Category: Reflection

Victories from the 2021-2022 School Year

Whew, what a year. My last post was in August of 2021 (!!!!! woops), but like many teachers across the world, this year was just about surviving. I have 6 days (including tomorrow) left, and I’m feeling my brain relax and have more space to try writing again, so I figured I’d grease the wheel by just listing out what went incredibly well this year. Despite the many challenges, there was so, so much good.

Being World Languages Department Co-Chair

I shared the department chair role this year with my colleague Andy, and it taught me a ton about communication and advocacy. I have empowered myself to speak up in meetings more, and make sure that WL does not (as it usually does) get put on the back burner. I successfully advocated for some policies that will help the more vulnerable languages at our school have more insured enrollment at the lower levels (thereby making my job / my colleagues’ jobs more secure), and I’m really proud of that. I have stepped down from the post for the next school year, and will not miss the extra morning meetings. 😉

Strongest, Most Unified Level 1 Ever

I learned a lot from implementing the SOMOS curriculum in my one section of Spanish 1 about how one can structure a lower level curriculum, and taking the lessons from that into my German instruction has made for my most effective year in German 1 yet. I know what my students can do better than ever, and our use of language in class has really pushed up to levels I had not previously imagined. And next year only promises to be even better, in this regard!

Biggest Level 1 Enrollments Yet

My level 1 enrollment has grown from this year at 37 to next year at 57 (!), which almost guarantees that I will have enough students the following year for two sections of level 2. (This will, in turn, make me full-time German with no more one-off sections of Spanish to teach!) Overall, the German program has grown by 39% (!!!) since I arrived at my school in the 2019-2020 school year. I attribute this to really investing in the lives of my students and finding ways to be a part of the community here as often as I can.

My First-Ever Batch of AP German Students

Last year, I had two students take AP German almost entirely online and it was a hot mess. One never really wanted to take the exam, and the other backed out at the end because their college only accepted a score of 5 for credit. (Which is wild to me!) This year, I had 9 students enrolled in AP German, and two took the exam! It will be a nail-biter getting their scores, and I learned a TON from having the AP class together with my level 3s, but I am proud of those two excellent kiddos, no matter what scores they end up with.

Reusing Materials I Have Created

I don’t use a textbook or pre-made curriculum for German, so much of what I do is created by…me. This year, I finally had a back catalog of materials that I could draw from, and holy cow did that make my prep life easier. I’m going to try to use some time this summer to curate more materials that others have made and insert them into my curriculum plan, but I was really thankful to have stuff to draw on when I was planning for my 5 different courses.

Receiving German Visitors in Class

When I lived in Chemnitz, I was an English Teaching Assistant (with the Fulbright Program) at a high school. At the time, my now-friend Moritz was in 7th grade. We somehow kept in touch via the powers of the internet and I may or may not have helped Moritz with his English homework. Fast forward nine years, and he is in his final year of studies to be an elementary school teacher in Germany with a focus in English teaching. Moritz and his girlfriend came to visit my classroom this week, and I had one of those rare teacher sit-back-and-watch-it-happen moments as my upper level students asked thoughtful, interesting questions about life in Germany, and got answers that showed so many cultural differences that we could learn from.

Student Panel on LGBTQ+ Life at Our School

I invited about 10 students to stay after school on a Friday and discuss how it is to be LGBTQ+ at our specific school, as well as what they wished their teachers knew about these experiences. What I thought would be an hour-long discussion turned into a 2-hour long discussion, and I was (and am) constantly astounded by the depth of thought and willingness to share my students showed (and show). This was both personally fulfilling as a gay teacher who had a tough time with myself in high school, and also incredibly revealing about how much work remains to be done to make our schools safe for LGBTQ+ students.

WAFLT Board

This spring, I was invited to join the board of the Washington Association for Language Teaching, our state organization for world language teachers. I am truly honored to be joining the board for the coming school year, and look forward to seeing how I can best advocate for language learning and help provide professional support to language teachers across the state.

German Embassy Teacher of Excellence

This one really warmed my gay little heart. Alysha Holmquist nominated me for the German Embassy Teacher of Excellence Award. As part of the nomination process, I received letters of support from a former student, the parent of a current student, my assistant principal, and a colleague. Winning the award felt like a warm hug from all the people who have supported me in my career, and the cherry on top is that I get to go back to Germany for the first time in 9 (!) years and take a teacher training course in Munich! I am dying of excitement, as I am definitely missing Germany and my beloved Chemnitz (European Capital of Culture 2025).

Braving the Post-Remote Learning Teaching World

This was the year I thought most about leaving teaching, but I have not yet. There were so many unforeseen (and foreseen) challenges, and it was hard to get my footing professionally for the longest time. But I know that students acquired more German this year, and that my program continues to grow, and that on most days, my students leave Fisherlandia with a smile in their hearts. I think it was all worth it, in the end.

What were your victories from this school year? Sound off below and celebrate yourself!

Notes for a Strange, New Year

School starts in just about a week – a week! – and I have started reflecting on what I would like my priorities and mindsets to be for this new school year. Last year was quite the punch in the face. But! For better or for worse, it refined many areas of my pedagogy and (I think) made me a better teacher.

Here are some ideas that have been bouncing around in my head as I prepare for a masked, fully in-person learning experience in the ’21-’22 school year.

Targeting

I trained in Teaching with Comprehensible Input (TCI) in a milieu that favored a non-targeted approach – no pre-determined vocabulary targets, and no mass repetition of those targets. I learned that letting go of targets would help refocus lessons on real communication with students instead of bogging the teacher down with preconceived notions of what students “should” acquire, when. Additionally, I learned that high-frequency language, by virtue of being high-frequency, would just show up enough for students to acquire without much effort, planning, or forethought.

After working with the SOMOS curriculum last year, I have decided to gently re-embrace targets, fully understanding that students will acquire our “targets” in their own time (aka not on any “pacing guide” that I, or anyone else, could create). But having vocabulary targets last year helped me streamline my planning, know and plan what sorts of questions I could ask students ahead of time, maintain focus as a teacher, and reuse previously-created readings and materials that I knew contained language for which I had planned ahead. Now, I can definitely still throw in activities like Card Talk and OWIs that generate tons of student-centered and interesting vocabulary, but I will also have rails to get back on should my brain implode and should I be in need of a “safety plan,” so to speak.

Consistent Routines

As soon as I gave myself permission to reuse activity types last year, my life became SO MUCH EASIER. There is no need to reinvent the wheel for every class period. I have started creating a list of my best, favorite activities that reliably get a lot of language, and can just pick from that list if needed. (I am looking into building out my Essential Strategies page to reflect the menu of activities that I tend to choose from.)

In addition, it can be very comforting for anxious students (and teachers!) to know that each lesson will have a familiar contour to it, and that we will not have to guess at what is coming next on any given day. Do Now – Warm Up Reading or Speaking – Input Activity – Review – Closing. Boom. Fill in the blanks with content, but the structure is always roughly the same.

Do LESS, Go DEEPER

I typically plan for 5-6 big units over the course of a school year, with all sorts of fun asides sprinkled in, and last year, I got to about…3 per class. Kinda sorta. 3.5? Oof. My “Coverage” lizard brain was on HIGH ALERT but really, it didn’t matter. The deeper I went with any given content, the more that I felt confident it had been worth our while to dive into. I could feel it in the way students responded during lessons, and the confidence with which they tackled any homework or assessment I gave them. On the flip side, things I threw in “just to cover,” felt like such a waste of time, because we all just felt panicky and confused. So – no more of that! Go deep until we are ALL ready to move on.

Plan My Planning Periods

This will be important for me as I make the return to teaching in-person, on campus. I am…social…and can definitely while away all my planning time checking in with colleagues, spacing out, and just being a Silly Billy. I have five preps this year (German 1-4AP, Spanish 1), and want to use my time at work thoughtfully to reduce the amount of work I bring home. (Goal: zero time at home doing work!) This means setting up processes for each specific planning period to get things done and ready, and sticking to them. It will require me training my focus and writing down plans ahead of time, and those are skills I would love to build, anyways!

Be Explicitly Human

I am incredibly nervous for this new school year. And I don’t think it serves me or my students to pretend that things are okay, because I am sure they are nervous, too. It is a goal for me this year to be honest about what I am thinking and feeling. I want to open up dialogue with my students so that they don’t have to hide what they are thinking and feeling, and so that they can be heard.

One of my reflections during a staff meeting this week was that I have grown the most as an educator and person when I have been invited to explore and be myself in a given context. I want to extend that invitation to my students so that they, too, can grow.

What are your reflections and goals as we head into this strange, new year? Comment below, and may you and yours be safe and healthy!

Participating in Students’ Lives with Real Conversation and Connection During Virtual Learning

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!

Maybe You Are Needing Positivity, Advice, and Support Right Now, Language Teacher Friend

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!

Classroom Management Tips (for Myself)

Ah, November. The time of year when students’ general goodwill towards school has shrunk a bit, there have been sports events and field trips galore pulling your kids out of class, and you might just be feeling a lil tired. I know this is the case for me, so this post is about taking the time to develop a plan of attack further so we are prepared for days when things are starting to feel tough.

I’m writing these as reminders mostly to myself, but I hope they help you in whatever you may be struggling with to make this time of year (aka…DEVOLSON).

I can also tell you that some of these reflections come straight from the hearts of my students: though I was recently in a negative head space and worried that students would tear me up, I again asked for student feedback on my teaching (using this form) on the Friday after Halloween (gulp). I learned that 1. things were so much better than I catastrophically had thought to myself and 2. that young people will truly surprise you with their helpful insights…if you just ask!

So, here we go!

Develop Your Vision

Do you know exactly how you want your class to look, moment to moment? This is a bigger, long-term mental project, but when you run into moments in the classroom that are irritating to you, ask yourself, “Why?” How do those moments divert from your vision of how class “should” be? I find that I often haven’t expressed to students a specific expectation that I take for granted, so it would be almost miraculous for them to just meet it. We all know that students can be very…inventive…with their behavior, so we can be the ones to express a vision of fun productivity that truly works in everyone’s favor. I’ve been writing down specific items of behavior that I envision, and then explicitly teaching to those expectations.

Tell Them Why

Language is so different from typical school subject matters that it needs to be taught in a very different way. This can be disorienting from kids who have learned how to “play the school game,” and then get into a language class where we “just talk all the time,” so explicitly stating why we do any given practice can help students understand and meet with our visions. I’ve been repeating since the early weeks of school that “we learn languages by hearing and reading messages we understand in the language,” so when I explain that talking English isn’t helping our language acquisition, kids are like…oh yeah, that’s right. But then! I give them alternatives that allow us to stay in the language as much as possible. They’re more likely to use these new mental/communication tricks if they understand why they are necessary or desired in the first place.

Energy!

When things are going right…tell them. And telling them can look like different things. Strong choral response after pumping them up? “(in L2) Yes, class! Wow, y’all are so intelligent. You’re getting it.” Long stretch of whole class interaction uninterrupted by L1? “(in L2) Wow, this class speaks a lot of [L2]! And so well!” Or save it for the end of class: “(in L1) Y’all, in the middle of class, we had a stretch where it was only in [L2], and it was so glorious. I could tell so much [L2] was going into your brains, and you are going to be the super awesome, multilingual citizens of the future. BAM!” And also: never discount the power of a high five, eye contact with a smile, a covert thumbs up…

Go SLOW

If I keep in mind that my desired purpose in each class period is, at its core, communication with the people in the room, I get better at looking for evidence that communication is actually happening. Am I learning new facts about my students and verifying them with their classmates? Are students reacting to those learnings and sharing more about themselves? Am I sharing new information about the Target Culture and gathering students’ reactions to it?

I must look into their eyes, check their comprehension, and speak to them in ways such that they understand. (Check out this post by Martina Bex about ways to make that happen.) This often involves going much slower, using lots of gestures, pausing, and taking the time to savor silence. This is a long-term struggle: I have literally presented at conferences about the importance of SLOW, and more than one of my level 1 students asked me to slow down a bit. It is important, and difficult! So, I will be slowing down in the name of comprehension and real communication.

Self-Interrupt

If I’ve shared how languages are acquired – hearing comprehensible messages – then I can just interrupt my own speech if a student starts to talk out of bounds in L1 while we’re talking in L2. I try to scan my class broadly as I do this, so as not to come off too aggressive with the student or students who spoke out of turn, but I do try to go back to them and give them a wink or a nod as we carry on.

Just Walk On Over To the Rules

This is a trick I learned from Tina Hargaden: just stop, saunter (really, saunter) over to the class rules, and indicate which has been broken while scanning the class with a smile. Because it’s so calm and quiet, students tend to get uncomfortable and push each other to quiet down a bit.

Get Feedback

Ask students what activities are working best for them, as well as what is a change they might make to class that would help them learn the L2 better. Most of the time, students are reasonable and helpful in their suggestions, as long as I frame the feedback giving as something that will help us have a more successful, fun class.

After getting the feedback, positively acknowledge that you have considered their feedback, and then try to incorporate their suggestions as much as possible. It turns out my level 1s love stories – let’s do more of those! Level 3 asked for me to actually be more strict about not starting side conversations in English after every sentence, so I know that there will be students in class that will help me out when I am managing towards a more L2 environment. If I am able to incorporate things that students have suggested, then bam! Goodwill towards the class that will help us be more productive and successful, and I will hopefully grow my influence as a classroom manager of their time.

This post only begins to scratch the surface of all the many philosophical considerations and moment-to-moment techniques that go into “doing” classroom management…do you have any quick tips or thoughts that might help others? Comment with your gems below!

Reflect Early, Reflect Often!

We’re ending week 3.5 here in Washington state (we started the Wednesday after Labor Day), and I figured it would a good time to plonk some reflection into my students’ laps to help them look back on what we’ve done so far, let me know what’s working and what’s not, and get an affective temperature check. My big goals for my students are for them to feel safe and cared for in my class, and for them to comprehend buckets of input in German or Spanish. (Sometimes both when my brain fails to shift gears during 7th period…oh mein Gott…)

I gave students this half-sheet form, and five minutes of quiet to fill it out before we transitioned to my personal favorite class game, Gimkit. (Edit: the fabulous Kate Smith on Facebook made it into a Google Form, which makes gathering the data EVEN EASIER! Go ahead and make a copy for yourself!) Feel free to modify as needed, as I forgot to do when I gave the version that said “German” to my Spanish class…d’oh. Anywho, I conveyed before we started that their honest and helpful feedback would make me a better teacher, and it would make class better for everyone. So it’s a win-win!

I’ve spent this morning reviewing the trends, and I’m feeling very, very thankful that I did this. I have solicited feedback from students before, and it can definitely be awkward and painful. But I’m going into next week feeling aware of what’s working for them, and overall how they’re feeling in class.

Here are the biggest trends I noticed, both across levels, as well as in individual classes:

Gestures

Classes at every level pointed to my use of hand gestures for verbs as something that really helped them. I lifted how I do them from Tina Hargaden, so it’s nice to see that it truly is a huge comprehension support, and that I’m not just doing the Macarena for myself up in front of the class. This has also really helped me use more natural language, as I can use the same gesture for a verb’s past, present, and future forms, and use context to otherwise make things clear for students. And I can stay in the Target Language so much easier! Which leads me to…

High Levels of Target Language Usage

All my classes told me they liked how much of the Target Language we used during class, for Small Talk, Stories, Calendar Talk, Card Talk…everything! One student told me while we were watching the Homecoming Football Game that their previous teacher usually would do “only the Target Language” like…every other day. Which meant that class was 50% English, 50% TL. They really need the input to grow their mental representation of the language, so I’m glad students are appreciating my efforts to keep things comprehensible and shift that percentage in the direction of the Target Language.

Write and Discuss into Choral Translation + Grammar

Write and Discuss by itself didn’t necessarily get the biggest shoutouts at each level, but many students pointed out that doing a Choral Translation of the class text into English, funky word order and all, helped them see how German and Spanish are constructed and made them appreciate how much they understood. This is the perfect time to slip in fun grammar noticings – German word order is always fun to see at any level, and Spanish can do some wild things, too. And it’s not TOO grammar-heavy for them – one student literally wrote under his positives: “He isn’t making us remember grammar. He’s just speaking to us.” #blessings

Classroom Management

A comment to the effect of “make my classmates shut it during our class conversations” appeared at least once at every level, but was especially prevalent in my level 3 German class. They have known each other for a good long time, and have so many in-jokes and crazy stories from their last German teacher (who was/is a wonderful angel), that we often all get distracted with the fun stories in English and forget to use the most German possible. I see this as a necessary growing pain – I would much prefer that they had positive experiences with each other in the past, but I’m also convincing them of the value of 90%+ TL, so this will be an area of growth for us all. (Being a slightly hyper and easily distracted sort of dude…I am sometimes a culprit. Oops!) I think I can leverage how much my students in each class enjoy hearing the Target Language (as evidenced by their comments) to turn this tide and get us going in a fantastic direction.

Double Checking the Forms I Give My Class

Because I gave out forms that said “German” instead of “Spanish” to my Spanish classes, I received many angry face emoji drawings on my surveys, and one “you could improve by loving Spanish more! (crying face emoji)” SORRY, Y’ALL! (They actually took it in stride, but I definitely don’t want them feeling like I only love my German students…I truly love them all because they’re so FUNNY.)

Sorry, chicos. 😛

Bonus Comments!

I have a couple of heritage Spanish speakers in my level 2 Spanish class, and I got some sweet comments from them, too. One wrote, “I already know the language, but it’s nice being in here.” I have another heritage speaker who sometimes speaks like a Novice – lots of errors, but comprehensible! – and he wrote, “I appreciate that Mr. Fisher tells us that being wrong is okay!” My heart!!!

I want to make sure I do this at intervals for the rest of the year. There are regular slumps in the natural cycle of the school year, and using reflective surveys like this can hopefully help me keep students engaged and contented in class. What’s more, I hope I am conveying to them how much I appreciate and care for them, and can build good will by not pretending to have all the answers all the time.

Go forth, and reflect! What have been your reflections from the beginning of this year? What have students told you? Let me know in the comments below!

Heute ist Donnerstag, nicht Freitag.

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!

Students Want YOU to Write a CI Novel

List of potential novel topics generated by the Comprehensible Cascadia 2019 Pre-Conference Reading Workshop

Reading is an essential component of any TCI classroom. Written input provides different data for the brain than oral input (think literary language, more passive constructions, sight cognates may be easier than when heard), and Stephen Krashen has compiled numerous studies that show that reading improves learners’ vocabulary, spelling, grammatical accuracy, fluency…you know, ALL THE STUFF. Students need to be reading in the L2 every day, because the benefits are too good to pass up.

Many programs have implemented Free Choice Reading (FCR), empowering students to choose whatever book from the classroom library they like, and read for a predetermined amount of minutes to get some great written input. Of course, the “C” in “CI” stands for “comprehensible,” so we need for reading materials to be leveled so that students’ brains don’t implode when we set them to reading. They need to understand their texts for the input to do its job!

We are lucky to live in a time where there has been a surge in “CI Readers” – compelling stories written in simplified language to help students both enjoy a story and get great input. Companies like Fluency Matters produce beautiful books that are meticulously edited and often have stories that students get hooked on. There are also other authors that sell through vendors like Amazon or Teacher’s Discovery. If you teach Spanish, you are especially blessed, as there are soooo many Spanish CI Readers when compared with other languages.

But what makes a student into a reader is the book that just “fits” them, the “Home Run” book, the transformative reading experience that makes kids unable to put books down. If you are a reader as an adult, chances are you can remember a book or two that was this experience for you. When the Harry Potter books were still being published, my parents took me to a couple of the “midnight premiere” events where you could get the book as soon as it was out, and kids my age were rushing to be the first to finish the newest book and know all the dramatic plot points. I remember powering through The Goblet of Fire at all hours (well past bedtime, with a tiny reading lamp) because it was a wonderful, gripping story. I was a reader!

We want these same experiences for our own students, to make them literate people who can use their reading to build empathy, as well as skill in the L2. And the texts need to both compelling stories, AND written in language students can understand with only a year or two (or maybe even a semester!) of language class behind them. But since comprehension-based readers are a relatively recent discovery for many language teachers, there aren’t a TON of authors or titles available. (Again, more for Spanish than any other language.) Additionally, “authentic” children’s books in the L2 may be more simplified when compared with the literary canon of the culture, but they often contain low-frequency vocabulary, and might not exactly be compelling for a reading-avoidant secondary school student.

This is where you come in. Yes, you! See those topics above? They were generated through observation of student reading habits and by directly asking what students would be interested in reading. Students want to read these books in the L2, but they don’t quite exist yet in large variety.

You – yes, you! – could write a simple, 10-chapter reader that could spark that love of reading in a child, a love that will push them to higher levels of L2 proficiency. A chapter could be like two pages, with lots of illustrations to support comprehension! Not feeling extra creative? Pick one of the Seven Basic Plots and map one of the above themes onto it. JUST WRITE THE BOOK!! WRITE A BOOK! WRITE ANY BOOK!

Your students want to read in the L2, and the benefits are undeniable. So lets put the magic into their hands with some new, exciting readers.

Want to learn more?

If you’re feeling like this might be something you could do (because duh you can) then reach out to Mike Peto. This post was inspired by him, and he is an excellent resource when it comes to all things reading in a TCI classroom. WRITE THE BOOK. WRITE IT!!

On Silence

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.

Inspired Proficiency Podcast

Y’all, I’m so thrilled to have been included in the Inspired Proficiency Podcast episode about Takeaways from #ACTFL18.  Ashley is such a gem for putting this podcast together – teachers need to hear from diverse perspectives to better know themselves and more deeply know their work.  Also…she is so sweet to talk to.  Her laugh is #iconic and listening back to our conversation, I am proud to have elicited a very deep laugh from her.  Hee hee!!

Take a listen, and let me know what you think!

I name drop like a total dweeb, but here are some of the people I mentioned and where you can find their resources:

Brett Chonko – Brett is such a great guy and does cool stuff with nontargeted CI that can align with district-mandated thematic units.  His blog is on point, too.

Sarah Breckley – I am OBSESSED with Sarah Breckley.  Shh just don’t tell her or she’ll take away my potato!  But also like…watch her videos and be inspired to film some of your own teaching for your benefit and the benefit of others.

Tina Hargaden – Opened my life up to the world of CI.  Check out CI Liftoff and her books – A Natural Approach to the Year being the guiding source of inspiration for many teachers this year.

BVP – Bill Van Patten’s book While We’re On the Topic is a super thought-provoking look into principles of communicative language teaching.  Easy to read and full of food for thought – I wanna book club it in my district!!

Did you go to ACTFL 18?  What were your takeaways?  Let me know below!