Textbooks: a Resource or a Curriculum?

¡Hooooooola!

As many of you know, I am not a fan of textbooks, and I never use the textbook in my classroom. If you asked my 6th graders, I bet they wouldn't even know there is a textbook (although I do use a few of them to block the cold air coming from my vent in the winter, so they might know). 

What I HAVEN'T really ever written about, though, is how I have used the textbook as a resource. 

Why a textbook shouldn't be the curriculum: 

Most textbooks are not designed with language research in mind; they are designed for what the public wants. Sadly, most language teachers still want the traditional textbook, so that's what is published. 

However, there are textbooks that have communicative tasks in them like "Sol y viento" and I STILL believe that those textbooks should not be the curriculum. 

For one, textbooks do not necessarily meet the demands of the students. How can a textbook published in 1995 still be relevant? I mean those textbooks are still teaching the word "chalk" in the classroom unit, for crying out loud. 

The other issue that I have with textbooks is that they start with a preliminary unit that usually involves the alphabet, numbers, colors, stating their names (this one's good), dates, days of the week, etc. This is treating a first-year language class like a kindergarten class, BUT IT IS NOT. My students are at a much higher cognitive ability than that, and I can teach them all of those things in much better contexts. Also, kindergartners go to kindergarten with LOTS of language, believe it or not. My students are coming to me with none, so I need to give them much more useful language than just an alphabet, numbers, and dates. 

How are textbooks useful, then? 

I know all of this bashing of textbooks on blogs can be really overwhelming for teachers, and it probably pisses you off. To be honest, it pisses me off too! Not because I think that textbooks are the greatest resources but because I believe that districts should be doing a better job of giving teachers time to re-write the curriculum CONSTANTLY. A good curriculum needs to be forever changing. This is hard for a lot of teachers. I have a beloved unit that I have done for five years now. I worked so hard on it, but in my eyes, it's time for it to go so that bigger and better things can come along. However, it's really hard to do that when you're not a department of one. If teachers are required to maintain our licenses (and pay for it ourselves), then why are schools not being held accountable for rich, well developed curricula?

Anyway, when I started teaching at my current school, I asked for a curriculum, and there was just a textbook. Now that's not a stab at anyone because my department head gave me that textbook and explicitly said that I had all the freedom in the world to do what I wanted with it. So, essentially, the textbook is being used as a stepping stone for teachers who are new to the district to have something to follow, but it is not a requirement. Do I think that's better than a written curriculum of thematic units hitting on hot topics like social justice issues? Absolutely not, but it's a start, and I was able to roll with it. 

My first year there, I basically taught the textbook using as many communicative strategies as I could. The problem, though, was that I was using that textbook like a curriculum. It just can't be that way. As BVP always says, teaching communicatively is not to be seen as a method to teach the same old things in a different way. It is an approach, not a method. That's to say, if I am trying to teach textbook rules and my units are based solely around grammar points, then I am not teaching communicatively. 

After that, I started doing workshops on thematic units, and I realized VERY quickly that my units were not good. The thing is, though, there are 8 middle school Spanish teachers in my district, and I wanted to still be in line with at least the grammar that we all expose the students to. So, I couldn't just throw the book out the window like I wanted to. I had to get creative. 

One thing that textbooks are somewhat good at is picking contexts for each unit. For example, there are units on school, housing, family, food, sports, parties, clothing, etc. These units are not strong enough by themselves, in my opinion, but they are a great place to start. I took those units and made units around them; that way, I was teaching the same grammar in the textbook but in a much more interesting context, and I was also teaching the same grammar as the other Spanish teachers who have their own creative ways of facilitating language acquisition. 

So, every year, for example, my unit on "school" gets muuuuuch stronger. It is now a unit on equal access to education. The unit on parties is now a unit on quinceañeras and gender performativity and heteronormativity. The unit on food and emotions is now a unit on how sugar consumption affects our emotions. Etc. 

However, in Avancemos at least, there are a few units that have no topic and are really just focused on a grammatical structure. Sometimes, those units have to be thrown out. For example, I will never ever do a unit on stem-change verbs ever again. I am trusting that stem-change verbs show up naturally throughout my curriculum (and they do). Other units, for example, can be worked with. Our textbook has a unit on prepositional phrases (in front of, behind, next to, etc.). Right now, I have that as a unit on teen technology use and focus on statistics about how much time we spend in front of screens, the percentage of us who sleep next to our cellphones, etc. This is one of my weaker units, so I have cut it down to a two-week mini-unit, but I still think it's stronger than just teaching the vocabulary out of context. Hopefully, I can get rid of this unit soon and fill it with something stronger. Like I said, our curricula in EVERY subject should be constantly changing. 

I am at the point in my career where I am ready to throw that textbook completely out. I would never replace it with a new one, but I thought it was time to be transparent that the textbook was useful to me in getting me started on rewriting the curriculum. It's okay to use a textbook as a resource, but when we are spending three months on learning to tell the date, numbers, days of the week, etc. just because the textbook demands it is when it gets a little problematic. I believe that we can get our students to much higher proficiency levels when our curricula are more designed to meet our students at their cognitive AND language level. 

Thanks for reading!!

Timothy

Distance Teaching: I Feel Like a First-Year Teacher Again

I think this is probably the longest I've gone without writing on my blog. I just got so overwhelmed when all my teaching switched to online. All these amazing teachers were sharing all of these great resources, and I was ignoring it all. My brain shut down, and I did not want to think about it until I had to. 

Teaching online has made me feel like a first-year teacher again, which is both infuriating and relieving. I look back on the way I taught my first year and regret it with every fiber of my being, so it's nice to kind of feel like I'm getting a do-over. I had a great mentor and was beginning to dabble in communicative language teaching, but I still had no clue how languages are acquired. So, being a new teacher again, it would've been really easy to resort back to grammar practice and language-based units. 

I'm too stubborn for that now, and I am grateful now more than ever that my units have changed from units on indefinite/definite articles, direct object pronouns, present tense, etc. to units on pollution and resolutions in Mexico City, human values with regard to sports/entertainment and education, etc. If I were to resort back to units based on a specific grammatical structure, I would've lost way more students than I did (because, let's be real, many of them are not doing the work now that it's optional and online). My students would've picked up on the inauthenticity (whoa, what the heck?! Did I make this word up?! Why are there red lines under it?!), and they would not have done the work.

The Interpretive Mode

I've always learned that speaking and writing are not necessary for language acquisition (that's not to say that they're not important for skill development). However, throughout this process, my goal is for my students to ACQUIRE as much Spanish as possible now that I am down to two days a week of teaching (and hours more work than ever in planning!). 

This has been a great opportunity for me to focus on the interpretive mode (listening and reading). It's honestly the only thing I can do right now because I cannot really monitor the use of Google Translate and other resources from home. Thanks to the help of Ronie Webster for sharing many resources, I have gone further in depth than ever with my unit on pollution in Mexico City. It's also been great because listening has always been the lowest for our students on the STAMP test at the end of eighth grade, so it's given me a lot of chances to develop listening assignments.

The 6th graders have been emailing me saying how much they're enjoying learning about solutions to pollution (I really believe these kids will change the world someday). It's cool to see that they're this engaged and lots of them are asking questions! They're also thinking critically and criticizing the possible solutions as well; every idea is flawed and can be improved! 

One of the things I teach about in this unit is how Mexico City has strict laws as to when people can drive. For example, if you have a yellow sticker, you cannot drive on Mondays. I'm sorry but isn't learning colors and days of the week by learning about driving regulations in Mexico City much more interesting than having a "unit" on telling the days of the week at the beginning of the year??? I really think so. I cannot imagine spending so much time on language that barely helps my students communicate about real things anymore. I want to meet my students at their cognitive level--not just their linguistic level. 

Teaching Online

Not being in class to deliver this content has been so challenging; I'm not going to lie, though, I've enjoyed the creativity. I, like many other teachers, was convinced that my students were not acquiring much language. However, I did a Google Meets with my 7th graders the other day and was really happy to see that they were having no trouble understanding and producing the language from the unit. It goes to show that engaging content really makes a difference. It also goes to show that input has so much power--even if it's only two days a week. They were using phrases like "le da" which includes an indirect object pronoun. I know that phrase is so "teachery" but just trust me that, if I had a unit specifically on indirect object pronouns, they would not be using them today. 

The technology part has been kind of fun for me, and I am so grateful to all the companies that are giving teachers free access to their stuff during this pandemic. It's made my life so much easier. I have found some really awesome ways to deliver my lessons even when I am not actually there in person. This took me so long to get good at, but I can actually say that I still feel like I am being a great teacher right now, and I DO believe that my students are acquiring language (just not as much as before). I found ways to embed videos of myself teaching the materials into interactive lessons thanks to Pear Deck, Screencastify, EdPuzzle, and many more. For example, my students can watch a video of me telling a story, interact with it, and then see the correct answer. Here's a quick sample below:

Although this is not my IDEAL way of teaching, I have still enjoyed doing it. I think if I had not stayed true to what I know about language acquisition, this would've been torture for both me and my students. 

The cool thing about all this is that it didn't happen overnight. That's why I felt like a new teacher again, exploring new tools again, figuring out what works, keeping track of student work in different ways, etc. And just when I feel like I am getting the hang of it, it's coming to an end! haha! That's life, but all I can say is that my sub plans are going to be bad ass from now on! 

Anyway, thanks for reading. It was nice to do something different for a change. 

Timothy