October, 2020: Really? Just...REALLY? A reminder and an update

 I haven't written much for a long while.  Well, that isn't true- I have been writing a lot, and thinking a lot, and trying new things- A LOT- but not over here on this blog.  Truth be told, I miss this old friend, but I am struggling a bit with a) who wants more screen time? and b) what this blog is, now that I have this whole new job (Director of Training, Comprehensible Classroom).

And, just like so many of you, I am overwhelmed by the new unexpected demands placed on teachers right now.  I never expected to be training teachers how to use Zoom, or advising teachers on how to connect and build community with students that they have never met, online.  I never expected to be working in my 8 x 11 foot office, with a (new) obnoxiously green wall (my green screen) and a whiteboard.  But I am surviving. Not necessarily thriving, but right now, survival is enough.

I swing day by day between relief that I have a job, a home, and that my family is healthy and safe, and all the other really big, scary emotions that living in a pandemic has brought.  I still grieve for the goodbyes I didn't get from my graduating students, from the farewell party that I never got when I left my school, and for the teaching I didn't get to do in the spring.  Oh, and all the conferences and weddings that I didn't get to go to in person.  I know I am supposed to focus on the positive, but sometimes it is REALLY hard. You feel me, right?  I keep reading and re-reading this article:  For Teachers Who Are Not OK right now, Angela Watson (Cornerstone for Teachers).

So, what is going on with me? I am teaching. A LOT! I have been running small cohort style virtual classes to support comprehension based teachers teaching online/hybrid/whatever, and adapting the courses as new realities are hitting us (scattered, anyone?). I have been thinking a lot about the kinds of issues that come up again and again, and trying to create resources to help address those issues.  I have been busy!  

Here are some of the things that I have collaborated or created in the past few weeks. 

Blog about Becoming an Anti-Racist Educator - Blog about assigning work in different Learning Management Systems- Virtual Assessment Video- Unboxing Flex video- Conversation with John Bracey about Connecting with Students of Color, tons of short articles and resources about really important things, like 90% Target Language and Distance Learning Resources and Projects in Comprehension Based classes- Upcoming: Trainings abut SOMOS Flex, Pear Deck, Differentiation- Rewriting the curriculum of my Methods of Secondary World Language Class and making it 100% virtual / synchronous, and creating all my assignments to be virtual (some synchronous, like our starters, and some asynchronous), and adding demos to every class.  Playing with new tools like Go Formative and Interactive Digital Notebooks- Planning a really extensive series of courses on assessment (coming in the new year, probably)- doing a small # of district trainings- trying to stay active and not get too sad.

On the other hand, even if my summer was spent in front of a screen, I had a blast at the various virtual conferences in which I participated and presented/moderated.  I had the joy of attending Latin class with Justin Slocum Bailey and Chinese with Diane Neubauer, two of my favorite humans and brilliant teachers who were using the teaching labs to experiment and push their own practice.  I watched a ton of other teachers teaching kids in a few different languages, including one memorable class where the students had no cameras, some had no mics, and they *still* created community and acquired language and participated.  (Note- they were there by choice, and highly motivated, but STILL!) 

I attended some mind-blowing sessions from brilliant presenters and teachers and started to remember that all we need to support language acquisition is a way to talk to our students (or give them things to read) and a way to check that they understand the input. Input, that students understand, works. All the other things are shiny and pretty and may or may not actually support learning. (And they ARE a huge time suck for teachers.)

Also, I made some new friends and collaborators. That was really lovely! 

Anyway, as we all struggle through the pandemic and the new realities of teaching, I hope you will give me grace as I find the new identity of this blog and my own teaching practice.  

Mindset reminder: as the new trimester starts and pressure to get kids "ready" ramps up

Backstory:  

Shortly before the grapefruit knee

I decided to get knee surgery after 2 years of PT, tons of doctor's appointments, and a grapefruit-sized knee after our second day of bike touring in southwestern Utah.

When I started paddle boarding because cycling was getting to be too much, I realized that I really needed to do something about it.  (If you don't know me, it might be helpful to know that I started teaching cycling in the public schools, and my previous career was as a cycling educator and advocate. So not being able to ride is major. And I ride to work every day possible.)

Back to school:
I sat on a stool, I put my knee up, and I tried to teach. I tried to follow my plan. I tried not to cry.

I sort of mostly succeeded, in that I didn't usually cry until I actually got home.  Usually.

Some days, the pain was so overwhelming that I could barely form words in English, and the thought of trying to do anything hard in another language brought those tears back.


So I let go.


I let go of my plans.  Instead, I did lots of card talk- only I would give the kids like 10 minutes and sometimes colored pencils to draw, and then collect their papers and make a slideshow for the next time I saw them. (Sounds like a lot of work- it's really, really not, with airdrop and a phone. Here is an old post about how I do this.)

These, plus some other pictures, ended up being an hour of lesson plan
in 2 different classes!

I decided to try Special Person interviews, something I had tried 4 years ago and hated.  The kids loved them and begged for them.  I tacked on some Write and Discuss, and voila, that was the lesson plan.  For an assessment, I had them write about themselves.  (And the results were mind-blowing.  Not a single student said "Yo es 13."  (I is 13).

I even showed funny videos, and used them for input, but I didn't always do a reading afterwards.  (The copier is a LONG way from my classroom.)

I leaned very heavily into FVR.  And Sr. Wooly.  And Weekend chat.  And small talk.  And whatever I could do to keep the language flowing, minimize trips to the copier, or even trips that involved standing up and writing a new word on the board with a translation.

I got REALLY GOOD at keeping my vocabulary in-bounds- and I was already getting good at it!

I'm not counting down. You're counting down.

I guess I want to write this for myself- to remind myself as I stare down the calendar at 40 more days of school, 8 of which are Mondays (at least according to the daughter of the kindergarten teacher, who is good at knowing things like how many days are left), that input is input.


Input that kids are interested in listening to and input that they understand and are interacting with is all good.  In fact, it's the best thing I can do for them.



There is no rule that says I have to follow my scope and sequence. (Thank goodness.)

There is no rule that says I have to cover this or make sure to teach that. (I am very fortunate.)  

There are only the constraints and demands I place on myself, and I really want to cultivate a different mindset.

I am incredibly lucky, I know, and I think I need to remember and acknowledge it.

I know myself.  I know that if I am not careful, I am going to look back at January, February, and March of this year and ask myself what the heck I was even doing those months.  There is hardly anything glued in our interactive-ish notebooks, and if it weren't for Anne Marie Chase's quick quizzes and weekly timed freewrites, there would be no assessment grades in the gradebook.

But you know what I was doing?  Getting to know my kids.  Exploring their interests, and mine.

Shooting the breeze with them, in Spanish.  Watching videos of cats and sloths and penguins and then talking about it. We literally spent an hour discussing the gross things that pets do and eat.  It was one of the funniest hours of my life as kids shared horribly funny stories of their pets bringing them dismembered bits of other animals.  We spent another hour talking about their class trip and what they saw, felt, and experienced in the nation's capitol, which led to an intense discussion about what is feminism, what is sexist, and what is culture.  I could not have planned that if I tried.

I want to remember that some of the fastest and best hours of teaching have gone by when we just read, or chat, or look at interesting pictures and talk about them.

I want to remember (in May, when the pressure to have my 8th graders "ready" is really building up) that I am preparing them to communicate, not to conjugate.

What's new in my classroom #3: Unsheltering grammar and rugs

This week, I want to talk about unsheltering grammar and the use of rugs.  Yes. Rugs.

In TCI/TPRS/CI/CCLT,* we often use the phrase "Shelter vocabulary, not grammar." Well, this is a fine saying, but what the heck does it mean? How can I shelter vocabulary when there are different words to use if I want to un-shelter grammar?  How do I not overload them?  If my class seems like they can barely handle the most common, frequently used words in the present tense, but not much more, how can I unshelter grammar?

This is something I personally have been struggling with since I started this journey.  How do I find the balance?  I mean, it seems to me that walk and walked are the same (camina and caminó) but some of those other words are just..well, different.  How do I know what to do?

Last summer, I learned a great definition of "Shelter vocabulary".  This comes from the talented Donna Tatum Johns: to protect my students from words they don't know.

Ok, that sounds great.  I focused on that for a few years.  It is a hard skill to learn: how to stay in-bounds, how to use familiar words and add words as needed that are high frequency, and how not to end up with a board full of new words at the end of a class period.  It's taken me a while to feel like I am confident with this skill.

So what's next?  How do I "unshelter" grammar?  I know that lots of teachers use past tense day one with their kids.  How do they do that?  I know that some teachers use the subjunctive from day one with their kids. Um, how?  But if they can, I can.  (Of course, being sure about how to use the subjunctive in Spanish is its own separate challenge, but thankfully all the reading I do during FVR has solved that one on its own with no concious help from me. Krashen for the win!)

After playing around with some ideas, and attending a fantastic workshop session at IFLT18 with Donna Tatum-Johns, here are some ideas that have stuck.

First and foremost, and the rule that I keep in mind when unsheltering grammar, is to use words that they have already acquired.  They know walk, so walked is not a big reach.  They know the phrases "It is important" and "She is nice."  It is not a huge stretch for me to combine these to say "It is important that she is nice."  Especially if I am doing lots of good comprehension checks.

Talking about the past
I *always* do two of the three following actions when I use past tense.

• I move to the rug that says "pasado."  Slowly. Sometimes I move back to the middle of the room and slowly move back to the past tense rug, and repeat the sentence again.



Past tense rug

• I gesture one hand over my shoulder to indicate past.  (I do this if the classroom is not set up for me to easily move to the past tense rug.
• I do a comprehension check: "Did I just say she walked or she walks?"  "Am I talking about now or yesterday?" etc.  

I started doing more weekend talk and, along with the past tense rug, I use these great free resources from TPT (by a colleague).  I stopped being scared.

Using the subjunctive...not that scary

A couple of years ago, I noticed that my students were trying to form sentences that required the subjunctive, but how could they since I almost NEVER used it myself?  Uh oh!

The poster

Chris Stolz to the rescue.  This blog post changed my teaching- I started incorporating a ton more subjunctive casually in conversation, thus making myself more comfortable with it.  Then I realized that I should make it visible, so I made the poster, and every time I used it, I would point to the poster and we would sing the word "subjunctive" with some jazz hands.  (Yes, I know that is the noticing hypothesis and completely unproven.  But it's fun.  And my hope is that it makes them less scared of it when they get to Sra. Grammar Teacher in the future, with the long list of subjunctive clauses and stem changing verbs.)  

Finally, I realized that in moving to point to the poster, I was moving to the same spot on the rug on the other side of the room...thus, subjunctive rug.

I don't know what this will do long term, but it is forcing me to a) unshelter grammar more, and b) slow down and do more comprehension checks.




** TCI- Teaching with Comprehensible Input
TPRS- Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling ©
CI- Comprehensible Input
CCLT- Comprehension-based Communicative Language Teaching

What's new this year #2: Positive adjectives

If you know me or have been reading this blog for a while, you know that diversity, inclusion, and social justice are as important to me as comprehensible input.

There are so many ways that these two passions meet and I am so grateful for the privilege to think hard and try to eliminate bias and use inclusive pedagogy in my teaching.  I am grateful to my colleagues and friends who want to talk about bias, and to the university (where I am an adjunct teaching a Methods course) for providing training and support in deconstructing bias and being more inclusive.  I just finished reading "Why are all the black kids sitting together in the cafeteria" and my mind is racing with ways I can bring some of the things I learned into my classroom.

In the meantime, while I cogitate, I want to share one thing that I changed this year that has had a HUGE impact on classroom culture and teaching.

Years ago, I attended a workshop presented by Elevate Education Consulting (Anna Gilcher and Rachelle Jackson) about how to be more inclusive and reflect positive values through TPRS stories.  It was life-changing, and I have continued to attend workshops and presentations by this amazing duo.  One of their handouts includes a list of diversity-positive attributes.  (This is *not* the link that will take you to the most updated version, but it is all I could find!)

Although I had the list by my side, I never made it visible to the kids.

This year, I decided to buy a $3.00 window shade from a home decor store (bad call, should have paid more as it falls constantly, but it works!) and write out the adjectives with their definitions (in light blue because that was the only blue sharpie I could find).

What I have seen:
The students ask for me to pull the shade down when we do birthday compliments.
They have started using the words even when I don't have it visible.
Our TPRS stories are kinder, more inclusive, and more real.

This was *so* simple.  But I think it makes things nicer!

What's new this year: #1 Celebrating birthdays

There are a few new things that I am trying this year in my classroom.  Here is a series of short posts about them.

#1: Celebrating birthdays

I am terrible about celebrating birthdays.  This goes for my personal life (sorry, friends) and even more so in my professional life.

Last year, Laurie Clarcq did a presentation in Comprehensible Online about classroom culture and it was so chock full of ideas that I was instantly inspired and overwhelmed.  I decided to pick one thing that I felt that I could manage, and made a plan to do it. That one thing was celebrating birthdays in class.  Laurie modeled how she has kids give each other compliments when it is their birthday.



While idly browsing someone else's blog (and I have no idea to whom it belonged, sorry!)  I found this AMAZING free resource on TeachersPayTeachers, which is basically a starter for birthday compliments. It is SO good that I did not edit it at all.  I just printed it up (half size, to better fit in interactive-ish notebooks) and passed it out to the kids.

That was the easy part.

Write the birthdays down in a book.  

Then came the "remembering the birthdays" part, something that I am terrible at.  I decided to get a school calendar from the dollar store and write each kid's real or half birthday in it.  It took about an hour of precious late summer time, but hey, I got it done.

Dollar store score!  

I also decided to make a kid check the calendar as part of class job.  This turned out to be great if it was the right kid for the job, and not-so-great if it was the wrong kid.  One sweet, sweet girl came up to me in early November to tell me, nearly in tears, that she had forgotten to check the book and that we had missed another student's birthday, and asked me to fire her.  Instead, I allowed her to resign and we found someone else to take that over.  In another class, the student comes in each day and tells me everyone's birthday in each of my classes, for which I am grateful.

When it is a student birthday, I ask the kid whether they would like us to write or speak our compliments.   Either way, the whole class gets out their compliment starters (that are in the back of their notebooks) and a whiteboard. They have a few minutes to think and write.

If we are speaking, I just take my phone and film each kid as they read what they wrote.  If we are writing, the kids line up the whiteboards and I film myself reading them.

Finally, I send the video to the birthday kid, cc'ing the parents so they can see it too.  Sometimes the sound doesn't record, which is a bummer, but it's still better than not doing it.

I wish I could measure the impact this has had on my classroom this year, but it is impossible to separate it from everything else.  Suffice it to say that I feel like this is the best year ever as far as classroom culture and classroom management.  This has got to be a big part of it, and the joy in the room is palpable.

I love my job!