Foreign Language Department
The foreign Language Department in the Dallastown School District has changed quite a bit. In the following you will see how it has changed throughout the years.
When asking Mrs. Michaelene Wiley what languages she had to choose from when she was in school she replied, "In high school there were only two languages to choose from. There was only Latin and French." While asking the same question to Mr. Mike Hess and Mrs. Gretchen Zimmerman they both stated, "There were four languages to choose from, Spanish, Latin, German, and French. The same as you have now." As you can see the students have more choices than they did in the past.
The Foreign Language Department has changed a lot throughout the years as Mrs. Wiley explained, "It became more involved. Things where the student was given an opportunity not just to sit back and memorize, but to actually become involved in things." However when asking Mr. Hess he gave a quite different answer. He answered, "In Latin we used a thing called echoramoni and it was a lot of memorization, it was a lot of lists because you don't speak Latin so there wasn't an interaction with the students. We basically did a lot of terms that would be useful in the legal profession, or the medical profession. The style was a lot of memorization we had to study, we had to learn that way." Mrs. Zimmerman disagreed. She stated, "I think they're very similar, the way I learned and taught in the High School."
When asking Mrs. Wiley if she thought taking foreign language was useful, she replied, "Yes, I think it was extremely useful for me, especially in Latin, because that's what really made me decide my experience, in Latin. The teacher, I liked her a whole lot, and that really made me decide to study Latin and become a Latin teacher."
All three teachers were asked if there were any moments that they remember and would like to share. Mrs. Zimmerman commented, "I remember we used to make puppet plays for the elementary students. We had the plays written in German, and I really think they enjoyed them very much so. It was a learning experience for the both of us." Mr. Hess pronounced, "Yeah I did a project, we all had to pick a famous saying. I think mine was from Boris, I did a poster and I also did the college mottoes from all the Ivy league schools and I researched all their mottoes and I put them together in a book. I was so proud of that."
Mrs. Wiley said, "I think that it was the first time for me that I really had the opportunity to look at other cultures, and to appreciate other cultures, and to see how much ours resulted from theirs and how much ours grew on the other culture. The other culture was the foundation of how much borrowing and getting took place."
These interviews proved that foreign language used to be taught in many different ways. Students have more choices now. The way the class is taught has a big influence on how much students enjoy it.
