I wasn't always an AIM teacher. I started out teaching uncertified, which means I did not have formal training and learning at a Faculty of Education and had not received a Certification from the Ontario College of Teachers. Back in the day, school boards were able to hire uncertified teachers on a letter of permission if certified teachers were unavailable. There were many uncertified French teachers because it was difficult to find qualified French teachers.
I had been a stay-at-home mom, raising four children. When the youngest reached kindergarten, I knew it was time to go back to work. I had a B.A. (Psychology), had been on the executive for our little community co-operative nursery school and drop in, and I had provided private day care for many of the neighbourhood children so I naturally gravitated toward teaching!
I had excelled at language in high school but hadn't used French for about 20 years when I was offered a chance to teach. I volunteered in my children's elementary school, hung around with the French teacher for a bit and was offered a job. It was during my volunteering in 2001 that I first heard of AIM. One of the French Immersion teachers was using it. I helped her make a work wall, using what seemed like random sets of words. It was very alien to how I had learned French. She kept talking about gestures and how she was using hand signals to teach French! I now know that I was making a word wall of the Pared Down Language-essential to AIM methodology.
As an early Core French teacher, I used the tools and resources I had. I taught the way I had learned. There were lots of paper and pencil activities and very little speaking of French was occurring. I taught with thematic units as were laid out in the resources available to me. I thought I was doing a great job! And I was, given the tools I had! In subsequent years, I was to learn that my methodology was flawed and resources were partly to blame!
I went to Trent University's Faculty of Education 2003-2004. At that time, I did not know if I wanted to continue teaching French. It wasn't very enjoyable. The students generally didn't like it, parents were not on board and I had not received any training in FSL pedagogy so I was flying solo. However, the ability to teach French guaranteed me a full time, permanent contract right out of teacher's college, And I was hired by a different board from the one |I had previously worked for. This is when my professional life changed and took a turn to the better.
I was hired by a school board that embraced AIM. They bought all the basic resources and arranged for professional development. I met Edite Sammons at the first board sponsored AIM workshop. She showed us a video that blew me away! Right there, in front of my eyes, were groups of Core French students speaking French. I could not believe what I was seeing! My first reactions were...
"How come they are speaking French? NO Core students speak French like that!"
"How are they speaking French like that?"
"How is this possible? What is this?"
"I am SO doing this! I want a class like that!"
And I was hooked. I decided then and there that I wanted what I was witnessing. I have never looked back!
As I continued to develop my teaching practice in those early days, I attended the AIM Summer Institute in Orillia ON in 2005 and 2008. I continued to hone my AIM skills, and used this methodology exclusively. I loved being a French teacher and I loved that my students were learning to speak French. We were having so much fun, it was hard to believe that I was teaching French. Finally, I had a pedagogy for teaching students to speak French, one that didn't rely on a need to read first! If not for the Accelerative Integrated Methodology, my students and I would not be enjoying the incredible success that we do.
