3 Takeaways from the 2018 WAFLT-COFLT Bi-State Conference

Teachers are wild.  “Let’s get a sub so that we can…do more school stuff.”  But seriously y’all I love conferences.

It has fully been like a week and a half since the WAFLT-COFLT Bi-State Conference in Portland, OR but I still have so many thoughts bouncing around in my enormous head!  My practice has actually shifted in the past few days as I’ve taken more time to work through my notes and reflect on the changes I want to make to increase student enjoyment and learning!  (Well…acquisition. Whatever.)

Let’s keep it short(ish) – three thoughts I’ve been playing around with:

  1. 90% Target Language Usage is Scarier for Teachers Than for Their Students
    Paul Sandrock, the Director of Education for ACTFL, reported during his session on Facilitating Target Language Comprehensibility that teachers have FAR MORE anxiety about using 90% TL in class than their students do!  This blew my mind. Kids are actually pretty chill if we’re like, “yeah, let’s just drop the English and DO THIS THING, MUCHACHOS!”
    Maybe they actually expect it.  Like, they go into a language class thinking that the teacher just WILL use the language most of the time. Because as a young person, YEAH THAT SEEMS LOGICAL. It’s us adults that come up with reasons not to use the language in class.  This is probably because we’ve tragically developed the ability to overthink things.  (How…wonderful.) J. Marvin Brown talked in his book From the Outside In about how adults struggle so hard in language classes because they, unlike children, let their thinking and their brains get in the way of just experiencing the language and enjoying it (and being able to subconsciously acquire the language).  He posits that we don’t lose the ability to learn languages as we age, but rather gain the ability to overthink things and ruin it for ourselves. I can see this same thing happening with target language usage. Of course it seems natural to use the language all the time in class because…duh.  But!!! But what if they don’t understand! But what about management! But what will I say! But what if I don’t feel strong enough in the L2 to fill awkward silences! But!!!
    Y’all, we can do this.  Our kids want this. They want the input, they want the language, they want to be good at this.  So let’s stop holding ourselves back and make it happen! I’ve started having little interactions (before class, in transitions, giving directions) in Spanish and surprise…everything is going fine.  Just more opportunities for me to work on my skills for comprehensibility! (That thing I present on…gulp.)
  2. You Are Putting On a Silent Film (+TL)
    In presenting with Tina Hargaden (of CI Liftoff and The CI Posse) about body and voice skills for comprehensibility, I learned something seemingly small that has made a big impact on my class flow.  Any time I do a gesture, point to something on the board, or do any of the other magical tricks to make language comprehensible (#futureblogpost) (#magicaltricks), I have to do that thing, then give a beat, then say the word in L2, then give a beat, let students process, then move the interaction along.  I see them anticipating what I’m talking about, hearing the word in the L2, linking the meaning, and having greater chances for success in interacting with whatever we’re talking about because they for sure GOT IT.  Silent film actors had to show EVERYTHING and know that it was going to sink in. I have to do the same! I’m working my silence more to watch their eyes and know that the connection is there instead of breezing through comprehensibility links and later thinking “but I showed them everything!”  They just need that bit of processing time. And the eye contact I’m able to make in that slower way is helping students know that I’m there with them.
  3. Think (Don’t Speak!)
    Laura Terrill gave a keynote on Friday that was great for so many reasons.  But the killer quote from this one was “think (don’t speak!).” Often we employ a turn and talk as a way for students to process some new information.  Buuuuut if they turn and talk with someone who maybe is a faster speaker or faster processor, the “slower” student may lose the opportunity to synthesize their thoughts, and/or make them into something they can express.  If we really demand that students think, but don’t speak just yet!, we are giving room for 100% of our students to do some processing and have some more success once the turning and talking actually begins. (I tried this during a PD with teachers the following week and lo and behold…everyone had something very interesting and thoughtful to express.)

I LOVE CONFERENCES LA LA LA.  But dang, it takes time to process all the great info you get and put it into practice.  I’m trying to take my own suggestion of just picking a few things and working them in. More than that feels like way too much for my poor brain.

(Also every conference reminds me that I should be doing more brain breaks.  Every conference! Goodness. This will surely be a lifelong quest. #futureblogposts)

What is your most recent learning from a conference, and how is it growing your practice?  Have a fantastic day, you pedagogical flower of excellence!!

Changing to CI-Centered Instruction Saved Me As a Teacher

I graduated my teacher training program at the end of 2016, and started looking for my first job as a world language teacher in the spring and summer of 2017.  I was so excited – I thought I had done very well in my student teaching and was on my way to having an exhausting, but productive first year!

I got a call from a middle school in a Seattle suburb, and one awesome Skype interview later, I was a real teacher!  Finally – all my years of experience in working with children were going to put me in a position to inspire and educate our youth!  Bam!

Well, the nerves crept in.  The position was a Spanish teaching position and I had majored in…German.  And done a summer travel-study program in Germany. And been the president of the German Club.  And lived in Germany for a year as an English Teaching Assistant.

I had been to a Spanish-speaking country for a total of…six days.  And though I had minored in Spanish in college…I was the German guy. Ok – I can do this! I am a creative, hard-working individual. There are MANY resources out there for Spanish teachers, more than for German, for sure!  If I flop, it’ll really be my own fault!  (What a dangerous sentiment for someone plunging into the great unknown of teaching…this, I must unpack in a future post.)

Mister Señor Fisher having a low-grade heart attack before leaving home for his first day as a Real Adult Human™ (September 2017)

The first day is a blur now, but I remember my first class coming and wondering, “will I be able to speak to them in Spanish the whole time slash at all?”  (I did it, phew. What did I even talk about? I can’t recall.) The students went home and there I was, alone in a little room that was now dubbed “mine,” with little idea of what to do next.  Okay…I’ll just follow what comes next in the textbook! And try to throw in some of those fun, interactive activities I learned about in my program! And browse Pinterest for MORE new ideas!

There are so many ideas out there.  Blogs, Pinterest boards, well-meaning colleagues, negative colleagues, district coordinators, other teachers who don’t even teach language who took a language class one time twenty years ago, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, books, instructional video series, YouTube…there are just a million ways to do any one thing.  Teach a language? Goodness gracious. Not to mention, if you shop on Teachers Pay Teachers, everyone else’s materials are BEAUTIFUL and look like they were hand-crafted in a giant marble library by angels and the ghost of Socrates.

Before I started teaching, I thought to myself, “I’ll never show a movie in class as a stalling technique!  I want to be up there, teaching, every day! No cop outs!” But the heads going down onto desks, the figuring out differentiation for six classes a day, the four preps, the days where I spent 12+ hours at the school looking for materials online, the wondering if it was fair or right for me to be a Spanish teacher when I felt I knew so relatively little….it all began to wear on me.  The beginning of November seemed like the perfect time to drag out The Book of Life over a couple days…in all my classes. I thought to myself…is this it?  Is this all there is?

A conference presenter turned me on to the CI Liftoff Facebook page, and through it, I started learning a lot about how teachers were delivering comprehensible input in their classrooms, every day!  What? My level 1 students only know some weather phrases (sometimes…well, some of them), some greetings, the numbers (sometimes), me gusta phrases…how do these language magic witch people just make these kids understand day in, day out, without planning every single word?  Devilry, I say!

So I read some more, watched YouTube videos of teachers working their classes like Vegas MCs, took tons of notes, thought aloud with wild enthusiasm (usually to myself), until one day I said, okay!  This is it! LET’S DO THIS!  [Imaginary enthusiastic table flipping]

Again, I don’t know what exactly I even talked about the day I “decided to go CI,” but I knew there was a hunger there.  I could not, would not stop. And, magically, I started learning things about my students that made me feel like I was connected to them, and actually knew their lives.  

And it reminded me: though I had not lived in a Spanish-dominant country, I had learned my Spanish and practiced it in a country with a huge population of Spanish speakers.  To me, learning Spanish represented building closer relationships with my Spanish-speaking neighbors, colleagues, strangers I ran into when they needed help, when I needed help.  It was about speaking to the hearts of people in my community. And that connection was sparked again when I started to speak slowly and comprehensibly to my students, making their lives and interests into our curriculum.  It felt like a loving tribute to all the times I or my conversation partner had made the attempt to connect in a tongue not our own, and we both smiled and understood, even if we didn’t say all the words right.

So I kept learning, I keep learning.  And the more that I learn, the more that I see that it is not about building a huge repertoire of “activities” that expands every time I log onto Pinterest.  It is really only about speaking slowly and using my body and voice so that students understand and can be understood. I look into my students’ eyes, and I feel connected, joyful.

I sense now that my career will not be an endless drudgery of activities and exercises, but an endless expansion of my ability to communicate and connect with other people.  I will get better at literacy activities, I will get better at speaking comprehensibly, I will get better at classroom management specific to this discipline. But – how wonderful – doing this will mean meeting tons of really cool young people and learning about their unique, beautiful lives.

I’m rolling into an October very much unlike the October I witnessed my first year.  There is so much space before me, space to get to know my students and myself so deeply.  And so, so many stories to tell.