Who do middle schoolers like talking about more – themselves, or others? I'd say it's a pretty close call. Developmentally, they are just transitioning from an extreme focus on self–identity to the bare beginnings of an awareness of humanity writ large. Their world is in the process of growing past a simplistic realm revolving merely around the self, but hasn't quite expanded to include everyone else, beyond their immediate circle of friends, family, and acquaintances. They are becoming much more social and establishing their own personalities, often in relationship to those of the people around them. In this respect, a feeling of kinship and similarity is extremely important to this age group, even more so than to others. Alternatively, a propensity to contrast as well as compare can result, if untended, in a splintering effect, as students establish who they are by who they consider themselves to be
un–like
, who they deem themselves to be
different than
.
Since our students are naturally employing these skills of comparison and contrast on a daily basis in their personal lives, it only makes sense to arrange our lessons around the same structures, so that we are speaking the same proverbial language. By guiding our focus to the similarities among people from the United States and those from French-speaking countries around the world, I can help students develop their worldview into one of sameness as opposed to difference or opposition. And within that context, we can address the idea of difference in a way that will guide students to equate it not with division but with variety and uniqueness.
I teach French at an arts magnet middle school in New Haven, to students in grades five through eight. The curriculum for grades seven and eight in middle school is the same as the ninth grade/First Year curriculum in high school. It comes with a faster pace, more academic demands in the form of district–wide testing, and a stronger focus on writing than the fifth and sixth grade curriculum, which is more exploratory in nature, stressing oral communication and vocabulary–building.
We spend the first marking period in seventh grade exploring how to introduce ourselves, by giving our name, age, nationality, and where we live. We also identify other people in very simple terms – this is a man, woman, student, friend, teacher. These language components are expanded over the course of the second marking period as students go from talking about themselves to talking more specifically about others, ultimately describing family members and friends.
Concurrently, the first marking period introduces students to the French-speaking world: Francophone countries and notable French speakers from France and elsewhere. The idea is to excite and perhaps surprise students with the knowledge of a French presence not just in France, but in so many places around the world, and to make that tangible by introducing a wide variety of historically–recognizable and modern–day people who speak French.
Traditionally, these two strands of our first marking period curriculum have been addressed somewhat separately, the linguistic component revolving around introducing oneself and the conversational conventions necessary to do so, the cultural component around identification of places French is spoken and well–known speakers of French. Of course there is overlap, as language skills are indeed practiced when French-speakers are presented. But it isn't until the second marking period that we formally introduce ways of talking about others beyond simply identifying them, as in
Voilà Madame X. C'est une femme
. So it has been challenging to make this aspect of the curriculum as exciting as I think it can and should be.
In the past, we have had students learn about famous French-speakers by researching them, but I have found that to be a largely inefficient undertaking. They are so (understandably) accustomed to viewing research as an information–gathering endeavor that they have great difficulty approaching it as a linguistic practice, limiting their search efforts to what can be understood and communicated with their level of French language knowledge. So they gravitate toward English language sources rather than parse through the French resources provided, and then work to translate the information into French (inevitably with online translation tools!) Our communication and comprehension goals are so quickly lost in this scenario.
Getting students out of the mindset by which they start with an English thought and then translate it to French words is long–term work. Bypassing English is tough to sell, as students at this level are often not yet familiar enough with the complexities of the English language to conceptualize the linguistic challenges inherent in translation. And when it is a matter of getting to know about actual people, curiosity can't help but get the better of our students. What a fortunate problem to have! So rather than continue to fight that natural inclination to find out about people, I have decided to go with it and celebrate it for the gift it is.
I
can cull and sort the information; they don't need to. There will be plenty of time to guide my students in the use of French resources for research, and to explore the corresponding pitfalls inherent to the task. But first marking period needs to reel students in and frankly, in my opinion the research project as it has been framed thus far just doesn't do it.
So I will do the research on a variety of French–speakers; in this unit, I will provide that information for a small sampling of people as a model of the process. It is a starting point and a structure for gathering and presenting the people as well as practicing the complementary language skills. Each year I intend to add more personalities, developing a strong bank of interesting French-speakers over time.
Our French-speakers will be introduced through two vehicles, facsimiles of passports as well as sample Facebook profile pages, which I will be referring to as "Fauxbook," profiles because it's fun and it will help me reinforce the meaning of the word
faux
as an example of a French word we have adopted into English language usage. Consistently using these two formats of information delivery will allow students to more readily access
and
use the pertinent information in linguistically significant ways. When they don't have to repeatedly figure out the particulars of the presentation format, they can focus on what is being presented, and will feel more confident to take the risks necessary to practice this new language learning.
After students introduce and create both passports and Fauxbook profile pages for themselves, they will then be introduced to a variety of French-speakers, through
their
passports and profile pages. Students will assume these characters, speaking from their point of view, in role–playing activities. This will allow students to continue practicing the
I
forms of our phrases without getting bored (yes, even seventh graders will eventually tire of speaking of themselves, especially when the topics are so relatively narrow!) It will also help students become more familiar with our French-speakers than they have previously been. I hope that heavily incorporating role–playing at the start of the seventh grade year will help to maintain the atmosphere of creativity and imagination that sometimes is lost as students transition to the more exacting curriculum of seventh grade.
Role–playing can be a fun and engaging way for students to practice language skills. But truthfully, sometimes it ends up feeling a bit contrived. The passports and Fauxbook pages will allow us to circumvent any sense of the stale or proscribed. And they can be used during the next marking period's unit, laying a solid foundation for a seamless transition to talking about others in the third person.
In the Yale–New Haven Teachers Institute seminar,
The Art of Biography
, we have addressed important elements of biography, and the tension between discrete facts and the more complicated bits of information that make up a life. To stay linguistically appropriate in this unit, we must stick to some very basic information; however we will address this tension, albeit on a fairly surface level. Personalities will be introduced first through their passports, and the factual biographical information contained therein. But even here, these facts of a person will only tell part of the story. Then we
will
"view" created Fauxbook pages as a way to explore some other details that help make up who a person is, their likes, dislikes, interests. Although those details are still relatively superficial, they will allow us to hint at the idea of what personal information does or does not define a person.
