Hey you! Long time, no see. You look great! What have you been doing???
I took this summer off to rest and relax, because unfortunately, that is NOT what I did last summer. All the work I was doing last summer made the launch into a difficult school year…even MORE difficult. I decided to prioritize my own health this summer, and spent 6 weeks at a summer camp in the middle of the woods. Long story short: just what I needed.
In June, I decided to read tons of LGBTQ+ Young Adult (YA) novels to celebrate Pride Month. My younger self did not have access to them when I was first coming out, and it is important for me to imagine new possibilities for young queer youth through art. It has been wonderful to revisit that youthful time of change and growth with hope, instead of with fear.
At about the same time I decided to read more queer YA, I became aware of TPRS Books’ donations to California’s Proposition 8 in 2008, and engaged with the discourse around that on Twitter. See here, here, and here for some thoughts about the donations themselves, as well as my reaction to the since-deleted response video that TPRS Books put out and the reactions of others involved in the conversation.
Part of what came of all that conversation and reflection is a sense that some straight US-Americans think things are “all good” for LGBTQ+ people in the US. I definitely feel that things are better since I came out in 2008, but we still experience homophobia and transphobia all. the. time. All the time! And that sometimes appears to be shocking news.
I’ve been called a slur in the past year. My fiancé, the man I’m fully gonna legally marry, has been called my “roommate,” repeatedly, even after gentle correction. I have been advised to act “less gay,” out of fear for my physical safety.
It makes me reflect that in my allyships, I will never completely understand the scope of how others have to move through this world, and how the world treats them in multitudes of moments. But it also has inspired me to speak more with my colleagues about LGBTQ+ students and issues, so that maybe, we can all be less afraid to live in our world.
I was delighted at the opportunity to speak with Kaitlin Leppert on her Preaching to Acquire podcast about ways to support LGBTQ+ students in the classroom. I don’t know if I expressed myself as eloquently or with as much organization as I would want from myself, but I am also happy to get my thinking and experiences out into the world and open a dialogue with you, Reader, about steps we can take to make our classrooms and schools spaces where students can be more themselves.
I would be happy to hear from you in the comments on this post, or on Twitter. Thanks for reading, and/or taking the time to listen to my conversation with Kaitlin.
Amongst the many triumphs, failures, victories, and indignities of Pandemic Teaching, I have found it incredibly important to stay in regular contact with teachers (and non-teacher!) whom I love and respect. This has meant planning Zoom chats, starting a book club, and rallying a local PLC to monthly meetings on Saturday mornings, even when we all feel tired and over it.
This dedication to planned socialization is what got me on Zoom with Mr. Mike Peto, who I have learned so much from at conferences like the ACTFL Convention and Comprehensible Cascadia. We talked about teaching online, frustrations and wins, and how to get back to the basics of providing rich CI to kids.
One thing that Mike said slapped me right in the face, and was a reminder that I hope can positively shape my planning and mindset as we journey into the darkness of our first winter of COVID: Real conversations do not have a planned outcome – you can’t expect what will happen next!
Now, on the surface, this is like “well…yeah.” We don’t launch into conversations with others knowing exactly what they are going to say, how we will respond, exactly what words we’re going to use.
But! In hearing this, I recognized how that need to meticulously plan and “cover” curriculum had creeped into my mindset for teaching, and I think it has been slightly stifling the sparks of real conversation that turn into real engagement in class. Not every moment in a CI class has to be wild and crazy. Most days are not! But taking time to ask about and pick up on the little details of my students’ lives is what has made me so happy as the teacher – and what has helped me provide loads of engaging CI.
The many anxieties of this year have me wondering things like “Are we where we are supposed to be?” “Is this class good enough for the level they’re supposed to be at according to the course title?” “Am I doing enough?”
That thinking is garbage, and I am done with it. Real conversations have participants, not performers. I don’t need to perform us “getting through” my curricular objectives when things are this difficult. I have less than half the contact hours I would have had during a typical year, and we are still in a global pandemic that is irreversibly impacting just about every aspect of our lives.
I want to participate in my students’ lives, participate in them maintaining and growing in their hope, their joy, their intellectuality. We can participate in each others’ lives through genuine engagement around topics that kids care about. Which means that I can let go of including every single little assignment, reading, and word that I “would have” got to in an ideal world, and just be where I am. Be, where we are.
Now, I’m obviously still a teacher paid to grow the students in their proficiency in an additional language. I am going to recommit myself to using as much TL as possible (though 90%+ is definitely not in the cards for this year) because I believe you can make genuine, strong connections in the L2, even with Novices. And I will continue to touch on themes and topics that are interesting, continue to have my students question their assumptions about culture. It will not be the same as a typical school year because it cannot be so. And that’s fine. We need this connection now more than ever.
Maybe I can do myself a favor by keeping a list of high-frequency verbs nearby to serve as springboards for every conversation. I think of this post by Mike that talks about the advantages of having those high-frequency verbs in your classroom – if all students had these verbs rock solid in their acquired language, they would be capable of quite a lot, and there would be so many ways to keep our conversations going without having to just repeat the same sentences or vocab over and over and over. Maybe the minimal-seeming goal of just the Sweet 16 as curriculum is what this moment calls for. Imagine the possibilities…
In any case, as our students are being crushed by trying to learn difficult subjects on line, crushed by mountains of homework after hours seated in front of screens, crushed by missing their friends and their teachers, I am recommitting to connections over curriculum. (I think I may have got that from Martina and Elicia at The Comprehensible Classroom.) Let our classes be those that lift the weight for them.
Do you feel connected? Cheer your fellow educators on in the comments below!
I am very lucky to have a local PLC of CI-oriented teachers that keeps me sane. We meet once a month to exchange ideas, experiences, joys, and frustrations. The problem solving power of the group has only grown with time as we have worked together longer. No, really: get yourself a PLC of people who are focused on the same (or similar) goals as you and who can grow in trust and capacity to push each other. I am a better teacher for this group’s love and support.
Today, our check in question was, “If you were to give advice to another language teacher who is teaching online, what would you say to them?” Everyone shared for two minutes each. Our shyest members tended to begin their sharing with something like “well, I’m here to mostly listen for advice for myself, so I don’t promise anything profound. But I’ll give it a try!” …And then they laid down some absolute wisdom. Reader, teacher friend, please don’t discount the expertise and wisdom that you do have. Sometimes, we just have to dust it off in trying times like these and let it shine again.
If you’re reading this and thinking that you yourself could use some advice, I even challenge you to search deep within, right now, for the wisdom that is already there. I’m a big fan of journaling (and I keep a separate teaching journal for this purpose), and it has helped remind me of the many things I have learned in my life. Give it a try.
Whether you try to retrieve the wisdom from yourself first or not, here is some of the food for thought that our PLC produced. I hope it is thought-provoking, or maybe even comforting for you. I am so thankful for the group that generated it.
Some Advice from October 2020, Month One Million of Quarantine, the Zoom Mullet (Button-Up Up Top, Pajama Pants Down Below), and Unthinkable Challenges:
Input is the data learners need to acquire a language, so remember that it is still a top priority. We play a long game when teaching for acquisition, but that input is definitely doing something in learner’s brains, even if it is impossible for us to see it. Personalize it, make sure it is comprehended, repeat.
Find a fairly predictable and productive schedule of activities or routines that works for you, and stick to it. One of our colleagues is doing martes de música (Music Tuesday), and showing cooking videos in the language on Fridays. When they haven’t followed the routine, the kids have asked for it. Because they love it! There is comfort in routines and predictability. Routines and schedules make planning for the teacher easier, too – you just find the song, the game, the recipe that fits into the open block in your lesson plan and you’re good to go.
See how early and how often you can get learners to respond to prompts in the chat, if you are virtual or hybrid. This can be for answering personalized questions, comprehension checking, whatever. Give students plenty of opportunities to show their engagement (and help prevent them from spacing out too much, though spacing is natural and necessary).
Work smarter, not harder. Find one single goal you want to focus on for a week, and make it your everything. When you are feeling confident in your growth, move onto a new single goal. Go back and forth between goals as you ebb and flow in your progress, as needed. One. Single. Goal.
Maybe sometimes, an activity’s secondary (or primary!) purpose is just to give students (and you!) a chance to socialize a bit in the L1. Many of us are lamenting the slip away from 90% TL, but we are in a pandemic. It will definitely be forgiven, and both you and your students need that connection. I have been leaving my kids in breakout rooms for slightly too long, and they’ve told me how nice it was to get the task done and then just talk to their peers in L1.
Slow down. Put a post-it on your computer, write it on your lesson plan, do what you have to to make sure that you are bringing all students along for the ride with slow, comprehended language.
Don’t try to teach like you’re a YouTuber. YouTubers are known for breathlessly moving from topic to topic, talking mostly to themselves with insane amounts of energy. It will be natural if you take a pause to come up with a good question during instruction, because you are in conversation with your students. You are not attempting to garner a “like” from them with a roller coaster of “content.”
Create self-grading assignments. You will thank yourself when everyone turns in homework and you just get to sit back and watch results roll in. Glorious.
It’s okay to not put as much emphasis on output this year. There certainly may be good opportunities for it, but you may save everyone a ton of stress by focusing on personalized, comprehended input.
Sing! Frequently! Poorly! It’s food for the soul, and music is a great connector.
Alternate between pushing students forward, and moving back into their comfort zone. If they’re starting to break down, walk back into safer territory to let them know they’re on the right track and experiencing a good, necessary challenge.
Challenge students’ fixed mindsets. Be prepared to repeat “Everyone can learn a language” like an incantation with students who are struggling. Let them know that you believe they can meet your high standards because you want so much for them to be a multilingual rockstar of the future.
Ask yourself: what can I let go of? It may be much more than you initially think.
What advice do you have for language teachers right now? Do not be afraid to share – who knows whom it may help!
I am at a new-to-me school this year, finally teaching German while also still getting to teach some Spanish. (And model how cool multilingualism is, boing!)
The prospect of teaching German was so exciting to me when I applied for and got the job – I know WAY more about German stuff, having lived in Germany for a year, and I just love the language dearly. But I didn’t realize how difficult last year was on me emotionally and mentally until I woke up feeling nervous and physically sick this morning, my heart beating wildly as I imagined facing my classes for the first time.
I kept swirling around in thoughts like: “What if this year is just as hard as last year?” “What if you lose control?” “What if you can’t keep it in German the whole time because there’s so much side chatter?” “What if this is just what teaching is like?”
I’m (finally) seeing a counselor for anxiety, and part of my initial stages of treatment has just been identifying when I’m having negative thoughts at all. Sometimes, just identifying that it is happening is enough to help me dispel the tension. So, I identified that I was feeling scared, and set about repeating to myself the mantras I know to be true and helpful: Go slow. Look them all in the eyes. Maximize comprehension. Give your students love.
Now, I saw all the freshmen yesterday as part of their orientation day, and my German 1 freshmen were very…lively. I worried that they would never settle down, and that it would be the failure I had imagined. But I stuck to my mantras and did my best with them today.
All we got was this short text:
Two kids got jobs. And we got one sentence! “Today is Thursday, not Friday.” It was a hard-earned sentence, but we got it out, because I decided to stay slow, maintain my calm, and make sure that that one sentence was good with everyone before we moved on.
And you know what? I had students come up to me after class and tell me that they appreciated how I teach. And my students exhibiting the most distracting behaviors knew 100% what was going on when I checked in with them. And even my girls (there are like 6 of them and 29 boys, help) were able to laugh with me about the energy of the class, aka I don’t think they hate me.
After school today, I called some parents as part of my mission to establish positive contact with all my families before we get too far into the year. (Currently at 12o-odd kids amongst four class sections, so pray for me.) ALL the parents I called today told me that their kid already liked my class. Even with all this energy, all this containment and calm I was managing! They liked it, and they liked me.
Our students want to understand. They want teachers to take it slow, check in with them, make sure everyone is okay before moving on. So maybe this group will need some training about how to respond and interact in a CI classroom – but if I can stick to what I know to work…we could have a wonderful, wonderful year. I will take the time I need to reflect and grow, and give these students what they want and need – someone they understand, who seeks to understand them.
I am here at my desk, wishing you the best for the new school year. How is it going for you??? Tell me in the comments below!
My last post here was in December of last year, and the last post was a month before that. In the meantime, I was still teaching, still giving conference presentations, still going to PD, still trying to be a fierce advocate for communicative language teaching.
But I was also experiencing a darkness in my professional life that I hadn’t anticipated, a life-consuming shadow. My start in teaching had been great! I was making lots of teacher friends, kids seemed to like my class, and my teacher evaluations didn’t make me feel like a total failure. Why, then, did I feel like I was drowning? Why, then, did I silence myself when the rush of learning in my early career was still there, and my growth felt day by day, week by week? Why, then, was I thinking about quitting?
I was finding myself in the middle of the age-old problem: the more I learned, the more I realized I didn’t know. The more I found myself doing, the more I realized there was to do. The more I tried, the more I thought that it would never be enough. And this mode, this mindset was doing damage to my mental, emotional, and physical health.
Around semester (the end of January), I saw the need for change in the way I was living my teaching, but I was stuck in bad habits. Then suddenly, we had five snow days in February, and I had nothing to do. The scared part of me thought I should be creating or perfecting or learning something for school, but for the first time…I just didn’t. I rested and relaxed, and came back ready to go once school got mostly back to normal. (I played a ton of video games and ate a lot of vegetarian chicken nuggets, for transparency’s sake.)
I deleted the Twitter and Facebook apps off my phone during that time. This, paired with committing to spending less time on my phone in general, changed the things I was actually doing with my time. I was enjoying my relationship and my friendships more, and I suddenly had time to read for pleasure. I had justified my insane use of both apps for a long time by insisting that the professional development I got through both was helping me grow as a teacher and be better at it. That was true to an extent, but the drive to compare myself with other teachers on the internet was also causing me to reduce myself in my own eyes, minimize my own accomplishments, and constantly be on the search for something new. There was no joy and gratitude for what I had inside me and around me.
I left any books related to teaching at school. I was in a weird place of having teaching both as my job and as my hobby – I was always reading something about teaching, always trying to find new ideas and research, always trying to be “in the know” about everything in CI world. But no one can do everything, and you certainly can’t learn to do things well if you’re not focused. So school was for school, home was for home.
And I started leaving school earlier. I’d have days where I’d be getting home close to 6pm, having arrived around 7am, and scrambling to get dinner ready and try to have some time for myself before Brent got home. When I looked back, the time at school was spent socializing to avoid work, searching the internet for resources I wouldn’t end up using, and getting lost clicking around my computer. I started thinking: What did we do today, and how can it grow into more proficiency tomorrow? A lot of times, the answer was simpler than I had imagined.
I went back to basics. I found that everything I knew I wanted to do with my teaching was inside of me already. Realizing this helped me slow down, see my students where they were, and actually teach them something. Classes and students I had started feeling despondent about suddenly turned around and created interesting stories and moments for everyone (instead of just for the overachieving do-gooders and the overachieving distractors). And then suddenly, I was able to go to work on time every day, do my work with smiles in most periods, and go home and enjoy my life. MY life.
Sometimes, you need a period of radio silence, the silence going both directions. When you go silent, you often find that you can see and hear things so much more clearly. This was true for me, and I know I am a better teacher to my students for that.
There are lots of blogs, websites, videos, trainings, ideas out there. Forgive yourself for not being able to do them all. My plea is for teachers – thoughtful, hard-working, innovative, passionate, self-sacrificing beings that you are – to just focus on being with and loving your students. Silence the voices (from without, from within) that drive you to scuttle parts of yourself in the never-ending pursuit of more. It’s enough. You are enough.
I graduated my teacher training program at the end of 2016, and started looking for my first job as a world language teacher in the spring and summer of 2017. I was so excited – I thought I had done very well in my student teaching and was on my way to having an exhausting, but productive first year!
I got a call from a middle school in a Seattle suburb, and one awesome Skype interview later, I was a real teacher! Finally – all my years of experience in working with children were going to put me in a position to inspire and educate our youth! Bam!
Well, the nerves crept in. The position was a Spanish teaching position and I had majored in…German. And done a summer travel-study program in Germany. And been the president of the German Club. And lived in Germany for a year as an English Teaching Assistant.
I had been to a Spanish-speaking country for a total of…six days. And though I had minored in Spanish in college…I was the German guy. Ok – I can do this! I am a creative, hard-working individual. There are MANY resources out there for Spanish teachers, more than for German, for sure! If I flop, it’ll really be my own fault! (What a dangerous sentiment for someone plunging into the great unknown of teaching…this, I must unpack in a future post.)
Mister Señor Fisher having a low-grade heart attack before leaving home for his first day as a Real Adult Human™ (September 2017)
The first day is a blur now, but I remember my first class coming and wondering, “will I be able to speak to them in Spanish the whole time slash at all?” (I did it, phew. What did I even talk about? I can’t recall.) The students went home and there I was, alone in a little room that was now dubbed “mine,” with little idea of what to do next. Okay…I’ll just follow what comes next in the textbook! And try to throw in some of those fun, interactive activities I learned about in my program! And browse Pinterest for MORE new ideas!
There are so many ideas out there. Blogs, Pinterest boards, well-meaning colleagues, negative colleagues, district coordinators, other teachers who don’t even teach language who took a language class one time twenty years ago, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, books, instructional video series, YouTube…there are just a million ways to do any one thing. Teach a language? Goodness gracious. Not to mention, if you shop on Teachers Pay Teachers, everyone else’s materials are BEAUTIFUL and look like they were hand-crafted in a giant marble library by angels and the ghost of Socrates.
Before I started teaching, I thought to myself, “I’ll never show a movie in class as a stalling technique! I want to be up there, teaching, every day! No cop outs!” But the heads going down onto desks, the figuring out differentiation for six classes a day, the four preps, the days where I spent 12+ hours at the school looking for materials online, the wondering if it was fair or right for me to be a Spanish teacher when I felt I knew so relatively little….it all began to wear on me. The beginning of November seemed like the perfect time to drag out The Book of Life over a couple days…in all my classes. I thought to myself…is this it? Is this all there is?
A conference presenter turned me on to the CI Liftoff Facebook page, and through it, I started learning a lot about how teachers were delivering comprehensible input in their classrooms, every day! What? My level 1 students only know some weather phrases (sometimes…well, some of them), some greetings, the numbers (sometimes), me gusta phrases…how do these language magic witch people just make these kids understand day in, day out, without planning every single word? Devilry, I say!
So I read some more, watched YouTube videos of teachers working their classes like Vegas MCs, took tons of notes, thought aloud with wild enthusiasm (usually to myself), until one day I said, okay! This is it! LET’S DO THIS! [Imaginary enthusiastic table flipping]
Again, I don’t know what exactly I even talked about the day I “decided to go CI,” but I knew there was a hunger there. I could not, would not stop. And, magically, I started learning things about my students that made me feel like I was connected to them, and actually knew their lives.
And it reminded me: though I had not lived in a Spanish-dominant country, I had learned my Spanish and practiced it in a country with a huge population of Spanish speakers. To me, learning Spanish represented building closer relationships with my Spanish-speaking neighbors, colleagues, strangers I ran into when they needed help, when I needed help. It was about speaking to the hearts of people in my community. And that connection was sparked again when I started to speak slowly and comprehensibly to my students, making their lives and interests into our curriculum. It felt like a loving tribute to all the times I or my conversation partner had made the attempt to connect in a tongue not our own, and we both smiled and understood, even if we didn’t say all the words right.
So I kept learning, I keep learning. And the more that I learn, the more that I see that it is not about building a huge repertoire of “activities” that expands every time I log onto Pinterest. It is really only about speaking slowly and using my body and voice so that students understand and can be understood. I look into my students’ eyes, and I feel connected, joyful.
I sense now that my career will not be an endless drudgery of activities and exercises, but an endless expansion of my ability to communicate and connect with other people. I will get better at literacy activities, I will get better at speaking comprehensibly, I will get better at classroom management specific to this discipline. But – how wonderful – doing this will mean meeting tons of really cool young people and learning about their unique, beautiful lives.
I’m rolling into an October very much unlike the October I witnessed my first year. There is so much space before me, space to get to know my students and myself so deeply. And so, so many stories to tell.
