As I try to learn new languages, I'm reminded of my school days.

Shout out to one of my junior high school French teachers. Literally shouting, "What were you thinking?"

It was their first teaching position. French 101. That teacher was hell-bent on only speaking French to students.

The first day of class, the teacher said in English that only speaking French was allowed in class from that point onward. Because immersion is how the teacher learned to speak French. During the three years they lived in France. After studying French in college.

All this to a classroom of 12 to 14 year olds who understood zero French, and only had the class for 50 minutes per school day, for one semester. No French was spoken at that school, outside of French class.

Day after day, there was no engagement from the students because we didn't know how to ask questions in French. Or, what the teacher was saying. Was there a homework assignment? Don't know. Maybe? The teacher would write something on the chalkboard, in French. No one knew what it meant. Best bet was to copy it down, and then crack open an English-French dictionary that night to try and decipher what the teacher had written.

That class was a roomful of silent students, planning how to offset the likely bad grade from that class with summer school.

About three weeks into the semester, that teacher gave up on only allowing French, and started allowing students to speak English in the class. The teacher was surprised and delighted when the class perked up and became engaged. Once we were allowed to ask questions in English about speaking French, we began learning to speak French.