Looking at my website, it has been a long two years since I made a blog post. They say that the road of life is littered with good intentions, or something like that. I have had a lot come my way over the past two years, so it has been difficult to keep afloat. Something had to give! First, trying to teach under pandemic conditions was a struggle. Finding a way to balance both in-person and virtual students was very difficult. I had double the work to do. On top of that, I started my doctoral degree in Teacher Leadership in 2020, so the time I had to dedicate to Verb Ninja was very little when you put those two things together. I hope to graduate by December 2022 or April 2023 at the latest.
If all that wasn’t enough, I was uprooted and moved to a new Junior High School and told to teach 8th grade in 2021. This was the first time I ever had taught this age group. In fact, it was so difficult, that I almost quit in the first semester. Not really, though, because I have to have a job, but in my mind I quit a bunch of times. By December though, things were running smoothly. I don’t know if the kids matured or I learned to handle them better or we just got used to each other. Who knows, but I ended up enjoying myself towards the end.
The problem we experienced was that now we had a whole 8th grade full of kids with one year of language under their belts. In the past, only a select few got to start language study in the 8th grade. Would we have enough teachers for the 9th grade next year in addition to the rising 7th graders who would also take a language in the 8th grade? (We added 1 position in French). What would the 9th grade students take? Those jobs are hard to fill and the budget was already tight.
We decided that students who showed both achievement and proficiency would be able to continue to level two of a language whereas those who did not would have to repeat level one or start a new language. About 150 students out of 600 would be able to continue to level two. The admin was concerned about the high school transcripts only showing levels 2 and 3. However, when I spoke with colleges in Georgia, they did not have an issue with that as long as there were two consecutive years of the same language. They would assume that students who only have 2 and 3 took it in the middle school, which is a common situation.
Our department decided it was important to create some common assessments and benchmarks for all languages for the following year to improve our alignment and to place students correctly. We decided to use proficiency based assessments in reading, listening, and writing. Students who show at least an 80% academic score, novice high in reading and listening, and novice mid in writing would be allowed to start level 2 in the ninth grade. We do not award high school credit to 8th graders in World Languages.
What does your school system do with 8th graders?