My favorite verb: To summer

In my house, summer is a verb.

To summer means...

• Sitting on the front porch at sunset drinking chilled white wine (or jalapeño margaritas in our school-branded margarita glasses!) 
• Running up through the water at City Creek in the heat of the day (not so much this summer- I have a torn MCL so am instead on the couch...sad)



This isn't even my cat. 

• Sleeping in and cuddling with the kitties.
• Making elaborate salads and no-cook meals for leisurely dinners

• Reading several books at once, including school summer reads, non-fiction, and whatever else is interesting to me in the moment
• Having the time to read all kinds of articles on the interwebs that I am interested in but don't have the time to read during the rest of the year
• Attending multiple conferences
• Rewriting a scope and sequence for K-5
• Writing an English-Spanish TPRS glossary and basic training materials 
• Working on my Spanish
• Thinking about how to better my curriculum
• And more school stuff
• Also, going back to GUATEMALA! 

Many teachers write blogs about how to get the most out of your summer- with the assumption that too many teachers spend their summer working on things for the school year.  Well, I do a lot of work to look ahead for the next year, and I try to keep it well balanced for the sake of rest and margaritas and rejuvenation.  That being said, I am doing three language conferences and going to Guatemala (just for two weeks) and will be back just in time to set up my classroom.  And I feel great about that!

For me, summer needs to be full of movement and excitement.  Part of that is because Salt Lake is hot and kind of miserable in the summer, unless you drive to the mountains.  Part of it is that my husband was working from home and both of us in our small house for eight weeks was probably a recipe for disaster. But mostly, it is that I recharge by meeting new people and learning new things.  And traveling.  The one year I spent mostly in the area was the year I felt least ready to go back to school.  (And, come to think of it, I did three workshops that summer too- they were just local!)

This year, I get to attend Comprehensible Cascadia in my adopted hometown of Portland, OR.  I am so excited to be attending a conference with an entire Equity and Inclusion track!  Also, Cherokee!  I am eager to learn about the much talked about Invisibles, One Word Images, and Story Listening.  And I am eager to go home for a few days and see my friends.

Next, it will be off to a Fluency Fast class with my father.  This is in lieu of going back to Costa Rica, both cheaper and less grammar focused for both of us.  We will be in Denver, where we have lots of family and the conference takes place at my dad's old high school.  I am excited to be a student in an advanced class and see what that looks like, and I am thrilled for my father to get to experience a TPRS class.

Shortly after, I will return to NTPRS, this time in Texas, with my newly hired colleague.  Last year blew my mind- I learned so much in so few days and became a much better teacher as a result.  This year, I am going to be on the coaching track, which is both nerve-wracking and exciting.

Finally, after all that thinking about language teaching, I get to go back to my beloved little community/school in Guatemala and be a student for a couple of weeks, with the rain storms and earthquakes and revolutionaries that I adore. I really missed not going last year (I try to go every other year.) so my husband surprised me with some finances to help with the plane ticket.  Here is a link to a review I wrote about the school, if anyone is interested.  I am passionate about this place.

So, I think that I am summering quite well.

Organizing - reflecting- paperwork: the technology solution (part 1 of 2)

Last year, I decided to put a bunch of time into what I called The Great Organizational Project. My idea was that I needed a systematic way to organize and store my files (well, duh) that was going to help me prep and plan faster.  Since I decided to commit to a specific TPRS curriculum and since I teach it sequentially (that is, I teach it across four different classes, just at a different pace for each), it made sense to archive it in a very thoughtful and useful way.

First: by "unit" I am referring to "target structures and cultural connection pieces."  Don't be misled by the legacy title- I am not talking about the "food unit" or the "travel by airplane unit".

I had to figure out how to store the units not in use and also how to keep track of four separate courses' worth of paperwork. (Made tinier by my habit of copying everything half size on recycled paper, then cutting it down to the precisely best size to fall out of a file folder.)  More on that in another post.

Plus, I realized that I had no good way of capturing all my notes, realizations, reflections, ideas, and extra resources, and that was going to be valuable as I wanted to teach at the same school/same level for more than a year or two.

This last bit was really important because nowhere could I find discussion about how to organize all the stuff that is important for reflection- and for me, that includes all the notes, extra resources, youtube videos, edpuzzles, etc.  Also, as we are told, reflective teachers make better teachers.  And I did *SO MUCH* self reflection in grad school (and found it to be really helpful) that the habit is pretty ingrained in me.

The short version: 

Evernote and Dropbox. (Scroll down for how I actually use them)

The long version, with details: (what I tried, why it failed, how I figured out what does work) 

Organizing resources and reflections:
Here are some of the systems that I have tried (unsuccessfully) to capture all that stuff:

• post-it notes - tried and true, always available, but horrible for capturing URLs or anything more than a few words.
• Adding thoughts to the PDF file on my computer that contains the lesson plans- it worked, sort of.  Except that you have to a have a good pdf player that is easy to annotate.  Which I didn't.
• A lined paper expressly for jotting notes in the front of the paper file.  - actually, if I didn't need to copy resources on the interwebs, this probably would have worked ok for me, but since I do, it did not.
• A word document in the master file in Dropbox (more on that below) that I can update- great for urls, typing quickly on the go, and being in the right place.  But not searchable.
• A document on my iPad in my favorite handwriting/notetaking program that I use all the time-this seemed ideal as I usually have my iPad, use it for planning and notetaking already...  - it turns out that a handwriting program, while ideal for all the ways that I use it (to capture meeting notes and handouts, to capture training ideas, notes, and handouts) is not ideal for managing all the errata that I found myself trying to organize- notes to self, pinterest boards, blog posts, pdfs, videos from youtube, conversations from a listserv or el Face (what it is called in Guatemala, my nemesis and favorite PLN), and more.
• Evernote 

Evernote: Why I love it and how I use it

Finally,  I committed to Evernote for this part.  I love Evernote because...

• Manage is the best verb to describe it.  I use Evernote to manage information, which means I have less to do.
• The search function means that if I use the tag function well (part of the management system), I can call up what I want in a short amount of time, i.e. in front of the class, if I suddenly need to fill an extra few minutes or a tangent leads us to this great video that I saved to do a short Movietalk.  
• Adding content from my iPad or computer, if I find something interesting or have a great idea, is easy.  If I really wanted, I could even use my phone.  Heck, I can import a pdf from my lesson planning app of my daily lesson plans for a selected time period so the next time I teach it, I have a rough pacing guide.
• I can capture everything from the interwebs, easily.  I can also include word docs, pdfs, and photos of the sticky notes I wrote to myself (as long as I remembered to take a picture of them, which is surprisingly easy to remember once you get in the habit of throwing all the stickies away at the end of the day, GTD style) 
• When I sit down to plan a new unit (Unit=Target structures that I focus on + cultural or other connection), I almost never look at the paper copies of the plans- I don't even take them out of Great Organizational Binder until it is time to make the copies.  So having all that stuff on the computer helps.  

How I use Evernote

• I created notebooks in Evernote for each unit that I teach. 
• I made sure to tag each note with the unit name.
• I made a tag for all notes that included reflections on what to do next time or how it actually went. Then I actually used it to tag those notes.  Then I remembered to search for that tag every time I went back to a unit.  (REAMDE is the tag, thank you Neal Stephenson)

DROPBOX

Organizing files (docs and pdfs)
Dropbox continues to be my go-to (go to the bank and throw money at them, but still go-to) system for storing most things on the computer.
If you don't know about it, explore it.  The advantage of it for me is that I can use Dropbox to save every single important document, while using the interface of my beloved MacbookPro, complete with the fantastic tag and organizational layout that is part of the apple UI.  And if something catastrophic happened to my computer (say, while riding to and from school with it on my bike) I would have a timely backup that I could access instantly and teach from immediately.
I decided to make every dropbox master file look the same so that it would be as easy to find stuff digitally as it is to find stuff in my binders.  For me, it looks like folders in each master folder called: Activities, assessments, to project, stories.  Again, for me, making electronic files easy to find is a huge priority.  Searching through word documents by vague title (Spanish, say, or reading activities) is a real drag and never results in finding what you are looking for.

Youtube, google drive, and other outliers
It turns out that if I had started using Evernote when I first started teaching, organizing youtube and google drive would be no biggie.  And as I write this, I realize that I could use Evernote to organize these two very important technology resources, just the same way I use it to organize edpuzzles (cool but labor intensive), kahoots (same), old-school jeopardy-on-the-internet games (extra cool), pinterest pages, vimeo links, soundcloud links, etc.  I will probably see if just copying the relevant google or youtube url into evernote and tagging it well will save time.  Because, you see, that although I have playlists by unit in youtube, they do not alphabetize and that drives me up the wall, and my googledrive is something of a disorganized mess, because really, who has the time to organize that too?

On labeling and titles
As silly as it seems, deciding on titles and investing in good paper labels (for actual print things) really makes a difference in organizing.  The same way that I use consistent tags in Evernote, being consistent about what you call something makes it easier find.  For instance, in quizlet (a somewhat crummy platform, in my opinion, as far as organization but a useful tool to keep parents happy and make kids feel like they are doing something familiar, which can be good for families new to TPRS who want vocabulary instruction [note: my Quizlets are resources for the students, and only once ever in three years have they been used to teach vocabulary, said the TPRS teacher defensively]) having all the unit names be familiar makes it slightly easier to organize resources.  For curriculum collaboration in google drive across states, possibly countries, and certainly grades, it is imperative to use the same names. (And since I do participate in this kind of collaboration, I really value it.)

So, that is how I organize digital resources.

Deskless Year 2: thoughts and ideas

On sharing a classroom:
     I share my deskless classroom with a desk-full classroom teacher.

     I never in a million years thought it would be as easy as it is, but it is fine.  She has tables that stack like a very complicated jigsaw puzzle in one corner.  She has one wall of whiteboards and when the tables are set up, she orients toward that wall.  There are windowsills for storing her stuff, and a couple of small tables- like coffee tables for her overhead projector and computer.  Each that she teaches, the kids come in, un-stack the tables, and set them up.  She stops about three minutes early and they re-stack, then set up the chairs for my class.  It is pretty seamless.
     My only minor complaint is that if I have left something in my bike bags, I can't easily get to them because the tables are pushed right up against my bike!  But really, that's just a matter of me being more organized and taking stuff out of my bag before her class starts!
     It also means I see another adult regularly and, as this teacher is also the middle school director (and therefore my direct supervisor) I have the opportunity to observe her and learn from her.  It's really pretty great.  Last year, when I was hyperventilating about having to move my classroom and having to share, I never would have thought it would be this easy.

On why I went deskless: 
I recently had a conversation (ok, a messaging conversation via a social media website) about going deskless and why I did it.  Here are some highlights:
How did you get to the point that you knew you needed to make this transition? 
       I was constantly feeling stifled by the lack of space- I wanted kids to move and act out stories (my first year with TPRS) and I wanted to move around to the kids, but I was super constrained.  Plus, I was constantly tripping.  Especially with backpacks!
      When I had the opportunity to keep my desks in the hall for a week due to testing, I tried it and felt like I could do so much more to make my class feel different- more language acquisition than language memorization and grammar.
      I think my class sends a powerful message to kids: memorizing and spouting facts, grade grabbing and ignoring the teacher don't work out here.  Being present, laughing, being yourself, and listening to understand are the values.  If that means we sit with stuffed animals sometimes, or a group of " toros" runs after the people to demonstrate runs from and runs to, then so much the better!    I also hate taking time to do things like seating charts and cleaning desks and stacking chairs...I think that I should be spending my time planning awesome lessons or recovering from my challenging job!

Can you describe what some of the challenges are with being deskless? Parent/admin by in? Challenges with students?
     Admins were behind it, parents either like it or have no opinion.  Again, it helps set a different tone.
     Challenges: some kids hate having to lean down and get their stuff.  (They can only bring in pencil case, notebooks, and whatever they need for the next class.) so they whine.
     But, as soon as I let them spread out and work where ever they want, they stop whining.  I also have a couple of TV trays I got at a thrift store, and one table that the kids can use if they are doing independent work.  They manage it themselves - for the most part.  Really, I can't think of any real challenge with it.
And- no desks: fewer germs, so I have been sick a lot less since I went deskless!

Do you start the year deskless or transition?
     I start the year deskless. I hand out these laminated character cards  and tell them to find the seat that matches their card.  From then on, that's how it works.
     I also teach them to line up outside my door so I can greet them each day, give them their card, and hear the password.  Then, they come in, find their seat, and get to work on a starter.

In short, I can not imagine teaching with desks.  Ever again!

Helping learners learn how they learn...or how I am turning my classroom into a sensory OT experiment

Many elementary teachers know that some kids truly need supports to learn.  These supports are frequently written into IEPs and 504 plans.  Many parents and OTs are the ones who get these supports written in, and good teachers incorporate the fidgets, lap weights, earphones, etc. into their classroom without a blink.  Other teachers can't get over the idea that "fair is not equal."

I'm not here to judge.

I am here to say that in every english - speaking classroom that I have taught in, there has been a huge sign saying "Fair is not equal."  I taught a series of lessons around this idea: that if Johnny needs (glasses, crutches, a cast on his arm), than it would be silly if everyone in the class also needed that support for it to be fair.  Or...more to the point, if Jane is allergic to chocolate, than to keep things fair, no one should be allowed to eat chocolate.

That's usually the point where kids nod and agree with me: how ridiculous.  Fair is not the same as equal.  They get it pretty quickly, especially once it's normalized.

Now, I can't do everything for everyone but I can do my best.  I can do my best to differentiate, to personalize, to make learning relevant and interesting, and to help kids learn what they need in order to learn.

You see, secretly I have had a lot of experience and training with behavior plans,  observations and tracking of behavior, identifying and data-keeping for IEPs and 504s, and that sort of thing.  I have been incredibly fortunate to work with amazing school psychologists and occupational therapists who have supported, mentored, and guided me as I tried to make my classroom equitable as well as a place for learning.  Those skills are not ones I have had to draw on too much since I moved to my current school.  Truly, I get to focus more on teaching and building relationships with kids, and less on behavior and/or meeting kids' basic needs.

I currently teach in a middle/high income independent (private, not parochial) school.  We do not have IEPs or 504s.  Some students have as many learning needs as in any of my public school classrooms, but our school doesn't have a strong culture, especially in the middle school, of trying to help kids meet those needs with more unusual accommodations.  That's not a criticism.  It just is.  Independent schools work differently.  We work as a staff to meet individual needs in different ways and we do have a culture of making traditional accommodations and modifications.  Both approaches are valid.

http://www.codeshareonline.com/plan-b.html

  But this year, I have been confronted by groups of kids who really struggle with impulse control.  To the point that in one class, I have gone to Plan B a bunch of times.This form is one of my favorites for this kind of formalized data keeping.  I can not recommend it highly enough.) I realized that I needed to go back to some of the strategies that I have used before.  Because there is no reason not to try.
 Seriously frustrating and boring for all!   After watching the kids for the first few weeks of school and thinking deeply about what their behaviors are telling me,  (

I spent a few hours re-reading notes from other accommodations, plans, and searching the web for DIY OT sensory kits.  I realized that many of my most challenging students are sensory seeking (chewing, touching, bouncing, etc.).

As I told them when I started discussing this in class, all those behaviors (not Behaviors!) are well within "normal" human range.  In fact, I am sensory seeky myself: I asked them if they had ever counted how many times I put on chapstick or check my pocket to make sure that it's there.  (One observant student pointed out that those behaviors happen about every 5 minutes.  I think she was being generous!)

I made a plan, a budget (which got a little out of hand...that's what happens when a sensory seeker goes to put together a sensory toolkit!), and a shopping list. I was going to get fidgets, make some lap weights, and whatever else I could find to make my classroom a sensory seeker's favorite place.

I hit up the thrift store, dollar store, winco for bulk rice and beans, and a party supply store just because it was near the dollar store. I ended up with a huge variety of squishy, hard, textured, and soft items.

Best scores:
coiled keychains for chewies (party store) + ziplock bags to keep them personalized
beads, pipe cleaners, popsicle sticks  for small fidgets
a bin and vertical magazine storage thing to store it all in
a great Frozen fleece sweater that was repurposed into lap weights - both non gendered and fuzzy!
a huge variety of squishy balls and critters from the dollar store
a variety of pet toys (soft, soothing), duster mitts (textured), and massage tools (hard, pointy), also from the dollar store
lengths of rubber from Amazon for chair fidgets

Homemade weighted lap belts-very popular! 

Tool check out system- very high tech

I knew I wanted some sort of accountability for students to use these "tools" so I also bought some clothespins, and wrote numbers on them (each kid has a number in my class) as well as"Tool check out".  When they check out a tool, they simply move their numbered clip to the correct bin.

I am introducing the tools slowly- and with great success.  The lap weights are the biggest hit so far, followed by some of the squishies and the chair fidgets.  I will follow up this post later...once the magic has worn off.
My biggest take away after two days with them are:
1) Students lit up when I asked them to try something (like a chewy, or a lap weight).  They knew what they needed- they just needed to be told it was ok to need it.  Seriously, the love was overwhelming.
2) I said that I was going to try this so all students could have a chance to learn the best way possible- and maybe other teachers would come on the journey with me if it worked out.  One student told me "well, you are way ahead of the rest of them.  Thanks!"  I reminded her that we are all on a different journey- this is mine, and I don't mind a little contained chaos.

Back to school nights

BTS nights are pretty challenging, I think. This year, when I was at the school for 14 hours, certainly was! The way we do it at our school is very challenging too: each teacher has five minutes to present, in one group space, to parents of each grade. Then you run to another grade level, and do it again. You do it twice for families that have kids in various grades.

However, I think it's so important for my students' parents to see what I do and why. I did not do BTS night last year since I was so very injured and on medical leave, and the first year...well, I didn't really know yet what I was going to do. (I cringe to think about it now!) This was my first time trying this and I am sure I will keep it.

My goals were this:
- short demo in the target language
- brief biography
- answer to "how you can help your child at home"


I prepped a poster with these structures:
éste es (ésta es) -this is

un hombre- a man
una mujer- a woman
o- or
sí- yes no no

I also prepped a couple of stuffed animal cognates (dragón, unicornio). I told parents that instead of talking about what class is like I would just do it, and all they needed to do was answer yes (pause and point) and no.



I demoed for about one minute, going slow, using parents and the stuffed animals to compare and contrast. Then I asked them if they understood everything, and explained that in my class, their students understand everything too.

 Then, I did my big grammar talk:
1) I asked parents who had taken two or more years of language to stand.
2) I asked them to remain standing if they studied grammar (conjugation tables, etc).
3) I asked them to remain standing if they were functional in that language now.
 (One or two were left.)

Reenactment of "Grammar Talk"- no one is standing.

I went on to say "that's why we don't teach that way!" Then short bio, and a quick reassurance that they are already great language teachers since their kids speak English, and that I will be providing their students with tons of input in class so the best way to support them is...to send them to class.
This year went incredibly well and parents were pleased and surprised. I got applause at the end!

When they scream for a story...

Quick post between meetings because something REALLY COOL just happened:

Several of my Spanish 2 kids had to leave for a cross country meet.  Instead of introducing new subject matter to only half the class, I decided to do a review. Of something.  Um, what?  I had nothing planned.

They begged for a story.   I didn't have a script and I didn't really think I'm confident enough to just do a story.  Plus, we are working on preterite verbs and talking about the past, because I'm still learning how to not shelter grammar.

I'm new at this!

But what I could do was take a story from another class that I know really, really well and quickly put it in the past tense.

I put the past-tense structures on the board and went for it.  We ended up with a usual silly story (a friendly elephant, a shark, and the reasons you don't see leprechauns in Ireland any more) and another easy, fun 30 minutes of Spanish used naturally.  I don't even think they realized how much language we just used...And as a bonus, I got to work in some structures (indirect object pronouns, tener + que) that I've been meaning to review with them.

Good day.

Spring Rush!

 My goal to write once a week has fallen desperately by the wayside.  Progress reports, parent-teacher conferences, 7th grade 3-day snowshoe/yurt camping trip, and winter sports days...all claiming a lot of my personal bandwidth.  Sorry.

So I will instead share some gems that have been shared with me over the past month:

"Señora, I just wanted to tell you thank you.  I scored 5th out of all the incoming freshmen for Spanish.  I know it is because you are such a great teacher."  -8th grader

"Señora, I wanted to say thank you.  Our son was placed in honors Spanish and we are so thankful for everything you have done for him." -Parent of 8th grader

"A group of us were singing your praises; all our kids got into honors Spanish."  -Parent of 8th grader.

"I didn't even realize we were speaking Spanish!" -7th grader after a particularly great PQA day, when I asked them to estimate how many minutes we spent speaking Spanish.  (The estimate was 52 minutes.)

I think that I should note that these happy 8th graders (and families) were never taught to a test, and have had minimal exposure to grammar over the past 2 years, primarily through quick notes and readings from Martina Bex's grammar notes.  So, TPRS does work.  Duh.

What else?  Oh, I wrote up a 6 page document to educate and advocate for TPRS/CI  as the pedagogical approach for teaching Spanish at my school.  It included a comparison table, an examination of why it is a great fit for our school,  and a breakdown of costs for training and materials.  It was very well received.

I planned a 5 week trip to Costa Rica to continue to grow as a language learner for the summer.  I will be traveling with my 70 year old father who will also be taking classes.  My mom and my husband will be joining us at different points during our time there.  I'm sad not to get to go back to Guatemala this summer, and also to not get to go to India (for my 40th birthday, as I've been planning for a decade), but this is going to be amazing.

Lastly, in my personal life, I was elected the chair of the city's Bicycle Advisory Committee.  It's a very exciting time for me!

Teaching formal language

When I started at my current job, I was surprised that little attempt had been made by previous teachers (or teachers of younger grades) to teach or use the formal, or Usted form. If you don't speak Spanish, all it means is that to refer to someone in the second person, the "you" form, you use either a informal tense or third person if it's formal. Ok, so it's a little confusing and we have no equivalent in English. The kids got the idea but couldn't apply it, and the lessons I found were, well, legacy teaching and had no sticking power at all.

Enter the great TPRS listserv and the Best Idea Ever for using Usted in context, every day, and making it a natural part of language. I wish I knew who to thank, but whoever you are, I am grateful.

The idea is that every day, you choose one or two kids to be the king/ queen (dictator, Jedi knight, principal, etc.) and as your are going through the normal day's activities of asking questions and eliciting opinions, you constantly refer to that kid in the Usted form. I make a big deal out of self-correcting (ok, sometimes I just forget who it is, then remember after the words have left my mouth) and rephrasing the question in third person.

When I started this, I would always stop and do a grammar pop-up: "why am I using this verb instead of that? What am I asking the king?" And so on. Very quickly it became ingrained in the students that there is formal language and that they already know how to use it.

How do I chose the kid? I read about having a thrift store tie or plastic crown, which are awesome ideas, but I just put a silly plastic toy randomly on a chair each day. That's it. Sometimes, if kids get it two days in a row, they give it to someone else, or if I know that it's someone's birthday, I hand it to them at the door.

Also, the king or queen does have some special privileges if the time is right. For instance, I often let them choose music to listen to, or whether or not we have a dance break, a game break, or a water and bathroom break.

The one thing that I want to improve over the rest of the year is getting the kids to refer to the king or queen in the force form, but I think that will come with time and lots and lots of modeling.

How do you teach formal language? Any tips or tricks left in the comments would be appreciated!

Update: Helpless learners and the opposite

Today, after yesterday's frustrations, I sat down with two of my most motivated, unafraid-to fail at anything classes and asked:
What do you do in your head that allows you to get past your initial fear (of seeing something that you don't understand) and just get to work?  What's your process?

The answers were fascinating and led me to almost cry in joy.  These answers came from a class of 7th graders that I have only just started teaching in October, and 8th graders that I have been teaching since last year.

• I looked at the words I know and just wrote those down.  The others came to me.
• I remembered what I know about (Italian, French, from last year) and tried to figure it out.
• It's fun to figure it out.  
• It's fun to have the challenge- like a puzzle. 
• I read the words around the hard words and figured it out.

Then I asked why it was fun- what was happening in their heads or in the class to make it something that they wanted to do.  (This was where I almost started crying.)

• It's not a competition in this class.
• It's ok to get the wrong answer in this class.
• If it's challenging it means I'm learning.
• How we learn in this class isn't stressful.
• You make it fun.
• I appreciate how you make it ok to be wrong, and we get to do fun stuff.  
• We are all on the same level here.
• Even the homework is awesome.  

So, my big question is:  what did I do with those two classes?  How can I recreate that feeling of love, support, trust, fun, and safety so that all my kids feel like that?  

And also, how do I celebrate such a mind-blowing success???  WOW!!!  

Are we creating helpless learners?

My gut reaction is YES!  Especially those who are "high" academically.  And I'll tell you why:
I have a class of "faster paced" students.  They are mostly girls, mostly with great handwriting and organizational skills.  They always bring their materials to class and meticulously write things down in their planner.  They almost never forget assignments. (The fact that they are mostly girls who got accelerated is a whole 'nother post, or possibly rant.  I'll save it.)

But they can't actually do much.  No- that's not fair.  Let me rephrase:  they really, really struggle with tasks such as inference, breaking down large tasks into smaller ones (and not in an organizational way), and problem solving.

These are the students who are so afraid of getting a wrong answer that they are unable to make a guess. Or, their brain gets completely overwhelmed with anxiety that it shuts down.

 I've seen this dynamic play out a few times in one particular class, and I vacillate between being incredibly frustrated ("Where do  I put my name?"  "Where it says Nombre!" I know, not fair of me but true.) and terribly saddened (What do you mean you don't know where to put your name?  How is that possible? What have we/I done wrong?)   What I notice is that often they don't know where to put their name because they are so terrified of putting it in the wrong place and...? Getting eaten by the no-name monster?  What role have I played in creating this fear of doing anything wrong?  Or how am I allowing it to continue?

I stopped calling tests and quizzes tests and quizzes.  I made my assessments short and sweet, 5-10 questions, and usually unannounced, in the middle of the class period.  That helps reduce anxiety, but I wonder if I am helping them (by reducing their anxiety, thus allowing them to demonstrate the language that they have acquired in a low stress situation) or doing them an injustice (by caving in to their absolute lack of resilience).  I am of two minds.  On one hand, everything that I've read (see sidebar for some links to great books about assessment) and come to believe about assessment, humanizing students, and recognizing that they are only 12 years old, indicates that they don't need more stress and that stress won't help them with my goal: to acquire language.

But I have to wonder: am I helping to create their helplessness?

There is also the question: are the tasks I am giving them too hard?  If they are not being successful, one would think that yes, I haven't adequately prepared them.  However, if I, for example, ask them to translate a sentence and ask them to explain it, most can do it 100% of the time.  Today I was using the Tweetly Deet assessment from Martina Bex's Las Novias unit.  I love this formative assessment because she has done an amazing job of finding authentic text (tweets, in this case), that use the targeted structures in context, and asking great questions that involve both knowledge and inference.

I discovered that my "helpless" kids absolutely panicked.  For instance (and this is not an example from the text in order to respect copyright), they had to read Mi hermano va a la iglesia.  (My brother goes to the church.)  The question was who goes to the church (in English)?

When I pointed out that they could translate mi hermano va (my brother goes), they were able identify the brother.  The iglesia could only be a church.  Right?  So about 70% of the kids got it, but the "helpless" couldn't think past the word that they didn't know.  And those kids are the "academically advanced" in our school with high grades.

Later, we were doing a sheet that asked them to look at a diagram of a bull and answer some questions about it.  Again, total panic from the helpless, and the kids who can problem solve were finished.  Some kids couldn't get past the first question.  I tried to give some hints:  "What do you think that word indicates on the diagram?  Which body part are the words near?  Is it a cognate?"  I tried to reduce the fear:  "This isn't graded. " Still, after 20 minutes, I called a halt because some were almost in tears.

How do I teach problem solving? That inference/trusting one's instincts/lack of fear of getting it wrong? How am I not teaching it?

Roses and thorns

Thorns: last night after school I had 3 pins that were holding some wrist ligaments together removed. It was an outpatient, fairly minor procedure, but it still hurt (still hurts) and I had a full day of teaching today. I hadn't really counted on the loss of the meager functionality that I had in my wrist this morning, so it was especially frustrating. Socks and zippers are beyond my skill set at the moment, so my husband had to zip me in my jacket and I had to keep wearing it until my morning duty was over. Also, I couldn't put my hair in a bun, so all day, my hair was in my face. Grrr.

Roses: a mother of a former student mentioned that in parent-teacher conferences, her child's Spanish teacher was very complimentary of his preparation and skill. Another student told a much younger kindergarten kiddo "You will love Spanish in middle school, Señora is the best."

Finally, after asking one class to work on a challenging on-line assignment, I asked them to reflect. I have noticed that many of my students, for whatever reason, are so afraid of "getting it wrong", no matter what "it" is, that they can't do anything without step by step hand holding. Throughout this assignment, I kept asking them again and again to persevere and risk writing something down that was incorrect. When I finally called it quits and we were in a circle, the students who had the most difficulty showed a great deal of self-awareness about their need to grow- to take risks, to try, to get it wrong. Other students kindly, sweetly, shared their strategies for succes, and it was a really neat moment.

Nope, it wasn't TPRS, it wasn't comprehensible input. It was a great discussion about our school's essential attributes, and I would argue that there is value in that.

Most Likely to Succeed

This afternoon, in lieu of a staff meeting, our faculty, board, and some parents screened the movie Most Likely to Succeed. The movie has been making the rounds at schools and was featured at Sundance last year (I think). The premise is that our education system was designed in the 1880s to create a docile but capable workforce for the assembly lines of the time. And it hasn't been updated since. The movie goes on to examine one school that is taking school assumptions (such as discreet subjects, tests, and scheduled blocks) and turning them on their head. Instead of teaching subject matters broadly, teachers focus on their passions, their interests, and teach deeply. There are no tests, only a public exhibition at the end of the year where the students present their learning. Teachers collaborate across specialties- physics and history, for instance. It was a glimpse, for me, of what I want school to be like. Mostly.
Parents and their many concerns were given a chance to respond to the school's methods, and voiced some valid points. The teachers talked a lot about the trade-offs they were making in terms of content (deep but not broad) and soft skills, such as team work, cooperation, perseverance, self reflection, etc.
I feel like the movie really validated a lot of the choices I've made as a language teacher the past year or so. The idea that we have to change how we teach resonates with me because it isn't working for most of the kids. Language teaching especially seems stuck in the dark ages, no matter how many computer programs you use to call it a 21st century skill.
Of course, the school in the movie uses primarily project based learning (PBL). While I am a huge fan of PBL when done well, I don't think that it has a place in the novice learner's classroom. But- and this is something that one of my colleagues shared after visiting the school- project based does not mean project only. Perhaps PBL is not appropriate for my students at their level. But maybe it will be further down the line for them, as their skills and mine improve. The other case to be made for PBL, and a strong one at that, is that it puts the student first. Now, someone who doesn't speak Spanish may not have the skills yet to be first, but let's face it: schools are demeaning, boring, and often just an endurance test. Instead of learning, instead of curiosity, students are taught that memorization and test scores are what's important. PBL is the opposite.
I was really struck by one moment in the movie where a teacher, after radically changing the way he taught math, was getting a lot of pushback from his high-achieving students. They were explaining that they just wanted to be able to pass the tests and get to college to get on with their lives. I felt a connection with this teacher, because like him I changed my approach, and like him, I got a lot of pushback from high achieving students. Instead of just studying for the test, they suddenly needed to really be able to use the language. Tests were unannounced. They had no study guide to memorize. And it was hard for them!
Which brings me back to my main point: TPRS is interesting, humanizing, and student centered. Sure, the teacher might talk a great deal, but when done well, the stories center around the students' lives and interests. The class feels different and asks students to pay attention in a different way. They have to monitor their own comprehension, follow along, and respond. Tests, instead of huge ordeals that destroy both moral and class time, are quick and easy check ins, and are usually no big deal.
And of course: no desks!