Reflection - Former students

So this is my third year in school (year 10 teaching) and I have definitely come a long way since I started teaching Spanish.  I used to use textbooks that were slightly older than me. Then I tried a year with a newer textbook.  Then I tried a year or two without a textbook.  Then, I found storytelling and haven't looked back!

But in my third year, I have had a lot of students now and many of them have had exposure to my teaching and another Spanish teacher as well.  I taught Spanish 1-2 the past two years and I'm only teaching Spanish 1 this year.

I know that what I do in my classes can be slightly unorthodox for other teachers, even teachers in my department. And they teach their classes differently from me (I'm not saying people have to teach like me).  But there are times I tell my wife that I feel like I am crazy.  Here's what I believe:

1. I believe that TPRS is a really awesome way to deliver instruction
2. I believe that TPRS is great for my classroom management
3. I believe that TPR is a great tool to get the kids up and moving in class
4. I believe that incorporating music whenever possible (in a comprehensible way) is huge for my students
5. I believe that talking about my students in Spanish through stories, PQA, etc sets the tone for my classes that they will be about my students
6. I believe that going slow and looking for my students' eyes to check for their understanding is crucial to their learning
7. I believe that shaking my students' hands as they walk in and saying "buenos días", "hola" or whatever else, and slowly adding more conversational vocab as they walk in establishes the tone that you're entering the Spanish zone!
8. I believe that other activities under the umbrella of Comprehensible Input (CI) are also wonderful additions to the classroom.
9. I believe that I should do my best to speak 90% of class in Spanish in a repetitive, comprehensible and interesting way to ensure my students will acquire the language 
10. I believe that explicit grammar instruction has a smaller place in my classroom than it used to so I can teach them through using the language correctly
11. I believe that what I do is making a difference in their lives

These aren't all popular opinions in a foreign language classroom.  I've been called a maverick by an administrator at one point.  I've gotten myself into trouble with my fellow department members because I strongly believe the aforementioned items are crucial to my class for students' success (regardless of level).

But I digress.  Recently, I have had a lot of former students visit me and tell me how much my class meant to them and how much they miss it.  It's meant a lot because I give so much of myself in the school year to ensure class is a positive place where we can laugh and learn in a low stress way.  And it further affirms that all of the hard work I (and the students) put into class is worthwhile.

TPRS year 3 - yay for Friday and positive comments

My first week on Friday, I was quite sad (see previous post) because of some negative comments about my class.

I appreciate the kind comments from my readers on the previous post!  I didn't mean to simply post that without something positive as well.  But I think it's important to give a glimpse of the good and the bad that we teachers go through.

Superintendent's visit:

A week ago onThursday (after about 2 weeks of learning about the students and constantly talking in the language), I had some students who had already finished the first activity (getting to know you through PQA) since there are only three of them in the class.  So we continued discussing things that were interesting to them.  It's so funny how the narrative in their class continued to grow and grow.  We discovered that one of the students stole boy's hearts and broke them.  And she also collected hearts.  One day she wanted to collect the heart of my class piñata, Pepé.  So I slowly through asking questions created the scenario where she enters the class with two swords (one in her hand and the other in her mouth) and she slowly walks towards Pepe.  While she is halfway there, my Speedracer cardboard cut-out (one of her ex-boyfriends), yells at Pepé, who is sleeping, "PEPE!  NO!  K WANTS YOUR HEART!  I DON'T LIKE HER!"  And K throws a sword at Speedracer and spits out the other sword at Pepé.  It was amazing.  The kids were engaged and laughing (as one would hope).

We didn't get to finish the amazing story because of those darn bells.  So the following day, Friday, I decided we should finish their story about K collecting hearts and stealing Pepé's.  Unbeknownst to me, my new Superintendent comes in before class and asks if she can watch the class.  While she is sitting in the back, one of my students (unscripted) says as he comes in, "Man. I can't wait to finish what we were doing yesterday!  That was an interesting story!"

They did the warm up, we got started and I reviewed the previous information, while adding some new words.  Then we continued and finished the story before class ended.  We took our student generated quiz, had five minutes to spare and one of the students wanted to listen to one of the songs we listened to last year (because he likes the drum set in the video).  The song incidentally had the word "corazón" (heart) repeated over and over again, having to do with that days' lesson.

When class was over, the Superintendent had a big smile on her face and told me, "That was so neat!"  And she shook my hand a few times and left.  Later on, my principal told me that she was really excited about how I teach and had nothing but good things to say.

Native / Heritage Speaker:

One of my students who is the only Spanish-speaker in his class, had been a little bit skeptical of what I've been doing in my class.  He's nice enough about it and has been offering to help out as well... this is neat because he isn't the most excitable student.  But in my class, he has offered to help.  So I need to think of some ways to encourage him in that.

That same day last week (Friday), he told me before class that it was really cool to see how much Spanish the kids in my class were learning and how quickly they could learn it in my class.

Textbook student:

Last year, a student told me at the beginning of the year that she couldn't really learn very well in my class and she had been talking to her mom, who told her that SHE had learned from a textbook back when she was in high school.  I told her I had some textbooks that were just collecting dust and she could have one during the year to go through while her classmate went through something else.  In the first/last ten minutes of class, I could go over something with her and then she could practice with the textbook while I worked with the class.  She told me that she didn't want to do that and she would rather the whole class do the same thing (probably meaning working on the textbook with her).  She only mentioned it that once and during last year, she did great and was enthusiastic in class.

This year, in Spanish two, last Friday (the same day as everything else in this post), she told me after class that she really saw how much Spanish she knew and she really liked how I taught.  She noticed that she could answer all the questions that I made in class and she felt much more confident in the language.

In short:

Last Friday was a good day in light of my previous Friday.  :-)

TPRS Year 3 - Days 1 and 2

Well, school just got back into full swing as we returned to having students on Tuesday.  My goals this year are to worry less about the actual storytelling (because it seems to be coming more and more naturally) and to instead worry about my students.  Last year I noticed I did better at monitoring students' lack of understanding.  That seems to be more heightened this year.

The first day went very well.  I think I got the idea from Ben Slavic to teach the first day while slowly teaching the classroom expectations during the first week or two.  Most kids aren't going to listen anyway if you just give them a list of rules the first day.  I wouldn't listen if someone did that to me.  So the idea is to show that everyday we will be learning Spanish (even on the first day).  This helps me set the tone for the year.  It also is very common that teachers might think of the first day where they don't have to teach very much and they can use it as a sort of day off.  I would rather be teaching though than babysitting.  If I am babysitting the kids, there are always more personality conflicts and kids not doing what they should be doing.  I think the best way to have a "day off" (of classroom management problems) is to teach.  When kids are engaged, they cause fewer problems.

For Spanish 1 and 8th grade, they drew a picture of something that they like to do and we started talking about me and how "The teacher plays guitar" (in Spanish).  Then we circled that information a little bit.  Afterwards, I moved on to a student or two and compared and contrasted their activities to mine.  This is another idea I have gotten (and used before) from Ben Slavic.  The more I do it, the better I get at throwing out more language to the students in a comprehensible way and also doing more short grammar explanations.

For Spanish 2, I had them draw two pictures about what they did over the summer.  The idea was to review stuff from last year while throwing in some new information and getting to re-familiarize myself with them.  I did notice that I would throw in some structures from last year and check for comprehension and most of my students from last year would remember those structures.  The only difficulty is that I have students who had the previous Spanish teacher (the year before I came) and they have no clue what we're talking about.  They did grammar-based homework out of the textbook all year.  Guess how great that was for their acquisition of the language!  Yep.  Not so great.  So they are keeping me mindful of making sure I do go slow and point and review even more so the structures from last year.

All in all, they were both good days.  On day 2, we continued the activities and they'll probably take me a few weeks to finish.  If I finish early in a class with getting to know everyone, hopefully we'll have plenty of fodder from different things we talked about to create short narratives or I can do some one-word images.  I already notice myself going off on tangents and asking about the names of the chicken they play soccer with or anything else that might be relevant to make it interesting.

TPRS year 2 - visitors

I was reading the other day about someone having a visitor coming into their class and how it was great because it gives the students a chance to show off.  It got me thinking that I really think that would help some of my students.  Yesterday, one student (who had heard all about Spanish class) came into my 5th hour class.  They enjoyed performing for him.  He (a native speaker and friend) thought class was amazing and also confusing (because he didn't know their inside jokes).  The students in that class have interesting personalities and their inside jokes in class are unlike any other class.

Today though, a teacher had two observers who were going into teaching and they needed to do some observation hours for their undergraduate teaching class.  She passed them off to me because he kids were just taking tests.  The girls were both graduates of the school I teach at and Native Spanish speakers.  I was a little bit nervous because the morning didn't go exactly the best (the previous entry on Junior High is a result of today not going so well in that class).  And that sort of put a bad taste in my mouth the rest of the day.  But my kids know that if I am not having the best day, they just get to try a little harder to help me out.  And they almost always rise to the occasion.

So my observers came in 5th hour and stayed through 8th hour.  I think at one point of staying in Spanish for most of the class I stopped and told them, "I don't know if you realized, but this is only a Spanish one class."  And sure my kids were making grammatical mistakes, but they were understanding SO much Spanish and it was really fun to tell the story with them.  They were showing off like crazy and it was awesome.  I wish I could have observers come more often.  It really is great for my kids (and for me) to see how much they have been learning.