Parent Accuses Pottsgrove French Teacher of Not Knowing French
This is probably a story we can all relate to on some level–the high school foreign language teacher who seems suspiciously inept at speaking said foreign language. Pottsgrove dad Tony DiPaolo, who speaks French, Italian, and English, filed a complaint against the local school district, alleging that his kid was being taught by a fraud.
…When his son came home speaking his “mother tongue” incorrectly, DiPaolo did what most parents would do, he went to see the teacher. However, he decided to speak to the teacher only in French. “I was horrified to hear her struggle to form her sentences and make gross grammatical errors,” DiPaolo wrote in his complaint to the state.
Actually, it turns out there’s more than one French teacher. The first one, a “very good Spanish teacher,” was filling in for a departed French teacher. Then, in January, when that one left on sabbatical, she was replaced by another one. Tony wrote her a letter, and was subsequently “much saddened to find (the new teacher) has a poor command of written French” as well. After complaining to various people, he got fed up and filed a complaint, which has now been rejected by the Pennsylvania Department of Education.
DiPaolo, who indeed looks very authentically French/Italian in this picture, accused the school district of “institutionalizing mediocrity.” Hey, maybe that could be the state education department’s new motto!
