Building an Ecosystem of Proficiency Across Multiple Language Programs
As the recently promoted chair of our school’s World Languages department, I’ve been thinking a lot about the kind of culture I want to engender in our 13 teacher “found family.” Teachers are a weird bunch to manage, since most of our work time is spent in a classroom with at most one other adult. Our craft is entirely practiced in secrecy, and often experienced by the unappreciative! Plus, aside from the lack of visibility of and by our colleagues, there are also questions of popularity amongst students, rumored differences in individual instructors’ ‘difficulty,’ and varied levels of experience among colleagues. And finally, depending on the popularity (or perceived utility) of your language program, teachers might also be fighting for their position by ensuring their idiomatic program appeals to and draws students enough to continue filling classrooms. So it’s quite hard to establish a through line that both honestly includes these perceptions while also establishing a belonging spirit of “we’re all on the same team here.”
However, on the flipside, cooperation in a department, specifically among teachers of one language, and collaboration across languages programs, is essential in order to dispel some of the aforementioned specters that may haunt any language department and to repel the growth of any invasive weeds of doubt that can further silo educators. When the goal of your department is to work with students over several years in order to scaffold skills, strengthen weak areas with repetition, and eventually build and assess linguistic proficiency, it’s essential that certain practices take root and guide the growth of its members. And remember, culture doesn’t just appear, it’s built by people’s habits, their repetitions, and a shared sense of a collective buy-in; that means any of the following ideas could be implemented by a top-down leadership model, or just as successfully suggested from a member as an experiment or a challenge that each member can conduct in his or her own spirit of professional and collegiate growth.
The Walkthrough
One of the new ideas I suggested to my department that really took off this year was to replace the tired old ‘peer observation’ model with instead a series of walkthroughs. As an educator, you are likely familiar with the popular institutional requirement that you are observed by a colleague at least once during your scholastic year, and that you reciprocate, and then reflect on the experience in writing. And, if you are familiar with this practice, you also know how it goes: the teacher, having waited until the last minute, schedules a visit to any colleague who is willing and available, and during their prep period, brings their computer to the class and is typing away, writing their reflection live as the class unfolds. They share it with a departmental supervisor, and the whole experience fades away like some unimportant clerical task.
Hardly a recipe for growth.
An alternative, suggested to us by a workshop offered by the ISM (Independent School Management) was instead of a class-long observation of one colleague, why not visit several colleagues for a shorter time? This way, a teacher can get a much more comprehensive look at what happens across languages, and across levels. The tradeoff is, of course, that it requires a little more planning in that it’s more than one colleague the educator needs to visit, but for a ten minute visit, it’s a lot easier to sell.
In our department, we agreed to the tradeoff through this implementation; if a normal class period would amount to about 50 minutes, why not instead, over 5 weeks, or scholastic cycles, visit 5 different colleagues for ten minutes each? Then after the five visits, the department as a whole can reflect on what they saw, experienced, and learned about what’s happening on a holistic level.
The results spoke for themselves: “I realized I need to visit my colleagues’ classes more often,” said one of my longtime coworkers. “I just never knew how many interesting ways they’re teaching, practicing, and assessing the different linguistic skills!” And this sort of ah-ha moment perfectly captures the point of the exercise: first of all, to free educators from the solipsism of our own classroom practices. Subsequently, and more useful to a department focused on proficiency, it clears the air of misty rumors and obfuscating assumptions to allow for true conversation and collaboration.
The Relay Race
Once a department has grown into a safe, cooperative space, where its members can openly discuss ideas, practices, and often, frustrations and shortcomings, working together becomes almost a natural evolution. Educators want to talk shop with one another; have you ever been to a happy hour full of teachers? They almost can’t help it! And, it stands to reason that the excitement of sharing very quickly and naturally turns into a spirit of cooperation. And that’s where you go from the rat race to the relay race.
When an educator has taught across levels of a language, they expertly know the process of building up to certain levels of proficiency and assessment should begin early; many educators, for example, believe that total immersion of the target language through TPR, cognate-heavy speech, and predictable classroom routines, can be established from day one of a language class. Colleagues discussing this, holding themselves and each other accountable, and building towards the capstone goals of assessment tasks, such as the 2-minute speaking exercise on the AP Language exams, reaching a certain level of mastery on written prompts from the AAPPL assessment, or even basing one’s highest proficiency level on the Seal of Biliteracy, can establish for colleagues in a department a sort of ‘finish line’ for the standard of competency a graduate of their program should achieve.
When the qualities of a student who has ‘aced’ the language program can be clearly delineated, what follows is educators in a language department naturally breaking down the scaffolding and major checkpoints in this journey. This is where the relay race metaphor comes in handy, since passing the baton is more like refueling a jet plane than it is hitting a bullseye: your students will have natural proclivities, talents, and hang-ups, and every scholastic year is different. Therefore, setting up a conversation where teachers of contiguous language courses do their best to create continuity in the language program, model assessments after capstone skill checks, and build on the skills and practices of their colleagues teaching earlier levels, all contribute heavily towards an ecosystem of unity towards establishing linguistic proficiency.
Knowing Where You Are So You Know How to Move Forward
Of course, all of this walking and running—walkthroughs, relay races, shared scaffolds, and collective expectations—only works when a department has a common understanding of where its students actually are. This is where a tool like the AAPPL becomes invaluable, not as an endpoint, but as a compass. Because the AAPPL assesses interpersonal listening and speaking alongside presentational and interpretive skills, it mirrors the kinds of communicative work we are asking students to do across levels and languages. Used at the beginning of the year to benchmark, or at the end of the year to measure growth, the AAPPL gives departments a shared data set that grounds conversation in evidence rather than assumption.
Even more powerful is what happens after the assessment. The ability to listen back to student responses, to notice patterns in breakdowns or strengths, and to identify where students struggle to sustain meaning transforms assessment into instruction. Suddenly, department conversations shift from “my students can’t handle this” to “here’s where we can help them next.” In that sense, AAPPL doesn’t replace professional judgment—it sharpens it. When teachers across levels and programs can see the same proficiency indicators and speak the same language about growth, the journey toward proficiency becomes more predictable, more humane, and more intentional. We stop guessing where to run next and start moving forward together, baton firmly in hand.
Ready to run with the AAPPL? Contact the LTI team to get started.
