Like many foreign language educators, Kathryn Wolfkiel of Barrington High School has had to deal with the challenges of teaching when students are wearing masks. (Stacey Wescott / Chicago Tribune)
When Barrington High School French teacher Kathryn Wolfkiel’s students returned to the classroom after months of COVID-19 remote learning, she quickly realized that mandatory mask-wearing would make speaking and comprehending the language très difficile.
“I ordered a bunch of masks online that have clear plastic over the mouth so we’d be able to see each other speaking,” Wolfkiel, the head of the school’s world languages department. “I thought I’d give it a shot, but the new masks didn’t work because the plastic got all steamed up, so they couldn’t see my mouth, and I couldn’t see theirs.”
Despite the challenges, she has found one silver lining: “It’s very difficult to mumble if you have a mask on,” she said, “so everyone needs to speak up and be a little bit more attentive.”
The pandemic doesn’t seem to have dimmed students’ interest in learning a foreign language, several Chicago-area educators told the Tribune.
But some say it has illuminated struggles for world language programs that surfaced long before schools shut down in March 2020, in particular, a failure to interest enough students to offer entry-level courses in languages like Latin, German, Mandarin and Japanese.
The pandemic also exposed what some describe as disparities in world language offerings, sometimes even within the same school district.
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