Blog – Page 3 – Path 2 Proficiency

Singapore American School Visit Catapults Us On Our Path

University School of Milwaukee World Language Teachers Share Their Notes From Visit to the Singapore American School

This past May 2017, my colleagues, Alison Dupee, LS French teacher; Neelie Barthenheier, a MS French teacher and LS and MS World Language Chair; and I returned on fire with inspiration to grow as 21st-century world language educators. We had heard about the Singapore American School’s exemplary world language program from our consultant, Greg Duncan. He described it as one of the best elementary school language programs in the world. When I attended a 2016 ACTFL session last fall conducted by SAS’ Upper School WL Chair, Jean Rueckert, and the MS principal, Lauren Merhbach, I was struck by the similarity of their program and ours. The difference was that they had been working with Greg several years longer than we had, and they had already overcome some of the hurdles we were facing. They had renamed their classes according to proficiency levels, developed an efficient three-year rotating cross-divisional culture plan by language, and most impressively shared video footage showcasing the intermediate skill development of an elementary Chinese and Spanish student. How were they developing such communicative facility so early in their students’ language study? We wanted to know more about their program. What we saw knocked our socks off!

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English in the classroom?

Novice students– Here and there we heard some English, but very little.

Intermediate – Advanced students- The students and the teachers used Spanish the whole class, even during project planning.

In general, it blew our minds how much Spanish was spoken in the classes we observed. It begged the question: How can we create this culture at our own school?

Do we dare to ……….?

…… ask a student to physically walk out of the classroom and come back in speaking the target language, if the student walks into class speaking English?

……speak the target language with our colleagues in the hallways and in front of students?

……set the tone at the beginning of the year?

……help students learn to do project work in the target language?

……not speak English during class time?

Many USM teachers are doing this!

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Comfortable Classrooms for Conversation

The elementary classrooms were inviting and comfy. There were no desks and traditional chairs. Instead, in the middle of the room was a group of coffee tables with dry erase countertops with cushioned stools. At the front and the back of the classroom were high top tables and tall stools. On the left of the room was a long whiteboard. The teacher used this as the teacher-input area. On the right of the room were 5 whiteboard stations partitioned off by book shelves. Each of these stations had an identical series of word and grammar walls posted around them. There were also moveable cushions for student to sit on anywhere in the classroom. The furniture was movable, and in fact, for each unit, the teacher used different furniture configurations in order to enhance the current theme or activity. This classroom offered a place for a variety of conversations to be going on at the same time.

In a high school Spanish class, there were beanbag-like cushions on the floor and a couch for students to sit on. When asked about what the students love about Spanish class, the theme of comfy furniture kept coming up. Students strongly felt that furniture helped create a non-threatening environment that encouraged discussion.

Do we dare to change our world language classrooms to promote more relaxed conversational opportunities for our students? Some USM teachers are doing this!

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Daily Feedback

During pair work, the teacher constantly dropped in and out of various groups in order to listen, ask questions, and generally interact as a group member. This practice allowed for teachers to guide and correct students, answer questions, and gauge student progress. Lyster’s work on feedback was highly recommended for us to explore.

Do we dare to use class time to interact with our students while they are doing group work? Many USM teachers are doing this!

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Activities that Foster Conversation and are Fun

Many of the classes we observed had stations set up for students to practice communicating. At each station, we observed a different game made with expressions from each unit. While we recognized some of the names of the games, it is important to note that games were adapted to foster LOTS of conversation.

Game stations included:

Connect Four
Uno
Concentration/Memory
Trampoline/Bosu
A grid with pockets for cards
Hop scotch with pockets
Dots to jump on with vocab pics underneath
A Bingo-like game where chips were placed on a board of vocab
Interactive magnets at whiteboard stations
A play with a curtain at a whiteboard station

Do we dare to be creative about how to promote conversation in our classrooms? We have hired consultant, Katrina Griffin, 2016 ACTFL Teacher of the Year to do a hands-on workshop with us in November in order to grow our bag of tricks for promoting oral proficiency.

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SAS World Language Culture Curriculum

Novice: The basics, content driven.

Intermediate – Advanced: The Spanish & French teams created a three-year rotating curriculum for the intermediate and advanced classes that is based on the culture of one country. Therefore, every class learns about the same topic and has the same curriculum, but the language goals and tasks are different according to proficiency levels. This plan allows for students to dive deep into cultural topics and language. It is adaptable. It allows for a lot of cross-divisional collaboration. This system makes planning easy, and it is a tremendous time saver. In addition, it allows for the classroom to set the scene both physically and culturally for each theme without the teacher having to quickly take it down before the next group of students arrives for class. For example, in the Picasso unit, the room could be an art studio with easels. Kids at all levels would be set up to paint during the whole unit without the teacher having to rally to get organized for the next class.

Since it is a three-year rotating curriculum, they do not worry about the fact that after the fourth year and beyond that the student will revisit the same country’s topics and content because at that point his or her oral proficiency level is considerably higher. At that point, the student might be accomplishing higher-level tasks with the same content.

To organize the materials, the teachers dump all of the activities into a shared Google folder. Anyone can use and adapt the activities placed in there based on the oral proficiency target.

Do we dare develop a rotating culture curriculum? We are doing it!

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SAS Readiness Rationale

Based on their research, the teachers at SAS have come to the conclusion that reading comprehension should be introduced when the students have an oral proficiency level of intermediate-high. Before this point, working on reading comprehension interferes with oral proficiency progress.

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The SAS Reading Program

Starting at the intermediate-high oral proficiency level, students start with level-based readers. They use a program called RAZ (it is the same idea as Reading A to Z). They learn how to read just as our kids learn how to read in the Lower School. Teachers sit down one-on-one with the students to gauge reading proficiency level and assign them a box of books based on the individual reading level. They have trained “helpers” in their classrooms to give students individualized attention,

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Course Offerings and How Students Progress

Since classes are titled by oral proficiency targets, i.e. Novice (Mid, High) Intermediate (Low, Mid, High), Advanced, students move according to skill level development at their own pace. Students can move up at the semester if they meet the goals for the next oral proficiency level by that time. Since there is no limit to how fast students can progress to the advanced level where elective courses in history and culture are becoming available, many are able to take these elective courses before the end of high school.

Do we dare change the names of our classes? We are in the process of doing this!

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AP Language Options

Students can take AP language and culture courses in the high school when they have reached an intermediate-high level of oral proficiency; since SAS has elementary language programs in Chinese, French, and Spanish, many students reach that level before their senior year, allowing them a year or even two to take electives in the target language. We observed a Spanish poetry elective class where students were sharing their own poetry while comfortably seated in bean bag chairs on the floor. When we had a chance to ask them about this experience, they raved about the opportunity. Many of them had taken the AP Spanish Language and Culture class the year before and now they were excited to be able to take an elective course.

How awesome is it to think in terms of having students so advanced in oral proficiency that they can explore advanced topics in the language? We hope to do this!

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Clear ACTFL Proficiency Targets

The ACTFL oral proficiency triangle was posted in every classroom with specific proficiency targets for the different classes.

We have posters in every classroom that stipulate the characteristics of each oral proficiency level.

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Professional Development at SAS

Teachers work together in teams (PLCs- Professional Learning Communities)coordinating curriculum, analyzing data, and truly seeking the best paths to proficiency for their students. Time is built into the daily schedule for Professional Learning Communities to meet. Each teacher is a valued member of a PLC; in the LS language department, each member had an area of expertise that made them a valued team member.

Do we dare to form Professional Learning Communities? We are doing this!

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Oral Assessment Feedback

For homework, the teacher asks students to re-watch their own oral assessment video and reflect upon it. The next day, the teacher sits down with a student separately at a table in the same classroom, but apart from the class to discuss reflections. The class works on something else.

During the meeting, the teacher turns on the student oral-assessment video and it plays in the background while they speak about the performance. The teacher starts by asking “Tell me about this last oral assessment.” The student starts speaking about the oral work. If the student starts by focusing on the negative, the teacher redirects the student to the positives. As the student speaks, the teacher asks guiding and follow-up questions only when necessary. Ex: What question words did you use? Did you notice if you were creating language or delivering memorized sentences? What connector words did you use? Were you speaking in full sentences? The students speak at length and in detail in English during their reflection time. The teacher asks the student where he or she hit on the ACTFL oral proficiency scale and then agrees or disagrees with an explanation.

Once the student finishes the reflection, the teacher then coaches the student. The feedback is encouraging and it focuses on functions that will help the student reach up into the next oral proficiency level. The conversation concludes with goals that are set by the student and teacher together. The teacher asks what will be the steps in order to achieve this goal.

Do we dare to take this kind of individual time to help students understand better their own skill level and what it might take to improve it?

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Singapore! A fading memory that will leave a lasting impression, not only on us but on our students!

Next blog: More details about the way we are changing our program as a result of visiting SAS

Keeping My Eye On A New Path…

After a long time, and an ‘aha’ moment, I’m introducing proficiency this year as a key part of my students’ learning. I’m using it fully with my Yr1&2’s this semester. There’s been much thinking and reworking of ideas with the help of colleagues, the resources on P2P and the ever-generous #langchat PLN. I know that when making changes sometimes the hardest part is sticking to the new direction..and here’s how I’m keeping my eye on this new path:

Posting An “Easy to See” Path To Refer To – Nothing helps you talk about proficiency more than having it visible in the room. I mean really visible – you can reach out and touch visible. Many like to put their path around the room above whiteboards and bulletin boards. However, I chose to put it down low, on one bulletin board, specifically because this is new to me (and my students). I notice that the descriptors catch my eye when I am talking or giving feedback meaning that I refer to them more often. It allows me to take that opportunity to walk over and point to the levels as I refer to them and really point the kids to what I am talking about. It makes it easy for me to incorporate the language of proficiency into my feedback. Being on a bulletin board, at the side of the room, keeps me, and my students, proficiency aware.

Adding The Path To My Syllabus/Site – I added a Path handout to my students’ syllabus in easy to follow language. I used the classic ‘road’ template from easely.ly but any program should let you put one together. Many teachers have also used the ‘taco chat’ or ‘sushi talk’ sheets shared by colleagues on #langchat. I referred to the path on the first day of class, the various levels too and explained to them why I was now using levels. There were no ‘in-class’ time dedicated to proficiency exploration at this point but I did ask students to reflect upon the difference between Novice/Intermediate – as they saw it – as part of their first day syllabus reflection. One response was great “A novice is a robot but an intermediate is one with evolving AI capability!” I’ve also updated my class site to include the ‘what’ and ‘why’ for parents and other educators/administrators interested in what I am doing.

Adding Proficiency Expectations to My Rubrics – Adding proficiency to my classroom means that I want to add it – as a level of achievement to my class rubrics. So I’ve created a pdf that I can cut/paste and add quickly to rubrics as I use them. It has two blanks to fill in – “Proficiency Expectations For This Task” and “Your Level of Proficiency on this Task” and a copy (just like the bulletin board) of what the basic level descriptors are. I was thrilled to hear a student who received their evaluation on their first interpersonal say to his partner, “Hey I got a Novice Three!”

Finding/Seeking Out Support When I Need It – I would be nowhere on this journey without a colleague (or two or an entire PLN!) there for support. This proficiency model is new in my school and it is great to have my school colleague Connie is on this new journey with me. Having someone in my right there in my department to consult with, get feedback from (and confess to) is invaluable. I can’t say enough as well about my ‘virtual’ PLN especially colleagues like Natalia DeLaat and Sara-Elizabeth Cottrell who answered key questions at critical times. Knowing that I am not alone on this path, and that I can call upon those farther down the road than me, is key to successfully implementing this new focus in my room.

The path may be new but I feel that I have set out on my journey with resources to keep me firmly on route..and fantastic people to travel this road with. Onward.

Colleen

Traveling the Path2Proficiency

My personal journey on the Path2Proficiency began when I was a teenager. I had the opportunity to learn languages in several very different settings. I started learning French in junior high school using the Audiolingual Method (yes, I know, it was a long time ago). We never saw a word written in French for at least six weeks, but I longed for visual cues, so I tried to take notes on a single sheet of notebook paper (Como talley voo?). The next year (age 12) I signed up for an “Aural-Oral” course at the University of Washington Language Learning Center to learn Modern Greek. I spent several months on Tuesday evenings with a reel-to-reel tape recorder learning to pronounce Greek, understand some words and phrases, and (fortunately) how to write the alphabet and decode words in Greek. I guess I wasn’t close to proficient in either language, and I knew it.

When I was 16, I headed to Europe with a group of dancers and musicians to travel to the Balkans and become immersed in the language and culture. And immersed I was. My French came in very handy a few times (though more people spoke German), and my Greek helped me learn to read Serbian, Macedonian, and Bulgarian Cyrillic a little faster. Living and traveling in a country gives you ample opportunities to learn critical phrases, like “Ima vreme,” which means roughly, “There’s still time, no rush, all things in due time, slow down and smell the roses” and “Nema problema,” which is pretty much what it looks like, “No problem,” and generally means that there’s probably lots of problems but “Ima vreme” to figure them out.

After our group’s trip, I went back to Macedonia and stayed with a family for another five months. That was real immersion. Few people I met could speak English (or even French), but they had the time to be sympathetic conversationalists. When people met me, they’d ask if I could speak Macedonian, and I’d say “I’m learning to speak Macedonian,” and they’d say “You will learn it (in the sense of learn it thoroughly or ‘master’ it).” That was my first lesson in the Slavic grammatical concept of aspect (imperfective vs. perfective).

The next fall I entered the University of Washington. I thought maybe I’d study French, but when the advisor heard that I’d learned to speak Macedonian (well, more or less…) he said I belonged in the Slavic Department, so that was the beginning of my career with Russian. I remember our textbook (still Audiolingual method, although we did get access to written texts at least). It assumed that students could not learn to pronounce Russian correctly unless they had access to the phonetic transcription. (A lot of students, I think, did not even learn to read Cyrillic because they became dependent on the transcription.) I remember reading words that looked like “vsego” and were pronounced “fsivo.” In Spring quarter of my freshman year, this thing called the Student Strike (Kent State… 1970) happened. Our Russian instructor was strongly in support of it, so she canceled regular classes, but she agreed to meet once a week if we’d conduct the class entirely in Russian and talk about current events. I probably learned more from those 10 hours than I would have learned from the 40 hours of class that we skipped.

After I completed third-year Russian, I signed up for a summer study abroad in Leningrad (yes, the Soviet Union). We had to sign a language pledge and many of us stuck with it, even when we didn’t really know enough to speak accurately. (I spent the first night in the dorm searching out “brick” water because I confused it with the word for “boiled.”)

A couple of years later, after I studied Romanian, spent a year in Macedonia and Romania and back in Leningrad for the semester program, I eventually entered graduate school and had a chance to be a Teaching Assistant for Russian. I could say that all my personal experiences on the Path2Proficiency flooded over me, and I committed to creating a powerful language learning environment for my students. I spoke only Russian in class (although I did not even know what ACTFL was or the 90% goal in target language). I did everything I could to provide comprehensible input (long before I heard of Krashen). I listened to my students, encouraged them, taught them to read in Russian (Cyrillic, not transcription) during the first week, and tried to get them genuinely engaged in the language and culture.

My career has taken me in many directions since that time, but for the past twenty years I’ve had the great fortune of working with many teachers and administrators to plan and implement Dual Language Immersion and World Language programs. I’ve become particularly fond of working with Heritage Language speakers of Russian and other languages.

So, now I’m trying to help others on their Path2Proficiency. Because I’ve coordinated our state and district testing for Competency-Based Credits and the Seal of Biliteracy, I’ve spent hours proctoring language proficiency testing and reviewing and summarizing test results in more than fifty languages. I can see the difference between students who are confident of their language skills and those who doubt themselves (and that includes, I’m sorry to say, a lot of Heritage Language speakers).

The beautiful thing about this work is that I never have to think about assigning “grades” in the usual classroom sense. Students receive ratings on the ACTFL proficiency scale. If their Writing is lower than other skills, I can encourage them to go do some more writing in their language, then come back and test again. Many of these are students who have had little formal instruction in their language. But if they are Heritage speakers, they may have become sensitive to criticism from native speaker parents and adults who assume they should be more “native like” in their mastery of the language. It is a challenge to get everyone more oriented to recognizing what the students CAN do in the language.

I also work extensively with Dual Language Immersion programs. In elementary school, there is a level of freedom to let the language develop “naturally” unhindered by grades because the graded subjects are the content areas like Math, Science, and Social Studies. I see students taking risks (and, yes, making mistakes) but they internalize the language, a lot like I did when I was a teenager in Macedonia. It can be messy, but very rewarding. Some students develop great proficiency, not only in listening and speaking, but also in reading and writing.

But then they hit middle and high school. In some of our programs that means encountering traditional “foreign” language teaching (like I experienced when I started studying Russian at the university). It can be a shock to move from owning your language proficiency development to trying to fit into a method of learning that someone else (the teacher or the textbook) has prescribed for you. I see students getting bored, discouraged, and sometimes giving up. It breaks my heart.

So, I continue relentlessly to provide our language teachers with more professional development on proficiency and the Path2Proficiency. Those that “get” it transform their teaching and their students soar.

Focus on adjustment

As teachers, we are constantly adjusting. It seems like we adjust frequently with different trends that emerge- PBLs, no homework, IPAs, differentiation- you name it. However, the best of each idea seems to stick as we work on the next idea emerging from education. Also, as foreign language teachers, we are all adjusting our beliefs and policies since we are reading this blog! As I have started to teach towards proficiency, I have found that I am able to adjust my instruction even more after I have reflected. This is even more important because I am adjusting based on what my students are doing. They are driving my adjustments instead of trends in the education world.

Feedback Adjustments

I love using Google Forms to collect feedback! One of my easiest adjustments comes from weekly feedback from my students. Wendy Farabough first taught me about Feedback Friday, and it is so easy to implement. You can have students complete this during the last few minutes of class. It not only lets me know what activities I should repeat, but it also gives me an insight into what they are thinking that week. I can easily add an optional question like “is there anything else I need to know?” While many students skip this question, the ones that do write something typically tell me something important. More importantly, it shows my students that I value their opinion. I want class to be engaging for them, and a quick five-minute activity can demonstrate that. Plus, it helps with my planning for the future year and week. But make sure that you adjust based on this feedback! If students like a certain activity, do it again! If students do not find an activity useful, explain it to them or tweak it to improve it.

Many teachers bemoan that students never pay attention to the feedback that they give them on assessments. However, what do we require for students to do with our feedback? Do we guide them with what we want them to do? To help students respond to the feedback, I typically have students fill out (another!) Google Form about what they did and how they want to improve. While I hope they use the feedback I give them, I also like to see if they agree with my opinion or not. Also, they can share what was easy for them. Many times, I cannot tell what is easy or difficult for them. It would also be useful to have them give feedback right after they take the assessment before I give them my feedback.

When students express what is difficult for them, this feedback helps me adjust my focus in class. Last year in Spanish II, many students commented that they were having trouble with interpretive listening. I started investigating ways to improve my instruction and coaching for students and to adjust to where my students were having difficulties. I read a lot of posts by Gianfranco Conti which explained the idea of micro-listening along with a variety of activities. I realized that this was where my students were truly struggling. I employed some of his strategies, and my students made improvements. It also allowed me to start working more on these activities earlier on in my instruction.

Assessment Adjustments

The other opportunity that I have found is to adjust after both formative and summative assessments. I remember the first time I gave a FULL IPA at the end of level 3. At the end, I was thinking there is so much that I want to work on with the students now! By using the rubric, I can see where students are struggling. For my Spanish V students, many of them were using the same verbs. However, when I looked at my vocabulary list from that unit, I mostly had nouns! Next chapter, I will be sure to include more verbs and phrases.

This can also be relevant for grammar points to reinforce. I frequently see these when they complete writing activities/formative assessments in class in their online Seesaw journal. I can target any structure that they need to communicate before they write their presentational pieces. Also by focusing on what they need to communicate, I can find the most relevant pieces of information. I am not just teaching “morir- to die” in the unit with food because servir was also in that unit and they both have a stem-change in the preterite tense.

If your students are still writing simple, repetitive sentences, have you reinforced conjunctions? Engage in more whole class conversation where you initiate better follow-up questions to help students with interpersonal speaking. I am always reminded to play my favorite circumlocution game when my students struggle with describing words in Spanish. One student has his/her back to the board, I write a word on the board, and everyone else must describe it aloud in Spanish. Assessments should give you a point to drive and adjust your next unit instead of being the end of learning for that topic.

As we teachers always reflect, remember to constantly adjust to help your students improve throughout the year.

Where They’re At.

I ended last school year with a new practice I’ve come to love–cleaning my classroom while reflecting on the year and creating a goals board for the next one. I left the last two summers feeling ready to leave, disconnect and return to work refreshed with goals and ideas in place. This fall, the goals board again came through and helped me to get my footing right away, and I got really excited about what I wanted to improve on this school year.

But this week, something threw a wrench in those plans: the children.

It was exciting to see them again after summer and I was elated by how much Spanish they spoke and understood. While some were ready to jump right in again, I have one group that just isn’t jibing with what I had in mind. They think my awesome Shakira song is dumb. They don’t care who Gerard Piqué is. They’re speaking in English the whole time, over each other and me. And I found myself a little knocked back on my heels.

I’ll pause here to inject something about working in an elementary and middle school. I’m in a K-8 program, which means, these children are not new to me. We’ve known each other since they were 6 years old. This is a gift, allowing me to build on a long-term relationship in which we can focus on having fun and learning together because we’ve been building rapport over so many years and developmental stages. I often rely on that relationship as the children enter adolescence and no longer argue over who gets to sit next to me(or on me) in class. But every once and awhile, I am reminded that I shouldn’t take that all for granted, and that building rapport with the children must be an on-going effort.

This year’s middle schoolers remind me that I have to pause and meet the students where they are, not where I planned on going. This may seem obvious, but most years I start knowing pretty well where they are already. So while I am continuing to work on building my CI toolbox, incorporating art, building connections with the main classrooms and seeking cultural lessons that foster critical thinking, I will be pursuing activities that get at the core of what I do.

The students are reminding me of some the most important parts of my job: supporting what we in Montessori call grace and courtesy–or thoughtfulness and kindness in our community, providing accessible, comprehensible Spanish input and bringing in lessons and experiences that are of high interest to the students.

My plan is to do more listening and observing so I can meet the students where they are and hopefully get them what they need.

Don’t Get It Twisted

As we kick off another school year, a lot of topics are swirling about in department meetings, district PD, online forums, Twitter, workshops, and more. This organization system or that one, new seating charts or going deskless, standards-based grading or category percentages, and much more. But, as Rihanna tells us, don’t get it twisted. There are some subtle nuances that define our teaching in big ways that we may not realize, and at the beginning of the school year, they merit some reflection.

“I taught it” doesn’t mean that they ‘caught’ it

How many times have we said that to colleagues, “But I taught that!” Usually out of frustration because students aren’t showing mastery, this is a deceptive statement. If there are students in the class who are showing that they grasp certain language and can use it, then it was, indeed, taught. But, don’t get it twisted; are these students the exception or the rule? Do they represent other students in the class? Or, would everyone stand to benefit from some re-teaching and differentiation? The high flyers can go even higher, and the rest can finally take flight, without the pressure of knowing other students are ahead of them. We need to take a hard look at why we require what we require to be due when it’s due and how we are meeting students where they are to make language accessible to them. Taught isn’t caught, but learned is earned — if we’re doing all the work, that is neither teaching nor learning; no one benefits, and we’ll trudge on tired and frustrated.

Compliance ≠ Engagement

Teaching, learning, and society have all changed a lot, in big ways. One doesn’t need to go very far to hear experienced teachers lament about how students used to learn better/faster/more, or be more engaged/patient/polite, etc. Don’t get it twisted; it’s fair to say that students weren’t that amazing then and aren’t that impossible now, but how do we reconcile the changes we’ve seen? When it comes to proficiency-based language teaching, this can be a major turning point in our own self-reflection. For me, when I taught book chapters one by one, based on grammatical themes, I was definitely mistaking compliance for engagement, and performance for acquisition. If they got a 95 on the test, it didn’t occur to me that they had just memorized rules to then regurgitate onto the paper according to DOT LOCO, or some other acronym. If I had assessed them again a couple weeks later they probably would have a) been too nervous to even write/say anything for fear of being “wrong” and b) all the rules would’ve gone out the window, which is fine. But I’d never have known because that wasn’t what I was setting them up for; what I was setting them up for was what I thought were really compelling guided activities, not can-do statements and goal-based growth. I was filling X number of minutes, not curating a sequenced, memorable language acquisition experience.

Memorized ≠ Memorable

As mentioned above, it’s important for educators in our content area to really reflect on what we’re making memorized and what we’re making memorable. The two aren’t equal and never have been. But, if we’ve been mistaking compliance for engagement, or fixated on the frustration of what they can’t do and not the joy of what they can do, we missed the best parts of our work. There’s a reason students learn swear words after hearing them ONCE or silly statements like “Your mom’s a stove!” which my friend Susan still remembers 20 years later. Making language memorized and not memorable is why our previous language teachers failed us and we now hear adults tell us how many years of a language they took and what all they cannot do. Memorable language is why we think toddlers who have picked up our idiosyncrasies are hilarious, “Whoopsy!” when they spill something or, “Ohhh noooo!” after falling. Our amusement is often memorable to them, and they persist; it’s a positive association. How can we create these same patterns and moments for our students across the span of a semester or a school year? If it really seems they understood and could use ser vs. estar or passe compose whenever back then was, and they aren’t now, that deserves to be unpacked honestly and expeditiously.

Performance ≠ Proficiency

In the same vein, a stellar performance on an assessment is to be lauded – and then followed up on. Performance is what students can do in the moment in a certain setting with certain expectations, and it isn’t until well into the Intermediate Level(s) that students can be ambushed with language and expected to respond. So, sure on Thursday they can talk/write about their family, but as the class continues, can they expand on that talk, or was it just for that one assessment? If they can answer five personal questions today, how do those recycle forward in the coming weeks and months? Does the perspective shift so that it’s the same question but with more repetitions, not as repetitive? Can those personal questions be woven into the class culture with Special Person Interviews or classmate quizzes? How can we take language and spiral it up so that performances over time reflect students’ proficiency and vice versa?

Model what you mention

If we communicate to students to do X, Y, and Z, but are not open to those in our own professional lives, that may merit some further thought. If we incorporate Música Miércoles but then tell students we never listen to TL music in our ‘normal’ lives, what message does that send? Do they hear us speak the TL with former students and colleagues? (If not, what does that communicate about us and our expectations?) As two everyday examples, cell phones and groups are two ways I’ve really shifted my mindset and teaching. If I tell my students about attention, responsibility, and self-control re: their cell phones, that they are to be invisible, yet I can acknowledge that I have my cell phone on my physical person 24/7 and I also take it to meetings and, gasp, glance at it occasionally, how do I reconcile calling my classroom a 21st century learning environment? The same goes with groups – how often do I work in groups in my professional lives, and what is everyone’s accountability? Role? Group work can be the bane of many others’ existences, whereas others live for it. Depending on the task and the group, my mindset can go either way, and I think it’s important to acknowledge that. If we mention it, we need to model it – so our cell phone policy acknowledges what we prioritize and can model, as do our group work tasks (if they can be done alone, or in pairs, why not? What is it about X number of people that makes the task more effective?

Work ≠ Job

Some days teaching is our chosen career, one’s life’s work. These are beautiful days – the choral responses sound like angels, handouts are color-coded and stapled, colleagues are pleasant, our cheesy jokes garner genuine laughter, and the copier is spitting out papers like Krispy Kreme, hot and fresh. These are the days we reflect and feel like we belong; our classroom feels like home, our students like family.Then, there are the days where teaching is a job. Plans B, C, and D-L have to be put in place because A didn’t work, everything seems to go wrong and on top of that, someone says something snarky, and then you realize you’ve had dried glue on your butt and two differently-colored shoes on, all day. Ugh. Realizing and reflecting on the contrast between our life’s work and today’s job is key — some days, our kids do breakout boxes and use collaborative documents; other days, they do a paired worksheet that is merely for repetition. It’s fine.

Sift and Shift

When it comes to research, philosophies, new ideas, high-leverage habits, I work to sift and shift, sift and shift. One at a time, or zero for the time being, it’s too overwhelming and tiring to do too much at once, because then suddenly we’re a first-year teacher again, inventing the wheel and installing it on the car to make sure it works because we really need to drive to X, simultaneously. Early teaching is already triage, all day every day, and when we try to revamp too many things, or change curricula, or move to a new school, or all of the above at the same time (been there!), way less gets accomplished. Rather, I try to slow down so that I can speed up later. There are tons of ideas out there, but don’t get it twisted: a stitch in time saves nine, truly — find ideas you mesh with, hash out a practical way to incorporate them, and give major shifts time to marinate. It is possible to be open to new ideas and not use all of them. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither was any effective classroom with quality teaching and learning.

Then, shift or get off the pot

Sure, new ideas need time to marinate but don’t get it twisted. Once you feel you’re on the precipice of major, positive changes, for you, it’s go time. Whether it’s going deskless, incorporating stories, not giving homework, starting student blogs, using student portfolio folders, whatever it is that you feel can jump start your teaching, shift or get off the pot. That is to say, either jump onto some action items that get you started, or eliminate them from your long-term plan. Like any good New Year’s resolution, it’s one thing to want a goal; it’s another to work toward it. If proficiency-based teaching has intrigued you, get reading, attending, and discussing. You don’t have to dive into the deep end of the pool right away (and when others do, resist comparison!), but it should probably be the goal, even if you started by gently easing into the shallow.

No matter how we tackle our goals and how we grow as professionals, we must not get it twisted — let’s look at what is really going on in our classrooms and realize that when we know more, we do more. In this moment in time, our best is all we have to give, and if it is truly our best, it is enough. Cheers! It’s a great year to have a great year!

Move Fast and Break Things

Anybody else out there have a long commute? Mine really gets to me some days. Fortunately, podcasts keep my brain fed and me from being on the news when somebody ignores the rules of the road. I recommend the latest batch of podcasts I stumbled across called The Masters of Scale. Reed Hoffman, one of the creators of LinkedIn, interviews successful entrepreneurs about how they got started. Smart people. Successful people. Ever heard of Air BnB, Facebook, or Apple? Each of the founders of these companies started with a small idea and wanted it to grow. Each founder had to learn how to take their little sprout of an idea and scale it bigger for the masses. Sound familiar? Teachers often have ideas that they want to bring to their students. We stumble onto a nugget of an idea online or attend an event that sparks our passion and fires us up. We get an idea that shows us a glimpse of the positive impact we can make on our students. Have you ever had a seed of an idea sprout in you, but you’re not sure what to do with it? How many of us stop watering our ideas and see them wither in the hot sun of everyday responsibilities or critical colleagues?

Mark Zuckerburg, founder of a little company called Facebook, had a motto when the company was starting out: move fast and break things. He decided that getting his imperfect product out there for users to actually interact with and get real-time feedback from was much better than waiting for it to be polished and pretty. He knew that if he waited too long to put his product out that somebody else would beat him to it. Reed Hoffman, the LinkedIn co-founder goes so far as to say that if you wait to release your product until it’s ready, you’ve waited too late. Do you have a new idea that you want to implement for your students? When are you going to move? Are you worried about your imperfect product? Are you waiting until you understand ALL about it before you try it out on your students? What if you just…tried something? Trust me, I get it. The fear of inadequacy, the stress of an unknown student reaction, and the judgment from our colleagues or administrators can be paralyzing. Just imagine if Steve Jobs had waited to release the iPhone until he thought it was in its final form. We would have all missed out on the product that has revolutionized communication around the world. What are we on now, the iPhone 8? Are people furious when a new one comes out? No, people practically foam at the mouth for Apple’s next big idea.

So what does that mean for us as teachers? A teacher committed to improving his or her students’ language learning experience must act like an entrepreneur improving his product. As a teacher, what is our product? We are. Let me say that again. Our professional self is our product. Our brand is directly tied to the improvement of our product. We can attend events and PD, but, in the end, we’re going to learn what we want to learn. It’s up to us to put effort into improving our teaching and we need to move fast, as Mark Zuckerburg urges. Take that seed of an idea and feed it. So, you try an activity and it flops. Oh well. The students may hate it. Your administrator may come in at just the wrong moment. Your colleagues may complain about the noise. So what?! You learned something about your product. Tomorrow you’ll try something else and become iTeacher 2.0. Next time, you’ll become iTeacher 3.0. As long as you’re moving forward, you can’t do it wrong. Even if you don’t move fast, just move. Try the new idea. Ask for feedback from your students. Release, reflect, revise, and repeat. Move.

In order to move fast, we’ll have to be willing to give something up in order to do something new. It is impossible to add more into our professional lives without editing something out. What are you going to break? We always have a to-do list, but we should also have a to-don’t list. What’s on your to-don’t list? Stop being afraid of opinions? Stop eating lunch with negative colleagues? Stop working alone? Stop saying yes too often? Stop working harder than the students? Stop grading everything?

Let’s give ourselves permission to try something new and edit out what is holding us back from getting that idea started. Your students need you to improve your product. Learn, make mistakes, celebrate success, and move forward. That idea of yours just might work. So, go ahead: move fast and break things.

There is no super teacher

Often when I’m just up to my eyeballs in to-do lists, I’m reminded of the catchy phrase in the Scrubs theme song that simply goes “I’m no Superman.”

When I first started chatting weekly on #langchat back in 2014, I was elated to find a community of like-minded teachers who taught the same way I did, who used the same types of teaching methods I did, who used the target language the same ways I did, and who were a wealth of information. I thought so often simultaneously “I could never be like that person!” and “How can I be more like that person?” After every #langchat or local professional development session I went to, I felt like I just needed to uproot everything I’d ever done before and start from scratch.

I’ve often said that being a teacher isn’t a 9-5 job; it’s more of a 5-9. And as much as I’ve worked hard for my students to have a learning process that was relevant to them, I always felt like I was never as good enough as others in my department who had just one more prompt, one more extension activity, one more manipulative or one more trick to help their students grasp the concept.

Who were these Super Teachers in my eyes?

Well, many were veteran teachers who had learned over the years through careful observation to add things on as they’re able, to not throw the baby out with the bathwater, and to manage their workload in order to help them still have time for themselves. And here’s the kicker: this didn’t happen overnight, either. These teachers’ techniques came after culling from other teachers over the years and observing what consistently worked well with their students.

But, come to find out, there actually is no Super Teacher. There is no magic potion one can drink one day in order to become the best possible teacher the next. Effective lessons still need to be planned. Copies still need to be made. Prompts still need to be created. Lesson targets need to be met.

Students still need to be taught by someone who is willing to do the hard work of teaching them, and students need effective feedback in order to help them grow.

So, what do I say to the teachers I now supervise who are trying to figure it all out now? I tell them “It’ll be all right.”

“But what if…””It’ll be all right.”

“I feel so…””It’ll be all right.”

“I’m just not…” “It’ll be all right.”

Now that I’m the one observing instead of teaching, my eyes are really opened to all that teachers need to be cognizant of in regards to keeping a language classroom running smoothly, though I did it for so long and it seemed almost like breathing, as I told a colleague once.

There certainly is a lot to remember in order to teach a class and keep students on track to grow in their language ability. As so many teachers are up early and up late to ensure their students have a quality learning experience, it is important to remember, though, that learning to be a better teacher takes practice, reflection, and, ultimately, growth.

And it’ll be all right because there are no Super Teachers, just teachers who love their students and who are willing to help them grow.

Rediscovering Language Learning

I love what I do. I love Spanish, and teaching, and I love watching students “get it”. I also love presenting, and how I have a platform to share my journey with other teachers, but y’all, teacher burnout is a real thing. Last year was a crazy year for me, and after my SCOLT presentation, I came back and pretty much hid in a hole and tried my best to make it to June. It was just a slow-rolling meltdown to the end of the school year, with a whole summer of school curriculum writing and STARTALK curriculum & program facilitation ahead of me. It was the first summer I’d put my kids in summer camp instead of being home with them all summer, and that combined with everything else had me really questioning my choices and feeling like I had nothing to share. Then, the coolest thing happened… I started learning Chinese! (No, really, I did!) I’m kind of obsessed with it right now, as anyone who knows me will tell you. In all seriousness, I can tell you that the process of rediscovering my love of language learning snapped me out of my funk, and it has led me to think about a few applications for my own classroom which I’d like to share with you.

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Classroom Application 1

My students need their intellectual curiosity stimulated to work towards learning a new language. They need a puzzle to figure out, or a pattern to see, because once they get the rush of being right, they’ll want to try to do it again.

This all started when Matt Coss, one of the Chinese teachers from a local STARTALK program and an awesome new blogger on this site, and I went to on a field trip to the Asian market to plan part of our student field trip. As we walked around, he in his element and me just kind of along for the ride, he started to point out things about Chinese characters in the products we were looking at. It was like a Novice Low Interpretive Reading exercise in a class, but so much better! I was in an authentic market, looking at authentic products, identifying characters and parts of characters I recognized in their contexts! Let me tell you, as I started to figure it out, I was hooked! (The character under the numbers means tea, by the way) It was the excitement of looking at a Chinese character and actually knowing what it says: that real Novice rush you get when input that didn’t make sense suddenly does.

From that point on, as I started to learn characters, any input was fair game. While Dr. Strange was making time stand still in Hong Kong, I was looking at the characters on the signs in the background. When I opened a fortune cookie from my favorite Vietnamese restaurant (yeah, I don’t know either) it had Chinese characters on the back and I immediately circled all the characters I recognized, wrote their Pinyin above to prove it, and sent a picture to Matt.

One of the Chinese apps on my phone was all about listening and reading texts. There were some texts that were really short and manageable for my level, so I picked a few of them to read. I was so excited when I realized that I understood what it was saying! The app even reads to you so you can hear the pronunciation, and puts the pinyin (pronunciation guide) on top of the characters if you need more support. The fun part was that I was choosing reading material at my level on topics that I knew I could probably handle, so I was experiencing success on my own. I was even finding children’s books on Amazon that I could read in Chinese that were on my familiar topics.

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Classroom Application 2:

My students need to learn language around their own personal content and to some extent, on their own terms, so they have buy-in and can maintain their interest in using the language.

I needed to expand my vocabulary in Chinese with the vocabulary, phrases, and language structures that I needed to talk about what I wanted to talk about, but where to start? So, of course, there’s an app for that, right? I downloaded a few free Chinese apps on my phone that did some basic greetings and things in Chinese (most with translations, some with pictures), and I learned the word my name is, his/her name is, a few animals, and a few other things. Then I put a Chinese keyboard on my phone, and since we were already texting about STARTALK teaching, I sent Matt a text in Chinese about my dog! And he responded in Chinese! So we had a (very limited) conversation about our animals’ names.

That first conversation about my dog continued to include the puppy we adopted right after that. As I learned vocabulary with my app, looked up more vocab in an app dictionary, and asked Matt for simple structures, I could do slightly more with my conversations than before. I could answer a question and add a detail or two. The more I talked about the topics that were close to my everyday life experience, the more I felt invested in my use of the language. I sent pictures of the barbecue we went to at my friend’s house. I sent pictures of the fish my husband was eating at the Mexican restaurant. I learned colors and then tried to explain the colors of my cats as they hung out in the den. Pretty much anything I had the language to talk about, I sent captioned pictures about. I was so excited that I could look at a situation in my life and be able to use Chinese to explain it, that it drove me to use more Chinese. I would really like to do a project with my students this year where they just do this all year, related to their own lives and interests, and watch how their language evolves. I wanted to talk about anything I could, and I remembered the words because they were close to my experience. Novices deal in familiar topics, right?

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Classroom Application 3:

My students need someone real to talk (or text) with who will be positive with them and show them that they can be understood.

The coolest part of this experience was talking with a real person who was so excited about my learning Chinese. I was constantly receiving positive reinforcement when I tried a new structure, or had correct word order, or gave a shot at answering a question. The fact that I was texting in real time with a person and that person was responding, gave me confidence that my messages were comprehensible (even though not always correct). It also made me strive for more vocabulary and more structures because I wanted to be able to share more information and understand more of the texts I was receiving. I think that even beyond that, I wanted to be able to connect with the person I was talking to on their terms, and when I was able to and got positive feedback, I was more willing to try again. I have already applied this idea with the question function of Google Classroom, where I typed in a question for the class and gave the students the ability to respond to each other. We all spent 5 solid minutes “texting” back and forth, answering each other’s questions, and responding with follow up questions and comments. They thought it was really fun, and it simulated (albeit frantically) the texting practice I had in Chinese. I want to find a way to do this same thing but with a native speaking partner instead of my students all “texting” each other.

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Classroom Application 4:

Student need immediate feedback for three reasons: 1) to validate their attempts to use language, 2) so they know they are “doing it right”, and 3) so they can be provided with the correct word/phrase/structure to do it better the next time.

Immediate feedback was a great thing that worked in my 1-on-1 texting-teaching experience over the summer, and I’m really trying to figure out how I can make it work for my students. I would text Matt my attempt at language, and then I got instant feedback with a response in Chinese. If my statement was wrong, sometimes I’d get a response back as a question with the right characters in it instead, like a recast of the correct language, so I could try again. Other times, there would be a correction in English explaining why I did it wrong and what I needed to fix to make it better, or something simple like “word order”, so I knew I had the right characters but wrong order. If I did it correctly, I’d get a positive response in emoji or Chinese and a phrase like “perfect word order”. Now, the problem with this in the classroom setting is obvious, right? Lots of them, one of me. Giving meaningful feedback takes time, so it’s rare that it can be immediate in the same way as directly texting a person and receiving specific explanations and error correction. What I want (I think) is to listen to their recording and just to be able to record my response back to them with my initial impressions and maybe 1 specific thing to work on. I think that would be manageable for multiple classes.

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Classroom Application 5:

Students need to be exposed to so much target-culture related input via products and practices that they get inspired to experience it on their own.

I drink tea now, which I’ve never done before. I bought a teapot and tea, and I drink it every day, so much so that I’ve basically given up coffee. I go to eat dim sum instead of ordering Americanized Chinese food, and my new favorite drink is honey pomelo. I am also searching through my Netflix for movies in Chinese that I can watch so I can listen to the words and read the subtitles. I have also found several artists on Pandora stations in Chinese that I listen to now, and you can’t imagine how excited I get when I hear songs I recognize. I get the lyrics in characters and listen to the songs over and over “reading” the lyrics. I don’t know what they say since I don’t have enough vocabulary to really make meaning out of much of it, but when I hear/read the phrases I do know, it’s an empowering experience (plus I like the music).

I took my best friend with me to Grand Asia (the market) yesterday and we walked down all the aisles and I showed her all these things I like to eat and drink now. I even showed her characters for tea, rice, fish, fruit, and a few types of meat like the language nerd I am. Even though I really can’t speak much to anyone when I’m there, I don’t feel even remotely as “along for the ride” as I did when this all started. That’s what I want to be able to give my students. I want to create such a culturally-rich environment for them in class that they get hooked and want to explore the language and culture on their own, the same way I did with Spanish when I was 15, and am now doing again with Chinese.

I realize that it’s not realistic to think that every language teacher who is overwhelmed and facing burnout will just magically jump into learning a new language as the solution, but what I found for myself was that going back into that exciting Novice mode of struggling and being excited to try to make meaning really brought me back to life. It has made me want to make things better for my own students because I am 100% in their shoes every day. They laugh at me and say “Sra. Rhodes, you talk about Chinese all the time”, and that’s probably accurate, but when I talk about learning Chinese, I’m explaining to them how I’m stuck on a particular word order that I can’t get right, or trying to add a connector and using the wrong one, and other issues that they have in Spanish! It’s fun to have something in common with the language learners I’m teaching, and instead of just trying to get content to them, thinking about how I would find it most helpful in my language learning. I hope you enjoyed seeing this glimpse into what I did on my summer vacation, and that you have a great year learning something new with your students.

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He’s mad because papayas are not good to eat…

I’ll leave you with this last story of my life. I hate papaya. Growing up in Hawaii, my grandmother ate it every single day, and I hate everything about it: the smell especially, but also the taste, the texture, everything. When I learned how to say “I really don’t like to eat…” I immediately thought of papaya, so I learned that word. Since then, I have found so many papaya-related things in the Chinese market: fruit, juice, cookies, ugh… so every time I see one, I remind myself how to say “I really don’t like papaya.” and send that picture and phrase in a text. Finally, I found this cartoon with this very angry animal climbing up a papaya tree, and I kind of made a joke, in Chinese! It made me so happy, and I hope this year I can give my students what they need to get to this happy mode in their language learning. Hope this helps! Have fun!

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Image Credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Language_learning.png

Can It Wait?

We know that teachers make a lot of decisions, many of them split-second and with a lot to consider. In all of that question answering, however, I think we as teachers sometimes forget to do some of the asking. Coupled with that is how hard it can be to prioritize and decide when assessing if we can answer at all, especially if the question deals with our own wellbeing. Confession: I’ve always thought teacher “wellbeing” was a tad vague, and, if not made concrete, meaningless to teachers. We put others’ wellbeing before our own many days, and it can be hard to figure out what our own self-care, mental health, etc. even looks like. Plus, we teach in 2017 – there’s a constant pressure to make lessons jazzy, smooth, and exciting, because if they aren’t tech-filled and pedagogically sexy, our classroom will be the backdrop of sleeping students on Snapchat, or, gasp, we’ll be known as the “packet” teacher who spends hours at the copier and does anything but engage students. The horror!

The truth? Just because we can do anything doesn’t mean we have to do everything. Innovative teaching lies somewhere in the middle of the aforementioned so-called extremes. And, unless certain stars align in our favor, we may not always (ever?) have time to figure out what that or any of it ‘looks like’ for us as individuals (also why the term “best practices” is slowly being debunked). Many of these stars lie in our immediate environment. For 2.5 years, I was in a high-stress, hostile, undermining-from-the-top-down department that looked not to advocate for its own members but rather initiate their removal, preferably sooner rather than later. It was in that department that I felt a high degree of anxiety and pressure, every single day: Am I doing enough? Am I grading these fast enough? Am I teaching well enough? Notice the common theme of enough. What I eventually said was exactly that, “Enough!” and relocated.

When it came to my own decision making for those 2.5 years, I would’ve liked for someone to tell me that it could wait. ‘It’ was the aforementioned doing, grading, teaching, and feeling like I had to be every teacher in every moment, Johnny On The Spot. Instead of making decisions that progressed my professionalism and pedagogy, I was making decisions based on what I thought others’ perceptions of my classroom were, would be, etc. What I should’ve been asking myself all along was, “Can it wait?” Learning to reflect on this first and foremost was a transformationally positive shift in my career.

This works for us as teachers in a number of literal and figurative ways:

Students asking to go to the bathroom during precious class minutes? Especially with older students, “Can it wait?” It probably can, and then they forget, or grow some patience and ask again at a more opportune time. This applies to other errands and miscellaneous tasks, too. If it can wait, it will.
Been grading for a couple hours but haven’t seen your [important people] or done [other plans/exciting things that keep you sane]? “Can it wait?” Odds are the kids won’t explode if they don’t get their quizzes back tomorrow, perhaps you can pace out the grading and finish tomorrow? (Truth: I have to be careful w/ this one and really self-discipline, or else two weeks suddenly whiz by – I plot out the time. “From 4-6pm on Wednesday I will grade their tests,” and then it’s a race to see how much I can get done so that I do not go over that time slot.)
Those 81,204 e-mails since checked, I swear only an hour ago. Sheesh! As a very young teacher, I wish someone would’ve told me that these can wait, because many can. And, many didn’t apply to me; those are deleted first, so that I can really see what I’m working with and need to care about. Then, do they merit a response, or merely for me to remember/schedule/keep something in mind? If they do need a response, but I’m swamped, “Can it wait?” Lots can, and that saves my sanity to prioritize them and actually have a plan instead of just seeing 81,204, *ding!*, make that 81,205, messages waiting, staring back at me.
“Oooo, cool ideas!” We say that after conferences, workshops, podcasts, great books, and more, but perhaps it should be followed up with, “Can it wait?” If it cannot, then great, let’s do it! But, if it can, perhaps then it can be even better. That new tech tool would be cool right away, but what if it waited a unit or two and could then actually incorporate stuff you’ve taught or that students have produced up until then, and therefore is even more meaningful and exciting? Asking myself if certain tools or projects or ideas can wait also helps me weed out the stuff I should’ve eliminated a long time ago — as Thomas says, don’t just look for the tools in your box you can change, also look for the ones you can scrap altogether. If it can wait, and you don’t really notice, or you feel relief (been there!), it probably wasn’t worth the time in the first place and may have been a comfy fallback or a crutch (I’m looking at you, family tree poster!). We all need our comfy familiars from time to time, but if they aren’t furthering students’ language acquisition and growth experience, perhaps our comfort, too, can wait?
Assessment. If your department is on a strict pacing guide, and Unit Blahdy-Blah must be “covered” by such-and-such date, this can be really tricky. When it comes to assessing students, if you’re apprehensive at all, I think it’s critical to ask, “Can it wait?” What if we pushed X back a few days and really focused on Y, so that they’re prepared for Z. Deep down, we know what our students do and do not know, can and cannot do; it’s whether or not we’re ready to face it that counts. When I switched to proficiency-focused teaching, I really had to blow off the cobwebs and open the closet door for those skeletons to come out. They didn’t just walk out, either; it was more of a sashay, set to music, for all to see. Proficiency-based teaching does that – it puts students can-dos and can’t-dos on display for all to see, and if we aren’t somewhere where we can be vulnerable and trusting to that, undoubtedly there will be issues. Miriam Patrick waits until she feels 80% will score 80% or higher to assess, and then their feedback comes when the students are ready. If the test can wait, let it. If the writing assessment can wait, let it. If the students can’t speak on x, y, and z yet, and it can wait, let it. Nearly nothing else in life has a strict [date] deadline, yet education still does — “No test retakes! Must know Chapter 6 by 5 NOV! End of story!” So, adults can take the Bar, MCAT, teacher certification, GRE, and other exams multiple times, but a sophomore must show mastery of ser vs. estar by the end of Unit 3 in Spanish I? “Can it wait?” Most likely it can, and should. If our curriculums are written properly, themes will spiral up and topics will be revisited within the framework of high-frequency structures and vocabulary. If Johnny will inevitably fail an assessment, but the content is imbedded in the next unit’s themes and s/he has more time and context, “Can it wait?” Seems likely.

Budgeting our time is important, but I think for teachers, budgeting our mental effort is even more important. I’ve found that if we can reflect more often on how we view and pace the tasks that do need to get done but aren’t necessarily impending, we are more equipped to zoom out from the day-to-day, and be present to prioritize the things that truly can not wait.