Building Community: French (300-level classes)
Activities for first day of class
I plan to write a message to all students in the course before the semester starts to introduce myself and provide an overview of how the remote course will work. I will add the course syllabus to this message. I will tell them that online teaching is a challenge for everyone, and requires flexibility and patience, but I am there to support them. I will tell them that we will spend time on introductions on the first day of class. I plan to create a mini-forum where each student can provide useful information – e.g., are they on campus or elsewhere, what time zone they are in, any issues with computer/Internet access, best way to reach them. Since the class I will be teaching focuses on childhood, I will also ask them to post an image they like related to the theme of childhood with a few sentences explaining why they chose this image. It could be a painting, a book cover, a commercial ad, their own photograph of an object…anything related to childhood. The class is in French so they will have to post in French. I would split student into pairs or groups of three; each student would be asked to introduce one of their peers during the initial class meeting and discuss the image selected by their peer(s). I would post my own image before the first day of class. I am not sure about the Name Coach feature. It is a good idea for the students themselves, but for me my name is hard to pronounce if you adopt French phonetics. Getting the French “r” right is very challenging for everyone! What I could do to make them comfortable would be to simply ask them to call me “Madame” which does not pose a pronunciation challenge, and explain that I use the “elle” pronoun.
I have a question about preferred pronouns (in French, il, elle and the gender-neutral iel). Is it appropriate to ask students what their preferred pronouns are during class time, or should we use the class roster for that purpose? I am not sure when inclusivity and respect for privacy may conflict. I include a paragraph about gender pronouns in French in my course syllabi, but in my experience, students rarely read syllabi closely.
Sustaining community throughout the semester / how this relates to online teaching / how this relates to overarching goals of the class
My classes will be entirely online this semester. I will teach 300-level classes so I anticipate that most of the students will be 2nd, 3rd and 4th year students – many of them will be French majors and/or students with a good level of French. Although creating an online community will be difficult, it will be helpful that a majority of the students in the class are choosing to study French because they enjoy it – and presumably will be familiar with some of the other students in the class, if not most of them, as our Department is small. I really liked the idea of creating a music playlist as a “waiting room” occupation when people are waiting for class to start, but also as a way to energize students, lift their spirits, and have them listen to some French. I could create a playlist of French and Francophone music from Edith Piaf to contemporary rap artists, and I would encourage students to add songs in French that they like. During the last class of spring semester, I did an activity in my French Conversation class where every student had to select one song in French, play it for the class, and explain why they liked that song. This activity ended up being very clunky with many glitches (I hadn’t realized before that Zoom had its own volume button that we needed to turn on) but it made me think that music would be a great way for the students to connect. It also ties in to the pedagogical aim of the class, since it exposes the students to the French language and to French+ Francophone culture.
I would appreciate guidance from my friends at IT and the CTL on how to smoothly implement this from a technical standpoint so that it may be an enjoyable activity instead of a source of frustration! Generally speaking I feel that I need more training with technology to smoothly implement the community-building exercises that are being suggested during our workshops. Hopefully there will be opportunities to explore technological issues either during or at the end of this training.
For my class “Enfants Terribles” (FREN-346), I have been giving quite a bit of thought to the course assignments to make them more collaborative, creative, and oriented toward community-building. The class discusses ideas and theories of childhood in 18th and 19th century France. As an introduction we will start with two contemporary films which show different images of school, education, and the process of growing up. I plan to follow up with a Moodle post in which each student would relate a story from their school years (in French). I also plan to have them write a response to an author in the voice of a character, and to collaboratively work on a mini-screenplay (more like a scene from a movie) based on a novel we will be reading. I hope that these activities will both help the students understand the course material at a deeper level and create a sense of community with the other students in the class.