Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools losing elective courses

Eleven students labeled brightly colored body outlines with the German words for different body parts last week.

Later, their teacher, Marilyn Metzler, joked in German with one student who told her she had a “bad face.”

Smith Middle School’s class is the last remaining middle school German class in Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools — and it won’t continue next year.

German, along with middle school electives in debate and African-American studies, was eliminated from the district curriculum in an effort to streamline course offerings in the 2010-11 school year.

The Board of Education’s Jan. 21 vote to do away with the low-enrollment classes has left teachers making plans for revised courses.

The board suggested integrating African-American studies across the curriculum. Latin, Spanish and French offerings were revised to avoid splitting level-one classes across two years.

Different visual arts classes were also consolidated to create a single class for each grade.

“We’ve been fighting this decision for over a year and have now lost,” Metzler said. “We’ve accepted the decision because it has been made clear that it is essentially irreversible.”

Her campaign against the decision involved speaking to the school board and requesting letters of support from UNC’s Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures and a German Consulate General in Atlanta. Other teachers mounted similar efforts.

“It’s going to be hard not having the feeders going into the high school,” said Metzler, who also teaches German at Chapel Hill High School.

Students who start with the first level of a language in high school will also have difficulties reaching Advanced Placement language courses.

“It will take longer to get to the same level of knowledge of the language,” said Nolan Winters, an eighth-grader at Smith Middle School.

When Winters goes to East Chapel Hill High School, he will have to face a German program that has struggled with low enrollment.

Without students continuing German from middle school, the program is likely to shrink even further.

Language teachers at Phillips Middle School are taking a similar attitude, teacher Jennifer de Lima said. De Lima said she thinks some students would be best served by a two-year level-one option, which has been eliminated. But teachers are coping with the decision.

“A planning day is in the works for us to work together to make this … as beneficial as possible,” de Lima said in an e-mail.

Phillips Middle School art teacher Angela Greene said she thinks the decision to combine visual arts electives represents a compromise.

“All of the visual arts teachers in our district are satisfied with this decision,” she said.



Contact the City Editor at citydesk@unc.edu.