Posts

Elena Giudice considers herself fortunate to have lived and worked in international schools in France, Puerto Rico, USA, The Bahamas, and Malta. Her studies in Intercultural Communications influenced her personal and professional growth in such positive ways that she strives to reach her students not only in their language growth but in the development of their social-emotional and cultural intelligence skills. Elena is currently Chair of the World Languages and Cultures Department at Saint Andrew’s School. I always look to lower school for inspiration. I firmly believe that many lower school learning experiences model best teaching practices that can be adapted easily to the WL classroom at any level. Sometimes, we don’t even realize we are modeling lower school experiences.  For example, the lower school circle time is the moment in upper school when we begin class as a group, warm up, hook the students, share current events, and then move on to more differentiated or pair work, or small group activities. We may not be sitting on a carpet in a circle but we are starting class as a community – together. I have always loved the concept of student roles in the lower school. I was always amazed […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

I think the act of teaching is a rather courageous process. It may not always be regarded as such, but it nonetheless is a courageous act. Through teaching we really put our best selves forward. I really believe (yes you’ve already heard this a hundred times but as a reminder…) that all teachers set out to be the best teachers they can be with the information and training they have accessed.  With this in mind, let’s think about what happens in a lesson. One hopes this is not a “stand and deliver” moment but rather an opportunity to “peel back the layers” moment. To be willing to make us vulnerable in a lesson and check for understanding or more specifically to check for learning can be scary.  It is a natural part of the instructional process but it can be unnerving. When we check for learning we are really evaluating our success through the student. If we are to be facilitators of learning we must look at the process of checking for learning as our data collection process by which we can evaluate our methods. Without that data we don’t know how successful we can be. So how can you […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

No matter what group of teachers. No matter what the original topic of the conference session, workshop, or professional learning training. Without fail, at some point someone is going to ask the dreaded question: “But how do I grade this?” While I try to be as helpful as possible and provide some solutions for the grading issue, my initial answer usually is “proficiency and grading don’t mix well.” I also know that’s not the answer that people want to hear as it ignores a teacher reality of having to give grades in the current system. Is there a way to combine the need to assign grades to please the system with the real purpose of assessment in a world language classroom: performance & feedback? A recent Musicentos post got me once again thinking about this question. Sara-Elizabeth’s post makes reference to the JCPS Performance rubric, so I will try to explain our thought processes in developing the rubric as well as one of the biggest challenges of rubric. ORIGINAL JCPS RUBRIC WAS A COMPROMISE “So what is it I don’t like? I always wondered why task completion was listed as a minor focus, almost in such a way that it […]

Disclaimer: I’m going to share a very vulnerable confession, which as a teacher is extremely dangerous because it puts me in a perceived “weak” position.  Although I confess that I struggle teaching Spanish 1, I choose to view it as a strength because it helps me evaluate what I’m doing, how I’m doing it, and what I can do to improve.  For any other educator out there, I would encourage you to do the same. During my first few years of teaching, my mentor teacher created my schedule so that I taught only Spanish 2.  Being that I was fresh out of college, I appreciated that she wanted to help me hone my teaching skills and classroom management.  As I became more comfortable teaching Spanish 2 and the proficiency targets and descriptors, Spanish 1 was added to my plate.  I was so excited.  The growth in Spanish 1 is magical.  They literally start with nothing and you get to see their growth.  As an educator this is very empowering.  It is also very empowering for the students to think about their metacognition.  For the past few years, I have drawn some conclusions about Spanish 1.  Somedays, I feel like I am […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

One of my favorite on-screen coaches is Doc Hudson from the Cars movies. Doc Hudson wasn’t always the town repair-car and judge. He was once the Fabulous Hudson Hornet, three time winner of the Piston Cup race! No one could out-race him until one horrible crash sidelined him and he didn’t race again. From that point forward, he didn’t want anything to do with racing until Lightning McQueen happened upon his sleepy town, and Doc finally saw something in Lightning that made him coach him and teach him and pass along all he had learned. We find the same process in Cars 3 [spoiler alert] as Lightning has a crucial choice to make in his comeback season after his own big crash similar to Doc’s. What Lightning finds out is that through the coaching he received from Doc, he finds himself coaching his new trainer–someone who always dreamed of being a Piston Cup race car! Lightning McQueen took his valuable experiences from racing and being coached by Doc Hudson and transformed that to ultimately be able to coach and train others. I actually shed a few tears at the end of the movie as I saw the connection from practicing teacher to […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

What can the biblical creation story teach us about unit and lesson planning? A lot! The Book of Genesis explains that God began with “tohu va’vohu” (sometimes translated from the Hebrew as “unformed and void”) and then differentiated the world into heaven and earth. From there, the Divine went on to separate light from darkness, water from dry land, and so on. Three years ago, when I began to transition from a textbook-based curriculum to thematic units designed for proficiency in my French 8 course, I quickly found myself mired in what’s known in modern French as le tohu-bohu, or disorder and confusion. Anyone who knows me will tell you that this is NOT my happy place! I spent weeks and weeks over summer vacation hashing out the bare bones of my units, and every night of the school year trying to figure out how to break down those unit plans into daily lessons. As a mere mortal, I did not know how to separate light from darkness, nor water from dry land. I would get lost trying to figure out, for example, what exactly Day 23 of a 35-day unit should look like. Or Day 13. Or Day 33. […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

The thing about embarking down the Path to Proficiency is that there isn’t just one single path you have to take.  When I first began my journey towards proficiency, I found myself often looking to others further along the trek than me and asking them for directions. I knew that I couldn’t implement everything I was hearing and learning about in my conversations with more experienced teachers… so, where should I begin?  What do I have to master first?  “Just give me the Secret Proficiency Roadmap already, and I swear I’ll follow it exactly!” Imagine my dismay when I discovered that the Secret Roadmap didn’t exist.  Naturally, this makes perfect sense: every educator’s path is going to be different, based on their past experiences and learning, where they’re teaching and who they’re teaching with, and what their natural strengths and weaknesses are.  Nevertheless, I keenly remember the frustration at feeling totally lost several times during those first few years — and I’ve seen other new travelers struggle with it, too.  So while I can’t tell anyone else what course their route will ultimately  take, I can certainly share the story of my peaks and valleys on the Path to Proficiency […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

In my education program, my professor would tell us a great analogy about grades and retakes.  She said that as teachers we should allow students to retake assessments, so they can continue to practice and improve with the language.  We want students to practice so well that they can attain a proficiency with the language.  Then, she made this analogy: if we were going to jump out of a plane, we would want to have the person who got an A in parachute packing, packing our parachutes instead of someone who earned a C.  Even if the person had to keep practicing until they earned an A, we would rather have the person who kept practicing until they earned an A instead of the person who got a C and then went to work.  Therefore, we want to let our students practice as much as we can to make them as proficient as we can.  We frequently discussed “how well is your parachute packed?”  It made sense for me; however, it was difficult to implement.  As my assessments after college mainly relied upon discrete grammar and vocabulary, it didn’t make sense to retake assessments.  I wasn’t sure how to recycle […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

While many teachers appear to be on spring break around the country, many of them are also taking the opportunity to reflect on their practices. Let’s face it, a teacher’s job is never done and it is hard for us to turn off our brains thinking about improving that lesson, finding that resource, and developing that next assessment. This week provided us with a treasure trove of blog posts and here are just some that caught my attention. Teaching for Proficiency … A Career Long Journey Ever feel overwhelmed and don’t think that you can really make this switch to a proficiency-based classroom? Before you go back to your language teaching past, read this post by elementary and middle school Spanish teacher Valerie Shull. In the middle of her own journey she shares some important insights to what she wish she knew when she got started: 1) You are not alone, 2) Be generous and forgiving with yourself and others, and 3) You’re never done. What an important message for anyone to hear every now and then. Read Valerie’s post –>  90% TL: just do it! You can’t go to a world language conference these days without hearing a discussion about the […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

It’s been one of those really busy weeks, where I have been counting the days, hours, and minutes until the weekend. For some reason nothing seemed to work this week and everything was due at once. It’s nice to know though that I wasn’t alone and going through these blog posts reminds me that we are together: a family of educators. Hope you find these posts from “my family” as helpful as I did this week. The Empty Desk Being a language teacher is so much more than inspiring young learners to acquire a new language and explore new cultures and perspectives. Anyone that has spent some time teaching, knows that the “it’s all about relationships” mantra couldn’t be more true. This certainly hit home in this incredibly raw post by Spanish teacher Jessica Pederson dealing with a sudden loss in her classroom. What Jessica describes just might be the most important task you have as a teacher. While I hope that not every teacher has to experience this, it provides me with comfort to know that our students are in good hands.  Read Jessica’s post –> They couldn’t hear the word “no” This rich post from Spanish über-Blogger, Sara-Elizabeth Cottrell, […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

Planning for a lesson in a world language classroom must include more than vocabulary. So often I have heard teachers talk only about the vocabulary that their students need to know for a certain unit, but these very teachers have been dismayed by how stilted their students sound while speaking in the target language. On the other hand, there have been teachers whose students felt comfortable speaking in the target language, but did not have a broad vocabulary. Add to the mix proficiency targets that more and more districts are including for their students, and there seems to be a swath of teachers who are planning for their lessons, though they may not be planning strategically for how their students will utilize the structures they need to in order to advance in their proficiency levels. When my kitchen faucet started leaking a few months ago, I tried to just tighten the handle at the sink, but that didn’t fix the leak. Then the handle came right off with water bubbling up from where the stem connected to the sink. Trying to put the handle back on didn’t fix anything either. After searching the hardware store for a couple of different […]

We’re all about the proficiency path at our school. I’ve got the levels posted in my classroom: the ice cream cone graphic in elementary and signs with level descriptors in middle school. We’re using can-do statements in every unit, assessing with IPAs, learning language in context.  My alumni students leave with a language immersion trip under their belts and are well on their way to the state seal of biliteracy.  Our admin supports attendance in language classes for all students in our school, and made sure there were funds to send me to the OPI training and workshops with Helena Curtain and Laura Terrill to create a proficiency focused curriculum.   I’m really fortunate to have my school community on this path. But this spring, I was reminded of one stakeholder who may not have gotten the road map to understand where we’re going: the parents. This spring, I was reminded that the parents’ language class experiences still color their perceptions about their child’s learning.  The idea of there being a right and wrong answer, of memorizing grammar points and being tested on them, is still very prevalent.  This can be a source of anxiety and worry for them. At our […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

For many years I’ve wrestled with how to handle my absences from school– but generally, I have two options for my elementary and middle school students: 1) cancel classes or 2) have an adult who is not normally with the students/not a Spanish teacher supervise class time.  My struggle with this stemmed, essentially, from the fact that I was focusing on discrete grammar and vocabulary, which provided little flexibility in what a substitute could do with the students–the children were very reliant on me for their learning.  This week, I had to call in sick for the first time this year, and quickly found how shifting to teaching for proficiency has changed how my absent days look. My upper elementary students met with my teaching assistant who facilitated independent activities: FV (free and voluntary reading), choice work(fast finishers) and playing Verba. This fall, I started with FVR in class– the students love it and are in the routine of independently choosing books and articles that are a ‘good fit’ for them. I was inspired by Martina Bex and her laminated fast finishers that focus on language in context that can be completed with a dry erase marker and self-checked, when applicable. […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

I think the biggest benefit of blogging for teachers is that it increases their ability to be reflective and articulate about their practice.  Stray thoughts and half-awarenesses get fleshed out into full-fledged epiphanies as teachers figure out how to talk with their colleagues about what they do in the classroom.  Back in April, I ended a blog post with four target areas for growth in my practice, one of them being Interpersonal Mode at the Intermediate level: “My Level 1 classes have a lively and robust environment that makes room for well-supported and scaffolded conversational interactions.  But in each subsequent level, I prioritize the interpersonal mode less and less, even as students are working towards pushing their proficiency ever further.  I need to take a hard look at my unit themes and objectives, and consider how I can make more space for interpersonal communication — the heart of why most people want to learn another language.” Interpersonal communication comes naturally to a first-year language course.  The early Novice curriculum is teeming with questions: first memorized ones (“What’s your name? How old are you? Where are you from?”), then open-ended ones (“What do you like to do in your free time? […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

The countdown has begun! Ok who am I kidding, the count down has been ongoing since mid February but nonetheless the end is in sight! I don’t know about you but the closer to the end the faster is all seems to fly! SO here’s three things I think you HAVE to do before you blink and your time is gone! Get feedback You have just spent a year together. No one is better suited to give you feedback than the people you have been with day in and day out. The vast majority of your students will give you meaningful feedback. What worked best? What could I do better? What advice would you give to future students of mine? If you could tell me anything what would it be? No names, no identifying content just feedback. Teachers get told all kinds of things and many messages are mixed. Administrators, parents, colleagues all provide us feedback based on a variety of motivations. The most critical feedback we can get is that from our students. They see us at our best and unfortunately some days, less than our best. We are human and they get that. So if you are serious […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

I took a look at my gradebook at the end of last year. My tasks were all jumbled together and still classified in the traditional  4 language skills: reading, writing, listening. I had evolved to using descriptors instead of numbers, but nothing else had changed. I couldn’t easily tell you how proficient a student was in any particular skill – in part because the information wasn’t easy to find. It certainly did not reflect my journey down the proficiency path. So this fall my colleague Connie and I decided that if we were implementing proficiency then we also needed to fully make the jump to modes. And if we were going to use modes of communication in class, our gradebook had to change as well. At the start of the year I put my new gradebook together with 4 separate pages: Interpersonal, Presentational, Interpretive and  “Out Of Class Prep” (our take on what work at home really is). Doing this led to some revelations about my practice, some surprises and, ultimately, necessary changes. Interpersonal – We set these tasks as anything requiring a possible negotiation of meaning between two (or more) students. Wow – if you had asked me BEFORE […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

I keep getting the same question: how do you make time to read all these blogs? Well, here is the secret I don’t read all of them all the time. Thanks to great apps like Feedbin however, I can check in on these blogs  when I have a free moment: in the TSA line at the airport, the car-pick up line at my daughter’s school, the sixty minutes of peace and quiet when everyone else sleeping in on Sunday morning. Once again, I found a couple of interesting posts that I thought were worth sharing: Proficiency Descriptors Not Numbers – Students React To The Change For the past couple of week’s I’ve shared Japanese teacher’s Colleen Hayes posts on formative assessment. While it’s great to follow along with her and read and I couldn’t have been more excited when she brought her students’ voices out this week. As educators we like sometimes forget that every action we take makes the learners in our classes feel something. Reading these student responses to giving up numeric grades is just priceless and should remind all of us of the real purpose of assessment in a world language classroom: performance & feedback. Read Colleen’s post –> […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

Coming back to school after the winter break was a fulfilling time for me this year! We revisited the proficiency guidelines, and students reflected on their progress on the path to proficiency infographic. What more could they do now that they couldn’t in October or even in August? As I teach students in Spanish 3, 4 and AP, they already knew a lot, but what they kept telling me was they felt more equipped to put their knowledge into getting their message across. I had students talk about how they needed a task to help them reach Intermediate High, so they could talk about events that happened outside of their daily lives. “I feel like I can’t reach Intermediate High if I don’t have tasks that push me to that level.” To that end, we took a couple of days to brainstorm ideas on what they would want to study, and out of that, my students created their own task plan. They had three options for a graphic organizer they could use–a bubble map, a pyramid map, and a preparation plan–in order to process their task plan from the overarching objective to the specific task they want to do. Their focus was the […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

If there is one thing I would want a new(er) teacher to take away from my blog, and especially this post, it would be to create your Dream Team.  Do you remember the 1992 Olympics with the Dream Team?  This was such a big deal for the United States.  The team was comprised of some of the best basketball players; Michael Jordan, Carl Malone, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Scottie Pippen, John Stockton, Patrick Ewing, Chris Mullin, David Robinson, and Charles Barkley.  Sports Illustrated coined “Dream Team” and our lives were forever changed.  As a teacher, you need to create your “Dream Team.”  I was fortunate enough to have a wonderful mentor, a colleague across the hall, and that teacher’s student teacher.  We began referring to ourselves as the “P.O.A.” or “Pocket of Awesome.”  Our “P.O.A.” was a unique system of collaboration, encouragement and betterment.  There were days when we would talk about things that didn’t seem relevant at the time, but later revealed themselves to be useful in everyday life or the classroom.  Our group of collaboration over time, turned into more of a familial dynamic that fostered the growth needed to be a reflective practitioner.  Since the induction of […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

Are you considering transitioning your world language program from a traditional one to an oral-proficiency based one? In this blog post, I will share the basic steps that we, the University School of Milwaukee in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, have taken to make such a shift in the last few years in our PK-12 World Language department. Shifting to an Oral Proficiency-based program First, since we knew the shift to an oral-proficiency program would not be an easy one, we hired a consultant to guide us through the process. If you can prioritize this in your budget, I highly recommend it. Department members may have more confidence in the process when an expert and outside consultant leads rather than a department chair who may have no particular expertise in developing an oral-proficiency based program. With the help of our consultant, we became familiar with the basic terminology of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) proficiency guidelines. For example, we began to learn what defines Novice, Intermediate, and Advanced level speakers. Even though we were familiar with this terminology, it wasn’t until we were all deferring to an expert that we began to understand more fully what they meant […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

Thanks to a couple of Foreign Language Assistance Program (FLAP) grants I was very fortunate to be able to build K-12 language continuums. Working in the 21st largest district in the country, providing a meaningful language experience for all students in all 125 elementary schools was out of reach. I was  however, able to build a LCTL and a Spanish K-12 language feeder pattern in each region of the district. This work was some of the most coordinated work toward proficiency I was able to do. Working with these new teachers who were eager to learn as much as they could, their energy was infectious. I was able to work with the best, my dream team and as we grew the teachers and the programs their creativity flourished. Designing a “Cone of Proficiency” In our third year I formed a leadership team with representation from each language. These teachers met weekly and the synergy was inspiring to say the least. As we struggled to make proficiency meaningful and important to our youngest language learners these creative geniuses had the answer. Borrowing from video game language to describe moving through levels (i.e. leveling up) and an icon that most children enjoy (ice cream) we […]

I’ve been struggling hardcore with my one of my classes recently.  They’re an upper-level class, and I feel like we’re doing the same style of thing every day, or most days at least.  Their interest in conversation and authentic resources and real-life issues is not really that high, and I’m at the point where I don’t want to try because the class has a weird vibe and it’s stressful.  It’s a course where I have a ton of freedom, and the students and I have picked the topics and themes we were learning about based on our interests, and up until recently, that had gone pretty well.  In the few weeks before Thanksgiving, it started floundering, and I was stressing myself out and making myself really sick. I spent Thanksgiving hanging out with my family from different places, and the more my cousins and I talked about what it was like when we were kids, the more this idea began to creep into the back of my brain.  I was going to take that class I was struggling with and do a mini-unit about their childhoods and their family traditions.  I was betting on the fact that they’d actually have […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

Sometimes I feel like a broken record but I will keep saying clear targets that guide instruction are key to success. The World Readiness Standards for Learning Languages outline what we should teach. And the first standard is communication. If you agree that the reason to teach students a language is so they can communicate, then the next natural question is “how well will they communicate?”. It is NOT up to us to decide the details of how students will communicate, such as when or where or with whom. We do not know what the future holds for our students. Nor should we make assumptions that ultimately limit their opportunity by deciding their future. We cannot decide that they aren’t really going to travel abroad so they only need to learn xyz. Our job as teachers is to open the world to our students and prepare them to the best of our ability for what the future could present our students. It is also to provide hope and opportunity to students who may not have even realized or considered that it was possible. My academic career has been focused in a large urban district. Many of our students have not left their […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

One thing I learned from participating in the TELL Collab in Austin, Texas, last summer is that I have a voice. I had been teaching almost 10 years, had participated in weekly Twitter chats, and had been a department chair, but being able to participate in the TELL Collab and freely share with other like-minded teachers helped me realize that I had a voice and valid opinions to share with other teachers. In fact, one of the main ground rules for the TELL Collab was that there were no attendees; everyone was expected to participate. And participation was key as we got in to our sessions, asked some hard questions, and gave back some hard answers. There were several hot seat sessions with teachers, and I was so glad I got to sit in on Amy Lenord‘s hot seat session not only because she’s someone I admire, but because she really speaks from the heart. Amy shared how she organized her website for students and colleagues, but what was the most impactful was that she was a teacher who wanted to share what she’d learned with others. That was the key of the whole Collab: share. Sharing was a key part of my experience […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

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 […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

Maybe, just maybe, Vanilla Ice was channeling his inner teacher when he wrote the lyrics to Ice Ice Baby. And, maybe, just maybe, the Universe was trying to tell me something on my way home from work yesterday when it came on the radio. Regardless, it did, and it was immediately after one of the most frustrating last blocks in recent memory that I haven’t yet repressed. Seriously – it. was. terrible. The eager students were frustrated with their peers; I, too, was frustrated with said peers; the lesson was completely derailed by nonstop, off-topic comments, questions, interruptions, and beyond sub-optimal conditions for any kind of valuable language input. I left feeling tired, annoyed, frustrated, and generally negative. On my way to teach my methods night class, I flipped on the radio to the exact moment where the downbeat drops in the opening seconds; it had just come on. I had been thinking about what my next steps where, logistically since now that class was behind as well as behaviorally since a handful of students had controlled the fate of the group when suddenly the lyric it, “Stop. Collaborate and listen!” and it dawned on me: “That’s exactly what I need […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

I have been judicious about planning what virtual learning that I take part in this summer.  It is so important that teachers make sure they take time to recharge especially after such a hectic spring and an unknown fall.  However, I did know that I wanted to set aside some time for the NFLC Virtual Summit. However, with over 70 sessions and 12 panels, it can be overwhelming!  Also, did you catch the presenter’s names?!  So many people that I LOVE learning from!  Luckily, I can (mostly) rely on Thomas’ suggestion to focus on my goal.  (I am going to sneak some sessions in that are from regional conferences that are a bit far away from Virginia.)  To be honest, I didn’t have a goal until the middle of the first day.  During the first day and the middle school panel, one consistent suggestion was to give more feedback during distance learning.  As I was processing (and tweeting!) my takeaways, I remembered how much I dreaded going through the process of giving feedback online.  I felt like I spent a LOT of time giving feedback (and emailing!), and I am not even sure how much my students even used it. […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

My blog reading seems to be frozen just like this winter weather. I’m so ready for some spring weather. Spring: a time for renewal and for new ideas. And while the weather isn’t quite catching up with my physical desires for warmth, a season of regional spring conferences around the country allows us me connect and dream of warmer weather (or even better learning experiences for our students). I’ve enjoyed catching up with friends at SCOLT and NECTFL over the past two weeks, make some new connections and leaving each conference feeling warmth in my heart (and head). I’ll leave with you a couple of posts that caught my eye this week. Assessing Proficiency and Providing Feedback I very much enjoy following a teacher’s growth through their blog posts and it seems that Spanish teacher Albert Fernandez has been doing a lot of processing in advance of his well-received SCOLT presentation as well as attending what was an outstanding conference this year. In his latest post, he takes us through his thinking/reflecting/reacting to information he gleaned about the role of proficiency in assessment and even more important what this critical information means for his teaching practice. “That’s why if we […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

It’s December, folks. In case you haven’t heard the announcements about upcoming concerts, special assemblies, fire drills, and semester exams, the close of the first semester is upon us. In the midst of all of these deadlines and Secret Santa lists, it’s easy to lose track of the path to proficiency. I know it’d be easy to just talk about holiday celebrations in the target language countries for now and just pick up with real lessons in January at the start of the second semester, but we all know that proficiency takes time to build. So, how can we take time to enjoy the holiday season, prepare students for exams, and still enjoy ourselves? It’s so difficult because we teachers are often overachievers. In fact, that may be why we became teachers in the first place–we were those students who loved every minute of school, and we want to the share that with the next generation. Here are some tips on how to beat the December Doldrums: 1. Celebrate with your students. Celebrate all they’ve accomplished over the course of the semester in terms of proficiency. Take some time to reflect on what they could do at the start of […]

When I was observed as a new teacher by administrators and other people, they noted that I had a good rapport with the students, that I knew my content, that I stayed in the target language a good portion of the time, but that I needed to work on my classroom management. Our post-observation conference would go something like this: Them: You just need to work on your classroom management. Me: How do I do that? Them: Oh, you’ll figure that out. Me: ??? Fast forward several years, moves and schools later, and I’m a department leader and a school mentor who has not only interviewed new teachers in my own department, but I’m also mentoring a good friend, who decided to become a Spanish teacher in Brooklyn. I have plenty to learn myself, but what do I say to new teachers when they ask me about how they can improve their classroom management? Or what about developing rapport with their students? Or how can they adjust their lesson plan to help students without sacrificing the lesson pacing? Here are four things I’ve learned over the years that I wish I’d known during my first year of teaching. I don’t know that […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

Teaching AP Spanish, for me, is as much a reflection on teaching Spanish 1 as anything could be. A couple of years ago, I was teaching several sections of Spanish 1 in addition to levels 3 and AP. Before that year, I knew what I was supposed to teach in level 1 because I was striving to provide them with the best basis possible for moving up the pipeline and to be ready for college level Spanish. But bridging from level 1 to college seemed so nebulous for my students. In Spanish 1, many of them were freshmen, so thinking about college seemed like an experience too far away to even think about that kind of investment. But what does it look like when students are taking Spanish 3 or 4 and are going to be in AP next year? How could I build into my students this year so that they’re ready for the next year? What should my levels 3 and 4 students know before coming to AP? Well, I asked them. Overwhelmingly, they said that students need to be able to talk to someone else. Not translate. Not script. Not conjugate. Talk. This was satisfying to hear, as their teacher, because […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

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 in 5th grade. It probably was everything we would label a traditional language class, but when I had the chance to go to Russia at the age of 14, about three and a half years into my Russian studies, I jumped on the opportunity and was indeed able to use some of my fairly novice Russian to communicate with my peers in then Leningrad. My second second-language learning experience was English and began in 7th grade. Once again, it was a fairly traditional experience: we following the book (“English for you”), watch the matching video series on TV, and spend most of our time trying to convince our teacher to let us leave class early so that we could beat the line at the newly opened soft-serve ice cream stand close to the school. Remarkably, it worked rather frequently, but of course, I learned very, […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

Three seconds. Research has shown that giving students at least three seconds of think time after asking a question increases results in a number of ways. Yet, with time constraints and our students’ waning attention spans, we are continually pressured to crank out questions and answers, call on a variety of students, make sure everyone feels good, bada bing, bada boom, ready to move on. How long do teachers, on average, wait? ≤ 1.5 seconds. I just asked my husband a series of six questions, easy and personalized ones about his life that he could answer quickly, and only waited 1.5 seconds between before cranking out the next one. He answered the first rapid fire, hesitated on the second, then stopped washing dishes and slow-turned to look at me like, “Really?” as I continued over his hesitation with the next four. Granted, they were back-to-back, but I highly recommend you try it – once he missed a beat, he got frustrated at my impatience, and students do, too. High-flying students see it as a motivating challenge (remember, like us, they aren’t normal) and the rest/majority see it as an impossibility, even if they can respond; they already see that they won’t be given time to have […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

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 blog doesn’t exist to provide all the answers. Instead, this blog allows regular educators like Michele, Jaime, Rebecca, John, Matt, Sharon, Tim, Christi, Maris, Paul, Juan Carlos, Holly, Rose, Amanda, Valerie, Betsy, Alyssa, Lisa and Meredith to share their reflections about what is working in their worlds, what failed, and how they plan on helping their students further their own path to proficiency. If you are a reader of this site, please take a moment to thank these brave teachers for sharing their reflections in such a public format. It’s because of them that we all become better educators. Of course with growth comes growing pains and some parts of our site are currently not functioning properly but that should all get cleaned up in January along with some other exciting updates. Since all of our posts are very personal reflections some posts hit nerves […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

“I can’t put Intermediate 1 in the gradebook,” I declared to my class. “I wish I could, but I can’t.” I continued, “So how are we going to show the number equivalent to your proficiency rating?” It turns out that everyone’s fine with being on target unless it interferes with their GPA. Shelby County Schools, where I work, has a built-in pre-unit on proficiency for every level to make sure the students, parents, and teachers are all on the same page in talking about what in the world it means to have a certain proficiency level, so the students–my students–can state the district target, my class target, and how they can achieve each level by the end of the year. That being said, I still can’t put in Intermediate 1 in the gradebook. How do we track proficiency? How do I measure my students’ grades? It’s a tricky thing because while students want to be measured solely on doing all of their work, there’s no way we, as teachers, can provide any kind of feedback based solely on that. If we want our students to be proficient–actually using the language–we must move beyond grading vocabulary or fill-in-the-blank grammar quizzes and […]

I’m on my way back from home from the return of the NECTFL conference in NYC and my head is spinning with ideas for writing my own blog posts. While that’s going to have to wait a little while, here is my summary of posts that caught my attention this week. The Big List of Discussion Strategies While not intended for a world language audience, this Cult of Pedagogy posts shares some ideas on how to get kids to discuss (talk in the target language). Each strategy includes an overview and link to an example video and I can see just about all of them in a language classroom. Try them and let me know which ones you liked.  Read Jennifer’s post –> Let Authres Take the Lead ~ Step 3 Megan from the Creative Language Class, finishes their series on using authentic resources as the foundation for lessons. Reading through it just reminds me think how much fun it must have been to be a student in her class. I’m engaged wanting to learn Spanish just following along her planning process. Enough said: Go read Megan’s post for yourself–> Improving Teacher Language Proficiency Until my daughter was born, I’ll admit that my German proficiency […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

If students can’t use the language they are learning for practical – REAL WORLD – purposes then why do we do what we do? I think (desperately hope) that most teachers agree our focus should be on teaching students how to use the languages they are learning. Many of us have attended a workshop on proficiency or maybe even several but the conundrum is still how to I move from conceptual understanding to practice? Maybe there is fear of making the shift from  understanding to practicing. Fear of student buy in, parental or administrative push back, fear of our own limitations, all equally important to address and mitigate. This conundrum of shifting from comprehension to practice is fascinating to me. As educators, we are all at some stage of embracing the growth mindset for our students but often not ourselves. I have often said that I believe most teachers are overachievers who have embraced a profession that allows us to continue to learn and evolve. I do not think that anyone sets out be bad at their chosen career. So safe can become the default. Peggy Boyles once compared implementing performance assessment to becoming a gourmet chef. She reminded teachers that gourmet chefs did […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

Have you ever had someone say something so startling that, in an instant, their words seem to smack you in the face with a reality check? I recently had one of those moments: an abrupt and much-needed a-ha! moment, that reminded me to be my best teacher self, I need to give myself grace and keep it all in perspective. My former student, Teresa, was on a break from Georgetown University and we arranged for her to visit my classroom to catch up before she headed back to DC. She met my current students, and during my planning period afterward we chatted. At one point she asked, “So, how are things going? Are you liking your new school?” (I’ve recently moved.)  I said, “Yes, definitely, but I have really got to get it together, I’m a little behind,” and gestured toward my computer and planner. Teresa smiled wryly and without missing a beat asked, “Like, actually behind? Or behind for you?” In that moment, I felt a pang of relief and a surge of reflection, as if her words had come out of her mouth, grabbed my shoulders, and shaken me. WOW. Teresa, knowing my love for teaching and desire to serve my students well, to […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

It was a rather quiet week in the world language blogging world, so I’m sharing a couple of other interesting reads that caught my attention. Oh, and then on Saturday, Dr. Gianfranco Conti released another powerful post that addresses so many things we should consider when teaching for proficiency. Can’t wait to hear what you think about this one. The final three posts came right from this site in case you missed them during a very busy week on the Path 2 Proficiency blog. The Truth About Millennial Teachers A very important read from the latest issue of the ASCD Education Update, that reminded me to consider the generational differences of teachers as they are on their own journey of teacher effectiveness. The author, Kristin Barker, describes the different needs and values of millennial teachers which also made me think about some of the issues that fellow Path 2 Proficiency Blogger, Alyssa Villarreal, discussed in her recent A Department Divided post. Wondering how millennial teachers feel about this article.  Read Kristin’s post –> Stop Second-Guessing Yourself! This isn’t an easy read, as the author, elementary school principal Sean Thom, undoubtedly is going through a tough time. But all educators go through these times at some […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

We have been working on realizing our goal of having performance-driven world language instruction in our district for many years. When shifts to our evaluation process came for world language teachers in 2011, it became urgent that we really own performance-driven teaching, learning, and assessment because jobs were on the line. Teachers could be dismissed after two consecutive years of low evaluation scores. In Shelby County language programs of six or more teachers, each language teacher is required to compile a portfolio that documents student performance growth across the modes as well as in their reflection over their learning process. This accountability enabled us to make enormous strides and offered me, as the district content advisor for world languages, the opportunity to create new resources and tools to support my teachers (one of my favorite things to do and even healthier than baking cupcakes!). In reflecting over the ACTFL Proficiency guidelines, I began thinking of ways I could represent the growth mindset that would be required of teachers and students in making this shift from memorization to proficiency. Out of this process came the Path to Proficiency infographic. I am deeply grateful for the inspiration for this idea, and I […]

Ah, yes, technology. Coming fresh out of a fabulous #SCOLT17 in Orlando, there were lots of technology ideas that floated around in sessions and conversations. These are great, because we do, indeed, live in the Information Age, a time where we can find nearly any piece of information at our fingertips. Therefore, we should definitely be using them with our students, and, even better, design learning opportunities with the technology in the hands of our students (not just us). Yet, school and how we ‘do‘ school largely hasn’t changed. We still require a certain number of hours, days, and credit hours, and students sit in front of adults all day largely sitting-and-getting, playing the game. We offer professional development sessions for teachers on how to get your students “up and moving” because what learning and learning in classrooms ‘look like’ has been ingrained into us to not include that, necessarily. Don’t believe me? Do a Google image search ‘students learning’ or ‘effective classroom’ or ‘good class’. Seriously – search that now. All done? All those fresh, scrubbed, smiling faces; don’t they look like our classrooms every day? Fed, prepared, excited, motivated. Ah yes, our students. Some days, absolutely. Other days? Not so much. […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

Looks like spring is finally here – well at least where I live – and with it are all those thoughts of renewal and spring cleaning. Unfortunately, our outdated school calendars don’t allow for much of that thinking and for so many teachers March is a rough time and often represents the end of an incredibly long uninterrupted stretch of teaching days. It’s with that thought that I hope you are reading this post either on your way to or from spring break or with plans for a weekend that includes some activities designed to take care of YOU. Perhaps you shouldn’t even be reading this right now at all and just bookmark it for later. In any case, here are the blog posts that caught my attention this week: 5 ways to use infographics in language class Using authentic resources is certainly one of the ways that we can engage students with language, but many teachers don’t know where to find the right resources and what to do with them once they do find them, especially when it comes to Novice language learners. Spanish teacher and super blogger, Sara-Elizabeth Cottrell shares five specific strategies that cover a range of […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

As a teacher, it is so easy to focus on everything I’m doing wrong: Have I graded that batch of tests yet? Have I planned enough activities to fill the hour? Have I contacted all the parents I needed to? Do I have enough grades? Did I get in that announcement on time? A lot of times, the answer to these questions is “No,” but so many of those things mentioned are good things and need to get done. It can be difficult to manage an ever-growing to-do list, however, along with making time for my family and myself. The good thing, though, is that while all of these things are good to do, it is important to realize that we should focus on the right things. As teachers, we know that all of our activities in the lesson must match the objective, so when we plan our lessons, we should focus on the activities that will help our students along to the meet the objective, not just what we think would be fun to do. Likewise, the vocabulary or grammar we teach them should be within the context of meeting the objective, not just what we think they ought to know for sometime […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

Marie Kondo’s book The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up is all the rage on social media and #1 on the New York Times best seller list. It is certainly a novel approach to keeping a neat, functional house that begins with a radical clean-out or “decluttering,” as the book calls it. She maintains that storage experts are hoarders. The idea is that organizing and arranging clutter does not make it any less clutter. So, as is my tendency, I began to think about the classroom. In the world language field, we have learned to grab everything we can to help us in providing quality learning experiences for our students. How many conferences have you been to where you came home with a suitcase full of handouts containing suggestions to improve the language learning experience? Every time someone shows you an activity they have used successfully in their classroom, do you say, “May I have a copy of that?” Are you the teacher who keeps all the sample books from the last adoption? What about the old literary magazines you subscribed to last year but don’t have the money for this year? And the realia you collected on your trip to […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

In thinking about assessing proficiency and growth as I approach the end of the year, I sometimes feel overwhelmed and a bit of self-inflicted pressure. Since making the switch to teaching for proficiency, I’ve come to understand the importance of assessment and feedback like never before.  I am greatly influenced and inspired by the wonderful proficiency focused teachers on #langchat–many of whom work in secondary education, and have planned creative, effective IPAs for the end of the year. At the elementary level, the process of assessment looks a little different– and when I feel overwhelmed with the task of assessing all of the levels I lead, I try to remember what makes language learning in elementary so unique–it’s the long haul. The privilege of teaching elementary world language is developing a long term relationship with my students and the students’ long term relationship with the language. What this means in my school setting, is that I’m not looking at where the children are at the end of 2nd or 3rd grade always, rather where they are functioning at the end of 8th grade. It may take up to two years to see real measurable growth–especially because I only see my […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

It’s been a busy couple of weeks of learning with teachers around the country, including the yet again amazing TELL Collab in Nashville last weekend (see the Google Drive notes). While I haven’t had a chance to share my weekly blog summary, all the travel hasn’t kept me from keeping up with language teacher blogs from around the country. As the school year is nearing and end, many of us are having lightbulb moments, regret moments and visionary moments for the future. Take a look at some of the posts that caught my attention over the past couple of weeks. I Don’t Do Standards-Based Grading, BUT… Like it or not, GRADING continues to be big deal for teachers. And while I don’t have the powers to get rid of grades for teachers, it was great to read Spanish teacher, Laura Sexton’s recent post on how to figure out a grading system that works for her and her students. Sure, you could probably argue with Laura about why she made some of these decision and my guess is she would welcome feedback on her post, but I liked it because of the important messages her system communicates to her learners.  Read […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

… as in, a self-assessment, on proficiency. Ask yourself: “What exactly do I know about the levels and what they look like? Can I explain it to students, and/or parents? Can I hear, read, and observe examples and then rate them?” For me, a lot of work went into the paradigm shift that is proficiency-based teaching, and the next step was educating myself on the ‘when’ and ‘how’. I knew that before I could teach it I had to know it backward and forward. Teaching it, in turn, reinforced it, and I continue to learn and see it more holistically every day. Then, at TELL Collab 2015 (left), I made it my E.P.I.C. teacher goal to “make proficiency levels and performance routine, accessible, and empowering for my students.” My 2016 goal (right) was then to not just do it but then do it more frequently. But first, I had to figure out what the heck to do and where to start. Back in 2015, I explored and studied these resources from Shelby County Schools in Memphis. There are proficiency explanations in parent- and student-friendly language as well as curriculum examples and much more. Click around, there’s a LOT and it’s refreshing that they share graciously […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

As a father of young kids, I’ve talked with other dads about when to share one of the most sacred of topics with my kids: Star Wars. We’ve gone ’round and ’round with what age, what order, and whether or not to start at Episode 1 or Episode 4, but the thing that remained clear was that this was a rite of passage from us to our children. We were discussing this in community in such a way that we might share our love of Star Wars with the younger generation so they, too, may know the joy we knew growing up about the mythology of the Force and the excitement of having light saber duels in the backyard and reciting “Luke, I am your father” in your best Darth Vader impersonation. (Maybe that last part was just me.) Many of us can recall our first time watching these movies and being mystified by the phrase “Use the Force.” And as I was introducing my sons to the movies over the winter break, thanks to the generous gift from some relatives, I made the connection that no one was working alone. Everyone was working in teams–red leader and the X wings, […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

So, here’s the thing that was happening in my classroom, and it has been making me crazy.  I am fighting every day to be the most engaging and interesting thing in the room so that my students will pay attention to me and learn Spanish.  I am speaking in the target language 90+% of the time with my big, colorful, amazing visuals, pantomiming things they don’t understand, using simplified language, and doing what I believe I am supposed to be doing.  Did you roll your eyes yet? I know.  I would have too. Are you hearing your admin (or saying to yourself) “You are not supposed to be the center of attention.  You are supposed to be facilitating the learning….”  I get that.  I hear it, but I’ve been fighting it. I felt that I needed to always be the one dancing in front. I mean, my visuals are clear and it’s not a list, right?  I mean, this slide pulls prior knowledge of colors and stores and adds new vocab that I label and we describe… It’s not that bad, right?  Do I sound desperate?  Yeah, I felt desperate. My principal’s favorite phrase is, “The students should be doing […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)