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“Teach for June” isn’t a slogan to get through the school year. It’s a new attitude towards foreign-language teaching.
Instead of the current paradigm of covering chapters and then moving on to new material, Teach for June turns that paradigm on its ear. Teach for June‘s assessment goal is not after each chapter or series of chapters, but a continuing and progressive evaluation of our students’ abilities with an end-goal of mastery by June. We could even look beyond that and set an ultimate goal of proficiency in the June of the final year of our programs.
What does that mean? It means that we use whole, natural language in the classroom at all times. It means that we don’t teach long lists of thematic vocabulary at a time. It means we use all tenses, direct and indirect objects, and reflexive objects from day one level one as appropriate. We do all of this with the goal in mind that they will have mastered level one material by June and will have been exposed to the entire language in a natural way from the beginning. This will best prepare them for what is to come in later levels. No more is the culture shock of moving to the past tense in level two or the subjunctive in level three. The students will be familiar with all of it from the beginning but only assessed on material that is appropriate for their particular level.
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