Today we’d like to introduce you to Micah Bellieu.
Hi Micah, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start, maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers.
I have 2 businesses started in Dallas: one is a corporate language training service, and one is Spanish immersion school for kids. Both began in Dallas, and both have grown. I was an English teacher in Mexico and started my career there. Also, I was obsessed with learning languages, so by 18, I had already taken Spanish, French, and Japanese lessons extensively. But when I moved to Mexico, I realized the formal training taught rules but not much application. I wanted to speak to people! So, I started researching language acquisition and started playing around with methods. Now, we have fluency coaches for any language for executives. And also a small Spanish immersion school, which is now online only. It was throughout Dallas and suburbs for 7 years. Through learning 3 languages and then applying the methods not only to myself but our students, we really were able to create a very dynamic and effective method of teaching.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
We originally started in person in Dallas, TX, in 2010. We started with 1 school and 12 kids as an afterschool program one day a week. This quickly grew, and I realized I could not be the only teacher, so we had to hire 4 others, train them in my way of teaching (very focused on listening/speaking), and give them a set curriculum and lesson plan. I was not on my own anymore! I had to communicate to others exactly my style, my method, and my curriculum. Originally, we had also used other company’s curriculum because it takes hundreds of hours to write curriculum! But I soon realized none of them were going to teach in the communicative way that I knew the students needed (and parents wanted!). We had all learned grammar rules in the past, but what we all really want is to be able to talk to others, to connect, to relate, make friends, and feel like we can travel and talk to our neighbors without a translation app. So, I had to write my own curriculum. That was hard. It’s challenging to teach people to teach like you even when they may not have had to learn Spanish like you. I am not a native speaker, but I hired only native-speaking teachers. So, I had to teach them what it felt like to learn Spanish as a non-native speaker. As we grew to over 15 after-school programs with over 200 students, I realized that one day a week would never get any of our students to the level of Spanish speaking that I wanted them to have. And even the parents didn’t expect any level of fluency with one day a week. I knew I wanted serious students and serious parents who wanted their kids to REALLy get fluent in Spanish. So, I knew we needed at least 2-4 days a week. I could not find a way to do that at in-person elementary school after-school programs. I knew we needed to go online in order to get the number of hours of weekly practice needed to truly move kids to fluency. But I was scared to do it. The programs were comfortable, but I wasn’t as excited about them knowing we had limits to how fluent they would get. Then COVID hit. I was not happy about COVID, but I knew it was the time to close the doors to in-person classes. We immediately went online, and we had to figure out how to do it – quickly, with curriculum that was written for in-person classes. Finishing that fateful spring semester (that every teacher in the world had to finish online), we quickly created our online curriculum and opened in the fall of 2020 with our new curriculum and new group of teachers that were expert at teaching online. We did it! And kids are getting MUCH more fluent with their new 2-3 times a week classes.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I started my businesses (I have 3 language schools) as a language student. I think that’s what sets us apart. I learned Spanish, French, and Japanese as an adult after 8 years of formal education. By the way, the formal education taught me vocabulary and conversations, but speaking with REAL PEOPLE who were patient with me is how we ALL get truly fluent. That’s why my school is based on speaking FIRST, just like all children learn their first language. No child learns through writing first! That’s unnatural. And it doesn’t work. Speaking first gives 100% success rate every time. Look at all your kids – don’t they all speak the language you speak? I am known for this method specifically. Giving SPEAKING classes with truly comprehensible input, using videos in a way that engages the students. We don’t push play and lean back and let the kids watch the video for 5 minutes. NO! We watch 5 seconds, pause, discuss what happened, who is there, what did they say, what did they ask for, what color is the ball, where is the woman, how many people do you see, and so much more. The classes must have hundreds of interactive questions with our native-speaking teachers at all time. By the end of the class, the children will have answered hundreds of questions. But not with one-word answers. They MUST give us a full sentence using the subject (when applicable), verb, noun, etc. Our kids come out of class saying full sentences, not just memorized, but really talking!
I am also proud of the curriculum we’ve developed over the last 2 years. It’s been a learning curve. And now, we are taking what we wrote, and putting it into 3 levels, because our students have developed so much that we are now dividing them into even more distinct levels to ensure everyone is with students at their caliber of understanding and responding. We now assess them during the first 4 lessons and make sure they are in the right level. Each level is 50 hours and corresponds to the CEFR scale, which is universally used for measuring language fluency while speaking.
There is truly nothing out there like us. We focus on fluency. We ARE NOT ACCREDITED because accredited schools, unfortunately, are focused on written tests and multiple choice. We want kids to be FLUENT. What does it matter if you can pass a conjugation exam if you can’t have a conversation? We want kids to be able to USE the language to connect with others, get a bilingual job, make friends while traveling in South America, and even talk to their neighbors on their street. We want to empower them with real communication skills in Spanish. Our method gives them this.
So maybe we end on discussing what matters most to you and why?
FLUENCY. I want kids to really get fluent. I don’t like the fluff of other programs. Fluency matters to me. Understanding what people are saying and being able to confidently respond. Reading and writing comes later for all learning in regards to communication. I can’t find any evidence of a child who learned to read and write before speaking. And we get calls every day saying, ‘My kid can read it but can’t understand it’ or ‘My kid understands when I speak in Spanish because we speak it with family members, but he can’t respond.’ So, if everyone is having a problem understanding and responding, then let’s focus on that! That’s the most important part. Kids learn to read and write in school. That will be easy. It’s the listening and speaking that takes many hours.
Pricing:
- Starts at $13 per class for 4-6 years old
- $19+ for 7 and up
- Private lessons available starting at $30
Contact Info:
- Website: www.trufluencykids.com
- Instagram: trufluencykids_spanish
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/trufluencykidsspanish/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGfCoKP2WTpSDyJ2wSkBKMg
