I am a first-year teacher in Ohio in my first teaching position. I teach High School Spanish 1 and Spanish 4 at a rural district. I acquired Spanish mainly through speaking it with close friends and my self-designed 5 month study abroad in Veracruz, Mexico where I arrived as a college junior, by myself with no place to stay and had to figure EVERYTHING out by speaking my broken Spanish and negotiating meaning. I learned so much in those 5 months—not surprisingly though, I don’t remember every specific vocabulary word that I used while I was there; I remembered the basics. So that is how I like to teach, too—how to communicate and navigate through negotiating meaning… not memorized and easily forgotten lists of specific vocabulary words. Sometimes upper level students intimidate me because they ask how to say words that I never have used or needed to know… this happens often, because they want to use exact words and literally translate. I love CI and TPRS and first learned about them in my methods class at college… but I feel like around Christmas time, I finally understood that I needed to make it all comprehensible especially in Spanish 4 (talking louder and faster because I would grow nervous as they didn’t understand didn’t help any of us!!). I have lots of issues with classroom management even after implementing a modified version of the 10 questions and having them “grade themselves” for input (I change their grade to what I have observed but wanted them to have the opportunity to self-reflect).
I really want to finish this first year well and am so thankful for the support that the PLC provides… just a space to share our hearts and minds openly and without fear, to help each other continually become better at this beautiful work of guiding others in acquiring language and opening worldviews!
Thanks,
Beth