I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the kind of environment I want to create in my classroom. I want students to feel free to express themselves, and make mistakes because that’s how you learn. In order to feel comfortable making mistakes, students need to feel supported in a space that invites them to be silly and lower their affective filter, that “invisible, psychological filter that either aids or deters the process of language acquisition.” Essentially, it dictates the “fight or flight” response in language learning. In a situation full of unknowns, do I shut down and retreat into “playing school?” Or do I reach out with curiosity and embrace the unfamiliar, bumbling happily until I understand? I remember pivotal moments like this from learning Spanish in an immersion environment as a teenager in El Salvador. In 8th grade drama, a required class at my school conducted exclusively en español, our first assignment was to memorize ten lines from a book. I found Cat In the Hat in Spanish and memorized that sucker (no one said it had to be a complicated book…and I didn’t speak Spanish yet!). On the big day, we sat in a circle and went around performing our memorized lines for the class. When I got to the end of mine, everyone sort of nodded and stared at me, then a few people said, “TuviÉramos.” I had said it more like, “TUviéramos,” ignoring or missing the helpful accent mark. I could have let that moment, so early in learning to speak Spanish, shame me or scare me. Instead, I repeated, “TuviÉramos.” Trying to recreate similar situations for brave language learning has proven difficult with your average student’s average level of motivation. But, to this end, we’ve been dancing a lot. Dancing is silly and fun and you have to lower your inhibitions in order to participate. Bingo: lowering the affective filter! I read about baile viernes for literally three years, circling back to Mis Clases Locas’s blog every time a pic of her students dancing popped up on my Instagram. But I wasn’t convinced my students would dance. Does anyone else ever feel like teenagers are like stray cats? You don’t want to spook them, but you when they finally come near you or do something cat-like it’s hard not to freak out because you’re so excited! That’s how I feel about Baile viernes. I try to be chill, but I’m actually thrilled when they want to dance and be silly. Or when a student recently wrote an original rap in Spanish about shark conservation in the Atlantic off Mexico. “Can I rap for the class?” Me (inside): “Whaaaaaat??? That’s awesome! Yes! Absolutely!” Me (actually): “Yeah, sure.” So, we end class on Fridays (and sometimes Thursdays...or Wednesday brain breaks...) with dancing. My most outgoing class obviously has been dancing non-stop since I introduced Baile viernes. Not all of them every time, but most, and they find me during Study Hall to suggest videos for Friday’s routine. But this past week, I hooked the juniors. A reticent age and a shy group. WIN. But I was cool about it. "Can we dance, too?" "Oh, sure." 😎
On another note, it’s my 6-month blogiversary! I have some goals for the next 6-months:
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You know what I thought would be a great idea? Traveling to Spartanburg on a Thursday, Columbia on a Friday, Lexington on a Saturday, and then back to Pawleys that same Saturday, all the week before Spirit Week and Homecoming. Turns out, not so much. 😆 So, Friday in Sparkle City: My grandmother celebrated her 90th birthday on February 2nd by having a luncheon for 12 women who have been important in her life She asked me to say a blessing before the meal. If you know Nana, you won’t be at all surprised that she loved the crazy speech I decided to make instead. Despite everything, you have to admit I know my audience: “I want to share a quote with you from a book I recently gave Nana: My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry. It’s about the relationship between a grandmother and granddaughter, Granny and Elsa. ‘Granny and Elsa used to watch the evening news together. Now and then Elsa would ask Granny why grown-ups were always doing such idiotic things to each other. Granny usually answered that it was because grown-ups were generally people, and people are generally sh*ts. Elsa countered that grown-ups were also responsible for a lot of good things in between all the idiocy – space exploration, the UN, vaccines and cheese slicers, for instance. Granny then said the real trick of life was that almost no one is entirely a sh*t and almost no one is entirely not a sh*t. The hard part of life is keeping as much on the ‘not-a-sh*t’ side as one can.’ I chose this quote because it sounds like advice Nana has given me, and probably given some of you, but also because I knew when Nana asked me to say the blessing, she would be thrilled if I also managed to say sh*t (insert total non-sequitur of a traditional Episcopalian blessing here).” From Spartanburg and my 5 minutes of fame for injecting profanity into a ladies’ luncheon, I drove to Columbia to stay with my aunt and uncle before the South Carolina Foreign Language Teachers’ (SCFLTA) Conference at Lexington High School the next day. Seems like lately I can’t visit Columbia without some kind of tire-related car trouble. This time the trouble was I hadn’t bothered to rotate or replace the tires. Ever. They were all bald! So I headed off to Lexington the next morning in my uncle’s borrowed car (#thanks) to present at SCFLTA 2018 with my awesome co-worker Abby. For my first time presenting at any kind of conference, I felt good about the experience. You can access our presentation about listening activities for different levels of French and Spanish learners, “Stop, Drop, and Listen!,” here. I definitely can think of ways to make next time better, including some basics: have your water available, scan the room for different teaching levels by a show of hands, and include an “About me” slide. At SCFLTA, I also got to meet the rest of the awesome AATSPSC (American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese, South Carolina Chapter) board members. I recently joined the team as the new National Poster Contest Coordinator, and I’m so thrilled about my students’ amazing designs for this year’s theme! Check out my TPT page for free lesson plans for incorporating the poster contest into your classes! I also really enjoyed Bethany Battig Ramseur’s session “Social Media in the Language Classroom,” and she gave me the confidence to start using Google Voice to record student presentational speaking. I’ve used it three times since the conference, and so far, so great! Basically, I’m shocked March is here (and shocked I haven’t blogged since January), but February was crazy-full of awesome stuff! Speaking of, shout out to my amazing co-workers: we rocked the Myrtle Beach Marathon Relay this weekend! Teachers who run together, stay together? 😝 It was a great day. Bring it on March! (My birthday month!)
¡Feliz año nuevo! Happy New Year! Feeling a bit delinquent in the blog-area as we start this new year, but in my defense, as every teacher knows, December is nuts. And, as every teacher I work with knows, we just finished up exams (also nuts). So here’s a long-overdue listicle to get back on the blogging bandwagon: 8 Things I Learned at the American Council of Teachers of Foreign Language Annual Conference in November 2017!
I’m so grateful to have had the opportunity to attend ACTFL. I see some themes in the sessions I chose to attend: meaningful and deliberate collaboration, interpersonal communication as a negotiation of meaning, and technology not only as a source of authentic material, but as an outlet for student creation. I look forward to applying some of these new strategies and ideas in the classroom this semester! SCROLL DOWN FOR ENGLISH Uy. Que lunes. Siempre que algo va mal lo primero que pienso es ¿fui yo, o fueron ellos? Es decir, quien tiene la culpa de que la lección que pareció tan interesante/divertida/informativa en mi cabeza fracasó tanto. Bueno, fracasar quizás no sea la mejor palabra, pero de todos modos, eso es lo que pienso. Echar la culpa a adolescentes también no es la cosa más constructiva. Asumimos entonces que es mi culpa. 😅 A ver, hoy los chicos freshmen se distrajeron tanto uno al otro que algunos ni siquiera terminaron una de las tres cosas que se suponía que iban a hacer hoy en su trabajo individual. Y los juniors estaban tan deprimidos que ni uno respondió a la pregunta, “¿Estamos listos?” En serio, yo, allí parada preguntado y nada… Entonces durante mi almuerzo me puse a pensar. Asumí que mis planes fueron buenas, o sea, que la lección no estaba aburrida y lo que les mandaba a hacer fue una buena idea. (Ya sé, no es así siempre, ¡pero hoy pensé que lo había planeado bien! Así que la repuesta fue otra.) Pensé, asumiendo eso, ¿que tenían en común mis dos primeras clases? Bueno, falta de movimiento e instrucciones vagos. Estaban sentados por todo la hora y la mayoría no sabían que debían estar haciendo ni cómo. Uf. Para mi última clase del día entonces cambié mi plan. Íbamos a repasar el tráiler de la película Mar Adentro antes de empezar a verla, pero en vez de una discusión oral, escribí cinco preguntas en la pizarra (¿Quién?, ¿Qué?, ¿Cuándo?, ¿Dónde?, y ¿Por qué?) y les di un marcador a cada estudiante. Tenían que reflexionar sobre lo que vieron en el tráiler y escribir algo para cada pregunta, sin repetir lo que había escrito otra persona. Yo también participé para introducir vocabulario clave. Pero antes de hacerlo, explicaba las instrucciones, las escribí en la pizarra, escogí a dos estudiantes para explicarlas en su propias palabras, e hicimos un ejemplo como una clase. ¡Fue súper bien! Sólo un estudiante de nueve no entendió las instrucciones. 😝 Fue una buena manera de incorporar movimiento con un propósito, funcionó para prepararlos para ver ciertas temas importantes en la película, y les gustó poder escoger su color de marcador. Pienso usarlo al principio de otras unidades para ver que ya saben de un tema, en vez de discusiones tradicionales, o para repasar. Al fin y al cabo, este lunes tenía un final feliz. 😆 EN INGLÉS/IN ENGLISH:
Oh man, what a Monday. Every time something goes wrong the first thing I think is, was it me or them? Whose fault was it that the lesson that seemed so interesting/fun/informative in my head failed so badly? Well, failed maybe isn’t the best word, but it’s what comes to mind. Blaming teenagers probably isn’t the most constructive thing either. Let’s assume is my fault, then. 😅 Let’s see, today the freshmen distracted each other so much that some of them didn’t even finish one of three things they were supposed to work on independently. And the juniors were so bummed out not one of them answered my question, “Are we ready?” Seriously, I’m standing there, asking, and nothing… So today during my lunch I started thinking. I assumed my plans were good, in other words, that the lesson wasn’t boring and that what I had told them to do was a good idea. (I know, that’s not always the case, but today I thought I had done so well! There was another answer.) Assuming my plan was a good one, what did my first two classes have in common? Well, a lack of movement and vague instructions. They were seated the whole time and most didn’t know what they were supposed to be doing, or how. Oof. For my last class, then, I changed my plan. We were going to review the trailer for Mar Adentro before watching the film, but instead of a class discussion, I wrote 5 questions on the board (Who? What? When? Where? and Why?) and I gave each student a marker. They had to think about what they saw in the trailer and write an answer to each question, without repeating what another person had written. I also participated to introduce some key vocab. But before we did any of this, I explained the directions, I wrote them on the board, I had student volunteers explain the directions again in their own words, and we did an example as a class. It went really well! Only one out of nine didn’t understand the instructions.😝 It was a great way incorporate movement with a purpose, it served to prime them for certain themes and important parts of the movie, and they liked picking their color of marker. I think I’ll use the activity again at the beginning of units to show previous knowledge, in place of traditional discussions, or as review. This Monday had a happy ending after all. 😆 Happy (almost) Thanksgiving! I’m in Louisiana visiting my dad and brother for the holiday. I flew in day before yesterday from Nashville after the American Council of Teachers of Foreign Language 2017 Conference. Oh. My. Gosh. What a cool weekend of learning and networking with other educators! #teachernerd Highlights: won a classroom set of TPRS books from Fluency Matters and got to learn some Swedish in an OWL circle. Still processing it all and I’ll write about it soon! My dad’s also a teacher (high school U.S. history and geography), and we were “talking shop” about classroom stuff when I realized how great Quizlet Diagrams would be for his geography students. Luckily, they’re one-to-one with Chromebooks, so taking advantage of Quizlet will be even easier. Quizlet's already been a lifesaver for me and my students, and I will talk your ear off about how great it would be for you and your students, too! But today I'll just tell you about how I've started using Quizlet Diagrams. 😆 In my own classroom, at the beginning of each unit, we look at a map of the region or country we’re going to be studying. I create a simple blank map handout for students to label while I project and label the same image on the whiteboard. This is all in the target language, and I got the idea from another blog post that I can’t find this far from my desk. When I’m back in the classroom, I’ll update this post! UPDATE: Found it! "Teaching Basic Geography in the TL" from Elizabeth Dentlinger. Thanks, Elizabeth! Then, I upload the same map to Quizlet Diagrams and label the 15 or so terms we’ve labeled as a class. Now we can play all the games they love on Quizlet, but using the map we’re studying! I’ve tried it twice so far and it’s worked great. Seniors in IB Year 2 were learning basic geography of Bolivia before watching También la lluvia (Even the Rain) and one student kept mis-labeling Brazil. His teammates, very gently, reminded him, "Brasil es muy grande..." (Brazil is very big...). LOL You do have to be careful that what you’re labeling is distinct and obvious when highlighted by itself on a map. For example, as a student I might memorize that Cobija is north of La Paz, but when we’re playing Quizlet Live with a diagram, only Cobija’s spot will be highlighted and I can’t use my reference point. Still, a thumbs up/thumbs down vote after playing the game revealed a positive review from the chicos! They like it. 👍 We also play a geography game that I’ve been calling ¿Dónde está? (Where is it?) that I found at MrDonn.org after some Googling. Students in teams create clues that get progressively easier, all leading to a point on a map. Teams read their clues to other teams that have to guess, and the harder the clue, the more points they can earn. This game is great because you can use any map, though it’s been good review for an assessment to use the map we’re studying. Check out my TpT page for a handout for students to play the game in Spanish class!
P.S. I love maps so much (just a quick count from memory: I think I have 5 up in my classroom permanently) that two years ago the senior prank in my room involved pretending to throw all my maps in the trash. 😆 Kids crack me up. In my experience, teenagers like to express their opinions and they like to win. And I think it’s important for them to use their brains in different ways throughout the school day, so we draw, sing, play games, and act things out, even in high school, even in IB. Something else I learned when I became a Spanish teacher? Day of the Dead is a wildly popular October unit. Holidays are a really great opportunity for cross-cultural comparison, real world applications, and incorporating authentic materials. Plus they’re fun! Today we combined all of these "best practices" of teaching Spanish to high schoolers. 😝 Last Friday I had an idea while I was making copies of last year’s DdeM webquest: I have students this year who will finish this in 20 min. Our class period is 50min… What if they also have to draw an ofrenda (a DdeM altar for a loved one that includes their favorite foods, personal items, candles and flowers, among other things) for a celebrity who passed away in 2016? Lots of options to choose from, nice synthesis of what they’ve learned about DdeM traditions without being overly personal, and I’d get to enjoy their drawings. Genius! It was. Proof: Then, I had another random thought early this year: I ask them to draw a lot, but then what happens to the drawing? It usually ends up in recycling bin. I had a bunch of off-brand sticky notes that failed miserably as a reading log bulletin board earlier in the year (not nearly sticky enough…), but they’d work great for kids to vote for their favorite drawing or write a brief description of why they like their classmates’ artwork. So, we’ve used the crappy stickies this way a couple of times with great success! I ask for 2 “Me gusta porque…” and one “Es mi favorito porque…” and they post them on the drawings. Today I asked the 9th graders in Spanish 2 to look at the juniors’ ofrendas and post 2 “Me gusta porque…” and then they got to pick a Spanish praise sticker to vote for their favorite. Robin Williams won by a landslide, probably because of the very accurate depiction of Flubber. :P The winner was a sweet junior who was very excited about her DdeM mug (90% off at Tuesday Morning). Happy drawing!
***By far one of the most popular things we do in Spanish class, at all levels, is Música Miércoles (M.M.). I got this idea from Allison Wienhold of Mis Clases Locas and wrote about it in a more detailed post for the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese (AATSP) South Carolina Chapter's blog. *** "I love wednesdays"The above is a real comment from my recent teacher evaluations. Thanks, kiddo. I love Wedensdays, too, because it's Música miércoles! Music was an invaluable resource for me as a language learner. The same year we moved to El Sal, Reik released their first album. For the uninitiated, Reik is a Mexican pop group. I listened to that self-titled album on repeat until I could sing along. Mimicking the sounds, even though I didn’t completely understand what I was singing, helped me develop intonation and pronunciation skills, and reading along with lyrics in the liner notes helped my listening comprehension. I still know those songs by heart. 😆 “¿Listos para Música miércoles? Necesitan una hoja de papel y un lapiz o lapicero (bolígrafo).” When students hear this cue at the beginning of class on Wednesdays, they know they should find a clean sheet of paper and a pen or pencil. A PowerPoint slide with the day’s song is already projected as students enter the classroom and find their materials. I purchased an editable PP template from Mis Clases Locas’ TpT store back in 2015. Each slide includes the title, artist, flag of the country of origin (my addition to Allison’s template), two discussion questions, and some instructions. I record the necessary links to the video and lyrics in the notes section. When everyone is listo, we begin:
At this point I show the music video associated with the song and students write down any words or phrases they hear in Spanish. Sometimes you have to be pretty creative and/or patient in order to find a song you think students might like that also has a video appropriate for school. I have shown live versions, lyric videos, or only a segment of a video in order to meet school environment standards. Students definitely prefer to watch choreographed music videos over any of those options, but sometimes there’s no way around it! (Definitely used the Sesame Street "El Patito" parody cover of "Despacito" for my seniors' M.M. the other day...lol). Where I've found songs: iTunes; http://www.billboard.com/charts/latin-songs; past Grammy winners or nominees; or Google search for country and genre/artists or country and top 40 ex) Chile top 40; Bolivia pop artistas. After the video, I ask “¿Te gusta o no te gusta?” and students give me a non-verbal response in the form of a thumbs up. The thumbs get pretty technical: I’ll get half way thumbs up/half way thumbs down and a student will explain, “Well, I like the video and the artist’s voice, but the lyrics were silly.” ¡En español! I always ask for at least two volunteers to explain their thumb vote, usually one that liked the song and one that didn’t. Then I go around the room and ask each student to say a word or phrase they heard in the song. This is quick. We then re-play a portion of the video, audio only, and follow along with the lyrics in Spanish. I just Google “letra” and the song title to find the lyrics online. Be careful! Some lyric sites are better than others in terms of commitment to Spanish grammar. The repetition of the listening comprehension with the added benefit of reading along with the lyrics can create some neat ah-ha moments when students put two-and-two together, or when they can confirm they heard. Nicely validating for a language learner! We usually listen through the first chorus at which point I’ll stop, and we try to translate what we’ve heard as a class. This is a great time to discuss word order, idiomatic expressions, slang, and any grammar topics you might currently be learning that appear in the lyrics. Sometimes even vocab words pop up!
That’s it! Depending on your students’ level of interest or your desire to get a discussion going, this whole process can take anywhere from 10 minutes to the entire class period. I’d say we average about 20 minutes for M.M. If students are working independently, I ask “¿Quieren escuchar a música en español?” and I’ll put on our M.M. playlist. Some M.M. picks have even made their way to being played during the Senior Halloween carnival and varsity basketball workouts. No better feeling than when a student tells me they’ve been listening outside of class! Check out our playlists and happy listening!! Música miércoles 2015-2016 Música miércoles 2016-2017 Música miércoles 2017-2018 Como profesora, estoy harta de la pregunta “¿Cómo se dice…?”. Supongo que es mejor que la misma pregunta en inglés, pero realmente lo único que hace es crear alumnos perezosos. Si la idea al fin y al cabo es enseñarles a comunicar, pero de verdad, reforzando la manía de traducir cada pensamiento palabra por palabra de inglés al español no lo va a lograr. Después de la experiencia de estar en Middlebury, sumergida por seis semanas en un ambiente totalmente monolingüe en que estaba obligada a esforzarme a usar el español que sabía para expresar lo que a veces no sabía, regresé al aula con una interés renovada en exigirles a mis estudiantes a hablar en español. Me quedé asombrada mi primer año enseñando porque aparentemente pedirles que hablaran en español en la clase de español fue demasiado. Uy, recibí tanta actitud. Cada mirada decía, “Pero que presumida la Ms. Dunlap, que hablemos en español. Ah, sí, ahorita mismo lo hago...” Sin embargo, insistí, y ya que estoy en mi cuarto año tengo una reputación: saben que hablamos en español en la clase de español. He usado muchos trucos y muchas técnicas diferentes para exigirles a hablar solamente en español, (y esta semana Secondary Spanish Space compartió algunos) pero añadí algo este año que hasta ahora no había enseñando de una manera deliberada. Todo esto empezó con unas conversaciones con mi compañera de cuarto de Middlebury que enseña con el estilo de OWL (Organic World Language). Yo no he asistido a las capacitaciones de OWL y no sé exactamente cómo es la técnica, pero me llamó la atención porque ella dijo que enseña completamente en la lengua meta y los estudiantes también únicamente hablan en la lengua meta. Me puse a investigar y encontré un post en el blog de La Maestra Loca en que ella reflexiona sobre su experiencia en una capacitación con la creadora de OWL. Lo que más me impactó fue el hecho de que la fundadora de OWL no enseña a sus estudiantes a decir “¿Cómo se dice…?” en la lengua meta. Literalmente no lo enseña. ¡Ojalá! Pero, entonces, ¿qué recursos tienen los estudiantes para expresar lo que no saben decir en la lengua meta? Pues, ¡la circunlocución! Según un recurso muy bueno del World Language Classroom, la circunlocución es “ una estrategia de definir o describir un concepto en vez de decir la palabra exacta”. Cualquier persona que ha vivido o viajado en un país donde no manejaba bien el idioma ha usado la circunlocución, no importa si no saben que así se llama. De mis primeros años en El Salvador tengo mil historias de cómo mis padres, mi hermano y yo intentamos comunicar en español usando todas las técnicas de la circunlocución, entre ellas: describir lo que no es, usar sinónimos, describir para qué se usa o dónde se encuentra y hasta dibujar. Lo más chistoso fue cuando resultaba que se dice en español igual que en el inglés. En el Hiper Paiz, la versión salvadoreña de Wal-Mart que Wal-Mart al fin compró, pedimos “una bolsa para una persona para dormir afuera”. El señor pensó por un momento y exclamó, “Ah, ¡esliping bag!” Lo mismo pasó en MacDonalds. Recuerdo que dije “la misma comida pero para niños” y la seño, “Ah, ¡ekis mil!” Una vez, mi papá y yo fuimos a comprar pescado en el súper. Alguien más nos había ayudado con la lista de compras entonces en ella habían palabras que no sabía yo. Llegamos al mostrador y pedimos lonja. “¿De qué?” dijo la señora. Pues, de lonja, repetimos, sin saber que estábamos pidiendo una cortada de una cortada. Pensábamos que lonja era un tipo de pescado. Después de un rato confuso, y buen uso de la circunlocución de parte de la señora, nos dimos cuenta del error y yo pedí su recomendación para elegir un pescado. 😆 Para presentarles el concepto de la circunlocución a mis estudiantes les conté estas historias, modelando que la circunlocución es lo que tienes que usar para comunicar en el mundo real. Después usamos este recurso del World Language Classroom que compré en TpT para practicar. Lo usé cabal cómo está para mis estudiantes IB y cambié las palabras de la actividad a sus palabras de vocabulario para los chicos más jóvenes. Tienen que usar técnicas de circunlocución para hacer que su pareja en la actividad adivine una palabra. Obvio fue una competencia y los ganadores recibieron dulces. 👍 El día siguiente fortalecemos las técnicas jugando $1,000 Pyramid en equipos. Misma idea, pero lo hicimos en grupos: escoges seis palabras para organizar en forma de pirámide. Un estudiante no mira a la pizarra mientras el resto de su equipo usa las técnicas de circunlocución para hacer que adivina la palabra antes del otro equipo.
Y ahora Uds. saben como funciona mi cerebro: una cosa me lleva a la otra y termino creando algo para mis clases que a veces resulta útil. En mi tienda de TpT pueden encontrar unos carteles en español e inglés para el aula con 5 consejos de cómo usar la circunlocución y también una hoja de actividad llamada “Remplazando el ‘¿Cómo se dice…?’” para estudiantes más avanzados. Voy a seguir insistiendo en esta técnica y vamos a tener que practicarla más, pero quizás lo mejor de todo este experimento con la circunlocución es que ahora puedo dibujar círculos en el aire y un estudiante que me acaba de preguntar “¿Cómo se dice?” ahora sabe que necesita intentar de nuevo con la circunlocución. ¡Éxitos! I’ve always been excited to share quince (Salvadoran Independence Day) with my students. On September 15th this year, we actually played handball (see my last English-language post!), so we postponed our quince celebration for Monday, September 18th. My first year to celebrate quince, we did a cultural Bingo I was sooo excited about. I laid out all kinds of things I had related to El Salvador; from souvenirs I somehow never gave away, maps, and my high school ID, to pieces of Fernando Llort art, Hilasal towels, and my Dad’s rewards cards from The Coffee Cup (they say “Don James”!). Students walked around the room with clipboards and a Bingo game I wrote en español with clues based on all the cultural artifacts. How cool, right? Realia! Authentic material! Man, just writing this down makes me want to be a student in my class! But it went horribly. They hated it. I was crushed. That first year was a trying one because I was figuring out how to assert myself as a teacher, and they were figuring out what their limits were in the space we shared. I assumed that if I was excited about something, my students would be, too. While it is very, very true that a teacher’s energy can set the tone for a classroom environment, the above is not. Assume nothing with teenagers. 😝 Additionally, my first year teaching was challenging because I had very little experience as a disciplinarian. I do not claim now to know everything about positively redirecting undesirable student behavior, but our space is so much better managed now, it’s really night and day. I try to set and communicate clear expectations for my students and follow through with defined consequences when something’s not working. Most of the time we do ok. 👍 But back to quince! After the crash-and-burn scenario of Year One, we did a scaled down celebration Year 2 that focused on quince as a part of Hispanic Heritage Month. But Year 3 we went all out (see a pattern?) and tried something I was definitely too scared to do before: cook in the classroom. If you’ve never cooked with students, I’ll tell you now, it will be a huge mess, you will be exhausted, and something will go wrong. But it is worth it. I decided we would make pupusas. A pupusa, the national dish of El Salvador, is kind of like a stuffed corn tortilla, usually with cheese and refried red beans inside. I practiced the whole thing from start to finish at home before I attempted it in the classroom. The magic part where you’re supposed to close up the corn masa and nothing falls out is, well, a bit tricky…Having made pupusas with students to celebrate quince for two years now, I still haven’t mastered curtido (a cabbage and carrot slaw), but my pupusas are no longer strangely square. Progress!
In terms of classroom logistics, we start with a few videos as listening comprehension activities and I model how to make a pupusa. (These resources are available as free downloads on my Teachers Pay Teachers Page. We ❤️ Lupita’s kitchen and have used her how-to video both years.) Then everyone goes and washes their hands. While they’re doing that, I put out wax paper on each desk and give each student the masa, queso, and aceite (oil) they’ll need. The actual pupusa-making is a happy free-for-all, my favorite kind of classroom. Another piece of advice about cooking in the classroom: enlist help from parents. I sent an email inviting parents to join and/or consider loaning us electric pancake griddles (these work great for any kind of cooking in a classroom setting). Last year, one student even brought pupusas that a Salvadoran friend of her mother’s made! Her curtido was much better than mine… My students from last year were so pumped to make pupusas again. New students were hooked. My seniors even hablaron en español the whole time and asked to make a second pupusa! We’ve come a long way from unhappy Bingo. ¡Feliz (belated) quince! Acabamos de terminar una unidad en el segundo año de IB llamada “Música y pintura”. Empecé el año con este tema porque a estos chicos les encanta escuchar música en español (prontito pondré el post de Música miércoles, ya una tradición en mis clases, que escribí para La vela, el circular de AATSPSC, American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese in South Carolina) y pensé que sería una manera divertida y fácil de comenzar. Pero, lo que más me emocionó sobre esta unidad es que por fin logré hacer una conexión legítima entre lo que estamos haciendo en la clase, los temas de IB, y algo muy chivo de El Salvador. Hace un rato leí sobre Ariela Suster, una salvadoreña y hermana mayor de un compañero mío de la secundaria, que había fundado una compañía de joyería que emplea jóvenes salvadoreños a riesgo de unirse a las maras por falta de otras oportunidades en sus comunidades. La compañía se llama Sequence Collection y ha logrado mucho éxito, no solo por su joyería, sino también por su uso de la tecnología para capacitar a sus artistas. Leímos este artículo destacado en el libro de IB y hicimos una pequeña investigación sobre los artistas mencionados. Después de varias otras actividades con el texto, hicimos una discusión en la cual les propuse la pregunta ¿Para qué es el arte? Ésta es una de esas preguntas que les encantan a los profes pero quizás no tanto a los alumnos, ¿vea? Pero ni modo, están medio acostumbrados a pensar así, o sea de análisis crítico de las ideas, por la influencia del IB. Quería que llegaran a la conclusión de que el arte sirve para muchas razones, entre ellas para disfrutar, para enseñar, para comunicar, para crear y definir identidad, y, por fin, para ayudar a los demás y cambiar la sociedad. Guiándolos un poquito, mis estudiantes lograron expresar estas ideas (Gracias a Dios) y cuando llegamos al propósito del arte de ayudar a los demás, hicimos la conexión con el articulo anteriormente mencionado que relataba como Shakira y otros artistas latinos se unieron para un concierto benéfico. Con esta idea clara, que el arte puede servir para ayudar a los demás, les presenté Sequence Collection con unos videos y su sitio web. Hablando en serio, mis estudiantes no tienen el nivel de lenguaje para entender el legado de la guerra civil salvadoreña, ni la violencia actual del crimen que afecta el país ahora, ni el rol de los Estados Unidos en toda esa historia. Sin embargo, les gustó Sequence Collection por sus diseños y podían entender su misión.¡Y eso es lo que quería yo!
Después, sentí que quizás teníamos un impulso para ir más allá de la clase con esta idea, así que les presenté el Proyecto pulsera, una organización que une escuelas en los EE.UU. con artistas de pulseras tejidas en Nicaragua y Guatemala. Les gustó y decidimos que vamos a tener nuestra propia venta de pulseras al final de octubre después de Fall Break. ¡Les cuento como nos va! |
AuthorSC native, Salvadoran at heart, Spanish teacher, trivia nerd, and novice blogger. Archives
January 2018
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