Two posts in one day! This is not the first day of the new year, but rather the thirteenth. It's the first day I'm home sick, because my body has some kind of rule that I must get sick enough to actually go to the doctor (which for me is can't eat for multiple days, semi-delirious, or inhaler isn't helping sick) at the beginning of the year, and at least once per semester. I should be grateful, I suppose, since one year it was HFM disease. Last semester, I broke and sprained my ankle less than a month into the semester. While I haven't met my goal of posting regularly in 2018, I have met my goal of making it a second year without a concussion so far, which is probably more important. But I'm getting off track here.
This year, like last year, I'm teaching four blocks. I'm more prepared this year too and I have a better system in place, as well as more training and experience. The two worst parts so far are the same problems I had last year and I still don't have a solution for either. One, the tree-killing is rampant. We aren't a 1:1 school and there's only so much I can do over the projector. Two, there's no down time. If I need to make an appointment, I will miss two classes, at a minimum, which means throwing my classes off, which means more preps for me. Unlike last year, I am, for the moment, the only in person Spanish teacher. That has its own unique difficulties, but it also means that until I have a coworker again, I can direct where my classes will go without input from anything except our state standards and research, instead of trying to accommodate an out-dated textbook. Admin has never been repressive but they'd prefer a unified department, which I totally understand. It's relaxing in many ways, but also a bit terrifying.
For my Spanish 2s, we started off with a free write and then El Escape Cubano. If you haven't read it you can find it on Mira Canion's website or the numerous booksellers. The free writes were... disheartening. I don't have a better word. I'm glad I started with a baseline from now instead of a baseline from last semester, but it still sucks to realize that the students who could write basic, coherent phrases without assistance last semester now can't string together related words. There was a three month gap between Spanish 1 and Spanish 2, and it definitely shows. I'm hoping that since they started out with the knowledge, picking it up a second time won't be as bad. They recognize it in context almost as well; it's primarily their productive skills that have suffered. We just finished the book yesterday and I'm still looking out where to go from here. We have so many options and so little time!
I have three Spanish 1 classes as well. I haven't been brave enough to try persona especial with them yet (very hyper and very large classes) but each class has done its first storyasking session and they all did pretty well. We still need to work on staying in-bounds and the amount of murder that they always want to include (what is it with these kids and death, every single semester?) but overall, they stuck together rather well. I'm trying to take things a little slower this year and circle more with the same vocabulary while adding in novel materials instead, which is hard for me, but good for them. They're starting unit 3 of SOMOS without me while I'm sick and tomorrow, we'll play with that vocabulary and go from there.
All four of my classes got to do Señor Wooly as well now that the new website is up. My Spanish 2s had almost all used the website before, and they're primarily a fan of the changes. It took a bit to get them to understand that they could earn more coins than they needed, in every class. I'm missing something since so many of them didn't get it, but I really don't get why that's a difficult concept. My Spanish 2s were very excited that they no longer had to do every single activity within a nugget to move on and that the website is so much easier to navigate. My Spanish 1s used Señor Wooly for the first time and it drove them insane that I only unlocked one song for their initial use, but aside from that, everything went well. It took them a bit to work out what some of the activities wanted them to do, but there were no major issues. The average number of nuggets completed for all students and the median were much closer than they usually are, so I think once I adjust the proficiency level of a few students, or just let them work on additional songs, everyone will be doing the same amount of work at a level that's appropriate for them. I really don't think it's fair to have my faster processors and native speakers doing extra work, so this is good for us.
I've also been designing work for the other four Spanish 1 classes, which currently do not have a Spanish teacher. That has been going less well, but hopefully will be at an end soon. I'm crossing my fingers that the last person interviewed will be hired and actually show up. He seems like a chill dude, he speaks Spanish well, and he actually knows who Krashen is! He's not already a CI teacher but 1) he's breathing, and at this point that's really the most important thing, though to be quite honest I'm not opposed to a well-spoken corpse or salamander as a coworker and 2) he's at least not opposed to CI and doesn't think grammar is the be-all, end-all of the universe, which is refreshing.
This year will be the year that Tennessee chooses new textbooks for world languages too, and I'm curious as to which ones will make the cut. I can't speak to anything that's not public knowledge (and I honestly don't know which ones will definitely be approved) but some of the big names have already withdrawn their bids or didn't put one in at all. The new standards are much more logical and actually usable. The landscape for world language education in Tennessee is changing. It just remains to be seen whether it will be a real change or simply a superficial one. If you're in Tennessee, check out the new standards and the textbook samples. You can find links to the samples here. You can use the form there to provide your feedback too. Happy new (school) year!
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