The Mysterious Person – A Community-Building Review Game

One of the tricky bits of acquisition-drive language instruction is providing meaningful, contextualized repetitions of new language without simply repeating the same sentences over and over again, or beating new information to death with a battery of activities that sap the fun out of what was learned. The Mysterious Person in a game that always has my students at the edge of their seats, processing language to win against their classmates.

Why should you play? Because the Mysterious Person is a fun way to get in repetitions on new language and information, while also insuring that you and the class are building greater knowledge of each others’ lives.

When do I use the Mysterious Person?

The Mysterious Person is a great review game that you can start using after about the first or second week of class, and whenever you like thereafter. You need enough shared class experiences so that students know information about each other (or figures from the Target Culture, perhaps!), which is the material for the game.

How do I do it? – Logistics

This can be played with no prep, or minimal prep!

No prep: Literally, you’re just making up the prompts/descriptions on the spot and providing them orally. (If you Just Can’t, you could also write them on the white board or doc cam.) Rely either on your own memory of what the class has learned together, or a compiled Write and Discuss document, for inspiration.

Minimal prep: Type up some descriptions of students from a given class, which you can project for your students to see. (I use the “Fade In One Paragraph At A Time” transition to make sure we’re focused on one description at a time.) These are descriptions using known information (preferences, ambitions, physical descriptions, etc.) that slowly get more specific so as to point towards one student that everyone knows about.

How do I do it? – Procedure

  1. Tell the class (probably in L2) that you are going to describe a Mysterious Person, who is someone from our very own class! If they know who the person is, they should raise their hand to give their guess.
  2. Using known language and your skills for comprehensibility, describe someone from the class. I recommend starting with the most general/vague (“The mysterious person…is a girl…” “The mysterious person…is wearing glasses…”) and slowly getting more specific (“The mysterious person likes…to read…comic books…” “The mysterious person is a girl…who is wearing glasses…and the glasses…are black…”). This helps you get in a lot of language input, while also keeping students on their toes.
  3. Describe the Mysterious Person as much as you care to, and then take guesses from the class – only from raised hands. If a student guesses wrong, celebrate them anyways, and then repeat the description! (I only allow each individual to guess once each “round.”)
  4. If a student guesses correctly, celebrate! Then: repeat the description, using the student’s name. I usually confirm with the student that everything I said was correct. You might also spell the student’s name in the L2 on the board, just for fun.
  5. After celebrating the guesser and the Mysterious Person, start describing a new Mysterious Person! Keep going until you run out of time, run out of known information to use as game material, or the class runs out of gas for playing the game.

What do I do with it now that we’ve finished?

This game is a great way to synthesize any new information you’ve learned about your students, and also retrieve old information from students’ memories! This leads nicely into an activity like Write and Discuss, where you co-create a written summary of the class conversation. (This can also serve you in the future as reminders to you as the instructor of what has been learned about the class. I have a horrifically bad memory, so I rely a lot on each class’ Write and Discuss document to have material for each Mysterious Person game.)

This activity can also be a nice sponge activity if you have a few awkward minutes, so maybe now that you’re finished – brrrrring! The period’s over and your kids played a fun review game.

Pro Tips!

  1. Add rules to prevent wild guessing! Students sometimes get squirrelly and want to guess after the first syllable. One rule I have used is that if someone guesses correctly, their whole row/group gets some sort of prize (points, stickers, candy, etc.), but if someone guesses incorrectly, the whole row/group cannot answer for the rest of that round. This helps put the brakes on students guessing at random without listening to the information.
  2. Don’t tolerate blurting! Blurting ruins the fun for everyone. If a student blurts an answer, you can 1) eliminate them from guessing for a round, 2) eliminate their row/group from guessing for a round, 3) make them write their answers on paper or a whiteboard, or 4) just end the game. Preempt this by modeling how to answer as part of the instructions, and cutting the game short if students aren’t ready to follow instructions.
  3. Weave in physical descriptions! I have had a hard time working on physical descriptions in my lower level classes – I just never seem to incorporate them as a topic somehow – so The Mysterious Person is an easy way to weave in tall/short, hair and eye colors, glasses, clothing, etc.
  4. Use famous people, perhaps from the Target Culture! This game is not only limited to the people in the classroom: you can also bring in figures from your school community, or people you have learned about from the Target Culture(s).
  5. Learn more about your students! If you’re struggling to come up with material to play the game with, it may be time to learn more about your students through other strategies, like Card Talk, Special Person Interviews, or Small Talk.

What if I want to learn more?

I wasn’t able to find tons of resources related to The Mysterious Person game, but I did find this great video of a teacher playing the game with her middle school French class!

What do you think? Do you feel ready to play The Mysterious Person? Comment below and send me any questions you might have!

Special Person Interviews – Making Students The Stars of Your Curriculum!

I tend to forget about Special Person Interviews for a while, and then when I start doing them again and kids are CLAMORING to be interviewed in front of the class in German, I’m like…what have I even been doing? They are easily adapted to align with curricular goals, interesting, and FUN.

Why should you do Special Person Interviews? There is no easier way to make your students the stars of your curriculum than by literally making them the “Estrella del día” / “Stern des Tages” / “Class Superstar” for an entire lesson! Students also get natural modeling of so much beautiful language, and, as Mike Peto says, we can effectively model the Interpersonal skills of thoughtful, engaged conversation for our learners. We need these skills perhaps now more than ever.

When do I use Special Person Interviews?

The Special Person Interview occupies the “Input” portion of your lesson, creating a common experience for your students as they engage in the interview of one of their classmates. It is highly recommended to follow up with some oral or written review of the information learned in the interview during the same period the interview is completed, and to do a Write and Discuss to summarize and review the information you learn about your Special Person!

As for when in the school year to do Special Person Interviews: I recommend doing them early in the school year, and regularly throughout the year thereafter. The Special Person Interview process establishes students’ lives as the focus of the curriculum, build community and connections between students, and build student skill in listening and responding during whole-class interactions.

How do I do it? – Logistics

The first step to conducting a Special Person Interview is…finding a Special Person! This could be any student, and maybe after a while, anyone from your school community. You definitely want to pick someone who shows some interest in being interviewed / being a star. An unwilling interviewee will likely give you very short, deflective answers that won’t be compelling to your class and won’t give you much language to work with as the instructor. I generally sweeten the deal by rolling out my Very Cool Swiveling Teacher Chair from behind my desk for the Special Person to sit on during the interview, and you might offer a cool prop or costume item if that’s your style. (And if all else fails…stickers…)

Ahead of the interview, you will also want to prepare about 5 interview questions. That doesn’t sound like very many, but between the follow-up questions that you end up asking to get more details, the reactions from the class, and your comprehension checks / review questions, you will likely end up with an entire period’s worth of conversation that you have to cut off for lack of time. If you have questions that you know that can be simpler to answer (“How old are you?” “Where do you live?” etc.), you can fill those in as makes sense, too, but 5 juicy questions are a safe bet.

You will likely get the most compelling answers if you allow your students to answer with a short response in the L1 (designate ahead of time “a phrase or single sentence” “2-3 words”) so that you can reframe the response in the L2 to control the flow of new language. Remind the class that though the class is interviewing the Special Person, the instructor is the one framing the interview and keeping it in the L2 so we can meet our two goals of 1) learning more about our classmates and 2) learning lots of L2. (Obviously, if the class has the proficiency and confidence to ask questions and follow ups…GO FOR IT! That is when it gets really fun for you and them.)

I display the questions on slides like the one shown below, with an option for the student to answer in a sentence in the language. This models different language forms very naturally for the class and gives high flyers a chance to try out some L2 for themselves. You can always prompt the interviewee to respond with the 1st person form once you have introduced any needed new language, which also helps recycle the information for the class as listeners.

This year’s most compelling answer: “moldy spinach.” Our Star had seen some really terrifying moldy spinach, but chosen not to eat it. (Phew.)

How do I do it? – Procedure

  1. Introduce the Special Person Interview to the class. I always try to frame it as the class interviewing a local celebrity who is really cool…someone in our class! You can accept volunteers, skillfully select an outgoing student who is game for most things, ask a student ahead of time and then announce them, or pick randomly (with the option to decline). To avoid the awkwardness of uneven clapping volumes for more or less popular kids in the class, I always prompt the class for a “dignified golf clap” as they take their seat in the SPECIAL CHAIR or don the SPECIAL WIG.
  2. Introduce the “Star of the Day” “Special Person” “German Class Superstar” or whatever you end up calling your interviewee. It usually goes something like this for me:
    “(in L2) This is Billybob! The class says, ‘Hello, Billybob!'” “HELLO, BILLYBOB!”
    “The class says, ‘Good day, Billybob!'” “GOOD DAY, BILLYBOB!”
    (something silly or ridiculous) (the class repeats that)
    AND THEN: I spell the interviewee’s name out loud and on the board in the L2, confirming with them once I am done.
  3. Quietly instruct the interviewee in L1 to answer however they feel comfortable, but try to keep it to [your limit of L1] for the answer. Tell them you’ll have sentence starters on the screen if they want to try to respond in L2, and of course, you as the instructor will help!
  4. Instruct the class that their job today is to learn information about their classmate’s life, react to what they learn in the L2, and answer any review questions you have for them!
  5. Pose your first question with linguistic support. Repeat the question in L2 as the Special Person thinks, pointing at the supports you have on the board (translations, images, etc.), and maybe slip in a reminder to keep their response either in the TL or within [your limit of L1].
  6. Depending on how the interviewee responds, either reframe their response in the TL, adding anything to the board that may help (the new terms plus translation/images/etc.), or just repeat what they said back to them (in the 2nd person). Then, report out to the class in the 3rd person, prompting for reactions if the info is especially interesting, or perhaps a “Me too!” if the class has commonalities with the interviewee. (Credit to Annemarie Chase for this!)
  7. Ask natural follow up questions. Shelter the language in the follow up questions to known language or that which you can easily support, such as with Sweet 16 postings or question word posters. It is easy to introduce tons of new vocabulary words in a lesson with open-ended questions, but we have to be careful to not overload our students with mountains of new language. I try to set a limit for myself of how much new language I allow into an interview, such as just down one side of my whiteboard.
  8. Bounce between interviewing the Special Person, and comparing / reviewing with the class. This helps with class engagement. I typically try to ask the class a similar question with a “yes/no” answer, or something that can be answered with a hand raise so as to not get lost in a side conversation. (“Class, are you also afraid of spinach?” “Billybob said he has a cat. Who has a cat? Who has a dog? Who has a hamster?” etc.) Once I’ve moved on beyond a question, I always try to go back and review what we’ve learned by asking review questions. (“What did Billybob say he was afraid of, again? Oh yeah, he’s afraid of moldy spinach. Did he eat the moldy spinach that he saw? No way!”)
  9. Linger on each question for as long as there is interest and material. Again, it’s prudent to limit the amount of brand new language that is generated from an interview, so keep that in mind as you follow up with the student. The length of the interview and follow up questions will likely correlate to the proficiency of your students – teach to their eyes, and keep track of how confidently they are following along and responding.
  10. Celebrate the Special Person at the end of the interview, perhaps bestowing upon them a sticker (kids love stickers at any age), or Knighthood in the Micronation of Fisherlandia. (Wait that might only work out in my specific classroom…)

What do I do with it now that we’ve finished?

Review review review! You likely just learned some cool new info about one of your students through the interview. Oral questioning (of the whole class or maybe individuals) can be a simple, but effective, follow up.

If you’ve done a couple interviews, you can play The Mysterious Person by describing someone from the class with info that the class has learned, and having students guess who is being described. This is a fun way to recycle language and also make sure that you are regularly making students’ lives the center of the curriculum: it’s hard to play Mysterious Person if you don’t keep learning new information about your students!

Always following up with a Write and Discuss helps turn the interview, which was mostly sound, into written language. In addition to modeling strong writing in the L2 and helping connect sound to form, this can become material for a class yearbook, a comic about the student’s life, or a display about the students in your class!

Rounding off the period with a Quick Quiz gives students one more recycling of the new language from the interview, gives you as the instructor formative assessment data on student comprehension, and gives the whole experience a “school-y” sheen.

Pro Tips!

  1. Ask natural follow up questions! Through this process, we are modeling conversation skills in the L2, so if a follow up question comes to mind based on the student’s response, ask it! You’re doing this on behalf of your class, who may not yet have the L2 to ask the question but want to learn more!
  2. “With whom?” and “Where?” are often great follow up questions! If you draw a blank when trying to pose follow up questions, these two power questions are often very interesting to pursue. Generally, leaning on question word posters will give you the inspiration you need for a follow up question.
  3. Go slow! If we want to model being a thoughtful conversation partner, it is natural to react, repeat, and rephrase the things we hear about. If you need to stall to think of a good next question, just repeat what you just learned. That is much better than rushing through to fill the silence and feeling frantic.
  4. Switch up the questions! Mike Peto recommends coming up with a new set of 5 questions after using them for about a week, and Annemarie Chase builds up from having her first interviewee answer just about 5 questions, to a slideshow of almost 20 questions. Maybe not all 20 questions get asked, but the idea is to add variety and build on students’ growing proficiency.
  5. Switch up who gets interviewed! Why not bring in a person (whether or not they speak the L2) from the community to be a Special Person? This could include L2 speakers from your community, your administrators, or L2-speaking friends and colleagues from across the world!
  6. Switch up who does the interviewing! I sometimes ask for volunteers to read the questions off the board, and then I (the instructor) reframe and ask the follow up questions. Students with more language might be able to do some follow up questioning of their own!
  7. Orient your questions towards the unit you’re teaching! If you have a pacing calendar to keep up with, or certain themes/vocab that you need to hit every year, use the Special Person interviews to introduce, deepen, or reinforce those themes. Here were some questions from a “Food Unit” that were super engaging for one of my German classes and helped reinforce tons of relevant vocabulary:
    – What did you eat this morning for breakfast?
    – What can you cook?
    – What is the name of your favorite restaurant and what do you order there?
    – What food do you personally find gross?
    – What is a food that you could eat every day?
  8. …or don’t! Maybe your goal is not “hitting this specific vocab,” but rather, “learning more information about my class.” That is a very worthy goal – pick questions that you think would be fun and interesting for your students!
  9. Teach rejoinders to help the class stay engaged! If students have a way to react to the new information that they’re learning, they will more likely stay engaged in the TL. Easy ones to start with are “Me too!” and “How cool/interesting!” (Credit again to Annemarie for this idea!)

What if I want to learn more?

I am so lucky to have learned about Special Person Interviews from Bryce Hedstrom, whose post here is a response to someone who had been trying Special Person Interviews and was experiencing some frustration. His response is clear, helpful, and illustrative! Here is a video where he discusses Special Person Interviews with La Libre Language Learning.

I refined my approach to Special Person Interviews after learning more from Mike Peto, who has a great primer on them in his CI Master Class (paid subscription necessary). This free blog post discusses how to make the most of the “untargeted” approach to these interviews and provide students with lots of repetition, interest, and joy.

This post by Annemarie Chase is a treasure trove of Special Person/Star of the Day ideas. Her ideas for keeping the class involved are (mind explosion noises) and I am immediately stealing.

Cécile Lainé created this post as an FAQ document for Special Person interviews, and has potential questions aligned to ACTFL proficiency levels, graphic organizers if the instructor wants, and a helpful list of ways one might follow up on the interview process.

Here is a video of Brett Chonko conducting a Special Person interview in one of his classes. Lots of great stuff happening in this video – and it’s great to see the process happen live with real students!

What do you think? Do you feel ready to use Special Person Interviews? Comment below and send me any questions you might have!

Warm Ups – Getting Language Flowing Before Class Begins!

Warm Ups (Do Nows / Bell Ringers / Entrance Tasks / etc.) inspire mixed feelings, according to my conversations with other educators. Some don’t want to deal with the paperwork of having students do that writing every day (and are unsure how much follow up / checking of the warm up sheets to do), or want to give students a chance to breathe a bit between classes before jumping into academic content. Others value the structure it provides to the beginning of class and appreciate the time it gives the teacher to breathe before jumping into academic content. (Jon Cowart lays out his arguments here for how having a Do Now procedure helps with strong classroom management.)

I appreciate the time it gives me as the teacher to take care of administrative tasks: taking attendance in a timely manner, signing stuff for students going on field trips, checking in with individuals. I also use my very simple warm up sheet as a note catcher for new vocabulary, grammar pop ups, and a place to write down the weekly password into our class. Warm Ups also remind me to spiral and retrieve older content in a more structured way instead of always forging forward. I try to make mine mostly input-focused, but scaffolded output is also possible!

Here was my Warm Up slide from the day I wrote this post!

Here are the formats I generally use for Warm Ups – I hope they serve you!

L2 -> L1 TranslationThis is a go-to for me: take sentences from a recent story, conversation, using recent vocab, whatever and have students translate them to English. This helps review previous content, see the written form of the language, and review any grammatical differences between the languages.
L1 -> L2 TranslationI use this one a little more sparingly, and only after students have had lots of input on any given structures. This can help students build confidence in their writing skills in the L2 if they see they can put sentences together.
Fill in the Blanks with New VocabCreate sentences that are missing new vocabulary terms to review new terms and build sense of how they fit into new sentences.
Sentence FramesI have seen Steve Smith call this “Start the Sentence” or “Finish the Sentence.” Give students a subject and a verb, and have them finish the sentence as makes sense to them. (“I play…” “I am…” “I have…” “I was…”) AND/OR give them a detail to incorporate into an original sentence. “on the weekend” “with my friends” “German and English”
Question and AnswerJust ask an interesting question! I sometimes provide a sentence starter to get students going, or I just leave the students to respond at their own proficiency level. (Words, phrases, sentences, etc.)
MatchingThis can obviously be done with terms and their definitions in the L1, or terms and pictures, but you can also do this with sentence beginnings and endings. This helps increase the amount of input and builds reading skills.
Reorder SentencesAlso sometimes called a discourse scramble, having students put events in a logical sequence (based on common sense, something discussed in class, or their predictions) can be another great way to get input and build literacy.
Imposter ReadingSometimes this is done with vocabulary terms (“Find the odd one out: corn – carrots – broccoli – pineapple”), but it could just as easily be done with entire sentences. For instance, if you’ve just done a Map Talk, having sentences about the area studied that are plausible, but one describes a different place.
True / False or Multiple ChoiceThese are good at giving sentence level input, and you could really target whatever language you like with this. You could also give an entire paragraph describing someone, for instance, and then have students choose from options of what that person might do in a given scenario.
Always / Sometimes / NeverProvide students with the words in your language for “always,” “sometimes,” and “never,” and then insert them into sentences where they would naturally fall in the language. Students then decide for themselves which is true for the prompt. For example “I (always / sometimes / never) am bored in English class.” “I (always / sometimes / never) sleep in my math class.” “This character (always / sometimes / never) does the right thing.”
Find the CognatesI use this early on in my level 1 classes to build student awareness of cognates: project a reading that is likely far above their level, but which contains cognates. Have students list as many as they can, defining them in the L1. (Works less well for some languages, of course.)
Find the Error(s)Write out some sentences with errors in them, and tell students how many they need to find and correct (or don’t tell them how many!). Use this to point out any tricky grammatical or spelling stuff.
Mysterious PersonDescribe a person in the L2, and have students guess who the person is. It could be a person in the class, in your school community, or from popular culture.
Retrieval GridsJust learned about this one from Steve Smith’s blog – give students a list of sentence elements (verbs conjugated to subjects, objects, added details) and have them create sentences with them. The task could be to create as many sentences as possible, or to make sentences that are purposefully outrageous. When checking, have students read their sentences aloud, and the class could translate them.
Guess What I Did Last WeekendIn preparing this blog post, I keep getting great ideas from Steve Smith: project a chat mat of weekend chat ideas, and have students pose questions in formal language about what you did over the weekend. They pre-write the questions, and then you can answer yes/no or with full sentences + details.
What’s the Question?Display an answer for a question, and have students come up with as many possible questions to elicit that answer as they can. Even more fun: have the answer be short and slightly ambiguous: “No, not right now.” “I can’t do that since the accident.” Or: focus on specific question words. “By car.” “Yesterday evening, actually!”

How do you start your class? Let me know if you have some more great warm ups below!

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.

The New School Year, Pronouns, and Protecting Your LGBTQ+ Students

As we roll into a new school year, many teachers are thinking about how to make their students feel welcome, comfortable, and connected in their new classes.

I know plenty of teachers who give interest surveys at the beginning of the year, hoping to figure out what makes their students tick (or if you’re Jon Cowart, finding out random facts about your students that you don’t mention until months later, by which time your students have forgotten about the survey and think you’re some sort of wizard). Increasingly, well-meaning teachers have started asking students about their pronouns as a way to help students share more of their identity with their teacher, as well as to normalize the sharing of pronouns in general. This is a really positive development – but let’s talk about ways to make sure we are protecting our LGBTQ+ students while making these moves in our classes.

The Fact That You’re Asking At All

The fact that you’re asking at all might be new for some students. Prepare for follow up questions that may or may not come about why the question is getting asked. I usually use a phrase like, “It is important to me that everyone is able to be their whole self in my class, and pronouns are very much a part of who we are. That’s why I asked!” in response to any inquiries.

For students who may be questioning their gender identity, it may be like you are shining a rainbow Bat-signal into the sky with questions like these, communicating, “you are safe to be yourself here, and I will not be afraid to address topics of identity in class.” Queer students have conveyed their relief to me that a teacher openly discussed issues of gender identity early on in the year, as it helped them feel safer to open up. But this is also a great responsibility for the teacher – the more anyone opens up, the more they make themselves and their identities vulnerable to harassment and derision.

Safety

It may be physically or emotionally unsafe for a student to be “out” in different contexts in their lives. (And really, they do not “owe” us any information about their identities. It is an act of trust to come out in any circumstance.) I have had students who used “they/them” pronouns in my class and with their friends, but nowhere else. I have students who were openly nonbinary in most settings at school, but not at home. I have had students come out to me, but not be ready to tell anyone else. (Again, an act of trust in me to keep them safe.)

Our students’ safety should be our #1 priority. As such, when we receive info about identities that are still controversial to some (for whatever reason), we need to not share that info unless the student gives explicit permission for us to do so in specified contexts.

Students may also get misgendered by peers during your class. If you observe that this as an issue, also check in with the affected student(s) to see how they would like it to be addressed in a way that keeps them emotionally safe. This can look like revisiting classroom expectations around respect, gently correcting the offending student, or empowering the affected student to (re)assert their pronouns.

Consistency

Some trans students shared with me last year that they had some teachers who asked about their pronouns at the beginning of the year, and then did not consistently use them throughout the school year. If a student entrusts you with this information, show them respect by doing your best to be consistent with your language. Slipping up happens, and is easily corrected with a quick, “Sorry, they were thinking that…”

My trans students also shared that they had had teachers who asked about pronouns, and even had safe space stickers in their classrooms, only to have students in those classes make homophobic and transphobic remarks that went unchallenged. This greatly damaged their trust in the teacher, and led them to disengage from the class as a social group, as well as the subject matter.

You are responsible for the learning environment in your classroom. It is uncomfortable to challenge loud voices, but you can practice what you might say as your best self in preparation for moments like these happening in class.

Revisiting

Think back to how many times you changed your hair style, your clothing style, your friend group, etc. while you yourself were in school. It is a time of growth and development for all students, so it is only natural that students may learn more about themselves during the course of their time with you. This can include trying out different pronouns to see if they feel right, “going back” to pronouns they may have used before, or even changing names multiple times. This does no one harm, and is a perfectly normal part of the identity formation process for teens.

In instances of uncertainty, where maybe I had heard the student or the student’s friends use different pronouns for them, I defaulted to a quick, private, “Hey Soandso, pronoun check?” This, followed by a quick, “Thanks! Wanted to be certain I’m doing right by you!” can help provide clarity for you and the student about your commitment to protecting them in your class. Assume nothing – just ask.

It is also illuminating to ask students how they have been treated by others in your class and/or at your school with regards to their identities. We try to catch everything that goes on in our classrooms, but it is normal to miss some things, so asking for that feedback from your student(s) can help you see what your strengths and areas of growth are in creating a safe, brave space for your students. Keep in mind that feedback interactions like this also require a lot of trust from the student (because there is definitely a power imbalance between you and the student in the school environment), and even if that trust is present, you still might just get a teenaged, “yeah it’s fine.”

This is the question I have used in my Google Form interest surveys. It has helped students share about their trans identities, their points of concern with regards to safety, or even just neat stories from all my students about their names or nicknames!

Safety again

Again, act to protect the safety of your students above all else. It may be unsafe for your students (and maybe you) to have open conversations about gender identity in the classroom. If so, treating gender non-conforming students with dignity and care while fostering an environment of respect in your classroom will go a long way towards helping all your students learn empathy, explore their identities, and flourish.

What are your thoughts and questions about this topic? Let me know in the comments below!

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!