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Our LOTE teachers are not necessarily native speakers, but the teachers with a bilingual certificaiton or a bilingual extension are generally native speakers. LOTE teachers are sponsible for teaching heavy duty grammar whereas, bilingual teachers are more focused on being a teacher of general subjects outside of English. There is an opening here for a teacher with a bilingual exenstion to work in a Polish bilingual program.
Finding qualified native speakers (who actually want to teach) are hard to find outside of the major metro areas like NY or LA. Even harder for some language like French or German.
Milwaukee is a long way from major metro areas like NY and LA and we are able to find native speakers in French (and I'm pretty sure German, too). See my post below.
Quote:
Originally Posted by germaine2626
We have several foreign language immersion schools (magnet schools) in my area that start at the four year old kindergarten level. At the time that my children attended the French Immersion School, the school took great pride in that they hired native born French speakers from all over the world. They felt that it broadened the children's view of the world as well as introduced them to accents, slang and colloquial statements from all over. When my children attended they had teachers who were born and raised in France, Belgium, Quebec, French West Indies (maybe it was another Caribbean island) and from several countries in Africa. They also had some teachers who were born and raised in American and French was their second language.
I am not sure about the current staff but I do know that they continue to seek world wide diversity in their staff.
All subjects, including math, are taught in the foreign language through 5th grade (they add an hour of English reading & language arts per day, starting in second grade).
Milwaukee is a long way from major metro areas like NY and LA and we are able to find native speakers in French (and I'm pretty sure German, too). See my post below.
Milwaukee is IMMENSELY metro (and multicultural) compared to many places (including where I grew up). Native speakers with an occasional exception in Spanish can be EXTREMELY hard to come by in small town and rural districts. MKE is a melting pot compared to various schools in which I've taught.
Milwaukee is a long way from major metro areas like NY and LA and we are able to find native speakers in French (and I'm pretty sure German, too). See my post below.
Don't know how to break this to you but Milwaukee is a metro area, maybe even a major one depending on the definition being used. It is one of the major cities in your state and has a major university, both are factors which make finding native speakers of other languages far more probable. Travel 100 miles from either of those, and unless it is near a military base, chances of finding someone whose native language isn't either English or, depending on the state, Spanish are slim to none. My last school had not even one ESL student the entire time I was there.
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I teach in a small district. One of the Spanish teachers is a native speaker, the other two are not. Actually, they've only studied Spanish for about 4 years, so their skills are rather weak.
I am not a native speaker, but I lived in France for a while and I've been studying the language for about 11 years. I consider myself to be fluent.
Very few native speakers will want to teach in this rural area.
I know, I know...we all use math one way or another whether we realize it or not.
But do we really use high-level math? I can certainly understand the reading and writing parts of the Basic Skills Tests...we all [English speakers] talk and write in English all the time; we communicate through the English language, not through statistical data or algebraic equations. I know that some of you will give me snarky examples of how we do use those in real life, but I really need some sympathy now.
The truth is that I feel that I have a lot of good qualities to become a teacher. I am compassionate, patient, knowledgeable, empathetic, hard-working, socially and culturally aware, and very much into social justice and educational improvement, and I love children and adolescents, but I probably won't be able to teach ever because I am unable to pass these stupid tests.
How does knowing how to get the unknown X in a two variable algebraic equation make me a better Spanish teacher?
And those are the kinds of things that you don't master in a 4 month crash course. You have to scaffold those skills from day one of your life-long education.
Most states will not let you teach Spanish, art, or theatre if you don't pass a fricking math component of a Basic Skills test that includes not just simple arithmetic, but probability, stats, and algebra. I don't know whether this was my fault or my teachers' fault, but at some point I became extremely bad at math. Anyone who says that there's no such thing as being bad at math, please come here and teach me how to pass those tests. I will pay them whatever they want.
This is a rant-y post because I am incredibly frustrated. I am not kidding...I'm this close to crying.
IAnyone know if any state in the USA doesn't require a math component in their Basic Skills Tests for non-math/non-science teachers?
The math component of the FL General Knowledge test is hardly high level math. It requires basic high school math abilities.
If you go to page 15 of this document http://www.fldoe.org/core/fileparse....e19edition.pdf you will see the requirements. They do not require high level math. I understand that many people haven't seen this type of math in a while. However, a refresher should bring most college graduates up to standard.
From the math 6-12 page on your link, I can see that some of these requirements may challenge people who don't feel particularly competent in math.
4. Determine the slope, intercepts, or equation of a line, given appropriate information.
5. Formulate and solve systems of linear equations or inequalities, including models of real world situations.
9. Solve quadratic equations using factoring, graphing, completing the square, or applying the quadratic formula, including complex solutions.
Finding qualified native speakers (who actually want to teach) are hard to find outside of the major metro areas like NY or LA. Even harder for some language like French or German.
Quote:
Originally Posted by germaine2626
Milwaukee is a long way from major metro areas like NY and LA and we are able to find native speakers in French (and I'm pretty sure German, too).
Quote:
Originally Posted by TabulaRasa
Milwaukee is IMMENSELY metro (and multicultural) compared to many places (including where I grew up). Native speakers with an occasional exception in Spanish can be EXTREMELY hard to come by in small town and rural districts. MKE is a melting pot compared to various schools in which I've taught.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Oldhag1
Don't know how to break this to you but Milwaukee is a metro area, maybe even a major one depending on the definition being used. It is one of the major cities in your state and has a major university, both are factors which make finding native speakers of other languages far more probable. Travel 100 miles from either of those, and unless it is near a military base, chances of finding someone whose native language isn't either English or, depending on the state, Spanish are slim to none. My last school had not even one ESL student the entire time I was there.
Of course, I know Milwaukee is a major metro area. However, as with many people in the Midwest, I'm just tired of people thinking that NY & LA are the only parts of the country that "count". The "flyover zone" is not just a vast, desert of nothingness.
It would have been easy to say something like, "In many parts of the country, especially in rural areas and small towns it can be extremely difficult to find and keep native speakers as foreign language teachers" instead of how it was put.
End of rant.
Last edited by germaine2626; 04-25-2015 at 10:37 AM..
5th grade? 11 tries? This is tragic and embarrasses our profession.
I felt the praxis math was 5th grade level. This teacher who had to take it 11 times to pass the math was meant to be a 2nd grade teacher. Previously, he had been a language teacher in high school.
Of course, I know Milwaukee is a major metro area. However, as with many people in the Midwest, I'm just tired of people thinking that NY & LA are the only parts of the country that "count". The "flyover zone" is not just a vast, desert of nothingness.
It would have been easy to say something like, "In many parts of the country, especially in rural areas and small towns it can be extremely difficult to find and keep native speakers as foreign language teachers" instead of how it was put.
End of rant.
And a lot of people who live and teach in tiny cities and rural areas are tired of people dismissing the very real issues created by that isolation. I've taught in the major urban area of Kentucky and I've taught in an isolated area in Eastern Kentucky, along with a number of other places (military wife). The difference in the level of resources available, whether economic or manpower, is mind boggling. On that front, urban areas are far better off. Finding qualified teachers of any kind, other than elementary, is difficult in poor rural areas, let alone a native speaker of anything. Just getting a foreign language teacher is a challenge by itself. For Heaven's sake, they still haven't replaced me (middle school science) with a HQ teacher they could keep, which is a little scary considering it has been 3 years and they are required by law to have one. It is impossible to say how long it will take them to replace their high school physical science teacher who is probably going to retire in a couple of years.
It would have been just as easy to say something like "most metro areas, especially major ones, aren't going to have problems finding native speakers" instead of how it was put.
By the way, in that rural area they also hired a lot of teachers, especially considering the size of their facility, who had been waivered at some point for Praxis passage.
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