Garfield hosts a world language program that offers both French and Spanish to students from freshman through senior year, teaching them useful language skills. However, teaching and maintaining the program comes with a variety of challenges.
For World Language classes, flexibility is a critical component. “It might be hard to make an adjustment to a structure that might be slightly different than a core class,” Garfield French teacher Madame Clayton said. She emphasized the importance of observation in the course and being patient in your understanding; “you just have to kind of be ready to absorb a lot of input, you know, and you won’t understand everything, but like, little by little, your vocabulary and your skills will build.” Mr. Cicolini, one of Garfield’s three Spanish teachers, added that it is very important “to be exposed to, you know, different cultures, different languages.”
Accumulating the attention of students doesn’t make the job any easier, though. Clayton offered a teacher’s perspective on overcoming the obstacles of teaching French: “You’re doing more of a song and dance. If you’re trying to act [words] out and really stick to not speaking in English, that takes a lot of energy sometimes to do.” Clayton shared that, over the past few years, many teachers–across all subjects–have taken hiatuses or up and left teaching altogether. “A lot of teachers in fact, nationwide are leaving the profession due to mental health struggles, and feeling less supported by admin and by districts’ policies,” Clayton stated “There’s a whole lot of systemic stuff going on societally, not just at Garfield that affects teacher attrition.”
Another struggle that the Garfield Language program deals with is constant budget cuts. Because the language program is viewed as an elective rather than a core class, the district devalues its importance. “When we have to have budget cuts, we are like first on the line,” Cincolini explained “They cut out the AP Spanish, and also they cut out the Japanese program completely and I think that’s, you know, that’s very unfortunate.” In the past, Garfield has offered a variety of languages like Latin and Japanese, but after a series of cuts, it only offers Spanish and French with inconsistent AP options. “This year, we are super thrilled and happy that the AP classes are coming back because last year they just cut out the Spanish AP class,” said Cicolini.
Now, more than ever, there is drastic globalization and connection across continents. “I think that It is very important [that] we live in to be exposed to, you know, different cultures, different languages,” said Cicolini. As future budget cuts threaten the fate of Garfield’s language program, teachers like Cicolini and Clayton believe that with enough advocacy, Garfield can continue to offer language classes that prepare high schoolers for a successful future in the world.
