I'm already certified in 2 states...

When I accepted my job for this year, I took it knowing a couple of things.... 1) The job was a one-year long term sub position for a maternity leave with little chance of me actually getting to keep the job for more than the one year contract and 2) my husband is applying to medical schools so I probably wouldn't be in Illinois anyway. As it turns out, the old teacher is DEFINITELY coming back and my husband is DEFINITELY not going to med school in Illinois so it doesn't even matter anyway. I am really going to miss this first job of mine though. The school is wonderful, the students and staff are amazing, and I look forward going to work every day. This was a wonderful experience and an amazing opportunity. I am so grateful to have had this be my first job. I'm still not quite sure where I'm going to be working next year because my husband has been accepted to a school in Pennsylvania, wait listed from a school in Florida, and waiting to here back from a school in Michigan. That means I am looking for jobs in lots of different places.


I am already certified to teach K-12 Spanish and 6-12 Math in Michigan and now Illinois. Although in order to teach middle school in Illinois, I think I may have to take another class or two. However, with the possibility of moving to Florida or Pennsylvania, I need to start the certification process for those states as well since I may not know where I'm moving for awhile. I took 3 tests in Michigan to be certified, as well as 3 different (yet eerily similar...) tests in Illinois. Pennsylvania requires different tests still! Which, of course, are not cheap. I think I need to sign up for 7 total, although 3 are really all rolled into 1. Plus, I need to have certification before I can be hired, so I've been told. This wasn't the case in Illinois as I just finalized my certification in this state about a month ago. In Pennsylvania, they are switching to an online system from paper so that transition is eating up a lot of their time. This means that they are pretty backed up and it seems to take 2-3 months for the certification process. With no email address and a 90-minute hold for phone calls to a call center, it's been difficult to get my questions answered. Florida has a pretty straight-forward process... submit a bunch of documents, pay a fee, and voila! I'll be certified in Florida. (From what I can tell... I still need to do more research to be certain.)


Even though I've just started this process, I've already learned a lot. My advice for those applying for certification in a new state? Start as EARLY as possible, be prepared to take more tests, and try to get an email address or a direct phone number whenever possible. While I couldn't have started the process much sooner than I did, I am a few weeks behind and could have already had a couple of the tests done and over with. This process is stressful but will be worth it in the end when I get my second job! Maybe my goal will be to see in how many different states I can earn my certification? Oooo, I could even add another country and teach English abroad in the future! This could be fun :)

Keeping Families Informed

A couple of weeks ago, my school district had a professional development all about technology. Many of my colleagues were telling me that most professional developments in the past have been a waste of time and just not very useful. So, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that this session was quite unlike the sessions from the past. We had a fantastic speaker, Steve Dembo, from Discovery Education. His life is technology, specifically technology in education but also in his family. He showed us multiple ways that his young child is using education in his every day life. Just doing a quick google search of Mr. Dembo shows how he takes advantage of every technology tool available. 


My favorite tool about which Steve Dembo told us was a different blogging website, posterous.com. This blog site is especially easy to use because of it's email-to-post feature. If you are fortunate enough to have an iphone, ipad, or other such tablet device, you can immediately transfer videos/pictures straight from your device to your blog. Sending a quick email with the attached picture and whatever you want to say in your post will automatically update your blog. I am fortunate to have an ipad at school but I've been struggling to figure out how to incorporate the use of one ipad into my class of 20+ students. I've been able to use the ipad when I do stations because then it allows only 4 students to work with it at a time, which is much easier for sharing purposes. However, now I use the ipad every day. (Granted, it's me that is using the ipad and not the students which is still something I am working on. However, this is a start for at least someone putting the ipad to good use.) I take pictures and videos of activities in my classes and immediately upload them to my blog spanishatlbes.posterous.com. This blog is for parents and families of my students and I included its url in the trimester newsletter I recently sent home. I wasn't sure how many people would view the blog, but each post has an average number of about 65 views. I'm so pleased with this result! I hope to create a blog for each of my future classrooms because it is a great and easy way to keep families informed about what is going on in the classroom. 

"nan ren" or "nu ren"?

I'm going to switch perspectives for a moment and talk about what it's like to be a language learner. This blog is dedicated to being a language teacher, but part of being a teacher is remember what it's like to learn a new language. I've been taught this from many different people... professors at U of M, faculty leaders from the elementary language program I was a part of during my college years, and most recently the curriculum consultant for the school where I currently work. I've learned lots of languages from these people... French, German, and Thai. I loved learning those languages but since it was only about one or two 10-minute lessons, I really can't recall anything I learned. That's why we want to teach our students as frequently as possible. I believe that 15 minutes every day is better than 30 minutes twice a week. Yes, you can't do as many in-depth projects because of set-up time; but having that language exposure every day is really what helps the new language to sink in.


Back to talking about being a language learner... I am one! I just ripped off my brother's Rosetta Stone to learn Mandarin Chinese. My brother is learning the language because his work will take him overseas within the next two years. I am learning it (and should have learned it already) because my husband is Chinese and the only people in his family to speak English are him and his parents. That means when I visited his family in China 3 years ago, we mostly just sat and stared at each other, waiting for my husband to translate. We are going to visit his family again this summer, and I am determined to say more than please and thank you. I started the lessons last night and have a goal of about 30 min/day, at least 5 days a week. So far... not bad! I have gotten a 93%, 89%, 94%, and 100% on the first four lessons, respectively. My lowest score was pronunciation and my highest was vocabulary. Not surprising really. I can memorize words by sight and match them to the picture but saying them is a whole different story.


I'll talk more about the teaching style of Rosetta stone later as I discover more about it, but so far so far, I like it. There is no English translation... all Chinese to pictures which takes out the extra step in your brain that makes it more difficult to become fluent. That's what I try to do with the students in my classroom. As little English as possible, no matter how frustrating it may be. I admit, I am not doing a very good job of that right now, but we're allowed to have an off day (read: off week) every now and then, right? I promise, Helena (consultant) and Maria (professor), I am returning to 90% or more Spanish in my teaching tomorrow! For now... good-bye, adios, and zai jian. 


P.S. I do not approve as Rosetta Stone as a language program in schools... because nothing beats that teacher-student interaction. However, as an adult looking to learn a new language or a school that can't afford a language teacher, this is certainly better than nothing!

"Sra. Zhang... I sprained my good wrist..."

That was what one of my students walked into class telling me today. Now, this is not the first sprain, or even broken, limb that has plagued my classroom. To date, I've had 3 students on crutches, 3 in casts, and 4 in some sort of brace. That's actually not too bad considering I have 300 students. Most of the time, they're healed up pretty quickly too. However, today was the first time that a student has been unable to write because of the injury, which caused me slight panic at first, until I came up with a great alternative for her.


The activity was to create flashcards for different body parts. I provided a template with the Spanish word. The students needed to cut out each card, and draw the body part on the back. No English allowed! Here's my example from class.

Now, my dear friend wasn't able to use scissors and could barely hold a pencil. So I grabbed the big picture cards and word labels and had her match them up on the carpet in the middle of the room. This way, she was still matching pictures to words, but didn't have to do the work herself.

Since it's faster to just match pictures/words than actually draw out the body parts, she finished quickly. So the next task I gave her was to create a body out of words. She had to order to word labels from head to toe and lay them out on the carpet. She did a great job!

These are great alternatives for any student who has trouble with fine motor skills. While it is important to practice fine motor skills in all classes, sometimes that focus can take away from learning content. So why should someone sit there and be frustrated with HOW to do activity when s/he could be getting the same practice with the content but not be frustrated with HOW to do the activity? My student couldn't write, but was still able to practice the same content, in practically the same way, as all of her classmates. It just took a little extra thinking on my part. She even got extra practice since she was able to finish more quickly!

Spanish is over already?

You know what one of my favorite things to hear from my students is? The phrase "Spanish is over already? That was so fast!" Times flies when you're having fun so I love it when my kids think that Spanish class went by quickly. I must have heard at least half of my 4th grade class say that today, and for good reason. We got a lot done, in a short amount of time. It was fun, it was entertaining, and it was all Spanish! I don't think I spoke a word of English the entire time! This is what we did:


1. Students enter and right away we sing the "Hola, hola" song. 
2. Students take turns asking each other the questions of the day and report the answers back to me.
3. We stand up and act out 8 different sports that we learned yesterday as we say the words and look at pictures on the board.
4. We sit down and students put labels on the pictures.
5. We do a ball toss where one students asks (in Spanish) "What sport do you play?" Then s/he throws the ball and the catcher answers "I play ..." This continues until everyone has had a turn.
6. Then we sit on the rug and watch a quick prezi about different ways to move.
7. Next I call out different ways to move and switch quickly from one way to another as students stand and act them out.
8. After that, students return to their seats and give me a list (in Spanish) of the words we just learned.
9. Then, students take turns asking each other which ways they like to move (¿Qué te gusta hacer? Me gusta ...)
10. Then we graph a few of the student responses and see which was the most popular.
11. Finally, we pack up and sing our good bye song.


All in 25 minutes! Lots of moving, lots of singing, lots of Spanish, lots of FUN. It was a great lesson. I love lessons like that :)

But they're talking so fast!

One of the things that our consultant is teaching the foreign language team at my school is to start every unit plan with a "hook" - something super interesting that it can't help but get the students engaged and ready to learn about the next unit. Some examples of "hooks" are books, songs, pictures (not the flashcard kind though), and short video clips. Most of my experience is with books but I decided to branch out and use some video clips for my next units with 5th grade (Help! I don't feel well) and 4th grade (Let's play sports!). Surprisingly enough (well, not really) there aren't really any video clips already out there on the internet that I could use with my students so I decided to create my own. I used two different websites: xtranormal and goanimate. I found out about xtranormal from my mother actually (thanks mom!) because she used it in one of her graduate courses to become a principal. I'll talk about this website first. 


Here is the first video I made about a doctor's office using xtranormal. It's fairly easy to use. The main idea is that you just type what you want the characters to say and then they'll say it. However, if you want your characters to move, walk, look at each other, look at the camera... that takes more time. All those little details can be fairly time consuming depending on how intricate you want your video to be. It gets easier with practice, I promise. The website itself allows a max of 2 characters per video. However, if you download the desktop version (which I did) you can have as many characters as you want. The desktop version is pretty much the same. You still need to be connected to the internet to use it but otherwise it's very similar. The only other con to this website is that you have to "pay" for each new character and each new scene that you use with points. There are a couple ways to earn points. You can just buy thousands of points with a credit card. You can also earn points for free, but I haven't been able to figure this one out. There is an educator monthly package discount if you feel like you'll use it all the time. Also, with this educator discount you can provide "tokens" to your students so they can use it for free. There is also a business package but I'm not really sure what that does because I didn't look at it. I just used the free version, which starts you off with so many points to buy your characters and settings. So my video is kind of boring but if I want to use it more in the future, then I'll think about buying. When you are finished, this video downloads to an .avi file so you need windows media player (or an .avi converter program for Macs) in order to view the program. 


The other website is goanimate. This is so quick and so easy to use because you literally choose your scene, type your lines (10 max for the free version), and hit publish! The catch? You can't really choose your own characters or settings (or at least, I haven't been able to figure that out). You have to choose one of their presets. But since I wanted to talk about sports and March madness is going on right now, I was all set. Here's my video. This one took probably 5 minutes to create. 


During the actual teaching of the video, we watched it straight thru one time. At the end, I mostly heard "They talked so fast!" among the whispers of my students. Then we took a break and did some TPR with vocabulary both in the video and just about the content in general (body parts for 5th grade, sports for 4th grade). After this break, we watched the video again. A few students did ask to watch in English, which I obviously denied (it's SPANISH class...) but most students were excited to figure out more of the video. This time, I stopped the video every now and then and asked some clarification questions. Yes, unfortunately, I did make them translation questions but in the future I plan to try and keep even their answers in Spanish. By the second time around though, they were understanding quite a bit and could answer most of my questions! They loved the videos and I think the videos definitely "hooked" the classes in!

I feel that Spanish class is...

This Friday marks the end of the 2nd trimester with my students. I honestly can't believe that in just under 4 months, my first job will be over. This year has flown by! I guess times flies when you're having fun, right? As a wrap-up to the 2nd trimester, I had my students fill out a self-reflection about how much Spanish they have learned, how their behavior is in class, and what they think about Spanish class. I told them they could write whatever they want, as long as they give a reason and are nice. They could write boring as long as they justified their response. You know, the whole "constructive criticism" thing. Here are some of their responses...

- I think Spanish is fun and a little boring because I like making books but don't care for the tests.
- I think Spanish is kind of fun because sometimes it's fun and sometimes it's not.
- I feel Spanish is boring because we have to talk in Spanish.
- I feel Spanish is fun because we play fun games and have a fun teacher.
- I feel Spanish is fun because I like to learn a new language.
- I think Spanish is awesome! :) Because I think it's fun to learn a new language and Mrs. Zhang is awesome because she is so nice.
- I feel Spanish is interesting because the words are really weird and hard to spell.
- I think Spanish BORING! I think that because why do we need to learn Spanish, it is useless! I'm not going to go to Mexico and speak Spanish! We need to be learning Chinese because we're going to be out in the world on our own, we don't need Spanish.


Overall, the majority of the comments agreed that Spanish is fun. However, that last comment I wrote about Spanish being BORING....? That was the first paper I read. It doesn't make me sad that they think Spanish is boring.... what hurts me is that they wrote it LARGE and in all CAPS with a giant exclamation point. I wrote a note back to that student saying "You might not think Spanish is useful now but you never know when you'll need it. A lot of Americans need to use Spanish in their everyday lives, so you may need to use it even in Illinois." I'm not going to confront this student about it; I'm just going to let the note do it's job. My husband tells me to take everything with a grain of salt since they are elementary students but it still hurt a little. I was expecting most of the comments/reasoning that I got, but that one threw me for a loop. I do need to remember though that the vast majority of the papers had nothing but positive words to say. I can't please everyone all the time so I am just going to push that comment out of my head.