I asked my students to tell me what they found difficult about the class, how they overcame this difficulty, and what they want to change.
I found planning very difficult. I was overwhelmed by the amount of work necessary to plan an immersion course, and was often exasperated and tired, desperate to make it interesting.
I also struggled with keeping the class in French because the students resisted using the French. Two out of three classes complied, but my class of juniors wore me down, and eventually I lost my energy to continue the fight for French. I gave in during World War II. Many students in this class mentioned that they liked the immersion and thought it was great, but these were the kids I fought with the most about using the French. (!) more exasperation.
I tried to overcome these difficulties by stretching myself too far, by trying to crack down on language and by modifying the participation rubrics in order to remove some of the subjectivity from the grading. Some students accused me of playing favorites, and I understand their point of view because some students actively demanded my attention much more so than others. Other students avoided me, and in trying to accomodate them all, I lost the group in the middle, I think. I don't quite know how to go about fixing this, and that troubles me. But I think it troubles me because I want to fix all of the things that were bad this year by flipping an instant switch. I have a lot of work to do.
Next year I will be able to contribute more time to my planning. I look forward to planning more creative and shorter lessons, based on concepts that I will spend time developing and researching. I look forward to having an overview of the course before I teach it, with much more development and preparation. This year I spent so much time today just planning tomorrow. i was never ahead of the game, and many days I just wanted to let the kids do nothing because I was so exhausted, although I never gave in to this. WWII and the Ma Vie en Rose movie took waaaaaaayy too long! I have no idea of the length of time that would be necessary to go through these lessons.
In short, this year I felt like a first year teacher in many ways. I'm very angry about a lot of my shortcomings this year, and the way they negatively affected my students learning opportunities. I can only blame so much of this on being in grad school and therefore having less time. The rest is because of my over-ambition, my lack of perspective on the amount of work I created for myself, and the shallow depth that I barely managed to reach because of the breadth I expected of myself, and of my students. While they spoke more French, and experienced their dream of "less textbook", there were so many lost opportunities, so many undeveloped lessons that I taught, so much blatant return to exactly that which I was trying to avoid: meaningless information. In expanding too quickly I reduced myself.
In order to move beyond this depressed outlook, I remember the Woody Allen quote about failure. I can be uplifted by my need to improve, and as one of my students tells me "Reflect your reflections". I will continue to work forwards, but hopefully in the future, I will work smarter, smaller, and deeper.
