We have a young scholar in St. Louis whose awareness of the research and spot on grasp of the difficult issues confronting us seems to go well beyond his years. Here’s Nathan Beck’s bio:
Hey Ben,
Here’s my bio that’s taken me forever to write. Sorry about that!
Hello, all! My name is Nathan Beck and I teach Spanish in St. Louis, Missouri. I teach at a private Catholic High School currently. I’m currently (as of March 2013) in my second year of teaching. Briefly about myself… I did my undergraduate in Spanish at Truman State University, which is also where I did my Masters in Education. While in my Masters I took my Foreign Language Instruction course, which literally opened my eyes to a whole new way of instructing. I was introduced to Krashen’s work as well as Lee & VanPatten. I learned about the ACTFL standards and the proficiency levels. I learned about comprehensible input, zone of proximal development, etc etc. I give all the credit to my mentor teacher and her colleague who taught that class. I also had a colleague there that introduced me to TPRS, though at the time I wasn’t fully able to immerse myself in the method.
As a part of my Master’s program, I taught for a semester at my old high school where I was able to learn A LOT. Unfortunately, their curriculum was VERY textbook driven, which was disheartening for me coming out of a graduate class where I was all fired up about Input and Communicative Teaching, etc. This, I have come to learn is more the norm in our schools, which is unfortunate because it most often does not reflect current Second Language Acquisition research nor current best-teaching practices. Thankfully that was a shorter experience.
In between then and now, I’ve attended two Blaine Ray workshops, have watched Susan Gross and Ben’s videos/DVDS, have read a COPIOUS AMOUNT (and I mean that — I am an avid reader that loooooves learning about anything and everything related to SLA, FL teaching, CI and TPRS), have put myself through some Fluency Fast German DVDs (or well, currently doing that) in order to acquire German (my whole family is German and speaks it, so I want to be able to communicate with them!).
Now, I am very happy at my school. My administration is very supportive and, though I must deal with a very traditional, set-in-her-ways department chair, I am still allowed to do a lot of what I want. And next year, it looks like I’ll be able to ditch the textbook completely in my Spanish I and II classes! Hallelujah! I was going to head off to get a PHD in Foreign Language Education, but decided to wait a bit and get some more experience in the classroom. I would like to effect change on a more national scale eventually, but I think I can do a lot here locally. Or at least I’m going to try! So, there’s a little bit about me. I love this PLC for everything that it does and for all of the exciting discussion. I am constantly learning new things! I hope to soon videotape myself teaching and of course would love your feedback. And if ever anyone needs help with anything, or is in St. Louis, please do look me up. I would love to meet! We should also organize a Google Hang Out sometime — that’d be fun, I think :).
Also, Ben, is there a way to get my photo added to the comments I make? I think that’d be nifty! I’ll go ahead and attach one. 🙂
Thanks again for all that you do, sir. I really value this space and camaraderie.
Nathan