5th Journal, January 25th, 2015

In this journal, I would like to talk about another topic that caught my interest from
chapter three about traditional and nontraditional lessons. As I was reading example two: An
Introductory Lesson on Functions under the nontraditional lesson of the chapter, what caught my
attention is what Cazden wrote about the lesson. She states on page fifty-three, This lesson
calls attention to the importance of the teachers understanding of mathematics beyond what may
seem to be required in the students curriculum. I want to apply that statement to the FL
classroom. As a fluent Spanish speaker, to this day, my students still come up with questions
that I do not have the answer to about the Spanish language. I have been speaking Spanish for
over twenty years now and I have been studying in the MATL for the past two and a half years.
I have had so much exposure to the language as well as the culture. And yet I still have to admit
to my students sometimes that I will have to get back with them on some of the questions that
they ask me because I just don't know the answer. Now, I understand that no one is going to
know everything about the FL that they teach or even everything about their native tongue for
that matter, but I feel very confident about what I know about Spanish and imparting my
knowledge to my students. This brings me to my point.
I have heard and become aware of situations where people who dont speak Spanish
fluently are hired as Spanish teachers. At a conference I went to recently, a Spanish teacher told
me that at her school, one of the Spanish teachers speaks no Spanish, but they needed a coach
who could also teach Spanish, and because this person had the credentials to coach, they hired
him. How is he going to teach the subject he does not know? Granted that is hearsay. I dont
have any proof of it but that is not the first time I have heard about a situation like that.
Cazden quotes historian Lawrence Cremin who wrote about the Progressive Education
movement of the 1930s and 1940s. His words still ring true today. Even though he was talking
about math in this quote, one could easily interchange the word Spanish, or French or any subject
where he said mathematics. He states:
...A teacher cannot know which opportunities to use, which impulses to encourage, or
which social attitudes to cultivate without a clear sense of what is to come later. ...with
respect to intellect this implies a thorough acquaintance with organized knowledge as

represented in the disciplines. To recognize opportunities for early mathematical

learning, one must know mathematics.
I could not agree with him more. I feel that to teach a foreign language, one must be
proficient in that language. Personally, I want to teach French one day. However, I feel that
although my French is on an intermediate level, I do not know it like I know Spanish. Spanish
feels like a second skin for me. It comes naturally to me as if it were my native tongue. I want
to get that proficient in French as well before I start teaching French. I love the language and I
want to do it justice when I teach it.