Acting and Getting Actors For Skits

When it comes to getting actors for skits, and getting good acting, some of us are kind of wondering why it's been such a struggle lately.  (Lately = the past 3-4 years or so.)

Maybe you aren't struggling with this, but I am and a lot of teachers I talk to are as well.  

We are dealing with a different generation of students in our classes nowadays; as I have blogged about before, they are less kinesthetic in class, more self-advocating, and very, very relationship oriented.  With you and with each other.  It's all about who "likes" or doesn't "like" them.  I believe that we've got to approach them from a relationship-oriented mindset or we won't get far in teaching them.

I've chosen to stop trying to change their basic psychological makeup and rather, to try to understand their reality and work within those parameters to teach Spanish as best I can.

I get student actors mostly by having students choose other students to be in the skit, not by asking for volunteers.  Kids hate volunteering to act nowadays because for this generation it is generally not cool to go up there on purpose and draw attention to yourself.  We need to understand that about this group of kids and just go with it.  If you notice, they will act (usually) if it’s not their choice; either you (the teacher) “makes” them act, or you are drawing names from a hat, or in the case of the Mad Lib scripts I've written for the second half of 3A, the actors were put in the skit by the class decision when no one knew exactly what they were going to have to do in the skit.

The other thing we need to understand about student actors with this generation of kids is that bad, unenthusiastic acting is cool; hamming it up is NOT cool.  If we try to force them to “ham it up,” they will resist even more; then they will refuse to act and you have no actors again, ever.  I personally do not “fire” actors (make them sit down and someone else step in) any more for this same reason.  Look, the whole point is to give the class a basic visual representation of the story and to have a fun, relaxed time doing it.  If that means your actors just sort of stand around lamely, only minimally following your stage directions, then that is what it means.  I have decided to roll with it and stop battling my kids.  As long as they do what I say and walk over there when I say walk over there, I keep telling the story.  We still laugh and enjoy ourselves immensely, and I find that I actually get more buy-in (and occasional hamming) by allowing “bad” acting than I do by nagging and scolding about their unenthusiastic, expressionless acting.  My actors will often get more in the moment since there’s no pressure, and then they WILL do the Dance of the Crazy Monkey for me when asked.

Secretly, your most unenthusiastic, unsmiling actors are actually enjoying the attention of being in the story; they just won't show it for a million dollars because that is not cool.  Know their secrets, Daniel-san.  Work with them.  Do not fight a battle you cannot win and lose your basic focus--which is providing comprehensible input in the target language in a low-anxiety situation.

Spanish 3A Almost Done...Some Random Tidbits about It

I can see light at the end of the tunnel on 3A...here is a photo of my extremely high-tech process of laying things out on the floor to organize them...and just a teaser for you of the extremely awesome stick figures I've been drawing.


This book will have pics to go with (approximately) every other story, starting with lesson 3.  I had kids doing retells all this past year with no pics, and they did fine, but I do think the pics make them focus better on their retells; plus, they are just fun.  I have to tell you I laugh out loud when I draw these little pictures sometimes.  Well, at least I crack myself up.


Also, I am interspersing some Mad Libs in place of the regular story scripts in the last half of 3A.  You know, when the students get so whiny and tired of everything you do?  I had so much fun in April and May with writing some of the 3B scripts as Mad Libs (it was experimental) that I'm adding that in for 3A as well.  If you end up not liking the Mad Lib thing in your actual classes, you can always just use the reading as a script instead. I'll write more soon about exactly how to do a Mad Lib in class.  It was a blast for me and mine.


Also...please don't be shocked...but this book will call for quite a bit of explicit grammar in the lesson plans, as well as...gasp...HOMEWORK.  That is just how it is for my teaching life, right now, at my school.  We teach explicit grammar and we do homework.  I have gone over to the dark side.  You of course do not have to do those parts of the lesson, and I'm being careful to call the homework "optional."  Giving homework definitely has its down side, but the reality in my higher socio-economic community is that parents as well as students expect it, and if you don't give it, you aren't taken as seriously. I think this is particularly true for levels 3, 4, and AP, but we are giving homework in levels 1 and 2 now as well. I still don't let it weigh so heavily that it makes a kid fail Spanish, but it's there, and it will affect their grade over time.


Ok, back to Lesson 26.  I'm on Lesson 26 out of 30.  3A should be finished and edited by July 15.  My plan is to have it printed and up for sale online by July 31, hopefully with 3B as well so they can go as a set.  But if 3B isn't quite done, I'll start selling 3A on July 31 or earlier so that those of you who are waiting with baited breath and needing to start doing some early planning can do so.  I totally get it.  I'm the Queen of Pre-Planning, hence these detailed lesson plan books, right?


I've got two blog posts on my mind that I'll write soon as well:  One on Acting/Getting Actors and another about Gesturing the Vocab.


Ok, really now.  Back to Lesson 26.

Level 3 Spanish Lesson Plans Ready Date...

People are emailing and calling me asking when the Level 3 Spanish Lesson Plans will be ready, so here is the answer:  I plan to have them up for sale online by July 31, both 3A and 3B.  The stories are 95% written minus about 4 or 5 on the ends of each semester; all the quizzes and tests are written; the vocab lists as well as the Spanish discussion "Questions of the Day" are all written...what isn't finalized are the lesson plans themselves.  They are all scribbled in my lesson plan book and have to be typed and shaped up.  I also have to draw a bunch of stick figures for story retells.  All that may be more information than you care to hear, but some people want to know what I still have to do, I mean, wasn't I writing the lesson plan books as I went this year?  Yes...just enough to get by in class...stories and quizzes and tests and the bare minimum activities/project assignments/etc.  Writing basically 50 stories this year (25 each semester) is a LOT of work.  A Lot.  Mucho.  Okay?

What about Level 4/AP?  I did write several stories for Level 4/AP.  I think about 10.  We were kind of all over the place in that level just trying to get ready for the AP Exam, which I am not ashamed to admit since it was my first year teaching AP Spanish Language.  I don't have anything I could publish as a lesson plan book yet for 4/AP.  This Fall we're going to be able to split Spanish 4 (I'll have about 20 students in there) and AP Spanish (34 enrolled last time I checked,) which will be a huge relief, but it also means that I'm sort of reinventing the wheel lesson-plan-wise.  My goal is to have something for Spanish 4 and/or AP the following summer.

Well, I'm off to Costa Rica for awhile...more when I get back!

My Colleague's Spanish Level 1 Lesson Sequence Using my 1A and 1B Books

Okay, as promised, here is my fabulous colleague Alexis’ current regular lesson sequence:

1 – Diccionario. She has her level 1 classes (jam packed with 30 – 35 students per class) absolutely trained to pick up a blank Diccionario page as they come into her room, then sit down and start copying the Diccionario phrases and vocab from the screen (she's using a document camera to project) while she takes roll and gets set up for the lesson. She is mostly using the Diccionario de vocabulario importante from my 1A & 1B books, but occasionally uses a 10 or 20 grid Diccionario for things like food. If you have my 1A or 1B books, those alternate versions of the Diccionario should be on your CD-Rom, either under “Extra docs” or “Related Docs.” Her students keep the Diccionarios until the test, and then they turn them all in at once for a 25-point completion grade.

2 – Vocab Quiz or Translation, whatever the warm-up is for that lesson in my book. Students grade their own and then she takes them up every day (and as I stated in the previous post, I am taking these up every time now too.)

3 – New Vocab + practice with the vocab. This practice might be TPR, gestures, a game, Q&A, point at visuals, conversation, or whatever she feels like doing that day that works best with that vocab set.

4 – Story with Actors. They act out every story, and Alexis just calls on whoever she wants and they have to act or they lose participation points. She tries to go through every student at least once before using the same actors. After the story, she sits in front of the class on a tall stool and methodically asks questions in Spanish from every line of the story while the students answer chorally. I swear they are so trained it's hilarious. I think it's mostly because Alexis has excellent teacher voice (loud) and tone (insistent/firm/expectant/positive.) Also, she has a "Pink Clipboard of Death" that she uses to keep track of Participation Point deductions for infractions, and that seems to work really well for her.

5 – Retell the Story, Write, or Read. I believe she is just following whatever my follow-up activities are in the 1A & 1B books. Sometimes she expands on the follow-up activity or tweaks it. She’s extremely creative. Every time I walk by this woman’s door (which is daily, since our classroom doors face each other) she’s doing something fascinating and her students are engaged.

6 – Grammar. She makes grammar packets by piecing together worksheets and parts of worksheets from our textbooks, other grammar workbooks and resources, online stuff, and whatever else we have lying around. Sometimes she adds a quiz question or two on the grammar point they are studying to the bottom of my vocab quizzes (I have started doing this too…you’ll see a lot more of that in the level 3A & B books when they come out this summer.)

7 – Some kind of enrichment activity or project. Examples: For the house vocab (after the Barbie story, 1B Lesson 5) they had to draw a house with individual rooms and label everything in it. For the chores vocab and the Binko story (1B Lesson 6,) she put them in groups of 4 and they had to draw a planet with an alien doing five different chores the way they do them on that planet (if you’ve read the “Me llamo Binko” story you know what I mean.) Then they had to write a 200-word story about the alien, the planet, and the chores, sort of Round-Robin style, with each person in the group contributing 50 words to the story and writing it in their own handwriting on the same paper.

8 – 10-minute essay. They do this constantly, and they are really, really good writers for level 1B. I can’t wait to get this little crop of students in level 3 and in AP Spanish. J

Homework – It might be very brief but she insists they do daily homework. I know one homework assignment she gives regularly is to go home and translate the story aloud to a parent, who then signs off that they completed the task. Since she’s doing this, I have received emails as well as verbal compliments from parents who know me who are enjoying the “crazy stories” I wrote, as well as feeling pleased and impressed with how much Spanish their kid can read. Yes, sometimes the kids try to cheat and sign it themselves, but overall she seems to get good participation on this one, and in our community the parents appreciate homework (if you can believe it) as well as the chance to see what their kid can do.

We are on the 90-minute A/B block, and Alexis said it might take her two blocks to do all of the above, or one and a half or so. And of course, the above list of activities isn’t EXACTLY what she does every single time, but it’s the general plan she’s following.

We've got state testing over the next two weeks which means a shortened class schedule, then a full week of class, and then Spring Break. Alexis is starting a Spain-geography-and-culture unit during this time as well as doing Midterms. After Spring Break, she’ll start back up with the second half of 1B.

Just want to say thank you *Alexis* for letting me share your awesomeness with people who read my blog…you rock, girl!

The Vital Importance of "Lesson Flow"

When I teach, I feel like I’m on stage. I’m constantly watching for audience participation and engagement, and reading their emotional state as best I can to see which combinations of what types of activities work best, and in what order, for increasing language acquisition.

I call this “lesson flow.” It’s a bit of an obsession for me, actually.

I have experimented with lesson design and sequencing for years now, and I’ve accepted the fact that I will probably always be tweaking it and seeking better and better ways of doing it for the rest of my teaching career. And I think that’s totally okay, because the search for constant self-improvement is just part of who I am, and it makes me a better teacher.

I’m now teaching on the 90-minute A/B block schedule, and through much experimentation I’ve noticed that different arrangements and combinations of lesson activities work better or worse with my students in terms of engagement. I’m going to share my current routine in case you’d like to try it yourself—especially if you are on the 90-minute block.

1 – Vocab Quiz using the vocab from the last lesson. These I am now projecting from my laptop onto a screen; kids take it on a half sheet of paper which I take up and give points for completion. My current students take it much more seriously if I take it up. They are the “why” generation as I have posted about before, and they need a reason for why they are doing everything. Give it to them!

2 – Read a one-page version of the Spanish story I told them last lesson. This way anyone who was absent last lesson gets to see the vocab in context in a story. Reading for me is usually reading with a partner, out loud in English (translating) so I know if they know what it says, but this year we’re also doing “Popcorn,” where each student reads a line (translating to English) and then calls on another student to read the next line. The kids taught me that one in class one day; I don’t know where it comes from, but I love it.

3 – Conversation/Class Discussion Question of the Day – again, projected from my laptop. Friday’s was Si tuvieras la oportunidad, ¿adónde irías en las vacaciones de primavera? Iría a_________porque… (“If you had the opportunity, where would you go for Spring Break? I would go to ____ because…” We’re working on the conditional tense.) I introduce the question, make sure everyone knows what it means, quickly brainstorm some vocab you might need to discuss it (in this case, me gusta/me encanta, el sol, la playa, esquiar o snowboard, ir de compras, cuidades grandes, etc.) and then have them talk about it in 4-groups. (My new 3A&B Lesson Plan books will have all of these Discussion Questions already scripted out for you, ready to go by lesson.) After they talk in their group, I go down the rows calling on every 3^rd person in the room to answer it for the class, and sometimes this leads to more discussion in Spanish.

4 – New Vocab Set and I am still gesturing every single vocab item because it works. They either gesture or point at something in the room or a drawing I make on the board. I have experimented with not doing gestures and it’s unbelievable how much their comprehension and retention of the new vocab suffers.

5 – New Story – using the vocab items we just gestured. Right now it seems to work best if I decide before class which students are going to act and just call on them; otherwise, we have to play the “I don’t want to act, make so-in-so do it” game. I’ve been saying firmly, cheerfully, and confidently, “Okay, this story is about Mike and Kimberly,” and it works like magic on pretty much everyone. They just get up and do it.

6 – Q&A about the story – don’t skip this step. Yes, they whine. Insist that they answer your questions anyway. They need to know why, so tell them it’s for more practice with the target phrases and that it will help them be able to tell the story to their partner.

7 – Retell the story with a partner – I am now doing this for every single story even though I don’t have pictures drawn yet, and it is working just fine. Students must retell the story I just told them to their partner, speaking Spanish for 1 minute while I walk around with a timer. Second partner picks up where the other person left off in the story and then starts it over, speaking Spanish for the entire minute. I’m a drill sergeant about this, and each time the timer goes off, I always give feedback on how well they did.

8 – Grammar lesson, Journal Writing, OR “Street Spanish” lesson – I’m alternating these so they don’t get too burned out on grammar or writing. They love learning Spanish slang, so I’m going through the lessons in a book I’ve owned for years called Street Spanish 1 – The Best of Spanish Slang by David Burke. Some of it is a little “scandalous,” so they like that even more. Friday’s list included slang for cigarette, party, hunk, and babe, for example.

9 – Mexican Telenovela for the last 10 - 15 minutes of class. Right now we’re watching Un gancho al corazón on DVD with English subtitles, and it’s soooo good…Sebastian Rulli…sigh…

I will post again soon with the “lesson flow” that my colleague Alexis is using with her level 1 students and my 2009 1A&B books as well as some of the cool extension activities she’s come up with to go with the stories. Every time I walk by her door, her jam-packed freshman Spanish 1 classes are completely engaged and doing something that increases language acquisition, and she’s been getting 10-minute essays in there of over 200 words fairly regularly.

Spontaneous v. Scripted Stories

All right, it’s time to admit it. I teach better with pre-scripted stories. My students simply stay on task better and learn more.

All last fall, I experimented with going into class with only the target vocab and brainstorming stories with student input, the way real TPRS is supposed to be done. I’ve watched the TPRS gurus do this in workshops with fantastic results, and I’ve always felt a little guilty that from day one of my TPRS life I had to pre-script my stories in order to feel secure that I could pull off a good story in class. I’ve always wanted to go full-spontaneous-story-creation with student input.

Well, no more. I wrote five scripts and readings for 3B over the winter break as well as the quizzes and activities to go with them, and started using them on my first day back with students. What a difference. I had forgotten how smooth a lesson can go with everything already written and ready, and I am now pre-scripting all my 3B stories as I go.

And as it turns out, the majority of my students like my scripted stories better than the spontaneous ones, so they are telling me. They started complaining about the spontaneous stories about halfway through the fall semester and asking me to just make up the stories myself ahead of time. “It takes too long, Mrs. Waltman, and we aren’t learning the words as well as we did last year [in levels 1 and 2.]” If the spontaneous story didn’t go anywhere, they complained that the story “sucked” and became way more focused on that than on the vocab units I was trying to teach. Also, it was near impossible for them to retell the spontaneous stories since they were so disjointed and rambled on and on at times.

I think part of the problem for me in my teaching situation is that I need to teach so much vocab in a given amount of time, and the vocab is complicated, boring, and dry by itself.

I mean, how do you make “a reliable news report” interesting and/or funny (vocab I’m working with right now from Exprésate chapter 6…)? I can needle the kids for ideas only so long before they get really whiny about having to think up new plot twists. And God forbid I’m begging for funny ideas on a day they are tired, not in the mood to be at school because it’s snowing, etc. With a pre-scripted story, I can draw their focus more to the story and the vocab and off my lame attempts to do Spanish improv and make it work every single class period.

Okay, so here’s what happened last week to illustrate this point. A student from my level 4/AP Spanish class is my TA (Teacher’s Aide) during one of my level 3 classes this semester. She sat at my desk alphabetizing papers through two blocks of me teaching with these new pre-scripted stories for 3B; she watched as we gestured the vocab, acted out the script, did verbal Q&A for a couple of minutes, then retold the story to a partner (like I always did in the past.)

Later in 4/AP Spanish class, Mandy* raised her hand. “Mrs. Waltman, I think you should teach this class the way you are teaching your Spanish 3 classes. They are having so much fun and learning so much more Spanish than we are.”

I smiled. I told her I was wondering what she thought of what she had seen, and I was glad she spoke up.

The other students in 4/AP chimed in. Another girl said, “Yeah, Mrs. Waltman. I learned so much in your Spanish 2 class."

So, I sat down that night and pre-scripted a very complicated 4/AP story to teach dar a conocer, darse cuenta de que, dar las gracias, estar a punto de, and estar de acuerdo. It took me forever to weave that many phrases into a funny story, but the AP vocab list is over 900 words, and I’m only scratching the surface as it is. The story ended up being called, “El chico que quería dar a conocer sus sentimientos” (The Guy Who Wanted to Make His Feelings Known,) and it was a blast to have them act out in class. After I did Q&A and had them retell it, I asked them in English, “Okay, how did that feel?”

All around the room, smiling faces. “Really good, Mrs. Waltman. Felt like we were really speaking Spanish.”

So…I’ve got a LOT of work to do every weekend if I am going to pre-script for both 3B and 4/AP this semester. But wow, that payoff in class over the past two weeks has been amazing and totally worth it.

I’m going to have some very fun stuff for level 3 ready to go to print later this summer, and it will be exciting to have my own books to use next year in level 3 as well.

So…stay tuned!

*Any time I talk about students in this blog, their names have been changed.

Musings On Multiple Intelligences

I have a pet peeve I need to discuss. I get really annoyed when I hear people refer to kids as “stupid,” “dumb,” “not that smart,” or any variation of the above.

Occasionally I hear people express this belief about students, and I wonder how they so easily wield such condemning words with a clear conscience.

I was corrupted early on in my teaching career when I heard about Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences theory and it resonated strongly with what I already believed about human beings and their intelligence and/or potential. (Gardner is a Harvard professor who is recognized as "one of the most influential public intellectuals” in the world. I personally think it behooves those of us in education to follow his research whether we agree with it or not, because he is initiating conversations that we need to participate in. He has a new book out called Five Minds for the Future, outlining his theory about the types of minds that will flourish in the coming decades—those he calls the disciplined mind, the synthesizing mind, the creating mind, the respectful mind, and the ethical mind. Check out www.howardgardner.com.)

Teachers sometimes roll their eyes when you bring up multiple intelligences, I suppose because they feel that drum has already been beaten too much, and they fear that it implies yet another layer of work for us in an already-tough-to-keep-up-with job.

It is true that some teachers work at incorporating all eight or nine intelligences into each and every lesson plan. (I say eight or nine intelligences because it depends upon whether you admit spiritual intelligence into the fold. Personally, I say admit them all, and find others. The more ways I can see intelligence and potential in my students, the better I feel about my practice, the better I instill confidence in them, and the better they learn.)

Incorporating all the intelligences would mean every lesson would include something musical, something mathematical, and so on.

I find that type of planning to be mostly too much work for too little gain, but the multiple intelligences theory helps me immensely in my thinking, in my perception of my students, and in my refusal to view any of them as “dumb” or “slow.” I’ve had students who took a long, long time to acquire any usable Spanish, but who could draw amazing artwork or play beautiful guitar music. I don’t feel comfortable labeling such a kid as stupid, because it’s obviously not true.

Someone will say, yeah, but I know people who display no talent for anything at all. My response to that is their potential hasn’t been tapped yet. Maybe nothing difficult has ever been demanded of them, so they haven’t had a chance to show what they would be able to do if given the opportunity to grow in a certain area. Or nothing has piqued their interest yet. As a teacher, I consider it my job to at least attempt to do those two things—challenge students to reach their potential without discouraging them, and pique their interest without assuming all people will love learning a new language.

So, what to do about multiple intelligences in your instruction, on a practical level?

· Believe they exist, look for them in your students

· Bring them out through praise and encouragement

· Vary your planned activities in class

· Allow students to show what they know through various means (not just on the district’s “common assessments”)

I believe that teachers who actively approach their practice from this mindset will feel better about their teaching as well as notice gains in student learning that are well worth the effort.

Just my 2 cents.

Affectionate Whining

I realized something very important about my students’ communication style, in April 2011 or so, about whining. Whining, the bane of my existence as a teacher.

I really hate it when they whine. It makes me feel I’ve let them down, that I have planned a crappy lesson, that they hate my class, that nothing I ever do is good enough, and that I’ve failed. Plus, it’s just annoying.

I have this kid Tanner. I’ve taught him for two years straight now, in Spanish 1 and 2, and now I have him in Spanish 3. I absolutely love this kid, and by now I know him well enough to know he loves me and my class too. In Spanish 2 last year, he whined almost every single day. He did it at the beginning of class, as soon as he walked in. “Mrs. Waltman, do we have to do anything today? Can we just have an easy day? I don’t want to do any work today.”

I would say, “Yes, we have to do some work today.”

He would set his stuff down, and then usually ask me if he could go to the bathroom or go get something to eat before the bell rang. Which struck me as kind of humorous, because the bell hadn’t rung, and he could obviously do whatever he wanted until it did. But he asked first, and he had a big smile on his face.

So it hit me along about April this past spring…Tanner was whining because he loved me and he knew I loved him. He actually wasn’t complaining; in fact, it was affectionate on his part. It was sort of a game we played, and he didn’t become combative when I said, “Yes, we have to work today.” He happily accepted whatever I gave him to do in class and he did his work.

Once I realized this, I realized most other students’ whining is exactly the same thing – affection. Suddenly I not only didn’t mind the whining as much, it became sort of amusing. Like I said, it’s a game we play.

Remember those old Wiley Coyote and Roadrunner cartoons (I think that’s who it was) where the coyotes would “clock in” at “work” in the morning, carrying their lunch pails, then chase the roadrunners who also had just clocked in? They’d chase and chase, and then at the end of the day, get back in line, clock out, and say things like, “Have a good evening, Jim” to each other as they left?

I see classroom interactions these days as very similar to that cartoon. Students clock in when they enter my classroom, and they perform their “job” which is to see if they can get away with something, show resistance to doing work, etc. They clock out as they leave, with a no-hard-feelings “Bye, Mrs. Waltman.”

It’s really nothing personal.

By the way, this year, Tanner isn’t whining anymore. He’s grown out of it I guess. But I’m thankful he had that constant routine going last year, because it taught me something, and now I can handle the three or four other kids who are still doing it.

I would say that if you are getting some whining, watch their faces. Are they truly upset and “oppressed,” or looking around at their friends and hiding a mischievous little smile? When you say Yes, they really do have to take the Midterm today (that was Thursday’s whine this past week,) do they settle down and get to work, or flat-out refuse to do what you ask?

I used to handle whining pretty effectively by simply ignoring it, but with today’s relationship-oriented, self-advocating kids, some of them won’t give up until they get a response out of you. So now I do respond to it more often than I ignore it, smiling and insisting gently but firmly that they do what I said. (“Yes, we have to take the Midterm today. Don’t stress out you guys; it isn’t that hard, you’re totally ready for it, and it will be fine.” No tension in the room; they settled down and got to work. And did great, I might add.)

Students Who Just Aren't Getting It?

What to do about students who seem not to be “getting it?” And what about teaching grammar?

I received the following two-part question this week from a friend of mine:

So how do you help failing kids who just don't get it (a very small few)? I tend to feel like --oh well, !!! If they were there and still after all the circling...I have some kids who struggle with vocab and reading in English, much less Spanish!

Also, with level 2 I am finding I am really teaching them how to do verb chart for present tense because without the concept (which I didn't touch in level 1) or conjugating, they can't really learn any grammar.

My response:

Those few that seem lost no matter how many times you go over it...well, I keep having patience as best I can hoping they are learning at least something. I can usually tell that they are picking up at least a bit of language when I have them write 10-minute essays, even if they are bombing all the quizzes and tests, and then that makes me feel better about it. I don't think there is anything you can do except to keep teaching the best you can and wait for them to bloom. I have had students recently - two boys immediately come to mind - who seemed at first not to be picking up anything. One of them was miserably bombing every quiz and test and could barely write two sentences on a 10-min essay, but I just kept encouraging him. By the end of Spanish 1, he could write 4-5 sentences and was able to tell me the basic skeleton of a story in Spanish for the final, so honestly, I counted that as gain. (This kid was on an IEP too.) The other guy was just very slow acquiring Spanish. After struggling through Spanish 1, he took Spanish 2 and that was when I saw him start to show more language growth. In level 2 he usually managed to get 80-85 words on 10-minute essays, and over time that writing looked more and more like real Spanish :-). I think patience is key and just hanging in there. You might talk to them (if you haven't already) and ask them what is making Spanish hard for them, what would help them learn it better, etc.

Grammar, yes. We are teaching some conjugating in level 1, and quite a bit of explicit grammar in level 2. I'm not sure it is producing much growth in terms of language production, but it seems to satisfy our departmental desire to see them doing grammar. :-) My main mode of instruction is still stories to deliver comprehensible input.

She followed up by asking me when I start 10-minute essays in level 1. My response:

I start 10-minute essays in Spanish 1 the first day. Of course, that first day they can usually only make a list of words, but it sets up that expectation (of writing essays and getting a certain number of words.) I have them write another after about 6 weeks. At that point, they can usually do paragraphs composed of very basic sentences. I put up a stick figure drawing and have them write a story about it. For me, this is a very useful assessment technique that shows you what language they have acquired enough to produce on paper. No dictionaries, 10 minutes to write just off the top of your head. I do let them ask me for individual words as they write, but only some kids take me up on that, and you can tell that they are writing pretty fluently with or without your help usually. If you haven't done it, try it! Your kids might surprise you in what they can put down. The first time might be a little slow going until they get used to the idea, but over time they really do see improvement and you will too.

My own favored approach with struggling kids is to keep encouraging, keep helping, keep trying to show them that a) I expect them to learn Spanish, and b) I believe that they can learn Spanish. Everyone acquires at different rates, and I’ve seen over and over that kids who start out slow can still make progress. I admit, I do get discouraged at times with certain ones, but I try not to ever let it show.

"High Expectations" and My Perfectionism

Okay, so the school year began three weeks ago, and this is the first weekend I feel I can even remotely catch my breath.

Biggest triumph so far? My level 3 students and I are making up some hilarious stories together and having a blast doing it. They definitely buy into this game of Stories-To-Learn-Vocab now, after two years with me. They are doing the gestures and coming up with crazy, fun stuff. I was going to just draw stick figures on the board and not make them get up and act this year, but they are begging to act things out now. What a switch from year 1 when I had to coerce them into acting.

Biggest struggle so far? My head. I'm obsessed with how my classes are going, for better or worse. I want to speak Spanish more. I want them to speak Spanish more. I want every single moment of every class to be incredible. I want everything I do to go over like gangbusters, to be awesome, to be the most perfect thing anyone's ever seen in a Spanish class. Guess how realistic that is?

"This is level 3," I keep telling myself. "I should be speaking Spanish 95% of the time!" Or, "They're in level 3 and they STILL don't get preterit/imperfect!" Or, "They should know more vocab by now." Or, "I have to get to such-and-such grammar point ASAP!!! We're already behind!"

Incidentally, I'm way harder (in my head) on myself and my students in my level 3 classes, because I've had these kids for two years. The Level 4/AP Spanish class is more relaxed for me psychologically because I didn't teach these kids and don't know them, so my expectations for them are more flexible. Odd, too, since that class has this hellishly difficult exam coming up in May, which will clearly delineate the quality of my teaching for all to see.

I have had to spend some time this past week talking myself down a bit, because I store all my stress in my back, and it's been extremely painful and stiff lately. It's okay if I don't get to every single grammar point, every project, and every piece of literature I had planned and (gasp!) published in my syllabus. (It's in the syllabus, so obviously I MUST do it ALL!) Who sets these bizarre expectations for me? I'm suddenly the "lead" Spanish teacher in my department now, so...no one! No one but me. Come to find out, I'm a taskmaster, and I have to stop it.

So the 3's need more work in preterit and imperfect. Guess what? So do I, and I've been studying Spanish for years and years. That's no big catastrophe. We just keep teaching it until they get it.

I have to do the subjunctive this year, along with about 4 other tenses I sometimes don't remember the names of. I'm intimidated; I'll be honest with you. But I know I'm a good teacher, and I never give up on anyone. I'll keep teaching them (and myself) until we all get it.

Does anyone else out there struggle with perfectionism in their teaching? How do you deal?

An Epiphany About Backtalk - Continued

So after I realized that all teachers in my building, regardless of strictness level, get what I would call “backtalk,” it changed my perspective on my students, and I decided to stop being upset at their communication style and instead focus on how best to teach these students as they are.

I learned a life-changing concept a few years ago while attending the ASCD conference in New Orleans. A speaker named Jerry Patterson did a session on Resilient School Leadership (he’s got an excellent book out on this topic.)

The basic concept he taught us was this: To be a resilient school leader, you’ve got to be a realistic optimist (as opposed to an unrealistic optimist, or a realistic or unrealistic pessimist.) A realistic optimist understands the reality, but still believes we can work within that reality to make progress.

A realistic optimist might frame a classroom “backtalk” situation this way:

We’ve got what some would consider entitled, self-important and self-advocating students in this school. That’s not the problem; that’s the reality. Given the REALITY that I’m teaching high-socio-economic kids who have an abrupt, challenging communication style, how can I still make progress (i.e. teach them Spanish and enjoy doing it?)

I’ve watched some teachers in my building go head-to-head with our kids and try to break them down. It doesn’t work. You’re not going to change their basic makeup, the way they were raised. (And, you’ll probably just anger their parents. In my district, the parents rule.) These kids have been trained from birth to stand up to adults, to consider themselves equals. A lot of Generation X and Y parents, no matter the economic status, allow their kids to participate in/dominate/interrupt adult conversation, to make demands on the adults.

What does this reinforce to the kid? “I’m equal to the adults, and I have the right to insist on my needs and get my way.” I’m not even saying that’s a bad thing—low-socio-economic kids raised in poor communities can feel scared and intimidated when they need to advocate for themselves with authorities and institutions because they haven’t been raised to interact with adults on equal footing.

(Malcolm Gladwell has a great discussion on this topic in Outliers, by the way. His observation is that high-socio-economic kids are in many ways better prepared to deal with society and succeed in life because of their skill in self-advocating.)

So after years of this kind of training (being allowed to interrupt/challenge the adults)—what makes us think we’re going to change the kid’s basic psychological makeup in 90 minutes every other day of Spanish class?

Furthermore, is that even my goal? To “make” all the kids act more respectfully, defer meekly to adults?

Do I have time or energy to attempt serious behavior modification as well as teach Spanish? My personal answer to that is no, for three reasons:

a) I don’t think it’s possible to modify their deeply ingrained beliefs and ways of being.

b) If it is possible, it’s going to take a lot more work and time than I can dedicate.

And c) I actually don’t think it’s necessary.

What I need to focus on is teaching them as they are. I just need to understand the reality and work with the kid’s psychology enough to teach them Spanish and enjoy doing it, because that is my real goal here.

The biggest step in the right direction for me was realizing that my students aren’t actually trying to be disrespectful in the way they communicate with me. Then I could feel better about my relationship with them, and truly begin to enjoy teaching them for who they are. That has made all the difference in the world in my classroom.