Now that summer is approaching, my prayer for all of us is that we stop trying so hard for stories, stop trying to be entertainers, and finally lift the heavy wooden yoke from our creased and tired shoulders, rest deeply this summer and come back without the yoke on our shoulders.
Being well prepared in the Star™ and for those doing the The Square™ – those are your go-to guaranteed curriculums that makes it so easy to do this work because they cut through all the confusion like a very sharp knife.
I have been working on those books since 2016 and some periods of the work on them were 16 hours a day. The Star™and now the The Square™ are so bad-ass that I can say that they are in fact bad to the bone. (For details: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqgUG_JVzCs)
There is no need to create a good story. The Star is designed to get us efficiently through a class with practically no effort. There is only the need to use the language in class as much as we can. (50% of the time is great and the ACTFL 90% position statement on use of the target language is an unattainable recommendation that ACTFL says we should do but not one person in ACTFL could ever dream of doing it themselves. That is the hypocrisy of it.)
It is our job to consciously relax and take care of what are for some of us – at this point after COVID – are our battered souls. We have to take care of ourselves. I have a book on mental health in the works but probably won’t need to write it once we all finally get that the mental health piece is all about having a good curriculum that works to engage them. That’s the classroom management piece and the mental health piece all rolled into one – just teach a good class (and for me that means using The Star™ and The Square™ and the FlipChart™ and all that good stuff), and watch the classroom management and mental health pieces fall naturally into place.
Start fully relaxing now so that when the last day of school happens you are already relaxing. Stretch out your summer by starting vacation now at least in your mind.
Any group members reading this are invited to call for a “career check up” with me and I would love to hear where you are and share my ideas of things you might do to make it all work better in the fall. 303-995-0526.
Keep on teaching!
For details:
