The beauty of being a department of one

So this week I was doing some planning ahead for my Spanish I class since today we finished a chapter. So I looked at the next chapter in out textbook and the topic is school which really made me yawn. Buen Viaje works with school related vocabulary for 3 whole chapters and this would be the third chapter. I am bored to death with talking about school. Now before I plunged ahead and started planning the next chapter I had a thought. I am a department of one. What I teach effects no other teachers or future levels because I am the one who teaches the future levels and being the only teacher I will not have kids switching classes (from/to another teacher) at semester time. And so there is absolutely no reason why I need to stick with the textbook. So this week I threw out the textbook. I will probably go back to it at least as a reference after break or maybe not until after the semester but for now it is sitting on a shelf.

So I took a few moments to sit down and think about what we could work on that would really give them more to work with and be able communicate more. I have settled on a unit on present tense verbs. How can we communicate without verbs?? So I put together a list of regular verbs, irregular verbs, stem-changing verbs, and spelling change verbs that are used very often and that could be used for students to talk about what they and people they know do. I added to the list some vocabulary that goes with those verbs to allow them to speak more completely.

By focusing on verbs together, I really feel that I can get kids communicating more and it will help them as we cover more topics so that they can speak more fully. I'm also hoping that it will allow me to spend more time on the past tense second semester.

In the future I want to get a hold of the textbook that introduces the present, past and future together. I hate being limited by the present tense in Spanish I.

Picking on others

I used to teach in a fairly large school and just this year have moved to a VERY small school. One of the biggest differences I have noticed is the increased amount of picking on that I see. In every school there is plenty of picking on but in my new school it is so constant you can never get away from it. It is a constant battle to try and stop it every second of my classes. It has become so accepted.

I expressed my frustration at this with my mentor a number of weeks ago and her response was that this is just how it is in a small school and that many of the kids act in a way that they are asking to be picked on. It really bothered me the way she just saw it as normal and instead felt the kids being picked on were to blame. I don't care what these kids are doing to provoke it is never OK for a kid to make fun of and pick on another kid. School should be a safe place for kids especially realizing that for many kids it may be the only safe place they have. I realize that we will never get rid of it completely. But if we pass it off as normal instead of stepping up to the plate to try and fix it then we are saying we don't care about these kids and providing that safe place for them.

Well we have now had some incidents seriously escalate and administration is scrambling to deal with it. I just wish someone would have realized how important it was to stop it years ago before it got all the way to the high school. Now that they are in high school it is so ingrained in them and so accepted even in the classroom that I fear we are fighting an uphill battle to stop it.

These kids deserve better. All of them deserve better. They deserve to learn how to interact with one another in a way that is positive and productive. They deserve to feel like someone actually cares about them. They deserve a chance to develop skills and attitudes which will help them be successful in the future. Are we giving them those opportunities?

Estoy muy orgullosa de mis estudiantes de español I

Today my Spanish I class was amazing! Honestly, it was an improv lesson because I really didn't like what I had originally planned but the kids just ate it up. They were thinking critically, they were using Spanish in ways that had never been officially taught, even my student who does nothing (absolutely nothing - his grade is at about a 25% in the class), was participating and ASKING QUESTIONS IN SPANISH!!!

Here is the lesson:
-As the bell was ringing I quickly wrote a very short story about my friend Sally and what she looks like. Here is the story:

"Mi amiga es Sally. Sally es muy alta y delgada. Ella tiene los ojos azules y el pelo marrón. Ella lleva unos pantalones verdes y una camiseta amarilla. También lleva zapatos negros con calcentines azules. Ella lleva una gorra blanca."

-Then as students walked in they picked up a blank sheet of paper on the front table and were instructed to get some coloring utensils from the back.
-After collecting their homework, I told them that I was going to tell them a little story about a girl named Sally and that they needed to draw what she looks like. I encouraged them just to listen the first time through. I allowed them to use notes if they wanted (since we had just learned this vocab yesterday).
-I repeated the story 3 or 4 times pausing between each time to give students time to jot things down and draw (some prefered to write notes first before drawing).
-Then I told students that I would not repeat the entire story but would be more than willing to answer any question they had as long as the question was in Spanish (and my answer of course was in Spanish).
-When most students had finished, I randomly called a student to the front of the room and asked him to tell us a little bit about Sally in Spanish.
-I then called on more students to add more
-After we had sufficiently retold the story, I asked them to write a paragraph on the same page as their drawing (or the back of the page) about Sally.

Here are some of their paragraphs exactly as they wrote them (from students of all abilities):

"Sally es muy alta. Sally lleva los pantalones verde. Ella tienes marrón pelo. Sally tienes ojo azul. Sally lleva camiseta amarillo. Sally tienes zapatos negro. Sally es una gorra blanka. Sally los calcetines blanka."

"Sally es bonita. Ella lleva una la camiseta amarilla y los pantalones verdes y los calcetines azules y los zapatos negro y la gorra blanca. Ella tiene ojos azul y pelo marrón."

"Sally es muy alta y delgada. Sally es blanca. Ella tiene los pantalones verde. Ella tiene un la camiseta amarillo. Ella tiene un los zapatos negros. Ella tiene el pelo marrón. Ella tiene los calcetines azules."

"Sally lleva la camiseta amarilla, los pantalones verdes, los calcetines azules y los zapatos nengros. Ella tienen azules ohos y marrón palo. Ella lleva la gorra blanco. Ella es delgada y alta."

"Sally es una muchacha. Ella es muy alta y delgada. Ella lleva los zapatos negros. Ella lleva los pantalones verdes. Ella lleva la camiseta amarilla. Ella son ojos azules. Ella son pelo marrón. Ella lleva los calcetines azules."

I suppose this is basically the idea of TPRS with my own little twist to it.

You will definitely see some grammar mistakes in them. But you can see they were able to communicate and retell the story. And the thought process they went through was just amazing.

One kid asked me towards the end of class, "Does marrón lose the accent when it becomes marrones?" This is something I have not specifically taught yet but was thrilled to see this student was already getting it.

Their homework tonight is to write their own little story and tomorrow they will draw pictures based on what another student wrote. I can't wait to see the stories they come up with.

This is why I became a teacher!

How can they care so little???

So today in one of my classes a major project (worth 100 points) was due along with a review worksheet. Both were given to students over a week ago with frequent reminders and time in class on a couple of occasions. So this morning I go around to collect them from my students. In one hour 3 students had completed the project and only 5 had done the worksheet out of 11 students! And what got me most was the absolute lack of care. Not a single student showed any disappointment or regret that they had forgot to do it or anything. They just sat there as if this were the most normal and perfect thing in the world.

And then when we started doing some review activities, they were failing miserably because they didn't recognize any of the vocabulary. It's only vocabulary that we have been working on for 3 weeks and have been tested on several times.

My original plan was to go over the review sheet as a class the latter part of the hour and then answer any questions before tomorrows chapter test. But since so few had even completed the review sheet I was not about to just give the answers to the rest so I met with the 5 who had completed it and we went over it together. What did the remaining students do? They sat and gabbed.

Will I feel sorry for them when they fail the test miserably tomorrow? No way! I have done everything I can to help them succeed and they have done very little, for some of them absolutely nothing. It's just too bad that the quarter ends this week so there will be no chance to pull their grade up after this and the zero they earned for not completing their project.