What the heck was I thinking: Five huge changes I made this year

Late April is a tricky time of year for teachers.  We can see the light at the end of the tunnel, but we know we still have 6-8 weeks to get there.

Hang in there, friends.

This year, late April is the time of year when I wonder what the heck I was thinking when I decided to try so many new things in the same semester. A recap:

In the fall, I decided to stop assigning homework. The pros: Less decontextualized work for students, less grading for me, grades became a more accurate reflection of students' actual abilities. Hooray! The cons: students initially felt less connected to the material, required more reassurance from me, and some failed to realize there would no longer be a homework grade to affect their overall grade, so a handful of kids dropped a letter grade that quarter.

In the middle of the fall semester, I finally cut the cords with our textbook completely.  I had been weaning myself off of it, but I finally stopped using it altogether.  I kept a class set under the desks for kids who still wanted the comfort of a book as a reference, but we no longer used it for direct instruction, a vocab/grammar source, or any kind of class activity. The pros: students had to actually listen to me to get their info, no more book assignments/lost books/damaged books, no more decontextualized grammar/drills/verb charts, student-created language lists rule, our resources are REAL and up-to-date, and there's a noticeable increase in voluntary conversation and reading. The cons: I have to start from scratch finding appropriate and relevant resources on a budget that resembles dental floss more than a shoe string, I find that I want to try EVERYTHING EVER with my students and our new-found freedom and there just isn't time, I am slowly realizing that I was much more dependent on a pre-determined curriculum than I thought, I am slowly realizing that I know virtually nothing about teaching without a textbook, and all of that occasionally makes me feel like a great big old failure. So there's that.

With the start of the spring semester in January, my classes all changed.  My Spanish I students have me for the spring semester of their seventh grade year and the fall semester of their eighth grade year (it avoids scheduling issues with other state-required classes to split it up that way), so I got two brand-new classes of seventh graders, who were brand-new to Spanish I.  I've been reading about and thinking about Standards-Based Learning for a while, and I finally decided to take the plunge and start my new Spanish I classes as entirely SBL courses.  The kids got a letter to take home explaining the differences between previous classes and this one, they got a printout of their standards, and we took off at a stumble.  The pros: AMAZING LANGUAGE PRODUCTION, self-actualization and self-agency, accountability like never before, independent learning, students asking for MORE, students using language creatively for real-world tasks, collaborating with each other, explaining things to each other, using the standards as a guide, asking questions, envisioning their personal language use outside of the classroom, and on and on and on and on! The cons: Brand-spanking-new system that I created myself with no feedback from other language teachers (#DeptOfOne, working on my Twitter networking skillz), being one of the first in my school to go full-on SBL so no other working models around, assuring students that this is the best way for them to learn, changing my teaching methods because my textbook-based experience falls far short of the demands of SBL instruction, creating instruction/learning tasks/assessments that meet the standard and are accessible to students while also reflecting authentic language tasks, balancing the five language skills (reading/writing/speaking/listening/conversation) and figuring out how to spiral them into increasingly demanding activities that challenge students just enough to interest them without overwhelming them, and on and on and on and on and on.

I figured if I was already making all these changes, I might as well make some more, right? (Seriously, what the heck was I thinking?). I decided to throw myself into honest-to-goodness real PBL (project-based learning). So my students are working in groups following a sort of Genius Hour model of investigation once a week to create activities for a Family Night in May.  We'll invite all their families to join us at school on a Friday night to celebrate what their students have accomplished and to have some fun with the Spanish language. We have students creating Twister in Spanish, number games, matching games, a kids' corner with art activities in Spanish, a stop-motion video for a viewing center, charades, a photo booth, Simon Dice (Simon Says), and one group of boys is learning to sing "Los Pollitos" and dressing up as chickens to act out the lyrics.  The week of the celebration, I'll do a cooking lesson in Spanish with the kids to make salsa for our refreshments. Students will make the schedule, the rules, the invitations, the snacks, the set-up, everything.  The pros: Getting it right has never mattered more!, the kids get a chance to show off together, parents get a chance to see their kids in academic action, they're having a ton of fun already just planning it, there's an incredible sense of ownership I've never seen before, and there'll be six boys dressed as chickens.  The cons: Planning planning planning. That's it.

The last change I can think of (I'm certain I'm missing something) is alternative seating. Our principals have been talking a lot about Kayla Delzer's classroom set-up (www.topdogteaching.com), and I liked what I saw.  I made a DonorsChoose project requesting four bean bags and four lap desks to make a start in the right direction, and it was funded! I was very cautious at first, severely limiting who used the beanbags, when, how often, how much, and finally in the past week I've moved the beanbags from the back of the room to the center of our Socratic circle, and added a small area rug.  So far, there has been little to no disagreement among student about who sits where, and the kids who choose to sit on the beanbags/floor seem to exhibit increased collaboration and attention to the topic at hand! I'm slowly making more changes to our classroom furniture and arrangements, to make the class an environment that's comfortable and inviting to everyone.  Pros: kids pay attention, collaborate, clean up without being told (so far), and seem to take pride in rearranging things for the next class that comes in.  The cons: can't think of any. I need more seating alternatives!


Also, a change-in-progress: I just started using super basic TPR so I can ease into TPRS and novels with my Spanish I kids, and I have no idea why I never did this before.  The kids love it; they see our five-minute TPR warm-up as a dance party! Why why WHY did I wait 8 years to do this?