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. .