off the WAL

When I moved from Paris to Seattle five years ago, it wasn’t a totally joie de vivre decision but more a comme ci comme ca change of life. I didn’t expect much from Seattle because, as all snobbish Parisians think, Paris was my raison d’etre. Seattle, in my mind, was an industrial rainy city lost in the far reaches of the Northwestern US. What could I expect of Seattle coming from Paris?  

First, I didn’t expect such a gourmet city. Seattle is an avant-garde scene par excellence of French Northwest Asian organic fusion/local food which is certainly the longest noun phrase you can ever imagine. Seattle must claim the invention of complex noun phrase. 

To give you an idea, for ESL students it is a tour de force to order a coffee. First you have to understand the concept of a noun phrase; second you need to guess the order of the words:

Should I say “Grande non fat double shot vanilla no whip café au lait?” or should I say “Grande double shot vanilla non fat no whip café au lait?”

 You tell me. Or maybe both of them are wrong, who knows…Touché. The responsible party for this grammatical issue: Starbucks (www.starbucks.com) of course!

Second, I didn’t expect this je ne sais quoi that Seattle produces on Seattleites. The only certainty is that French people have a hard time returning to France after a few years in Seattle.

Why really? I don’t know but c’est la vie isn’t it?!

Cecile Casanova

In my last post, I mused about how WAL could possibly become authorized to accept international students. We had to have graduates in order to be considered a school by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, but we couldn’t have students unless we were an approved school!  A catch-22!

I was too young to let a mere contradiction disturb me. I had read that Nordstrom was training a group of Russian immigrants to be shoe salesmen (this was 1979). So around Christmas of 1979 I was able to convince Nordstrom (www.nordstrom.com) that I would give the shoe salesmen free English lessons; the price seemed right to Nordstrom. We were all successful: the salesmen learned English, Nordstrom made more sales because their salesmen had a fair command of the language and WAL had successful graduates. We earned Immigration approval to have international students the following March. In April we received our first students.

Once I reconciled myself to the fact that the Iranian halcyon days were over, I concentrated on Japan, Venezuela and the Middle East. We were fortunate to receive students from all of those geographical areas and the school was off to a grand start by mid April 1980.

While this story is not one of how the leopard got its spots, it is the story of how WAL became authorized to have international students. Of course, our school has been examined and reauthorized several times since that very challenging first time.

Little did I realize that the easiest part of beginning a school was beginning a school! Stay tuned.

 Paul Schneider

How not to start a School: 

The 1973 Middle East War left the U.S. with at least two changes: we paid more for gas and private language schools exploded with students from the Arabian Gulf and Iran. Iranians were everywhere. A significant minority never even got to the school they were to attend. 

Prospective students are issued paper work which allows them to attend a specific school. They take the paperwork to an American Embassy, and they are issued a student visa to attend the school that authorized them to attend. In the 70s it wasn’t much more difficult than that to enter the U.S. on a student visa. In the late 70s a slight loophole in this procedure came to light as President Carter discovered. Once a student arrived here and left the airport there was no telling where the student went. Many Iranians never went to the school they were supposed to attend. 

I had been putting together some new thoughts on teaching English as a Second Language and had left my previous job as a Director of an ESL school, and decided to put my own thoughts into practice. Together with my partner, I rented a few rooms, hung out our shingle, and opened as a school on November 1^st 1979. Or so I thought. 

We had applied for authorization through the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to issue the relevant acceptance material to international students. We expected approval in mid November and then voila! We would receive more Iranians than we could count. Going into business would be easy. Or so I thought. 

On November 4^th 1979 the American hostages were taken in Iran and that is when I had my first clue that business is a different matter than academics and politics always trump both. No new applications were to be processed by INS. President Carter was embarrassed and this matter of Iranians running around the country and the hostage situation played an important role in the loss of his Presidency to Ronald Reagan. But why take it out on me!  

The government is always easy to deal with: I was told I needed graduates to prove I was a school and until I had graduates I couldn’t have students! I think that is what is meant by Catch 22. 

How do you think WAL did become a school that was approved to accept international students? We were finally approved in April 1980. 

Dr. Paul Schneider

The World Languages department at Washington Academy of Languages (http://www.wal.org/wl/index.html) opened its first courses in 1984, a time when languages were mainly taught on university campuses. Twenty-four years ago, language study was certainly not in the forefront of people’s mind in Seattle (http://www.seattle.gov/); back then, one could graduate from high school without being exposed to foreign language instruction.

When Dr. Paul Schneider founded WAL in 1979, he had a vision to bring world cultures and languages to adults using modern language teaching pedagogy.  The World Language program initially offered twelve different language classes. The class format designed by him in 1984 has been a model for other schools since then. Not only was he an innovative designer of language curriculum, he was and still is dedicated to education as a process of development and change. Twenty-nine years of existence is no small feat for an independent non-profit language school! And yes, hopefully, the situation has improved but the US has a long way to catch up with the rest of the world.

WAL didn’t wait for others, but constantly transformed, adapted and experimented with new pedagogical methods.  

Such an energy and desire to remain updated, to create and think about new pedagogy, new material and new curriculum has to be celebrated.  That is why I would like to dedicate this new adventure on the Internet, WAL’s blog, to Dr. Paul Schneider to whom I owe so much.   

Cecile Casanova