I worry a lot about the kids’ German exposure. Not just when I’m about to go on vacation and leave the kids in an all English environment, but in general. Yes, I speak as much German with them as possible, we’re practicing OPOL and are doing all sorts of other things to ensure German will stick with them, but in the greater scheme of things our circumstances are not exactly ideal (I work full-time outside the house and The Husband doesn’t speak German, for instance). So I worry.
I do know that they are doing well with their German so far – both are speaking it with me and are capable of having conversations entirely in German – and I am impressed and happy about that. But in my plan, German Saturday School had always played a large-ish role to help support their bilingualism, biliteracy and biculturalism. Outside of teaching German, to me it was also a place where the kids could interact with other German-speaking kids; we would exchange information with parents and teachers to help support the kids’ German; have access to German resources like books, CDs and DVDs; and find out about cultural events and activities; and maybe even make a few German-speaking friends for Punk 1 (and later Punk 2). There isn’t much of a German community where we live, but I had been hoping – and maybe unfairly so? – that this school would serve as a hub of all things German, offering up or at least advertising activities and events of interest to local German-speakers and doing everything it could to support its students’ language development.
But I know from past experience that this isn’t so. In fact, although cultural activities and events were mentioned by the principal when we met for a tour and are advertised on the school’s website, this is where the school fell painfully short. Yes, it had a German lending library full of kids’ books and DVDs that we used extensively, there was a Christmas Party (that was not particularly kid-friendly) and a summer end-of-year picnic to try and get everyone together, but other than that there was just nothing.
No newsletter advertising local German events (and there are some we know off and attend - other parents probably know of other things), no babysitting board, flea market or anything else to try and help their students get some more exposure to German, no use of social media to help parents and the older students stay connected. When I approached the parent council to help get a few things going, it became pretty clear that they had absolutely no interest to do anything outside what they were doing already, so at the end of the year we weren’t sad to see the school year come to a close.
Given that most of the kids in Punk 1’s class also didn’t actually speak any German and she would have gotten a lot more of it had she stayed home with me, we chose to sit out SK (it’s joined with JK, so there really was no point), giving us free weekends for the past school year (except whatever other activities we had going on).
In the back of my mind I probably always thought that she’d go back for grade 1, coming up this September, to start learning how to read and write. But I am beginning to wonder whether she really should.
‘Cause here’s the thing.
She’s begun to read and write in English (a while back, and yes, it’s in English even though she’s in French immersion – go figure), and a lot of those early literacy skills have been easily transferable to German. Last year for a while when she was interested in practicing with me, she was doing as well in reading German as she was in English (without any help from German Saturday School). Now as I write this, I’m of course noticing that we’ve been letting the German reading slide a bit, but we’ll go back to it and presumably this transfer of literacy skills will have continued. Even if it hasn’t, I can certainly help her with the basics. Plus, Oma is coming this summer to babysit her for a couple of weeks between summer camp and starting at a new daycare – that is bound to have an impact on her active and receptive language, but likely on her literacy skills as well as Oma would make a super-patient tutor and would be happy to help out this way, too.
So, given that it is likely that at least her spoken German would be way ahead of that of most of her classmates and the school does little else, do we really need German Saturday School for grade 1?
We haven’t talked to her about it really since last fall or so, but I have the feeling she’d prefer not to go. She’d probably agree to ‘study’ a bit with me, and maybe that’s enough for the time being?
Part of the deal for us with the Saturday School always was this grandiose idea that she should be going to this school (as should Punk 2 when the time comes) as graduating from it with the highest credential means they could attend university in Germany without having to pass the notoriously difficult language entrance exam. I have since heard that kids that have done exactly that have had huge difficulties in their classes as they just didn’t have the academic language skills required to keep up with assignments and that kind of thing. So maybe this reason is not as important as it once was – though I still feel very strongly that I want both kids be able to read and write German.
For now I am thinking I will once again speak with the principal to see what she thinks and to maybe get an idea of the other students’ level of German. Maybe there is an expectation that as of grade 1 kids do have to have some level of German after all? But really, if it picks up from where SK leaves off, there might not be any point in us attending as Punk 1 would be too far ahead again of the rest of her class. And we love our weekends too much to clutter them up with 3 hours of school, 4 hours if you count travel to and from, that doesn’t actually do much to help Punk 1’s German.
The other side is that the longer we wait to re-introduce Saturday School, the more unlikely she is to agree to such a preposterous thing. It was easy with JK as back then she didn’t know that most kids don’t go to school on the weekends and had a little friend who went to Greek Saturday School – but she’s got it all figured out now, and I don’t think convincing her of its merits will become easier with time.
Any thoughts out there?
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This post is part of the Blogging on Bilingualism Carnival, this time around hosted over at Multilingual Mania.
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9 comments:
If the other kids are not German and do not speak German, you can't really say there is any "immersion", can you?
And isn't immersion what really does it? Like when Oma comes, for example?
Hi, I'm interested in what you say about literacy skills being transferable from English to German - can you say some more on how that works? I've been working on the assumption that we need to ensure proper teaching in reading and writing in each language independently, but if that weren't the case, that would make some thigns a lot easier!
On your ideas about the school, it has to be said that on your description of it, it doesn't seem to have a lot going for it for your children, does it. The only thing that might help is that it is "institutionalised", so that should the kids ever get rebellious about studying at home, with school they just don't have any choice. Not sure that's much of a reason though.
Good luck with your decision!
@Jen - my older daughter learned reading English, mainly driven by school. I don't think I ever explicitly sat down and read German books _with_ her. But once she was able to read English, she also started to read German books.
Granted: she is a lot slower and has to ask more often.
But I think the concept of looking at patterns rather than letters has been firmly implanted in her brain and the patterns in English and German are fairly similar. They might sound different, but they are not that far apart, really.
@Jen:
Similar to what Jan said :)
I think you can find researchers supporting both sides (teach them how to read a second language after they've mastered a first as opposed to doing both at the same time) - but we pretty much just followed our daughter's lead.
In JK, she learned all the letters and sounds that go with them (in English, of course) and started practicing this like mad at home (no letters/sounds were ever learned in German JK....). She also started looking at words to try and read them - in both English and German. When she then tried to read a German book to me because she wanted to, I realized that she had a pretty good idea of what was going on. All I had to do, aside from helping her a little, was explain what sounds some of the German letters and letter combos make (like 'ie' and 'ei', Umlaute, etc.) and she was off sounding out German words as well.
For a while she was very interested in reading with/to me, so her German reading was on par with English. When she entered French immersion last fall, for a while she stopped wanting to read in German - but since I wrote this post and realized how long it's been, I have asked her to read some German to me, and she can still do it. She even still remembers most of the letter combos that are different from English. And just as she has progressed in English, she has progressed in German (woo hoo!).
Her main 'problem' is not that she is learning to read in two languages at once - rather, it is guessing a word based on either a few letters, an accompanying picture, or what she thinks may come next, regardless of whether she reads in English or German :) Depending on how tired she is, she can manage anything from a couple of sentences to an entire chapter in one of those early reader books, before she starts to loose interest and/or concentration.
I am by no means an expert and don't know how this actually works, except that it just did :) It'll be interesting to see how this will play out with our youngest. He's not nearly as mature as she was his age and is altogether different. But he will start JK this fall, so we're about to find out.
Good luck with your kids - and remember to write a post (or send me an email) about how it goes - I'm interested to know!
Thanks very much for your comments! I wonder if this then really isn't such a big deal after all. I'll do a bit more research I think, but this is very encouraging!
What is JK by the way?
Sorry Jen, JK is Junior Kindergarten - attendance optional for 4 year olds (though most parents send their kids as studies show they are better prepared for school and do better in it as compared to those who don't). Followed by SK or Senior Kindergarten for 5 year olds, again attendance optional. After that, they go into grade 1.
If you find out anything earth-shattering (or just plain old interesting and/or useful), please let us know :)
And I totally agree, our experience with Punk 1 has been very encouraging. Not only for her future acquisition of literacy skills in all her languages, but we're also hoping that Punk 2 will have a similar experience.
Hope it goes well for your kids, too!
I'm so sorry to hear about your experience with your local Saturday school. It is such a shame.
I teach at a Saturday school near my house in the suburbs of Philadelphia. We're a very small school (I have the highest level - a Mittelstufe using A1 level textbook - and have only 4 students). I actually passed on your blog to our director, because I thought you had such great ideas!
I think our students have some link to German - usually at least one parent. But as a teacher, I can tell you it can be very frustrating that the parents don't tend to do much at home with their kids during the week. I often feel like I'm only helping my students stay afloat rather than seeing any progress. Not that it's the case with you - or even all of our students! And as they get older (my four are ages 13-16), they're so busy with "regular" school, homework and extracurriculars, I can't really blame them for not doing much with German during the week.
I know all this doesn't really help you. Just thought I'd offer some thoughts. Good luck with your "schooling" - whether in school or at home!
Hi Kate,
nice to see you here :)
And thanks for your comments 'from the other side'! They really echo what our principal had mentioned to us - that parents expect a Saturday School to teach their kids another language and that few parents do anything to support this. Since this is not really our situation, I am thinking that, at least for the lower grades, we are not really the right people for this model (at least not the way it's playing out at this school).
We'll continue to keep it in mind for the future, if only so someone else can help me fix the kids' grammar and that kind of thing. And maybe in a few years the parent council will be a little more receptive to other ideas as well. As it was, new members were encouraged to join, but none of us lasted for long. I'm not sure what happened with the others, but I assume they also got frustrated and pulled out.
Thanks again, also for passing things on to your director.
In one of the posts on this month's carnival, the author talks about creating a storytime at the local library. Maybe something like that could be an option! Here in my local comunity there is a small group of german immigrants who meet together monthly also with their kids and organize fun literacy activities, like making books, etc.
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