Lord have mercy!!! I was nervous...
Monday night was the parent-teacher conference with all kid's parents. All I knew was, that all these parents were very kind but that it was an issue that they thought that in their opinion the kids didn't have enough vocabulary drills for homework since they will have to deal with that in secondary school too...
Great, and here I come with "my new way" of teaching a language... I have to admit that I did have butterflies in my belly... but as I found out later, for no reason at all!
Before the parent-teacher conference, the main teacher of the class asked me to explain this Birkenbihl approach to the principle just in case there were some issues with parents to make sure she would back me. Well this made me nervous too... The teacher told me right from the start, that I could teach her class the way I wanted to, so I didn't think of asking the principle too. And since I really want to do my bachelor thesis about this I was sort of worried that she could disagree... But she didn't. On the contrary! When I explained her in the staff room, what this was about, she agreed and said that this sounded fantastic and that if this was successful, that I could teach this method to the whole team :-) How motivating :-)
Well and then I wrote my speech and as I told the teacher about it, she asked me to keep it a short as possible and not to say that learning vocabulary was non-sense since she still teaches this way. So I really focused on explaining the 4 steps, comparing it to us having learnt our mother tongue. AND especially how important the passive listening was and how much I needed their help with this...
There was one couple that knew Vera F. Birkenbihl and here learning approaches and they were thrilled. Others asked, why we would only teach English this way and not French as well. So I really felt that the parent were fine with me teaching this way and they are keen on seeing some results.
After the official meeting lots of parents came and chatted with me about this method. Some told me about their own experiences with passive listening and how good it worked. I was sooo relieved!
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