Since today was a lost day party time when we were supposed to see a video from the internet but no one could get the technology to work BTWhas anyone ever noticed that I always work? Not only that, you don’t have to worry about the quality of what I teach I teach great stuff and do it well. And I don’t need batteries.
So I got a lot of sorting and filing done while the kids finished up an assignment and ate tortillas espanolas and candy. While I was doing that, I was observing the students. One boy who has shown signs of being a bit contemptuous of the class he’s a top student and came from another school displayed some concern for me trying to take roll. That signaled to me that he was not disengaged. This gave me some time to chat with students individually and to see how they interact with each other when not under normal classroom constraints. It’s good to do that now and then, esp if you don’t participate in a lot of extracurricular activities at your school.
I read Melinda Gates’ piece in the Huffington Post on teachers. I think of my situation where I could easily work another few years one more and I’m vested but cannot continue in this environment where after 25 years of teaching and turning out students who can actually use the target language, I have to follow the path of teachers who only teach grammar one boy today was talking about his test on the subjunctive. Why are they not able to see the uselessness of what they do? And why do administrators follow the same path to language oblivion? They are serving something other than fl acquisition, that’s why.
Tomorrow we are pushing further into the text in Spanish, using some of the circling technique of tprs. Included will be picture files used to recap the story. (tomorrow is block). For Latin, I am moving into the new book (CLC III) and recapping the first two books using pictures which students will attach simple sentences to. Each class will also receive a brief lecture on the ACTFL stages and where they should be now and can expect to be if they take four years of the language