Corinne Bourne teaches Russian and French (and some Spanish) in Redding, CA. A member of this PLC for over 15 years and a real pro at CI, is retiring this year. She writes: Hi Ben – My position at UPrep, Redding is now on Edjoin, and obviously we are hoping for an applicant who can
I think we should all write – and keep updating – a mission statement about why we do our work in the way we do. We should not write it because we have to, because someone forces us, but for ourselves, to guide us in our preparation to honor our students in the way we
How to not be blocked? Develop FLOW, whose source is in our hearts. That’s what my message in the StarChart™ is, and why it works. I never could get real flow going in my classes until I developed the Star. Believe in the process. Believe in the work. Don’t let fear and fatigue even get
I will write a post about how teachers get away with not teaching in a way that honors the research and the Communication standard. I don’t look forward to that task, but it is becoming increasingly clear that such posts, posts that reveal the truth, are necessary. How much longer will we teach in such
When we do things we enjoy, we don’t get tired, and neither do our students. That is FLOW. When we teach our languages slowly and clearly, it energizes everyone in the classroom. When we enjoy FLOW, our hearts sparkle and our students’ hearts begin to sparkle as well. (It takes a lot to get teenagers’
Our group member Laura Avila in Maine has written this on Can Do statements: Hi Ben – Next week we are getting another layer of police inspection into our teaching under the title of “Learning Walks”. They want to see us using Learning Targets in the form of “I can” statements. I have adapted the
This is the time when things are reversed. Teachers teach falsified history, views of science are constantly overturned, false versions of language are presented as language but only explore its mechanical aspects. Children have grown weary of such false things in schools and cease to engage. Classrooms have become tombs. The heart quality in things
Our reaction to the COVID crisis has so far been to frantically search the internet for band-aid solutions, activities that do little for us or for our students. Our reasoning seems to be that if we can just find the right activity to keep our students at least minimally involved in our online instruction –
Group 4 just finished its six-week training and I would like to share this report from Lori: Hi Ben. I just started school today after the break and I used the Star! We had a 90-minute class. I used about half of the time to get to know the kids and then maybe 20 minutes
Last week, we mentioned a good, research-aligned objective for our whiteboards when we are teaching a tableau or story: S/W understand and read Spanish I also found a 2019 post on this topic on the PLC with comments, for anyone interested in going a bit deeper on the topic of posting objectives: OCTOBER 24, 2019
In this repost, John Piazza describes a largely ignored aspect of our job, but one we make a priority here on the PLC. Here is John’s article on mental health: Recently, I was speaking with a friend, who described a marathon job interview she just went through. She sat before 4 panels of critical professionals
The discussion about targeting certain expressions so that our students “can do” certain things (order a meal, etc.) in the TL raises questions about the nature of language. What is the nature of language and what is its purpose? To be able to order a meal AT A POINT IN YOUR STUDY WHEN YOU ARE
