About

The Indiana University Honors Program in Foreign Languages is an incredible opportunity for the state of Indiana’s top high school students to spend a summer fully immersed in their target language and culture. In June and July of 2008, three colleagues and I traveled to Brest, France with 38 high school juniors for seven weeks. Their daily routine included classes in grammar, literature, conversation, culture, and phonetics, along with afternoon activities in theatre, choir, and sports. I was responsible for teaching grammar and phonetics, and I led a theatre troupe as well as a running group in the afternoons. In addition to teaching, we also mentored the students in small support groups.

Reflection

This was my first time working with high school students; it is also one of the most rewarding teaching experiences imaginable. United by their exceptional motivation and talent, IUHP students are inquisitive, dynamic, and driven. It was like taking the top one or two students from each class I’d ever taught and putting them all in one room: for the first time, every ounce of energy I invested in a lesson was universally absorbed, processed, and returned with interest – giving me even more to pour into the next lesson.

This unique experience was extremely valuable in my development as a teacher. I had to adapt my teaching methods to create free-standing, 50-minute grammar lessons without sacrificing inductive presentation or communicative value – without the help of technology. I used the chalkboard to present examples (that I sometimes asked the students to provide) and progressed towards doing more and more exercises (and even an occasional quiz) orally. However, without a chapter-imposed context to link to, I had ultimate freedom to tailor the class to my students’ needs: we worked on the points they most needed strengthened, and once in a while had a Foire Aux Questions day, where they could ask about whatever structures they were struggling with at the time. Answering their questions drew on everything I’ve ever learned (and a few things I hadn’t), and fending off their boredom kept me searching for ever-more-creative lesson ideas. After just six weeks of lessons, enormous improvement was evident in every single student, and each of them could feel it as well.

What I enjoyed most about teaching for the IUHP was the 100% French environment. The students obviously benefited more from remaining in a French mode, and they knew it. It was proof to me that a policy of “all French, all the time” is possible in the classroom, and that it really does make a difference in the end result. When I return to classroom teaching in the States, I will enforce this policy with that much more conviction.