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BY ROSARIO PAZ

In print | Published January 31, 2008

Although most introductory education courses allow for classroom observation fieldwork as part of the class, a new pedagogy workshop class being taught by professor of French Carina Yervasi is allowing students to actively engage in teaching non-English languages in which they are fluent at Swarthmore Rutledge School and Nether Providence Elementary School as part of an after-school language program.

According to Yervasi, the new course is “a way for students who know a language, or who are learning a language, to be able to use that and participate in the larger community in which they live. I also think, pedagogically, it’s really great for children to learn other languages and learn about other cultures because it opens their horizons at a very early age.”

Previously, both elementary schools had implemented other language programs into the school’s curriculum. Foreign language programs within the public schools of the Wallingford-Swarthmore school district were either “eliminated” or “replaced with some other program” that was part of a “curricular decision,” according to Yervasi.

“I was shocked to find out that there was no foreign language program. The Home and School Assocation, basically the PTA of the Parents-Teachers Association, were having a meeting about how to get the foreign language program back at the elementary school,” Yervasi said.

With the help of financial support from the school district and advice from Farha Ghannam of the Sociology and Anthropology Department, Sibelan Forrester of the Modern Languages and Literature Department and Lisa Smulyan from the Education Department along with her colleagues in the Modern Languages Department, Yervasi was able to successfully organize the current course.

“[Lisa] encouraged me to try and put together a foreign language pedagogy course to help the students to teach at the schools … She totally supported me,” Yervasi said.

The after-school program allows students of the college to sign up to teach one of the seven languages currently being taught within the Modern Languages Department. Students at the elementary school, with the help of their families, then sign up for the language they want to learn.

Although students are not required to have taken previous education courses or have any formal teaching experience, students are not always guaranteed to be able to teach because of the varying popular demands for each language. “Two students signed up to teach Russian, but there weren’t enough students to run a class,” Yervasi said.

The teaching component of the course is strictly held as an after school program from 3:30 p.m. to 4:15 p.m. Students taking the course for the whole semester are only required to do a teaching session once a week, but those taking the course for a half semester must prepare for two weekly teaching sessions.

“The classes started [last Monday] and the kids go Mondays and Wednesdays or Tuesdays and Thursdays,” Karen Minyety ‘08, one of the students responsible for the Spanish sessions, said. "It went well. A few of them brought their notebooks home to show how they know Spanish. They were asking each other their names. They’re catching on pretty quickly, I think."

“It was a lot of fun. The kids looked like they were having fun and us teachers were also having fun. There were a lot of kids, but because there were four teachers we were able to manage the class pretty well … We just started with the basics … and the kids really caught on. We thought they would be pretty shy about it and not speak up but they were definitely willing to try … It was great,” Rita Kamani ’08, another student in charge of the Spanish sessions, said.

In addition to the teaching component, students must attend one of the pedagogy workshop classes available either Thursday evenings or Friday afternoons.

“I decided to take the class because I like working with younger students and I’m really enthusiastic about learning Chinese and the importance of learning a non-western language, in particular because Chinese is going to become more and more useful in the future … So I sort of want these kids to have the chance to learn this early on,” Alison Flamm ’09, a student teaching the Chinese sessions, said.

Currently, the class is structured around helping students to construct strong goal-oriented curricula by utilizing communicative method and “natural approach” teaching strategies. For their first week of teaching, students were given an example lesson plan that would introduce the students to basic greetings in their respective languages.

“[The student teachers] must always speak in the foreign language. Clearly, if the student is about to burst into tears, they can use English. It’s about using a communicative method … to give the students the most exposure to the target language as possible. I teach them how to use this method, based on what is called a ‘natural approach’ – how to learn the way they have learned their own language,” Yervasi said.

The idea that students must teach their languages without the use of English stems from the hopes of providing a simulation of complete language immersion, similar to that of language ledges done at language programs at Middlebury College and other intensive foreign language programs.

“[In having complete language immersion] I think it has the potential to be more frustrating, but I also have seen people who have learned languages using too much English have a hard to time learning when people speak more quickly or when they use words you don’t know. But if you get more used to learning a language by immersion it seems to be more useful. If it works, I think it’s a useful technique,” Flamm said.

“I think the advantage with Spanish is that there are a lot of cognates, a lot of words that sound similar in English and Spanish. We’ve made an active effort to choose the words that sound similar … I think that if we just threw them in a classroom … and we didn’t provide them with the tools to try and connect with the language, that would have been much different,” Kamani said.

Students interested in the new pedagogy class are encouraged to ask about the possibility of signing up for the second half of the semester, or upcoming semesters thereafter. With the support of the Education Department and the Modern Languages Department, the class will likely continue to be available for those students interested in providing a positive language learning experience for schoolchildren within the community.

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