We welcome Melissa to the group. Here is her bio:
My name is Melissa Kriebel. I teach Exploratory and level 1 Spanish to 7th and 8th graders in Western Massachusetts. Teaching Spanish is a second career for me. I majored in Spanish in college with a minor in Marketing and upon graduation went to work for a Marketing company. I was tutoring Spanish on the side for extra money and realized how much I looked forward to working with the students and speaking Spanish with them. So, six years after college, I went back for a master’s degree in education while teaching Spanish (student teaching in my own classroom) in a long-term sub position at my old high school. I was right to make the career switch, I love going to work most days and working with the students.
I joined on to this professional learning community in early October of this year. As I was walking around my classroom watching certain students agonize over filling out the pronoun chart quiz (and I even use TPR for the pronouns), I thought, “There has to be a better way to reach these kids and teach them the language?!” I started googling for alternative ideas and found a blog from a teacher who uses TPRS. I began reading her methods and it was like bells going off in my head – YES YES YES! So I clicked from link to link and for weeks was reading about TPRS. I thought to myself, “How did I miss this?” Then I saw the words “Blaine Ray” and realized that name sounded familiar, but I never paid much attention to what he was offering. The more I read, the more I became convinced that this method has more clout. So I am giving it a try. I wished I had found this method during the summer so I could have started the year with it. For now, I am going to incorporate a lot of circling as I teach structures and gradually develop my skills in this method. I know that there will be a lot of growing pains, like anything new in life.
Time is limited for me since I have two young daughters at home, ages 2 and 4. They keep my husband and I very busy outside of work. I also teach Les Mills group exercise classes at a local gym (my sanity) and love most anything fitness related (skiing, biking, running, etc.). Other hobbies include reading, blogging, and of course, languages and travel!
I’ll conclude this extra-long bio with this: I have read so many posts on this wall where I’ve just thought “thank you for that” and “yes!” and “maybe I should try that” and when I have experienced frustrations, there has been a post somewhere on here with some noteworthy advice and empathy. I love and appreciate the candor. I know that I will pose questions to the group and also chime in once I am feeling more comfortable with the method. I don’t have a single colleague who uses this method, so you will be that for me right now. I hope to make it to a conference in the near future. Thank you all!