It’s been a year of growth for the Path 2 Proficiency community: more than a dozen new teachers joined as authors and readership almost doubled, but most importantly the reflections and conversations grew well beyond this site. This blog doesn’t exist to promote anyone or anything. This blog doesn’t exist to showcase the perfect teacher. This …
Author Archives: Thomas Sauer
On their own path (02/11/2017)
Here are some of the blog posts that I “loved” this week. A year of Growth This practical post by Spanish elementary school teacher, Jennifer Kennedy, may be one of my favorites of the new year so far. Reflecting on her own growth as a teacher, Jennifer gives three recommendations that any teacher can follow …
On their own path (02/04/2017)
What a busy week in the blogging world. There were so many great posts from educators that it made it really tough to pick the ones that really made me think, smile, or wonder. Hope you’ll find them helpful in your own journey. Using Proficiency Levels With Students? I NOW Get Why! (Or “You Don’t …
On their own path (01/28/2017)
After spending a wonderful weekend at TELL Collab Seattle last week (thanks to Japanese teacher, Colleen Lee-Hayes for her reflections of the learning on day 1 and day 2 last), I’m back to reviewing some of the posts that caught my attention over the last two weeks. And with just about everyone back to school, so …
On their own path (01/14/2017)
We are all so busy and it’s hard to keep up with blogs, social media. Many of you told me that you liked the weekly blog summaries I started last year and you missed reading them. It’s a new year and a new attempt at keeping up, even though I’m not making it my goal for …
Forget about your goals this year!
“Should old acquaintances be forgotten, And never brought to mind?” … it only takes this song and a couple of hours of reflection on the just-completed calendar year and our list of resolutions or goals for the new year is longer than the grocery list for Christmas dinner. Of course, it’s easy to set goals and …
What you missed on the path in 2016
As the calendar turns to a new year, we are of course looking back at 2016 and looking forward to 2017. We added several new authors this year and more are coming on board next year. Since it’s an unspoken rule to share your top posts of the year, we thought we do the same …
Continuing Your Conference Path
Going to a conference, especially one as large as this year’s ACTFL Convention with over 8,500 attendees, can be incredibly invigorating. Meeting so many teachers who seem to understand just how you think, who understand your struggles, and who are trying to figure how to make this “proficiency thing” happen with their students. But even if …
Beyond Meaning Making – Establishing Language Ownership (Part 1)
As our field grapples with the difference between performance and proficiency, translation and meaning making, fluency and errors, grammar and functional language use, I’ve been thinking a lot about my own language learning experiences. Born and raised in Germany, I was fortunate to be exposed a second language in elementary school by learning Russian starting …
Continue reading “Beyond Meaning Making – Establishing Language Ownership (Part 1)”
On their own path (05/14/16)
Oh, the tension of end of the school year. Can you feel it already? Teacher nerves are shot. Students have checked out. Just about everyone including the janitors are counting the days until everyone is gone for the summer. But the year isn’t quite over yet and how you close a school year might be …