AP Spanish – @cwilsonspanish

15 and a half years, and a rain jacket.

Posted on December 28, 2020 by @cwilsonspanish

The other day I was asked how long I’ve been speaking Spanish. As I thought about it, it occurred to me that I started learning Spanish 15 and a half years ago. I remember that exactly, specifically. I was a high school sophomore signed up in the only foreign language class my 1A high school offered. I didn’t know I’d be walking into a class that would change the course of my life, offer me relationships across the globe, give me opportunities I couldn’t even imagine at that point in my life. I DID know that the majority of my classes bored me to no end. I knew that this one would be a challenge; it would be new. It would be, if I am completely honest, a much needed distraction.

I had just spent the summer working full time on a peach orchard under the table. I was racking up ag hours, but I was also using my paycheck to buy groceries because my mom was sick and couldn’t work much anymore.

And again, if I’m completely honest, in those classes that couldn’t occupy my mind, I spent my time thinking about things I couldn’t fix. And dancing around a truth I couldn’t yet see. And pretending I was ok.

So when I walked into sophomore Spanish 1, I wasn’t expecting to go from learning “hola” to teaching hundreds of students at every level of Spanish K-12 and Spanish 1- AP Spanish Literature. I wasn’t expecting to have a teacher who somehow when I wrote “Yo tengo el taco” read: actually, my mom is dying and I’m not as ok as I seem, oh, and I’m going to move 1000 miles away and might need a rain jacket— but she did.

So for over half my life, I’ve been bilingual. And tomorrow marks 15 years since my mother passed away. And, if I’m honest, Spanish is part of the reason I made it this far in (mostly) one piece. And a teacher, one in a long line of teachers who made a difference along the way. That, and a rain jacket.

P.S. Here is a picture of me in said jacket, 6 years later in Costa Rica with Billy Ray Cyrus, looking like a dork because I fell backwards directly into him right was as the picture was snapped.

Here is a picture of me in said jacket, 6 years later in Costa Rica with Billy Ray Cyrus, looking like a dork because I fell backwards directly into him right was as the picture was snapped.

Google, homework, professional development

Google Voice: Part 1- In The Language Classroom

Posted on February 18, 2015 by @cwilsonspanish

Google voice has rocked my world this year. I had previously wanted to see what I could use Google Voice for, but, like most teachers, I didn’t have time for another “tool” to add to my list and make my life harder. After attending the ACTFL Convention this year, however, my perspective changed.

I sat in on a session by one of the ACTFL teachers of the year, Carrie Toth, who runs http://somewheretoshare.com as she talked about different way she has added authentic assessment to her classes. She shared that when students have projects that many classes traditionally “present” (aka: waste 3 days of class time presenting), she instead uses Google Voice. In a room so crowded with people that I was in a corner on the floor, here I sat, suddenly engaged beyond measure. This woman had the answers to all my problems.

Any student who has ever sat in my classroom knows 2 things (ok, hopefully more than 2 things…)

Mrs. Wilson doesn’t waste time.
Everything we do has a purpose.

I literally refuse to waste even a second. And, if a student asks me “why” I usually have a dissertation like response of my thought process behind the request.

Presentations had always been an irritation of mine. They worked so hard… shouldn’t they present it? To be honest… these presentations aren’t going to be that great. Who listens to them anyway??? The class can’t hold their attention span long enough to hear more than one. UGH now we are a week behind 😦

Instead, Carrie explains, that she has students call and leave their presentations using Google Voice. Genius. Students are then able to:

Speak with a lower affective filter.
Practice several times before calling.
Call again to record a better version.
Not waste 3 class days listening to their Spanish 1 classmates repeat all 15 words they know (ahem, I mean…. um… sorry!)

I was anxious to try this, and I was amazed at the results. My students did fantastically. They even worked harder on their accents, because they felt that me having a voicemail was more “permanent”.

Tips and Ideas:

Carrie suggested using some of the time that would have been spent on presentations to do a “museum” style walkabout, encouraging students to interact in the TL instead (Interpersonal).
Use Google Voice for AP level classes to record their cultural comparisons.
Google Voice voicemails cut off at 3 minutes. When students don’t have much dead space… that is actually quite a lot of time! But, be careful about assigning something that can’t be recorded in the time limit. For example, during their celebrity family presentations, I graded their project as a written piece, but asked students only to share the 5 most interesting things via voicemail.
You can set up Google Voice to ring to a phone… but since the main use for it is voicemail (for a teacher), I recommend setting it to “Do Not Disturb”, so that it will automatically record voicemails.
In your voicemail message, remind students to leave their name…haha, seems obvious, but you are a teacher, so you understand.
Space your assignments out, so that your voicemail box isn’t clogged with too many assignments at once. One week I gave an assignment to Spanish 1. Once those voicemails had been graded, I assigned a Voice assignment to Spanish 3. A few late Spanish 1 assignments got mixed in, and there was a delay in grading them.

Have any ideas yet?

-CL

teaching, Uncategorized

Everything i learned is wrong

Posted on June 4, 2013 by @cwilsonspanish

I’ve learned over the past 2-3 years, as I’ve moved from proficient to fluent in Spanish… that everything i’ve learned is wrong.

Not everything, but a lot of things. For instance, lots of the “rules” that we teach kids in Spanish, aren’t really true. Not every sentence that starts with “Ayer” has the preterite. Not all of the rules we learn and teach fit into spoken, normal, everyday Spanish.

Recently, I’ve had the great pleasure of meeting a lady who is a true genius and actually re-wrote Spanish grammar to reflect simple truths about Spanish. Her book is called “Spanish Grammar for the Independent Learner”. I intend to use it with my upper level classes next year, and in the future, from the beginning in any class that I teach.

As teachers, let’s not perpetuate the reasons that kids hate Spanish/ Foreign Language.

Another great read, kind of a “pep rally” for Foreign Lang. teachers is Chapter 2 of this Texas Framework.

-CL

teaching

Things that work: Tiered assignments

Posted on June 1, 2013 by @cwilsonspanish

No matter the subject area, no matter the school, no matter the class or the individuals in it, as teachers we realize that students have different goals for their learning, and we have different goals for their learning too.

Don’t get me wrong: The standards are the same. I just mean, that maybe we know a kid needs to work on a certain skill, or maybe we know where he wants to go in life, or how he is motivated, so we cater to that in our instruction.

One way to do this is though differentiated assignments. For instance, assignment “menus” where students pick various tasks within the menu to complete to demonstrate their competence.

One neat idea I’ve toyed with in the past, but actually go to use for the first time this school year is the idea of tiered assignments. The fact is: students learn language at different paces. Sure, we can aid that pace, but we can’t completely control it. This year, I had to come to grips that I had to provide (with 22 kids in the room) the same, somewhat modified, instruction to all of my kids (sure, i could supplement in small groups, etc.) knowing that half where native speakers of Spanish, and half were not. …and knowing that the content of the instruction was vital knowledge for their learning.

I had to come to grips with the fact that after a reading selection, the summaries of the native speaking 2nd graders would be full, developed, grammatically “ok”….while my non-native speakers at different proficiencies could do, well, various things. Some of them could tell me, some could draw it, some could write it…but not well, some could give me a better paragraph than a native Spanish speaker could.

In order to facilitate learning and gradable assignments, I started using this idea of different levels of assignments that targeted the same skill but required different levels of language proficiency to complete.

Taking this from a content based 2nd grade Dual Language classroom… back to secondary next year… here’s what I’d like to do:

Teach AP Spanish in the same classroom with my Spanish 3’s. I’d like to give them the same/ similar content…but, give them tiered assignments. You see, what happens a lot in smaller AP Spanish programs is this: the AP kids get stuck in the back of a room and do “independent study” aka: automatic “A” & probably not gonna pass…….

Instead, I’d rather teach them all–but then modify the assignments to meet them where they are in their proficiency and assess their progress that way.

It worked with 2nd graders… ask me next summer if it works with AP 🙂