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26 thoughts on “Red Alert”
My vote is a strong yes for many reasons:
1. You are Lance Piantaggini, not some newbie to this work. I’m not blowing smoke with this comment. Those who know your voice here on the PLC know that you are a force in this work. You crunch down on it. You eat CI for breakfast. That’s the main reason.
2. I have done it. I taught for eight years in a middle school where the seventh grade 12 week program offered six weeks each of French and Spanish and I don’t know Spanish. Or at least at the time I didn’t know Spanish. But I actually learned it teaching it. There were a few embarrassing moments like after an observation which caused me to sweat profusely (but which went well because of (reason 3 below) a kid asked me randomly how to say “onion” and I didn’t now and the observer AP was standing literally right there.
3. I used Word Associations. Lance I will publish that as an article after I post this. It’s pure cake for making it look like you know the language when you don’t.
4. The St. John’s College (one in Baltimore and one in Santa Fe) have this model where the instructor and the students sit around and learn together. See this link: http://www.sjc.edu/
5. If the kids don’t know Spanish then what is the problem? Compared to the kids, you are a master at Spanish.
6. The base line for the class is zero. Thus, success won’t be measured on gains but on how much fun they have. You teach using TPRS. Problem solved.
7. You know Latin, the mommy of Spanish. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
8. My gut feeling here is that you can do it.
9. Your wife is there with her Spanish.
10. Ringing throughout your email to me above is confidence. You know you can do it on some deep level, no?
11. I am sending you my Big CI Book. Beyond Word Associations, your bread and butter for the first months of your “new” class that will get you through 30 minutes of fun learning with them bc of how that strategy works, there are many other strategies in that book that will work in the same way. I am also sending you my Bucky program. It is based on TPRS circling and is 100 pages of circled Spanish translated and recorded by my friend Guadeloupe Garcia. After you hit a home run with the word associations, you just play those CDs as the kids follow along. This is a proven program that is used in many TPRS classrooms by teachers who don’t feel fully confident in their TPRS skills yet.
12. You do “marching artistry”. Tell us about that. I think that marching is the second coolest thing in the world next to basketball. I think of the baton leader dude with the legs in the air leaning back digging life, expressing life. That is even cooler than basketball. Nothing is cooler than that. I have one of those dudes inside me but never let him out. It’s how I want to teach. If you actually DO THAT, then your Spanish classes will fricking rock the house. Bam! Talk about leadership! What are you concerned about? If you can march in front of that with the baton and all with a big hat on, then why would you even doubt you can lead a desperate group of kids forward with Spanish? Just put on your uniform when you teach the class. Strike up the band. Engines full throttle head with ANY language. We are Americans! Nothing stops us!
I have other reasons but I forgot them while writing the above reasons. Oh here is one more:
13. The Word Wall/Word Associations allow you to do the Word Chunk Team Game. A proven winner. Between the Word Wall/WCTG and Bucky you will be very busy with fun Spanish while you learn it yourself like I did for those eight years and then when summer comes you can go off to Mexico and return victorious to those same kids victorious in the fall. Get them all little marching band uniforms and walk around campus playing Spanish music to wake up the administration to the wonders of teaching using comprehensible input.
Also, if it really goes splat, which it won’t at all, you always have your Ultimate CI Weapon – Dictado. That eats up more minutes that anything!
(Lance I need your regular mail address for the Bucky CD Program)
Here’s another reason re: to the St. John’s model described above: there is no limit to what a group of dedicated people working together toward a common goal can accomplish. In this case, all vestiges of the natural oppositional defiance that comes with the territory in any school class (teacher vs. student – teacher wants the student to learn so naturally being teenagers they don’t want to learn) is gone when the students know you are not expert at Spanish. Their sense of ownership in the class increases exponentially.
Lance, you can do this. Even I have taught a Spanish demo class (to Russian speakers, because it wasn’t a language they knew). You can run your questions by your wife, you can listen to videos, you know what to do! That’s the most important thing, which Ben has already said, so don’t stress it. Go for it!!
Hey Michele. What’s going on in Alaska? Any more language earthquakes since last month’s explosions? You’re changing the terrain up there. Soon, as a result of the Alaskan TPRS Commandos work, you really will be able to see Russia from there, and the distance will be a lot less. What’s the best military force in the world? Language. What’s the best peace making force in the world? Language.
I think we’re calm for now, though we’re meeting tonight to start planning next year’s conference. Between having BVP to blow us out of the water on methodology and Scott to blow up the established ideas on grading, we have to take it down a notch or two!
I, too, think you can do this, Lance.
My question, however, is how this will work with anything and everything else you are doing. Will adding this to your schedule totally exhaust you to the point that nothing is even remotely enjoyable? Think about the Self Care element. Don’t do this solely because there is a group of students who need “saving” as far as foreign language is concerned (You can’t save everyone), but if it is manageable and you are both excited and confident, then do it.
If you do this, Lance – you asked about using that commute.
I have a 45-minute commute one way most days. I have been using Pimsleur CDs to learn Thai. If you don’t take their demand that you repeat everything right away, it does have a strong element of comprehension and meaning throughout. I have significantly added to my Thai vocab and comprehension from them.
Also, I used to listen to Chinesepod.com a lot — they have audio podcasts with transcripts, and they indicate level and topic of each 15-30 min. lesson. They’re also pretty good. Looks like their Spanish equivalent is http://spanishpod.com/
The other thing that might be more obvious – listening to audio books. The Spanish TPRS readers usually have an audiobook version, right? (We don’t for Chinese, and I wish we did for everything published.) I also listen to the Bible, and there are great audio versions online for free, if that would be of interest.
Middle school is lots of fun! Seventh grade is my favorite age group in all the world to teach!
7th graders are like electric balls of fun!
My mom (a retired middle school science teacher) says they have control over almost nothing: their emotions, their bodies, what they say. They fall out of their chairs randomly, for example. They can be quite a lot of fun.
I say go for it Lance. Finding Spanish resources is by far the most of all other foreign languages, Spanish is as phonetic as Latin, and you have a huge support group.
My biggest take away about teaching middle schoolers for the first time in many years is that showing genuine care is far more important than my usual fullcourt press of providing target language exposure.
They care more about the relationship with the teacher than acquiring a new language…at least in my current situation.
They don’t care what you know until they know that you care.
Heck! I don’t know Latin, but I teach it every day! Give it a shot. 🙂
Ha ha! Love this!
Ditto
Haha same with me. I think having your wife as a fluent speaker is huge. So much of how I’ve gained with Latin was thinking about how to say something that I wanted to say, go find some trustworthy source or ask colleagues online. Once I knew how to say it, I said it often and then it became easy. You have that source at home, and as we know when you are starting off you MUST limit vocab. Blaine once told me that my lack of fluency was a blessing for the students. I’m assuming he meant because the fastest I could speak was SLOW and the most vocab I could use was limited naturally.
Yep… actually you may be a better Spanish teacher because you won’t be able to go far out of bounds. You will be forced to circumlocute ideas along with your students using only HF language, which I think is the major skill when it comes to skill-building.
I, like Diane, enjoyed some Pimsluer (French) on a long commute a while ago. Had to get via Interlibrary Loan. I listened to each track at least twice, and didn’t feel bad if the first time I just listened with no response. Bucky will be great for that commute too.
Yes, I second this. I basically taught myself Spanish, relying heavily on my knowledge of French, through Karen Rowan’s online Fluency Fast classes (fun!) and Destinos telenovela and tutoring with an online tutor in Guatemala. So my Spanish is far less robust than my French. I find it so much easier to stay comprehensible, slow, and in bounds in Spanish. It’s almost a gift!
Yes Lance! And also I echo what Robert said re: your overall load. If by taking this on it means sacrificing yourself to the point of extreme overscheduling and fatigue and ???…then…think about that.
As far as the actual job, of course you will be great. I started teaching French when in this situation and it is totally fine. Yes, there are moments when you have to say “Hmm, let’s find out about that particular context” I too love 7th graders. So fun.
On a side note: This might be one thing that makes “other” language teachers cringe about what we do. Think about it. There are so many of those native French speakers teaching French, or those people who were blessed to spend a lot of time abroad and so are very good at their language, and here we are saying that it really doesn’t matter. At least not at level 1. How upset my colleagues would be to read this thread!
You all are rocking the “C” in PLC right now, thanks.
James, since my days in Music Education programs, I have had the sentiment that teachers need waaaaaay more training in pedagogy, and waaaaay less in their content area. Any expertise is a bonus, but incidental. I was asked to prepare orchestral audition pieces on my main instrument despite being years away as a Band Director standing in front of true beginners of EVERY instrument. I just needed to know what to say to the squeaky clarinet kid, man, not perfect my 4-mallet grip on marimba (which is seldom used outside of percussion groups anyway)!
If I go through with this, I’d like to take a Spanish assessmet (OPI?) now, then again at the end of the year, as well as show some student samples to see where we reach. I predict that students will reach a similar proficiency level taught by a Novice speaker using a superior method as an Adanvced or Distinguished speaker using an inferior method. That would certainly shake things up.
Lance don’t you teach Latin as well? What DON’T you teach? Hey by the way if you sit back far enough from your pic above and squint your eyes you see a Roman soldier. So you must teach Latin.
Just in case you need further encouragement,yes it’s possible if, as others have said, you do not have too much else on your plate. In a similar situation, (I taught Spanish 1 for two years with LICT after a week in Blaine’s sessions at NTPRS) if students asked how to say something I didn’t know, I told them that word would be coming soon, and I made a mental note to include it in a subsequent story.
Here speaks an expert on doing too much at once, but I think Latin and Spanish is a good combination. French and Russian has been tough, with neither of them my native language. After eleven years of building both to four year programs, the Russian will end in June 2016, bittersweet, but it’ll feel good to focus only on French.
I think it’s best, Corinne. You have been carrying two AP horses on your back for far too long now and it’s good that you put one of them down.
I feel a new student job coming on…Magister Magistr? (Profesór de Profesór). This student gives the teacher their homework (e.g. Find out how to say “onion,” see if we can say “la biblioteca estaba…” and not “la bliblioteca era…” if it was supposed to be permanent but then burnt down, etc.).
This would work for normal teaching assignments as well (e.g. Teaher must watch an episode of Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared on YouTube before next class).
Ben et al.,
I killed it today during the interview. If they go with someone else it’s because that person has just as much pedagogy interest, and second language training as I do, BUT simply knows more Spanish. If so, that’s cool with me…I’d probably hire the other person, too. Here’s a gem from the interview:
Principal: “So, Lance, tell me your experience with TPRS.”
Me: !?!?
It turns out that he didn’t just skim my resume…he KNEW about the method, and really pushed for it about 5-6 years ago when they got a new 8th grade language teacher. That teacher wasn’t super confident with Spanish (also teaches French), so I am in a similar boat. Also, since this is the first year for 7th grade, both teachers will teach the same stuff to both grades, and then the the 8th grade program can expand next year. That’s good…they have no pacing requirements to meet, or textbooks to align with.
Stay tuned.