Category: Reflection

Victories from the 2022-2023 School Year

PHEW it is already July 12th and I’m just now getting to a post I outlined right at the end of the school year. I’ve been busy busy with my honeymoon, my brother’s upcoming wedding, LLLAB summer work, ACTFL stuff, CI Reboot… Lots going on. But I really got a lot out of reviewing my victories last school year, so here we are again. Here’s what went well this school year:

Free Writes / Focus Writes

I use timed Free Writes as a way for students to show their language growth over the year, with each student storing all their Free Writes in portfolios that we keep in the classroom. This is consistently a winning procedure, as students love comparing their disjointed writing from the beginning of the year with the more fluent, detailed writing they are producing by the end of the year. Our greater consistency with doing them just about every 2 weeks helped me in my planning and gave us lots of evidence of growth to reflect on at the end of the year.

A related win has been doing something I’ve titled Focus Writes at the end of each major thematic unit. Students get 5 minutes to write about themselves in relation to the major topics we explore throughout the year. For example, for Level 1:

  • End of unit 1: Introduce yourself
  • Unit 2: Introduce yourself and your hobbies
  • Unit 3: Introduce yourself, your hobbies, and your important people
  • Unit 4: Introduce yourself, your hobbies, your important people, and your school life
  • Unit 5: Introduce yourself, your hobbies, your important people, your school life, and your food/drink preferences

It’s simple, quick, definitely not the only kind of writing they do, but kids get to see how much easier it becomes over the year to write more. We reflected on how comprehended listening and reading input becomes greater ease in writing about yourself over time. And my two Level 1 classes averaged 96% and 116% increase in word counts on these Focus Writes between Focus Write 1 and Focus Write 4 this year, which I brought to my evaluation conversation with my assistant principal, who loved it. Definitely keeping Focus Writes for next year – kids like increasing their skill in talking about the most important thing: themselves!

Reviewing and Clarifying Expectations

Every year, I have been trying to refine my classroom expectations so that they are clearer to students, both in what to do and why we do it this way, and making them expectations that I feel comfortable and justified in enforcing. Inspired by Lance Piantaginni, I used the following expectations this year:

I reviewed these expectations Every. Single. Day for the entire first month of school, and regularly thereafter. (This is especially important after long weekends, breaks, big events, etc.) In addition, any time we did a new activity type, I specified how these expectations applied to the new activity. And this year was so much more peaceful! It was easier to enforce clear expectations whose justification we went over thoroughly. I am keeping these expectations and these procedures for sure.

March Music Madness

I participated in March Music Madness this year in all my classes and it was a huge hit. If you are not familiar, excellent teachers across the world collaborate on a March Madness-style bracketed tournament for new music from our target cultures with the goal of finding a “winning” song from the contenders. Teachers can either link up with international online voting calendars or keep all the decision making up to their own classes (I opted for just doing a school-internal tournament this year because of scheduling). I had my TAs put up a bracket with images of the artists, pictured below, and my students grew so possessive of their favorites that it made my heart smile. They were arguing with each other about their preferences related to Target Cultures music – arguing about content – awesome! I can’t wait to participate again next year.

Free Reading

My students started reading earlier in the year, and read more than ever before. Kids traded books, talked through plot twists, and generally got so much in linguistic competence from daily free reading. Not to mention, it was an absolute joy to read outside when the weather was nice.

Something I touched on but want to do in greater depth next year is discussing with students what successful Free Reading in the TL should feel like. Students have different tolerances for ambiguity/volume of new vocabulary and thus need to try different levels of difficulty for themselves, and sometimes learners need reminders of how to use the glossaries of the books they’re reading. Reading can be a very efficient, effective way to acquire a lot of language, but not if students are frustrating themselves out of potentially successful experiences.

Teaching a Novel

I have only ever done free reading of novels in class, but this spring, I taught my first-ever whole class novel. And I loved it! I taught Mit dem Wind in den Westen from Fluency Matters, and the Teacher’s Guide made it so easy for me to plan and read with my students. My students loved learning about the former East Germany and its culture, and Reader’s Theater was a hoot. I tried a variety of reading formats with my students, including whole class reading, group reading, partner reading, and individual reading, and the group reading procedure pictured below was the favorite of my students:

1. Reader (reads text aloud in L2) 2. Explainer (explains what’s happening after each paragraph/page) 3. Dictionary person (looks up words) 4. Questioner (asks content/context Qs) [Roles change after every page / logical amount of text]

This Tweet

This Tweet was my most successful Tweet this year.

I asked my Level 1 students what color they associated with each school subject and it got…heated lol. Try it as a warmup some day and report back – lots of fun!

WAFLT / PNCFL / NEA

In October, I was named the Washington Association for Language Teaching (WAFLT) Teacher of the Year. This was a huge surprise to me, and I was deeply touched by the recognition. I have felt lots of love from colleagues I have met through WAFLT conferences, and I was honored to be chosen as a representative for language teachers in our state.

In February, I submitted a 30-page (!!) teacher portfolio to the Pacific Northwest Council for Languages (PNCFL) as the WAFLT candidate for PNCFL Regional Teacher of the Year, and interviewed with members of the PNCFL board for about 45 minutes, touching on topics of best practice in language teaching, the teaching of culture, advocacy for language teaching and teachers, and so much more. At our online conference, I was named the PNCFL Regional Teacher of the Year. This really made my head explode, and it has been so incredible to meet language teachers from across our 6-state region and learn from and with them.

The next step is the ACTFL Convention and Expo in Chicago in November of this year. I am one of five candidates for National Language Teacher of the Year, which makes my heart pound every time I think about it. The process of refining my PNCFL portfolio and adding to it as part of my ACTFL candidacy has been truly transformational for me. I am prone to self-deprecation and anxiety about my work as a teacher, and the reflection built into the portfolio process has really helped me identify what I do well, and areas where I want to grow some more. I feel really proud of myself, and no matter what happens in November, I am ready to use my teaching and advocacy skills for the good of all the language teachers I have the pleasure of connecting with.

If all that wasn’t enough to make my heart explode, I found out in April that I am Washington’s nominee for the NEA Excellence in Education Award. My lovely colleague Kei nominated me (knowing this feels like such a wonderful professional hug – professionally hug excellent educators in your life!!), and it means that I’ll be headed to an awards gala (!) in Washington DC in the spring of 2024. Wild. Wild! I am so thankful for these opportunities and can’t wait to see how they evolve over this next year.

Whew – enough from me. What were your victories from the past school year?

ACTFL 2022 Reflections: Saturday

ACTFL 2022 brought so much new learning, and gave me the chance to synthesize so much of the learning I have been doing mostly online over the past 2.5 years.

I decided to break up my reflections posts by conference day, so Friday’s reflections are linked here if you are interested! Otherwise, here are my reflections from the Saturday sessions, in addition to as many links as I can muster to the presenters and their resources:

Why It Matters: Black Social Justice Movements in Austria and Switzerland (Karin Baumgartner and Amanda Sheffer)

Working with and listening to Ben Tinsley’s presentations reminded me that I want to make conscious efforts to center the lives of Black and brown German speakers in my teaching, so I chose this session to help start filling some of the gaps in my own knowledge.

Dr. Baumgartner’s part of the presentation focused on the M-Köpfe debate in Switzerland. I appreciated how she created a unit around the discourse that gave learners multiple access points to the debate and the thinking behind it, ranging from interviews with business owners, to using the Schweizerisches Idiotikon (new to me!) to look up the “official” Swiss definition of the M-word, to predicting and then analyzing public perception statistics, to connecting the debate to similar debates in the United States. The unit was text-rich, and really aligned with the learning I had done this summer about a discursive mode of cultural studies: asking questions about texts and cultural phenomena, and critically questioning our assumptions and reactions to them.

Dr. Sheffer focused on Black Lives Matter solidarity protests in Vienna, which really showed the ever-increasing connectedness of cultural discourses across the world. At the same time, regional/national cultures have influences on how these debates and discourses play out – I learned here for the first time about the Opferthese, as well as the life of Angelo Soliman. Context is so important in building learning, and the connections of each of these units about Switzerland and Austria tie closely into debates that have also been present in the US in recent years. I can see each of these units being easily integrated into my upper level courses, as my students are at an age where they have more capacity to engage in cultural discourse about race and society. A question from the audience reminded me, though, that learning about and reproducing slurs, even if in the L2, can be potentially triggering for our students, and we need to create and maintain brave spaces for students to explore these topics.

Simplifying for Equity (Abbi Holt)

I missed this session to go to the Swiss/Austrian session above, but luckily, Abbi posted her slides online! In her presentation, Abbi illustrated the journey she has taken to make her Latin class into one where all students have a chance to succeed based on what she could control in her own classroom. This led her to dropping homework to level the playing field of home environment (dis)advantages, and then on to dropping other things that have often been staples of language classes: tests weighted more heavily than other classwork, vocabulary quizzes, and explicit grammar instruction. All this seems to have helped raise her reading scores – score!

One key seems to be the use of daily exit tickets. Abbi writes on her slides that she changed from using a calendar to set the pace for her instruction to pacing with the exit tickets. This is so simple and brilliant. Exit tickets can show us what truly stuck and where students are struggling. By “publicly committing to not moving on until everyone is ready,” as Abbi puts it, we make adjustments to our instruction that benefit ALL students – and they can always use more input!

If you are able to plan ahead sufficiently to have pre-made exit tickets for content, go for it! The shorter the better. I am a huge fan of trade-and-grade because going over the answers can serve as more input for learners. If pre-made exit tickets aren’t possible for you, I am a huge fan of the Quick Quiz as a formative assessment. (My observing principal thought the Quick Quiz I gave during an observation was just about the coolest thing ever…ding!)

I also appreciate this post by Lance Piantaginni that takes a Twitter thread by Abbi on the same topic (simplifying for equity) and lays out how it aligns with the research on best practice. Check it out for more mind explosions!

Level 1 to Level 4 and Beyond: Creating Vertical Alignment (Briana Bailey and Hannah Whyard)

I currently teach one section of Spanish 1, and then the rest of my day is all levels of German. I am also the only German teacher. Foreseeably, I will only teach German next year, but I want to make sure I’m sending my current Spanish students to the next level with confidence and skills, so I was interested in seeing what this session suggested in terms of aligning with other colleagues. I really loved the protocol Bailey and Whyard presented and think it could be very powerful for departmental conversations.

Where I still struggle is finding the time to do this work. The long term ROI for me personally is kind of low because I might not be teaching Spanish next year, so I tend to invest my time in things that will make my immediate planning for five different courses more manageable. We have been doing a smaller version of this protocol in my department this year by all trying out Puedos as ways of designating appropriate skill checkpoints in our Spanish curriculum, and it’s been helpful to open conversations about what’s needed and then taught at each level.

This session also reminded me that I should collaborate more with others, for a couple reasons. One: hopefully, it would eventually lessen my workload by distributing the creation/curation of resources. Two: by doing some grading calibration of assignments, I could figure out appropriate expectations for each level of German I teach (for which I create my own curricula), and talk in a more concentrated way with colleagues about how we get students to those expectations. It’s hard feeling like you’re doing everything alone. Part of it is that I am an Einzelgänger in some respects, and the other part is that I just don’t have time to seek out collaborative relationships with other German teachers in my area. But dang it, I’m going to try!

Making Authentic Materials More Comprehensible Without Changing a Word (Maria Goebert)

I’m trying to build more #authres into all of my units as I flesh out my curriculum, so I’m always looking for new ways to use them. Goebert’s process was pretty straightforward: take a text, and highlight certain categories of essential information in the same color (who, what, when, where, causes, effects, whatever you could want, each with its own color). Then, have students fill in graphic organizers to show their understanding of the categorizations and information from the text. Finally, give students another text on the same topic, and have them highlight the information relevant to the categorizations they worked with earlier using the same colors. (So, same color used for the “who” in both articles, same color for the “where,” and so on.)

I think this is a cool idea – it helps students focus on the specific information they really need to understand the text. Sometimes, blocks of texts in the L2 can just feel massive, and this helps narrow the focus and concentrate on the really key info. For high fliers or heritage speakers, they can certainly go beyond the highlighted info to read and learn more. Something for everyone!

ACTFL’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee Listening Session

ACTFL’s DEI committee held a session to hear people out about their areas of focus in making ACTFL a more accessible, equitable organization. I got a friendly invite from a committee member to come, and was happy I did.

The session was closed for photos, recordings, and the like, but I feel comfortable sharing the question that I came to the session with: how does ACTFL vet (if at all) the vendors in the exhibit hall for each convention, especially when there were vendors on the floor this year with documented histories of contributing directly to structural inequities?

I felt confirmed in the importance of posing this question at the listening session when I saw this tweet from Carrie Toth about something she purchased in the exhibit hall. We have to demand better materials – our students deserve culturally-sustaining reading materials and curricula – and I am so appreciative of all teacher-leaders who use their platform to make these demands.

Representation and Multiculturalism in Comprehensible Input Readers (Dorie Conlon Perugini, Pam Wesely, and Diane Neubauer)

I am very proud to work with the Language Learner Literature Advisory Board, serving this year as the President of the Board. We provide feedback on language learner literature (CI readers, novelettes, etc.) with regards to issues of identity and positive representation. Through this work, we’ve read and reviewed tons of books and discovered how many of them contain harmful, disrespectful tropes. Students need CI to build their language system, but that language always conveys a message, so we want to make sure that the books we put in our students’ hands are transmitting positive, culturally-sustaining messages about cultures and people (in addition to providing compelling input).

This presentation dovetailed very nicely into the work we’ve done with LLLAB: the presenters did a survey of 90 language learner books (30 each across 3 languages) to see who was represented in the texts, and how. Confirming our readings of individual titles through LLLAB, their study found that language learner literature is overwhelmingly white, male, and heterosexual. Additionally, they found that most texts have little or no cross-cultural representation, meaning that the titles we are serving our learners just serve to reinforce US-American cultural viewpoints about the world. This can lead learners to believing that cultures are monolithic entities expressed through one ethnicity, or by the government of a nation, and that culture is something that is static across time.

I had so many thoughts during this presentation. Again, it confirmed from a birds-eye view what we had seen in up-close discussions of particular books: there are many books for language learners that represent and reinforce majority stereotypes. There remains a great need for readers across a greater variety of genres, as well as representing more aspects of identity ((dis)ability, mental health, neurodiversity, religion/faith, LGBTQ+ issues, etc.). I encourage you, reader, to find a community of CI teacher-authors and think about writing a novel yourself. At the very least, audit the books you already have on your shelves, and see what adjustments need to be made to your classroom library. Additionally, our community needs to find ways to support authors from minoritized identities in creating texts from their own voices so that the representation in these works remains thoughtful, positive, and nuanced.

We can also build our learners’ critical awareness of what they read by having them complete an audit of the books they are reading. I thought this could be a whole-class activity: after doing the Free Reading for the day, stop to take a tally of the genders of the characters in the books we’re currently reading, the skin color(s), how the male, female, and nonbinary characters are represented, and so on. I think it would be very revealing to everyone involved – what are we reading? What are we not reading?

I was very thankful for this presentation and look forward to when the research is published so I can share it far and wide!

Phew!

That was Saturday! I have two more posts with reflections from Friday and Sunday, as well, if this has served you in any way. Happy reading and stay reflective!

ACTFL 2022 Reflections: Friday

This was my third ACTFL, and I’m noticing that it always feels the same: whirlwind, like I didn’t do enough, FOMO even while being there.

But I have definitely felt refreshed today while teaching, and looking at the list of sessions I attended, I got lots of the inspiration that I needed to continue through the doldrums of the winter. Here are the sessions I attended on Friday (too many thoughts for one post!), as well as my main reflections from being in those sessions. Where possible, I have linked social media accounts/websites/presentations from each presenter so you can also go check them out!

This Can Be Done: Materials for a Task-Based Curriculum (Dr. Claudia Fernández)

Tasks always seemed to be BVP’s pedagogical goal, but I have never felt comfortable claiming I knew exactly how to implement and evaluate them. Dr. Fernández’ presentation helped me feel more secure in what they are and how to build up to them.

In a Task-based curriculum, we are aiming to create conditions for language use in class. This means that we are setting students up to communicate: having goals with non-linguistic purposes: psychosocial, cognitive-informational, entertainment. Or, in plainer English, exchanging information to build relationships with others, learning something or sharing our own learning, or just being creative and having fun. Dr. Fernández said she doesn’t go to the ACTFL conference to practice her English as an L2 learner; she goes to give information to others about her professional experience. She has her communicative purpose!

This reminded me of one of the main through lines I found while reading Common Ground: always asking, “What are we going to do with this information?” Often, adding good Bloom’s Taxonomy-style verbs to our Task goals (rank, decide, design, convince, etc.) help add that purpose and make the Tasks more…Task-y. This helps the heavily input-based “pedagogical tasks” (as Dr. Fernández calls them) still maintain their communicative nature while building towards the final “target task.” I often think that it goes “input input input input TASK,” where the “input” is just trying to “expose” students to the necessary language via comprehensible input in whatever medium, but they need to be doing those actions listed above to keep it all communicative. What do students DO with any input?

I’m still mulling this over (and trying to be clearer with myself about the communicative goals of any given lesson), but this helped me synthesize some understanding of how to move towards a Task-based curriculum.

Incorporating BIPOC Practices and Products in the ML Classroom (Ben Tinsley)

[I am a huge Tinz fan (and work with him on LLLAB) so I’ll try not to gush too hard.] I ended up coming late to Ben’s presentation because I walked out of another one (woops), AND YET I still had my brain going wooooosh with the great ideas he was sharing.

One thing that really clicked for me during this presentation is the true power of context. Providing comprehended input is not just doing the fundamental CI skills (writing on the board, slowing down, using cognates, etc.). It is also building the context for the language and information to make sense in, and for the learning to find its seat in. This can be a story, a photo, a calendar, whatever.

Ben uses Map Talks to teach his students about the geography and cultures of countries with which his students might be less familiar, providing the context for learning about the products, practices, and perspectives of Black and brown French speakers across the world. My brain blast came when I realized that Map Talks can contextualize LITERALLY EVERYTHING.

A map is something students at the high school level know well enough as a schema, and it is easier to map any new language onto something that is very familiar to them. When we start discussing the 3 Ps after giving context with a Map Talk, students have a greater understanding of where even in the world we’re talking about, as well as what human geographical influences may have shaped those 3 Ps. Holy cow.

No joke, I planned Map Talks for 3 levels of German during this session that 100% made sense with everything I am presently teaching, and will provide such rich context to the cultural information and new language we are learning. Level 1 is going to talk about the hobbies of German youth based on a series of video interviews? Map Talk shows them where those kids live and how their area may have shaped their interests. Level 2 is talking about houses and dwellings in Germany and Switzerland? Boom Map Talk, the materials for those houses have to come from somewhere, and the climate will influence how the house has to be shaped. Level 3 learning about the education system of Germany? Boom Map Talk they get to see the 16 Bundesländer that each set their own education policies, and situate Germany’s notable universities in their geographic contexts. Boom goes the Map Talk! (Oops, I gushed, as I foresaw…)

This presentation also reminded me that even though there are no majority-Black German-speaking nations, there are still communities of Black German speakers across the world. My education, very much in white spaces, did not teach me about those communities, so I will have to do some searching for myself. (This had an influence on the sessions I ended up picking for Saturday!) If I don’t, there is a non-zero risk that my Black and brown students will hardly see themselves in my curriculum, and I don’t create the conditions for them to become joyful German users.

Alle für alle: Supporting LGBT+ Students in the Language Classroom (Alysha Holmquist Posner, Mariah Ligas, and me!)

I was lucky to present with my WA German teacher bestie and our awesome East Coast colleague Mariah (met her for the first time about an hour before the presentation!) on a topic that is incredibly important to me. Click the link above for access to our slideshow, with resources in Spanish, French, German, and more!

One thing that came out of this was a conversation I had with a teacher after our presentation was over. She was worried about teaching her nonbinary student a “wrong” pronoun or one that “people don’t use or understand.” It is tough for us language teachers in the US to find access points to discourse about gender and language from here – nothing beats actually being in community with other LGBTQ+ people to see how they talk about their lives. From afar, we have to do our very best to piece together what we can through lots of online research.

Whenever I do teach “xier” as a nonbinary pronoun in German, for example, I make sure to let students know that some German speakers may not recognize it, either because of not having heard of it yet or because they deny the existence of nonbinary people. (And then they might have linguistic qualms with it!) I also explain that there may be more NB pronouns that are less common, but still used. (Neopronouns abound!) I think ultimately, a nonbinary learner asking for information about this is seeking mostly to know that their nonbinary identity will be validated 1) in the language used in class and 2) by their instructor. It will take learners time to find the intuitively “right” pronoun in the L2 as they increase their exposure to the language. We can be their language guide and show them one nonbinary pronoun, validating them in our language and inclusion of their identities in the class. If we commit to this, and to continuing to learn, I think we’ll be alright.

Phew!

That was just Friday! I ended my evening with a great dinner with a colleague, and then some chats in the Omni lobby with so many teachers that I respect and admire. Not a bad deal for Day 1. I have two more posts with reflections from Saturday and Sunday, as well, if this has served you in any way. Happy reading and stay reflective!

Think For One Extra Second When Choosing Hot-Topic-Discussion Content

I’m writing this post from the airport in Boston, where I had a wonderful time at the ACTFL Convention meeting online friendos (haaaayyy!), and where I learned from some really inspiring, skilled educators. What a gift it was to have been here!

I’ve been thinking about a discussion that comes up on Language Teacher Social Media every once in a while: is Comprehension-Based Communicative Language Teaching (CCLT) inherently more equitable than legacy approaches? A few years ago, I may have quickly answered, “Yes!” Learners need lots of comprehended input to build their linguistic systems and be able to draw on them to communicate, and the learning of grammar rules and memorized vocabulary do not contribute much to building that fluent communicative competence, especially at the Novice level of proficiency.

Through the ensuing discussions I’ve been a part of on social media and the work I have done with LLLAB, I have changed my answer. I don’t think any method, approach, technique, what have you can be “inherently” more equitable because language does not exist in a vacuum as such. Methods, approaches, and techniques that work “better” for more language learners can still be instruments of harm.

When we communicate with our students, helping to build their implicit systems, we communicate content. We communicate messages. And these messages have an impact on the thoughts and emotions of our learners, which may change their level of willingness to even engage with the communication/input at all. It may also lower their willingness to engage with anything they perceive as “too different” from themselves. If the messages we communicate are comprehensible, but “other” our students, and/or reinforce stereotypes or disrespectful conceptions of other cultures, that’s not “inherently equitable.” Language always has content.

Well-meaning CCLT teachers may try to inspire communication in their classes by selecting content that they know their students will react to – something that students are interested in, something funny, something controversial. Nothing feels better than when students scoot to the edges of their seats, eagerly waiting their turn to contribute to the class conversation about something interesting. I want to use this post to make this recommendation to teachers as we are trying to pick content for our courses:

Think for one extra second when choosing hot-topic-discussion content.

If you are exploring the theme of Health and your prompt to get students to communicate is a photo of the bare torso of a plus-sized man, head out of frame, what messages does that send to your students about the humanity and worth of family or friends with that body type? What if they themselves have that body type? What if the class gasps in disgust? (I have been doing some learning and unlearning about anti-fat bias via the Maintenance Phase podcast, which I can’t recommend enough.)

If you choose to talk about a slideshow titled “Weird Breakfasts from Around the World,” how are you prompting students to react to foods that may very well be the breakfast foods of their classmates? Do you feel comfortable potentially labeling the eating habits of your students’ families as “weird?” Why not approach the same topic without the evaluative label of “weird,” and instead with curiosity?

If you display photos of any sorts of spaces in other countries (schools, homes, public spaces, etc.) from the angle of what they don’t have compared to your community, do you feel comfortable presenting another culture as deficient compared to the home culture? And do you feel comfortable potentially presenting areas of the Global South in confirmation of widely-held stereotypes, presenting them as monoliths of deficiency?

I am with you: I want students to talk, to engage, to see and learn new things. It is fun when students get a prompt and a conversation ignites immediately. But we have to take the small amount of extra time to wonder if the materials we select reinforce negative ideas about people and cultures that deserve dignity and respect, for there are many ways of living in this world.

This is hard work. Let’s keep learning and unlearning together.

Reflections from the 2021-2022 School Year

Phew. The last day of school was only 12 days ago, but so much has happened in my personal (and even professional) life in those 12 days that it feels like a lifetime ago. Despite my best efforts, this summer will be as packed and crazy as my last two, so I’m looking to carve out time for reflection on the lessons from last year, lest the time escape me and I collapse like a dying star when we have to start up again in August. So, here are some reflections from our first year back in the classroom full time since the beginning of the pandemic:

It’s Time to Raise the Bar

Most days, right after school, my Spanish teacher colleague Laurel and I take a walk around our school and neighborhood. We chat for ~30 minutes about whatever comes up – sometimes it’s reflections from our teaching day, sometimes rants about unruly classes, sometimes it’s just talking about what’s going on in our personal lives. I always feel refreshed and reoriented after these chats, because they get me away from my computer right after school and help me process lots of stuff. If you read this and take anything away, let it be that you find a Laurel for after-school walks!

Many of our final conversations towards the end of the year were, of course, looking ahead to the 2022-2023 school year. The pandemic has taken so much from all of us, from just about every aspect of our lives, and has required us as teachers to be dealers of grace: not only to our students, but also to ourselves as professionals. There was so much from The Before Times that we just had to let go, because we could see that our students (and sometimes the exhausted professionals we saw when looking in the mirror) were just maxed out with all the upheaval and change.

But the agitation of all that change seems to be settling a bit, for better or worse. Maintaining the empathy and SEL skills that we have learned from these past two school years, it might be time for us to start raising the bar of our expectations a little bit. We want to make the most of our time with our students and see where denying ourselves the easy way out (with behaviors, learning, whatever) helps students flourish even more as they build their competencies. These last two years were definitely not a waste, but we, carefully and lovingly, want to push for more now.

An aspect of this conversation was definitely our students’ relationships to their cell phones, and the impact that they have on our jobs. I won’t get into that here because there is, uh, plenty of great writing about that online right now, but it has helped to see that other teachers have struggled with this these past two years and are looking to try to demand more from their students, as well.

Moving My Posters Around

Last year was the first year I had a classroom allllll to myself, and I have to admit to not being the best decorator slash practical user of wall space. (Luckily, this is one of the many strong suits of my husband-to-be, phew.) I am going to demolish some old (bad) displays I have in my room to make way for spots for the Sweet 16 verbs (also written about here by Mike Peto), common classroom phrases (“Excuse me?” “Can you give an example?” “Can you repeat that?”), and also rejoinders. I think these will be crucial in giving students language with which to create their own responses to what’s going on in class, as well as remind me to recycle these super important bits of language over and over throughout the year.

More Retells

Input is what drives acquisition, but I’ve found my students build a sense of momentum in their language journey by remarking how retelling class stories becomes easier over the course of the year. The first retell is a little bit of a struggle, but it gets better as we go! I tried Blind Retells for the first time this year, and they seemed to go really well. Plus – it’s actually a secret input activity!

Rejoinders / Passwords

I was using both rejoinders and passwords in The Before Times, but they fell by the wayside as we adapted to the many changes coming our way. Time to bring them back! My third years (who were in their first year when things went sideways) brought them up a couple times this year, so I think they stuck out as something cool / helpful /important.

Ungrading

I recently read a fascinating book about Ungrading, a collection of essays by practitioners at different educational institutions about how they go about reducing the importance of grading within their courses while also increasing student ownership of the course content and also their learning outcomes. I am always uncomfortable with grades – they are so arbitrary and not helpful – especially as they relate to the messy work of acquiring a language. I would like to decrease their relevance in my classes as much as possible, while also not uh…getting in trouble at my place of employment.

To that end, I want to see if I can move towards a more portfolio-based assessment system with clear goals that students can personalize and work toward. Part of that will be changing my listening/reading quizzes from having “A/B/C” rubrics to just listing the approximate performance/proficiency level the student demonstrated instead, so that the emphasis is on building performances towards lasting proficiency.

Additionally, I want to try to give only feedback (no grades) on writing and speaking performances as much as I can get away with. Students just look at grades on assignments and trash the rest, so I want to make sure my feedback is actually doing something for them and that it doesn’t go to waste. They have to be able to do something with it, which might end up being revisions and resubmissions. Sooooo that will require a bit more thinking as well, as red-pen-ifying a piece of writing (or a speaking sample) doesn’t do much for a student’s acquisition. But some kids want that red pen! I’ll be thinking on this a lot.

Choosing / Creating Rubrics That Show Growth

I learned a lot from my Avant ADVANCE training about what the different proficiency sublevels actually look like. I think that this knowledge could help me craft better writing/speaking continua that help students see the stair steps they are making towards higher proficiency. They need to be granular enough to be able to demonstrate growth, but student-friendly / not crazy technical. I started creating a writing continuum based on that training, but I think it needs a lot of work for me to feel comfortable using it as a tool for my students’ reflection and learning.

Writing Moves for Each Level

There are certain phrases that came up as part of the Avant training (“Added Details”, “Complex Components”, “Transition Words”) that, again, are a little opaque to our novice learners, but they are the markers that help move them from one level to the next. I’m thinking of creating little cheat sheets of prepositions, conjunctions, and transition words, and then angling my use of them toward the levels that “need them” to move up to the next proficiency level. These could be good reminders to me to keep everything as rich as possible in class (so I don’t just resort to making them memorize the lists), while also being a nice resource for the students who actually do want something to study while at home. Mike Peto also has these brilliant magnets for whiteboards that remind everyone to draw these vital words into our Write and Discuss to make it flow better.

More Backwards Planning from Authentic Resources

My relationship to #authres is that it’s fine-ish if (and only if) I can find ways to use it comprehensibly without breaking my brain / spending 8,000 years preparing ancillary materials. I generally think that time is better spent providing more comprehensible input to students vs. having them hunt-and-peck for words and phrases in otherwise incomprehensible texts. But some things have just proven to be interesting conversation pieces, if just a bit above where my students are. So, I want to be more intentional about creating Embedded Readings or front-loading vocab for stuff that is really cool and merits a closer look.

Using AP Cultural Comparison Prompts as Research Questions

AP was kind of my Big Fail for this year. I taught it as part of a combined Level 3 / AP German class and I never found the correct balance between the two courses. Lots of students expressed frustration about it, and I was frustrated, too. There didn’t seem to be a logical throughline to the course, so I’m brainstorming ways to make that happen next year.

One idea I got from my AP German training last year was to take all of the Cultural Comparison questions that the College Board has generated over the years, assign one to each student, and make that student the “expert” on that area of culture. It allows them to go deeper on one specific topic and its related vocabulary, perhaps even teaching it to their classmates, and helps me broaden their cultural horizons in a way that also prepares them for that exam. That exam I love so much. What an exam. (Muffled screaming)

Answer Questions That Regularly Come Up for Our Whole Department

As department chair, I fielded some questions from parents at an incoming freshman night that I think would be powerful to answer as a department. There is quite a bit of diversity in teaching philosophy / beliefs in my department, which I think ends up being okay because there seems to be a lot of alignment within the languages themselves. That being said, it’s important for us, in both defending our jobs and promoting our content area, to be able to compellingly answer, “What does a successful language learner do to create that success?” “Why is it worth studying a language for more than two years?” “How can the home adults support a student studying a language they don’t know?” Having a, er, common language for this can help us promote our department and hopefully create stable enrollments (a historical problem for us as elective teachers). As we all know, there are plenty of adults who had poor language learning experiences in high school and can’t imagine the magic we create nowadays. 😉

What were your reflections from this year? Let me know what’s been on your mind as we transition out of the school year and go into summer mode!

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!