The biggest part of my professional development has been engaging in community with other language teachers. The ACTFL convention in November was like a breath of fresh air as the lone second language instructor at my school site. Being with other teachers and sharing ideas is so valuable! Since then, I've been meeting individually with a few other Spanish teachers in San Diego. I always come away from these experiences with new ideas and inspiration.
Last week, I started a group on Meetup.com to take these experiences to the next level. With Carol's help, we have already coordinated over a dozen teachers for our first Meetup! I wasn't expecting so many teachers to be interested in an end-of-the-year Meetup, but I've been pleasantly surprised with the responses.
One unexpected downside is the cost of the Meetup site. In all my years of attending other Meetups, I never imagined that there was a hefty monthly fee. I'll be looking into sponsors to offset this cost once we have a larger number of members. I have a feeling that there is at least one university out there that will be interested in sponsoring our group in exchange for exposure to teachers that may be seeking further education.
Overall, I'm just tickled to get some fresh ideas and meet some other language teachers!
http://www.meetup.com/Language-Teachers-of-San-Diego/
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
No world language cuts, please!
http://www.suntimes.com/news/maxedout/2262994,CST-NWS-cuts12.article
This article about Chicago public schools makes me verifiably triste. It seems that world languages make for an "easy cut" when it comes to school budgets... but it clearly makes our students less competitive in the world market and robs them of a myriad of cognitive benefits.
A better approach would be integration of world languages into the core curriculum, so that they become a greater support to the coursework being studied. I've tried this a few times in my classroom - re-teaching the current science lesson in Spanish - but have found that unless I do that 100% of the time, it doesn't seem very effective. Maybe I need to give it another go - but would that style put a damper on basic conversation skills?
What kind of teacher does it take to learn the core curriculum of a school and fuse it with world language learning? I think I'd need an aide...
This article about Chicago public schools makes me verifiably triste. It seems that world languages make for an "easy cut" when it comes to school budgets... but it clearly makes our students less competitive in the world market and robs them of a myriad of cognitive benefits.
A better approach would be integration of world languages into the core curriculum, so that they become a greater support to the coursework being studied. I've tried this a few times in my classroom - re-teaching the current science lesson in Spanish - but have found that unless I do that 100% of the time, it doesn't seem very effective. Maybe I need to give it another go - but would that style put a damper on basic conversation skills?
What kind of teacher does it take to learn the core curriculum of a school and fuse it with world language learning? I think I'd need an aide...
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