come to class, only a handful of students even want to engage with your awesomeness.
Give yourself some grace!
You are not the reason to blame for everything. Are there things you could be doing differently? Definitely. Are there things you should start or stop doing? Definitely. Does that mean everything that goes wrong is your fault? Definitely not.
We do not need to be perfect all the time. Accept that.
The poor behaviour choices our students may choose to make are not a reflection of us and our teaching competency. Accept that.
And then make up your mind that you want things to be different and look for ways you can make that happen. If you’re here and reading thus far, you’re already well on your way!
Strategy # 2: Begin to understand them.
The first thing we need to do is understand the why. Why are our students not engaged in Core French?
For me, I realized the answer soon after I started teaching in Ontario. Simply put, the language I was teaching was not relevant to the students. When they walked out of my classroom door, they didn’t need French. The next time they were exposed to French was the next time they walked back into my classroom. Although they knew that French would most likely benefit them when they grow up, that goal was too far off to be realistic for them when they were only 11 or 12.
Who can blame these kids for not wanting to engage in French?
Although this is not the only reason why my students are not always engaged in French, it definitely has been a significant factor, year after year.
Other reasons over the years have included a general dislike for the subject due to past experiences, something going on at home, or fear (which I will talk about below).
So take a moment to ask yourself, why are your students not engaged in French class? Don’t know the answer? Ask your students.
Once we understand why our kids feel the way they do, we can begin to adjust our program to meet the needs of our students.
Strategy # 3: Believe in them.
This next strategy is probably the most important one. Believe in your students. Believe that they can succeed in learning another language. Believe that they can succeed in French class. We always have students at varying levels in our class. While some can write great sentences, others may still be learning all the key vocabulary. Whatever their goal is (or yours), you must believe that they can accomplish it. I can’t overstress this point. It is so important and makes a world of difference in your classroom.
Every September, I can honestly say that a good chunk of my students are not engaged in French. And that’s because they are mostly fearful of failure and/or humiliation. They don’t believe in themselves, they don’t believe they can learn or produce the language. As a result, some of these kids don’t even try.
When my students see that I have high expectations of them and that I believe that they can succeed in French, their attitude in French class changes. For some it is a lot quicker than others. But eventually I am able to convince most students that they can do it.
I hear students tell me again and again, “I’m not sure if I’m pronouncing this correctly” or “I don’t know how to say that.” So I guide them, I show them how to say it. Then I encourage them to try. And when they try, I praise them for their effort, if nothing else. I tell them they did great and I understood what they were trying to say, and I can see that their eyes immediately light up with this sense of accomplishment. They begin to believe they can succeed in French.
So, make sure that your students know that you believe in them and that you truly believe they can succeed at whatever it is you are doing in French class.
Strategy # 4: Have a conversation with them.
My final strategy for today is for you to have a conversation with your students about the importance of learning languages.
At the beginning of the year, one of the questions I often ask my students is how many languages do you speak? Many of my students have another language at home that they are learning. And so they happily begin to list the languages they know and count their total number. We talk about how happy it makes them feel knowing all these languages. Sometimes there are students who don’t know any other language besides English. We talk about how that’s okay too but that now they have the opportunity to learn French. Then we zoom into the reasons why learning French might be advantageous for them.
Strategy # 4: Have a conversation with them.
My final strategy for today is for you to have a conversation with your students about the importance of learning languages.
At the beginning of the year, one of the questions I often ask my students is how many languages do you speak? Many of my students have another language at home that they are learning. And so they happily begin to list the languages they know and count their total number. We talk about how happy it makes them feel knowing all these languages. Sometimes there are students who don’t know any other language besides English. We talk about how that’s okay too but that now they have the opportunity to learn French. Then we zoom into the reasons why learning French might be advantageous for them.
My students and I usually come up with some ideas that we put down in written form or using visuals. We then display these visuals in our classroom. Here is a sample of a poster set I use for this activity. By displaying the ideas we have discussed in the classroom, the students are reminded year long about why they want to learn French and why they have agreed to keep trying.
Unfortunately, that’s it for today!
Keep an eye out for my next post where I will be sharing some more practical strategies I use to help students stay engaged in my Core French classroom.
Until next time,
Mme. I
