Avoid These Five Common Mistakes Made by Novice World Language Teachers
Last year I had the privilege of mentoring the new French teacher in my school, and serving as mentor was an illuminating and rewarding experience that allowed me to gain insight into the strengths and weaknesses of novice World Language Teachers. The mentoring experience also helped me to reflect on the beginning years of my own teaching career and realize that I, too, used to make many of these mistakes! With time, reflection, and a desire to refine my teaching practices, I learned and/or developed alternative methods to better help my students and preserve my mental bandwidth in the classroom.
A note on the word mistake: When I say that these teaching techniques, philosophies, and practices are “mistakes,” I use that word loosely, and I am not passing any sort of judgment on folks who still subscribe to them. Ultimately, you need to do what’s best for you and your students, but I see these “mistakes” as hindrances that meet one or more of the following criteria:
They do not positively impact student learning. (Or, they may positively impact student learning to a minor degree, but the juice simply isn’t worth the squeeze.)
They drain the teacher’s time, energy, and mental bandwidth.
They are unsustainable and contribute to burnout.
Novice World Language Teacher Mistake #1: Using target language unintentionally
What is the problem? Many novice language teachers think that they should be speaking to their students 90% or more in the target language, regardless of the communicative context. What they may not be considering is that the input they are providing their students must be comprehensible in order for it to be effective. Language that is not comprehensible becomes nothing more than background noise to students. When you speak incomprehensibly to your students, they disengage and become frustrated, their affective filter goes up, and you get nowhere.
What is the solution? Be intentional about the input you are delivering to students. Context matters: the amount of target language you use in Spanish 1 should not be the same amount that you use in Spanish 4. Logically, we know that using 90% on day one of Spanish 1 does not make much sense, but on day one of Spanish 4? Totally realistic. Design lessons that center around targeted language that is appropriate for your students’ current level. Think about communicative purpose: why am I using the target language, and does it make sense right now?
I wrote an entire blog post called How Much Target Language Should I Use? Feel free to check it out for more context, as well as tips and tricks to staying comprehensible.
Novice World Language Teacher Mistake #2: Not organizing digital files
What is the problem? Many of us use Google Drive to organize our digital files. Google Drive synchronizes with Google Docs, Google Slides, and Google Classroom, so it makes sense to organize our teaching resources and materials there. I see novice teachers who create files haphazardly and do not organize them into appropriate folders. The problem with this approach is that they have begun creating a fantastic repository of teaching resources; however, they will have difficulty accessing their files in subsequent years because they have not created an easy-to-access organizational system.
What is the solution? Create one digital folder for each course you teach. In your course folder, create sub-folders to organize your materials by using one of the following organizational approaches: organize by marking period/semester; organize by unit; organize by month.
In each of those folders, include a copy of your digital lesson plans, and then create individual folders for each theme, skill, or content chunk that you teach. That way, next year you will know exactly what you taught, when you taught it, and what materials you needed in order to teach it.
Bonus tip: Keep a physical binder that you organize similarly, with all of the handouts you’ve used so that you know which photocopies you’ll need to make next year
Keeping an organized Google Drive will save you countless hours and immeasurable frustration during your subsequent teaching years.
This is my Unit 2 folder for my French 1 class. Each folder you see contains the Google Slides presentations, handouts, documents, and activities that I use with my students. My folders are organized chronologically, so I know that I start this marking period off with French/Francophone music and end it with -ER verbs. I also include folders for Assessments and Extra Resources, which is where I also store my sub plans and activities in case I need to be absent.
Novice World Language Teacher Mistake #3: Collecting and grading EVERYTHING
What is the problem? Novice teachers believe that they need to collect, provide feedback, and grade every single assignment that they push out to students. They spend hours outside of contract hours correcting work, calculating grades, and inputting data into their online grade books. They pass back the assignments that they spent hours grading, students take a quick look at the grade, and then they shove the assignment into their folder, never to be looked at or consulted again. This practice is time-consuming, stressful, and doesn’t move the needle in terms of student learning.
What is the solution? The myth that teachers need to collect and grade everything is fairly pervasive for new teachers. I challenge you to cut back on your grading by asking yourself, Does this assignment really need to be graded, and will it help my students improve in X, Y, Z way? If you cannot say unequivocally that grading the assignment will positively contribute to student learning outcomes, don’t grade it! Students need to practice, and they need to be able to see their mistakes so that they can self-correct and learn from them, but there are many ways you can accomplish this that do NOT involve you sacrificing hours of your weekend. Here are a few:
Have students work in pairs or small groups to correct each other’s work. Walk around the room and answer students’ questions and clarify misunderstandings.
Have students take out a different colored pen. Project the answers on the board, and have them correct their own work. Circulate around the room to formatively assess student performance, and determine what interventions are needed and for which students.
Pass out Answer Keys and have students self-correct. Come back together as a whole group and have students ask questions in a whole-group Q&A format.
Have students take out their homework, preferably while working on another assignment (or bellringer activity). Circulate the room and check for completion. Pick one or two areas of the assignment that you are going to really hone in on for accuracy. Provide students with a grade based on those two factors.
This might be a 5-point assignment. Give 5 points to students who have completed every element of the assignment with a near-perfect degree of accuracy, give 4 points to students who have completed most elements of the assignment with high accuracy, so on and so forth.
Novice World Language Teacher Mistake #4: Working MUCH harder than the students
What is the problem? “If I’m not in front of the room teaching, then my students aren’t learning!” “Students can’t POSSIBLY learn new vocabulary without me teaching it to them explicitly!” “I need to put on a show every single class for the duration of the teaching period/block; otherwise, I am not a good teacher.” “My value, worth, and effectiveness as a World Language Educator are directly proportional to the amount of energy I expend in the classroom.” “Teachers should never sit while teaching.” “My students need me. Without me, they can’t do anything.”
Do you have one or more of these misconceptions? I’ve heard these a lot over the years, both from new teachers AND veteran teachers alike! There are two problems with these flawed ways of conceptualizing our role in the World Language Classroom: 1) They contribute massively to our exhaustion and burnout. Few of us are built to teach full blocks in which we are the “Sage on the Stage” day in and day out for 10 months out of the year; 2) They rob students of critical learning opportunities and experiences.
Remember: students are learning the language and content; you’ve already learned it! It’s their job to take ownership of and an active role in their learning.
What is the solution? Keep lecturing and direct instruction to a minimum. Use it as a tool in your teacher toolbox, rather than the primary method of transmitting new information to your students. Have students work cooperatively to grapple with new language. Provide students with resources they need to access content on their own (think: Youtube tutorial videos, how-to tutorial sheets, textbook explanations, level-appropriate texts, podcasts and audio recordings, infographics, graphic organizers, etc.). In a word, create learning experiences that force students to actively learn the language, rather than sit passively in their chairs as you “deposit” knowledge in their brains.
Our role is to empower students to learn independently and cooperatively. There’s nothing wrong with direct instruction, but as a primary teaching strategy, it puts students in the passive role rather than in an active one.
When it comes to planning for instruction, you should be working hard. When it comes to in-class instruction, both you and your students should be working hard, but I’d say your students should be doing most of the heavy lifting!
Novice World Language Teacher Mistake #5: Not setting appropriate boundaries
What is the problem? Our profession can be an all-encompassing one that can drain us of all of our time and energy and negatively impact our mental health, personal relationships, and overall happiness. When teachers fail to create and uphold boundaries between their professional life and their personal life, they tend to overwork themselves and get burnt out. You need to rest and recharge your batteries in order to be the best version of yourself, so that you can show up for your family, your friends, your colleagues, and your students.
So often I see teachers fully buying in to the martyr complex, in which they sacrifice their own needs and those of their family in order to live up to the impossible standards of what they think the perfect teacher ought to be and ought to be doing. What they fail to realize is that this self-sacrificing behavior ultimately leads to burnout, and unfortunately it can lead to negative effects in terms of their health and interpersonal relationships.
What is the solution? Set up appropriate boundaries. Take care of yourself. Do a great job at work, but leave your work at school. Come home and decompress. Be present for your family. You deserve to enjoy your life. You deserve rest. You deserve grace. Students will learn better from a recharged teacher whose lessons are imperfect and who maybe takes a few extra classes to hand back work than they would from a burnt out teacher who spends countless hours attempting to perfect every single lesson and grades work on nights and during the weekend.
Students cannot tell the difference between you putting in 100% of your time, effort, and energy and putting in 80% of your time, effort, and energy. (And spoiler alert: neither can admin!) Do a great job, but stop aiming for perfection! Learn to live with good enough.
Teaching is not a sprint; it is a marathon. You need to establish appropriate boundaries so that you can endure until May or June. Maybe this means that you work contract hours only (hardly realistic for first-year teachers, unfortunately, but certainly feasible for second or third year teachers and beyond!). Maybe it means you refuse to take any work home with you on the weekend. Maybe it means you say no when your principal asks you to host a club or chaperone a social. Maybe it means using all of your personal and sick days (which, by the way, are given to you so that you can use them to take care of yourself and your family) by the end of the year. Maybe it means taking a mental health day every few weeks.
Whatever it is, create boundaries that are going to contribute to your overall sense of well-being, that are going to keep burnout at bay, and that are going to help recharge you so that you can continue showing up for your students. Your needs matter, and you shouldn’t have to sacrifice your own health and wellbeing in service of lofty, unattainable teaching goals.
And of course, once you’ve established what your boundaries are, you have to stick to them at all costs!
I always say that teaching is a job that is never really over. There’s always work to be done. But unfortunately, if we allow that reality to intrude into our personal lives, we are bound to suffer and burn out eventually. There is always work to be done, sure, but there’s always tomorrow, as well! You are more than enough. You are doing great. Give yourself grace, and give yourself the freedom to take care of yourself and your family. It’s what’s best for you. It’s what’s best for your family and friends. And it’s what’s best for your students, too. They will be fine.
Have you made any of these “mistakes” at the beginning of your teaching career? Or are you a novice teacher who is currently struggling with some of these areas of your teaching? I’d love to hear from you in the comments below. I hope that you’re able to walk away from this blog post with a few solutions in mind that can help reduce your workload, improve your teaching practice, and preserve your mental health.
As always, let me know if there’s anything I can do to help!
Happy teaching,
~ Michael
