The End of the Year

This year has certainly had its ups and downs. The good thing is that a lot of things clicked for me this year. As a new teacher, there are so many experts around you throwing out all these buzz words, and you're just trying to stay afloat to understand it all.

At the end of the Proficiency Academy last summer, one of the speakers said to me "you know what the second year means, don't you? It means you throw out everything you did last year and start over." I thought he was a netball for saying that. It turns out he was right. I only used maybe one or two things that I developed last year. It wasn't because those things were bad, but rather because I had ways of making them better.  

This year, as you can tell if you have kept up with my blog, I have tried to dive head first into teaching for proficiency. I am so proud of all that I have learned and done this year, but it is amazing that I am still sitting here thinking of how I want to improve next year.  Despite all the research that I have done this year, I certainly had some failures, and I can't wait to fix those failures and fail some more. That is how we learn, right? 

One thing that has been stressed to me is that, if it is not open ended and not spontaneous, then we really cannot assess someone's language proficiency. On my course evaluations, that was one of the biggest complaints I received from my students. "Stop giving surprise tests." I think that I need to explain my reasoning behind this better next year. I want them to understand that, if it's not spontaneous, then it doesn't really show me or them what they can do in the language; or rather, it doesn't show them what is in their head and can come out naturally.

I did an open-ended final with all six of my Spanish classes, and boy did that stress me out. However, I would not change it for the world because it is so beautiful to see what my students could do at the end of the year. My only complaint is that, because I was assessing all six classes at a time, the feedback I gave the students was not as in-depth as I would have liked. 

Each assessment had a prompt that involved a lot of what each grade had learned that year. In other words, they were cumulative assessments. It was really good for me to see where the students were the strongest and where they were the weakest, but I take pride in the fact that each student was able to communicate in the language. I was so proud to see my students focusing more on meaning and less on grammar. This type of assessment is so much more meaningful than a non-communicative grammar quiz. 

I have learned that teaching for proficiency takes a lot of time and creativity, but it is not as scary as I had imagined. I was so worried about "doing it wrong" at the beginning of this year and last year that I held back a bit. Once I committed, I learned more and more, and I have really grown as an educator. All that they have taught us at the proficiency academy is true; the students really do learn a lot faster and can communicate a lot when they are taught using a communicative approach. This all has made me love my job even more, and I am so unbelievably proud of my students. I cannot wait to see what next year brings. 

Con cariño,

Timothy