I hope that all the teachers out there have had a great start to the year and that everyone else who is working is still having a great year.
It's so good to be back at work but also super exhausting. This year, we extended the school day by fifteen minutes, which doesn't sound like a lot, but I am totally feeling it. We used to be allowed to leave at 2:35, and now we aren't supposed to leave until 2:50. However, we rarely leave right on time, so I am finding that I am not getting home until after 4:15 or so, which means that I have a 10-hour work day. Yikes.
Normally, I like to have these blog posts be a bit more organized, but I have a lot of things that I want to say, so I think that I am just going to let my fingers do the talking.
This year, I have been working really hard (thanks to some really great friends and a really amazing boyfriend) on trying to fight for/ask for what I want more often. I often get too shy or too worried about bothering someone else, that I won't make even a simple request like asking the Dunkin' Donuts worker to add more sugar to my coffee.
I think that this is true for teachers too. It's not necessarily that we are afraid to ask for what we want, but simply that we don't do it. We complain SO MUCH but rarely actually do things about it. This got me thinking: what is the thing that I complain about most at my job? Once I thought of it, I thought of a solution. This was a solution that I was saying I wanted for a while, but I never asked for it. So, I AM GOING FOR IT! I am really proud of myself--whether the request is honored or not.
That's my advice to teachers and everyone else: instead of walking around the halls with bitter, angry faces on, do something about it! If your problems are not solved, then make a decision. Every problem has a solution.
My wonderful students:
As always, I have a great group of students this year who are eager to learn and laugh at my stupid antics! I kind of like being a weirdo in class.
Sadly, I did not get a lot of my students from last year back this year, which was a major bummer--especially when I had students for two years and now don't have them their last year in middle school. However, as I look at the students that I did get back, I am SOOOO proud of them and their Spanish. I gave each class an open-ended assignment in 7th and 8th grade just to see what they can do with the language, and they remembered so much more than I expected.
As many of you may know, last year, I rewrote the curriculum to reflect a curriculum that I want to teach while still making sure that I still expose my students to the same grammar as everyone else in my district. I am so unbelievably happy that I did that because my students are writing more than ever in such brilliant Spanish; they truly are constantly exceeding the proficiency goal for the course, and I could not be happier. I LOVE THEMATIC UNITS.
Thematic Units and Myths About Communicative Language Teaching:
The reason why I love thematic units is because my students are learning about something IN Spanish instead of just learning Spanish. This way, I can always help them focus on the MEANING of words instead of just doing grammar exercises. I can see how effective this was in my students this year, and I cannot wait to watch them continue to move up in proficiency.
Now, it seems that people are constantly under the impression that communicative language teachers do not teach grammar. This is simply not true. In order to give the students communicatively embedded input, we have to be using grammar. It just means that we don't explicitly teach grammar. In other words, the meaning is the most important thing. They could fill out a grammar chart with a verb they do not know, but if they do not know what it means, it's impossible to acquire language! That's what communicative language teaching avoids: students not needing to know what something means. They need to truly listen to understand, which is a beautiful thing.
In my class, I always tell my students that communication is the most important thing; that means that if I understand you, then you have met your communicative goal. This, however, does NOT mean that their Spanish will not get better and their accuracy will not improve. Of course it does because the more courses they take and the more MEANING that they pay attention to and express, the more they will acquire. My students cannot always give a grammatical explanation for something, but they very often can USE that structure--just like native speakers. How many of you who are not language teachers can give me an example of the pluperfect tense? I bet very few, and that is OKAY! Too often we focus on students' output and think "if I don't correct this, they won't get better," but they WILL! They will get it through more and more input.
My department head said something that really resonated with me the other day. If our hope is for our students to be as native-like as possible, then why are we beating them up for missing accent marks and misspellings when native speakers make those same mistakes??? I had never thought of it that way. Of course I want my students to use accent marks correctly (which they will acquire through reading--not from a spelling test), but in the grand scheme of the universe, how important is it?
Okay, but many people say to me: "Timothy, you love grammar, and you always want to know the grammar rules." This is wicked true. I do. I love syntax and morphology. So, if you have a Timothy in your class (I rarely do) who wants to know the grammar rule, obviously explain it! Our minds sometimes find grammar to be fascinating, but that doesn't mean that those grammar rules wind up in our heads. It just means we know a grammar rule.
Greg Duncan explained to me recently that he does believe that those Timothys can get their grammar explanations quickly along with their communicative input. It doesn't take long. He also said that you can have grammar walls for those kids to look at and the non-Timothys in the class can just never look at them and get all of their input communicatively.
However, I do believe that if there is no exchange of information--no need to TRULY listen or truly read the meaning--then there is little to no acquisition. If somebody asks me to conjugate the verb "mancar," I can totally do it:
But if I do not know what that means, how can I use it? How can I acquire something without a context?
Anyway, I am really proud of the work that my students and I did last year, and I am looking forward to getting even better. All I ever want to say about my job is that I am proud of the work I do, and I really am. I'm so lucky to love what I do.
Thanks for reading,
Timothy
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