Burning Out

Hola amigxs:

Something with which I have struggled is separating my life from my job. This week, I have been so devoted to getting everything graded to give back to the students the next day that I forgot to sleep. All week, I've been telling myself that turning down plans with friends and working on all this feedback (of which I am proud--don't get me wrong) meant I was devoted. Obviously, that is true, but it is very hard to be fully present in the classroom without enough sleep. For the first time in my life, I have been relying on coffee. Yikes.

I think that this is something people don't always realize about teachers. We go home and have to still do work. Most people get to leave work and be done with work until the next day (not saying that other jobs are not stressful!). We have to assess, plan, worry about students, etc. If I'm not careful, I work from 7 AM until 9 PM. That was my problem this week. I really do believe in getting the students back their work with really valuable feedback the next day. Otherwise, the feedback isn't as meaningful. However, sometimes I need to remind myself that it's okay to take two days if I need. I think I will struggle with this for the rest of my career, honestly.

In great news: my seventh graders have been working with Puerto Rico, and I am loving what they are doing. The curriculum calls for teaching "ir" and "er" verbs at this point. I was struggling with that. How do I make it so that the students don't feel like they are learning and practicing a grammatical concept? How do I make this communicative? Well, I did this through Puerto Rico. They are making connections between animals, places, people, etc. in Puerto Rico, and they are using "er" and "ir" verbs while barely even realizing it.

I'd like to give one example: the students have learned some things about the Taínos--the indigenous people of Puerto Rico. At first, they were talking about the Taínos in the third person plural form (The Taínos are...they write using...). Then, I had them imagine that they were the indigenous people, so they were using the first person (we are...we write using...I am...etc.).

Their assessment on this is going to be a speaking assignment. I am giving them the pictures of the many things we've discussed with regard to Puerto Rico, and they have to explain some of them.  Our goal is that they will make connections between the items/people/places. Instead of simply defining each person/place/animal, they will also discuss how they are related. Some of the students have already built some connections that I hadn't even expected. I am really excited to listen to the final results next week. This is something I got from Ronie Webster; she did this when I was her student with "La comida mexicana," and I remember how powerful I felt after. It's nice to be able to connect ideas as opposed to just spitting out facts.

Thanks for reading! <3

Timothy

Do we reward extroversion?

Hola a todos:

Last Thursday, I gave the students in my flex class (basically a class that does not have to be related to Spanish) a test to see if they were more introverted or more extroverted. Along with this, I gave them an assignment in which they had to reflect on their results and state how it impacts them in school and in their social lives. This raised a question for me: do we, as teachers, reward extroversion?

One student wrote that he/she feels that his/her intelligence is overlooked because she/he is an introvert; he/she referenced participation points, stating something along the lines of: I know all the material, I get 90s-100s on quizzes, but my grade is lowered because I am shy and do not feel comfortable talking in front of the whole class.

I think this goes the other way around too. Are our participation points only rewarding extroverts? Are our participation points inflating students' grades and making them think that they have skills that they do not? I'm not sure what the answer is. I have been considering eliminating participation points from my gradebook--mostly because the students are constantly interacting with each other. It's almost impossible for students to not be participating because I am not calling on one person at a time. They're walking around talking to each other, etc.

Another student wrote about group projects. It was an interesting perspective. I do not give group projects, so it was hard for me to reflect on my own practice through this student's writing, but the student pointed out that he/she would like to be responsible for her/his own grade as opposed to someone else (another student) having an impact on that grade. There's so much to consider!


Another great discussion this week was with regard to growth. I gave my students back a reading assignment on which they received a percentage grade and an evaluation of their proficiency level (Novice High, Novice Mid, etc.) I talked to the students about growth because I wanted them to understand that a lower percentage does not mean lack of growth. I gave them this scenario:

If you received an 88 on this assignment, and then, at the end of the year, you receive an 85 on another reading assignment, did you improve? They all said no. Then, I pointed out that the reading assignment at the end of the year would be harder with a different proficiency target. Therefore, they DID improve. They may have been evaluated at a Novice High 2 on this assignment and then at a Novice High 3 on the next one. Although the percentage may have gone down, the proficiency evaluation went up! My hope is to get them to care more about growth and less about percentage. So, we are keeping portfolios in which they are tracking their own path to proficiency.

I am really curious to hear what people think about all this! I know it's a lot, and my mind is racing with thoughts!

Timothy

Who likes it?

This week has been such a positive one (but also the longest week in the world). My seventh graders had me jumping for joy. Not one of them got below a B on their assessment on their and others' likes and dislikes.

This is how we did it: Once I felt that they were ready to start producing the language, we took food items, and they answered questions about their own likes and dislikes. I would mention a food item, and they would write whether they liked it or disliked it. This didn't take long.

Soon, I had them going around and asking others what they liked. We did this by having them play human BINGO. They had to go around asking and answering questions of each other. If they found someone who liked the item, they could cross it off and write that person's name. When they got BINGO, I gave them group points. It was so fun, and we continued to do activities similar to that.

Then, I wanted them to start talking about others, so I gave them all mini white boards. At first, I would have one student come to the front, and I would mention a food item. The students sitting had to guess if the student standing liked it or disliked it. They would show their boards, and then the student standing would reveal the correct answer. Eventually, this game progressed, and I would have the students guess if both the students standing liked or disliked the food item, and the students standing would reveal it by saying "yes, we like..." or "no, we don't like..."

For the assessment, we did the same thing. I gave them pictures of food items and, in some parts, they had to talk about themselves. In others, they had to pick a group of students and guess whether they liked the item or not. In one part, they talked about their best friend's likes and dislikes. Etcetera.

 The results were phenomenal! It is amazing how the students can pick up on grammatical concepts without even realizing it! I told myself that I wouldn't be too picky with the grading; I have to remind myself that communicating is the most important aspect of a language. If the students wrote "Me gustan bananas" instead of "me gustan las bananas," they would still be understood--thus communicating the message. However, I didn't even have to worry about it because these errors were VERY FEW and far between! And zero students made this mistake throughout; they just made it on maybe one or two questions (probably from writing too quickly). I am gleaming. <3

Introduction

Hello, everyone!

My name is Timothy Chávez, and I am a second-year Spanish teacher. I taught high school last year and recently switched to middle school. The switch has been amazing for me; my students are always coming into class with smiles on their faces and with excitement for the material.  I remember that, my first week, I kept leaving work thinking "if everyone were as happy as middle school students, the world would be a better place."

Let me start out by explaining the purpose of this blog. I have been working very hard to move toward proficiency in my classroom this year, and I just felt that I needed an outlet for expressing myself and reflecting on my work.  Yes, I think it would be incredible for people to read this--especially people who are willing to give feedback--but I need to do this for myself above anything else.

Two summers ago, I attended the Novice level Proficiency Academy through the Massachusetts Foreign Language Association (MaFLA) thanks to an incredible colleague and former teacher who taught me so much of what I know. Shoutout to Ronie Webster--you still inspire me every day. This was the beginning of my love for proficiency, but it was so out of the box from what I knew.  For those of you who don't know--and I am putting this in the simplest of terms because proficiency is complicated--proficiency, to me, means giving the students a purpose for the language. Essentially, we, as foreign language teachers, should be teaching our students that conveying a message is the most important aspect of learning another language. Basically, can I and others understand what you are trying to say? I tell my students now that, though it would be great, we are not striving for grammatical perfection. We are striving to communicate. Grammar is a tool to help us communicate, but it is not the sole purpose of learning a language.

We've all seen it....the conjugation charts. Some of us probably even loved them because we are lovers of grammar! But how to we get our students who DON'T love grammar to love a foreign language? Well, the truth of the matter is that we need to stop giving grammar quizzes and fill-in-the-blank quizzes with the correct article (el, la, los, las). Instead, we need to give assessments with real-life scenarios that still require our students to use what they have acquired but allow them some freedom.

I remember being given quizzes on which I had to state what Paco likes and dislikes. But who the heck was Paco?! I was being given a quiz to test my ability to say "he likes..." and I knew it. The grammar was the important thing--not the message. Instead, why don't we ask the students to make guesses about others in the class? REAL PEOPLE. Or have them think of a friend and guess if that friend likes or dislikes something. It's the same concept but application to their real lives.

I know this is getting a bit long, so I will end with this: I am so excited about what I have learned and discovered about teaching Spanish through proficiency, and I am hungry to learn more! I truly welcome any comments, questions, feedback, etc. .