A very talented colleague and I have an ongoing friendly disagreement about the purpose of upper level Spanish classes. (I can say it's a friendly argument because I understand her goals, and don't disagree with her approach based on those. I'll explain how that's possible below).
School Background:
I teach in a school that is in a relatively Blue-collar area. As a result, college is not a priority for all of the students, nor should many go to college due to the shifts in our workforce. There are many great vocational jobs and technical jobs that don't require a college degree and lots of debt! And we are doing our kids a disservice by pushing college onto them when they don't necessarily need it to be a productive member of society.
My colleague's thought is that we can de-emphasize grammar in the lower levels (since it's a requirement for most kids). But for those that really want to excel in the language, they will learn Spanish grammar in levels 3 and 4.
The belief is that if our kids from Spanish 3 go to college Spanish, they won't have an understanding of the grammar to be able to succeed in the college Spanish classes. So we need to teach them explicit grammar.
I respectfully disagree with this viewpoint for a few reasons:
Showing posts with label disagreement. Show all posts
Showing posts with label disagreement. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 29, 2016
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