lernejo
For those interested in the teaching of Esperanto in American high schools, I wanted to take a moment to present my plan for this year at Seattle Academy, a private, college-prep high school in Seattle.
We have just finished our third week of our Esperanto course at Seattle Academy and by all measures things are going very well. We are learning what types of activities work and are fun with this format and the daily progress is obvious.
So, just prior to Christmas break when we sat down to talk about what was going well and what could be improved, I was a bit surprised that several students asked me to assign homework. to the class.
While my current course is focused on what are the best collection of activities for students to study Esperanto in their first 50 hours, I frequently have the opportunity to spend a much smaller amount of time, about 30 to 45 minutes to introduce the language to one of my math classes or to another teacher's class where there is some time to fill.
So far I have come up with this:
* The basic idea of the language: "Imagine a world where every person could speak as equals with one another, but without giving up their individual or group identities?"
An interesting thing is happening in my Esperanto class/club and I am not sure whether to celebrate it or try to prevent it. What is happening is that new words and expressions are coming into existence. The most apparent is the word "Malsaluton" which is what they use for "Goodbye". I have explained that constructed compound words -- especially with the established affixes is an important part of the language. But I have also explained that such constructions have to make sense,and that there are perfectly good existing expressions that have these meanings.
This trimester I began an Esperanto course for 8 students at our private high school. Seattle Academy is an independent school with about 600 students (350 in our high school). The course is structured as "independent study" class although I have students meet together during the regular school day. As such, it is not graded -- students earn credit for 50 hours of work. This is the standard format for non-established course in a school.
