Looking back

Looking back on my second year teaching I can truly say I've grown a great deal on a professional and on a personal level. How?

1. I had a positive and productive relationship with my administrator
2. I was able to collaborate with colleagues
3. Colleagues were emotionally supportive
4. I loved most of my students
5. I focused on the things I could change
6. I focused on student growth in relation to our big goals
7. I earned a masters degree!
8. I was able to attend workshops for professional development
9. I've learned how to keep students engaged
10. My interactions with students are much more productive

Fun with conjugation

To lighten the mood during state testing, I am combining card games + mental math + conjugating verbs in Spanish. How? Our first game is 21 Blackjack. 

Students play the game in groups of 3's or 4's. After each round the winner doesn't have to conjugate any verbs, but the losers have to conjugate verbs based on the cards they have in their hand at the end of the round. Each suit (spades, clubs, hearts, and diamonds) corresponds to a given verb, and each card value has an assigned subject pronoun. 

This is how it works

Global perspectives

How do I connect topics I am teaching to the real world?

One of our recent units was "la comida" - food. Food can either be very mundane and basic, or it can be unique and exciting. In order to make learning about food unique and exciting, one of the activities involved looking at an ordinary activity like grocery shopping from a local and global perspective. 

We compared grocery shopping the USA to grocery shopping in Venezuela.

Why did I choose Venezuela? Aside from it being a Spanish speaking country, Venezuela has a government and an economy that is very different from our own. On paper Venezuela has a republican form of government, but in reality the government has socialist tendencies and an economy that increasingly socialist with pockets of capitalist industries. What does grocery shopping have to do with socialism? In order to make necessities like toilet paper, flour, sugar, meat, and cornmeal affordable, the government subsidizes local farmers and manufacturers who supply government run supermarkets. This means that privately owned supermarkets do not have sufficient food or basic necessities. As a result, people are forced to shop at government run supermarkets. This sounds great except the government supermarkets are also low on supplies like beef, chicken, toilet paper, sugar, and flour. Why? The government subsidized farmers and manufacturers are not making a substantial profit by exclusively supplying government shops, so they only supply select items. 

Food shortages in Venezuela

What does this look like for the average consumer? People stand in line for up to 5 hours to get into the grocery store. Once they are in the grocery store there is no guarantee that they will find what they need. Some people wait weeks to get basics like toilet paper. My students' minds were blown at the thought of cueing up just to go grocery shopping. 

Toilet paper crisis

What was our classroom discussion like? We asked and answered some revealing questions. 

1. What is socialism and how is it different from our government?
2. What is supply and demand? How is this an issue in Venezuela's supermarkets?
3. How do we feel about necessities being available at a reduced price that everyone can afford regardless of occupation? 
4. What would happen to the EBT program if the USA adopted socialist policies?
5. What are some extremes we saw in the Venezuela supermarket crisis? How is this similar to and different from a trip to the supermarket in the United States?

The teaching and learning format for this lesson featured several video segments followed by open forum discussion on the issues presented in each video. At the end of class students answered reflection questions. 

My students will never look at grocery shopping the same way. 

Bread from heaven...

School has been canceled for 3 days. Why? Manna is falling...

Así es la vida

Talented students revisited

I'm always amazed at my students' creativity even if its completely misguided. 

Will this one get an office referral? Most likely. We don't condone violence.

Así es la vida...

When the teacher is away...

When the teacher is away, the students will play. A few weeks ago when I was absent from school one of my classes took this opportunity to wreak havoc. Things escalated from verbal threats to flipping desks.

The end result...a broken desk (that still hasn't been replaced) and in school suspension for one of the students involved.

Así es la vida...

Talented students

Students are such talented individuals. It's amazing how they will always find an outlet for their creativity.

 

Should I have written this kid up for drawing on his desk? Probably.

Así es la vida...

Time management (inside and outside the classroom)

Since I have a two hour layover at the airport I figured I would put my free time to good use rather than wasting my life sitting at my departure gate.

What am I doing? Grading exams (and planning for the next two weeks).

What's conjugation?

We learned how to modify verbs in Spanish depending on who we are talking about. 

If you still don't know how to conjugate present tense verbs that end in -ar after multiple modes of presentation, you are beyond the teacher's reach. 

1st try: visual + auditory

Check out the awesome video

2nd try: traditional (some people like the no frills approach)

3rd try: kinesthetic (you made a foldable on neon green paper and stapled it into your interactive notebook)

OUTSIDE

INSIDE

I don't remember Spanish being this exciting when I was in high school.

Riding the struggle bus

How do we improve teacher attendance?
I always laugh when I see this question posed in faculty meetings or in education leadership circles. Why? We should ask a different question; why are teachers absent so much?

Excessive teacher absences

Sure the odd teacher has a chronic health condition that requires frequent absences for medical attention, but this does not apply to the rest of us able bodied teachers. 

Why are teachers absent so much i.e. more than 10 days each year (in priority schools)?

1. We need a break from being a teacher, mentor, counselor, parent, psychologist, interventionist, corrections officer, zoo keeper, and/or life coach
2. We need a day of peace and reflection
3. We need a day to catch up on paperwork (for the extremely dedicated few)

Frequently asked questions 2.0

It always warms my heart when my students are hard at work either independently or in groups, and they raise their hands to ask a question. What is less pleasant is the nature of the questions since they are completely unrelated to the work in front of them.

1. Miss, how long your hair is?
2. Is that all your hair?
3. How long you been natural?
4. Is you gon' flat iron out your hair?
5. Miss, where you from?
6. You from Chicago, ain't it? (nah, she from New York)
7. Miss, is you mixed?

At least I inspire curiosity in the classroom. 

"Is we gon' had to presentate this?"

It never ceases to amaze me how my kids want to act up and show out in front of their friends. They will do anything for attention which may include anything from being loud, wearing revealing clothing, being disruptive in class and in the hallway, refusing to do work, and open defiance in the classroom.

Given that they love to be the center of attention, you would think that that they would enjoy being the center of attention by presenting their work in front of the class. This was NOT the case when they had to present a basic greetings and introductions comic strip that they created.

Sample comic strip

When it came time to present, one of my boldest attention seekers was clearly opposed as he raised his hand and asked, "Is we gon' had to presentate this?"

Increasing student engagement without over engaging my free time

This year I try to keep students engaged without spending hours planning a fun activity that may or may not work out. I thought of the easiest review game ever after I was forced not to do my modified version of the fly swatter game when the poster machine broke one morning. It took me all of two minutes to think of the game and ten minutes to get the supporting materials together.

Modified Fly Swatter Game

I let students pick a partner. Each pair gets an answer board with scrambled phrases in the target language. I call out a number and translation of one of the phrases on their answer board. Students work with their partner to write the correct number beside the phrase on their answer board. The group that gets the most correct wins a prize. 

Why is this review game awesome?

1. Students are engaged

2. Students are quiet (they don’t want neighboring groups to steal their answers)

3. Students are practicing listening

4. I can easily assess listening comprehension

"Is we doin' work today?"

I never knew kids could be so lazy until I started teaching. Last year when I taught a state tested subject, I kind of understood why they complained about doing so much work. This year I teach an elective; Spanish 1. Just to be clear, this is Spanish for kids who have NEVER taken a foreign language class in their lives.

This means we're learning things like the ABCs, days of the week, numbers, weather, classes, and colors. You are officially the laziest person on earth if you think learning the ABCs in Spanish is too much work. We even watched a video and sang a song!

New classroom management

I actually give out a tangible reward!

I make it rain raffle tickets for participation. This is crucial since I require 100% participation every single day in my classroom. As a foreign language teacher I need to hear my students attempt to speak the language to gauge how they're doing orally.  To reward their bravery for trying they get tons of verbal praise and raffle tickets.

And I do a class raffle every two weeks with 3 winners from each class period.

Off to a great start

Reasons why this school district is better than the last one

1. the vision statement is catchy. “All students will be successful”. I didn’t bother remembering the vision statement was at my old school because it was too long. 
2. they gave us paper to start the school year! 
3. my kids can read (most of them anyways)
4. I get a break for lunch (last year I had to escort my kids to lunch, walk them through the lunch line, sit with them, and escort them back from lunch)
5. school starts at 8:00 instead of 7:30
6. there’s no snack time (seriously why do high school students need snack time?)
7. I’m "in civilization" (still no target though)
8. I’m teaching an elective instead of a core subject (I get to teach whatever I want however I want to teach it)

Inspiration

These three signs will be featured in my classroom this fall since it is my job to encourage and inspire young people to stay on task and do their work. 

Things you can only enjoy in civilization

One of my favorite productions

You may only enjoy the luxury of seeing the fantastical musical Wicked if you are in/traveling to New York, London, Louisville, Salt Lake City, or Winnipeg.

What will I see the next time I venture into civilization?
Aladdin? Chicago? The Book of Mormon?

The possibilities are endless!

Random things students ask/say...

1. What you is?
2. How you get your hair like that?
3. You natural, aint it?
4. Where you from?
5. You Spanish, aint it?
6. May you please give me a pencil?
7. We aint never learn this!
8. I need for to go to the bathroom. 
9. We must finna go. 
10. You got kids?
11. How old you is?

You never know what's on the mind of a teenage student.

The exodus

As I look back at my time spent in the county, I can definitely say that living there has helped me appreciate the little things in life such as the following:

• paved roads
• a grocery store
• shopping malls
• movie theaters
• Chick-fil-A
• Starbucks
• Target
• Walmart
• Kroger
• Belk
• Gap
• diversity
• education
• integration

Every cloud has a silver lining

You never truly appreciate the privilege of having a real Walmart (all Walmarts are not created equally) less than 10 minutes from your house until you have to drive an hour to get there.