An Open Letter to my State's Governor

I found something out today that I cannot get out of my head.  I found out that you will be proposing another track of teacher licensing.  In your proposal a person with "real-life experience" (no clue what you mean by that) can take an exam, pass it and *POOF* have their teaching license.

Let me set the record straight that I have voted for you every single time you have come up on the ballot.  I know that I am in a VERY small percentage of teachers who have done so.  I know many in our state criticize you for what you've done to education.  I will say that I don't think it's your strong suit, but there are other things that I greatly agree with you on, so I've supported you.  I even supported you when you required teachers to chip in a bit for benefits.  How you went about it wasn't the best, but considering our benefits are amazing compared to the private sector, I was okay with chipping in a bit for said benefits. 

But this is a new low.  This is offensive to me.  This is a slap in the face.  Your proposal proves to me that you have ZERO idea what it takes to be a good educator.  Of course subject matter knowledge is important as a teacher.  But guess what.  Of the ten teaching standards of our state, only ONE addresses subject matter knowledge.  The other nine are learned through a combination of teacher education training and teaching experience.  There are a couple of those nine that can also be partly learned in life, but I can tell you not everyone possesses those skills.

Your proposal belittles my education and my experience.  When I went to college to be a French teacher, I not only had to major in French, but I had to go through the education classes as well.  I took classes that taught me how to meet the other nine teaching standards.  One specific class was so crucial to my education that it was specifically geared toward aspiring foreign language teachers.  It also makes no mention of student teaching.  That semester taught me more than the other 3 1/2 years of college.  I know I speak for every teacher when I say I was nowhere near ready to teach on my own the first day of student teaching.  Student teaching is a crucial part of the teacher education process.

Teaching ability is a gift.  I will not pretend that everyone who goes through the education program will be an awesome teacher and I will not pretend that nobody can be a good teacher without going through the education program.  Some just have it and some just don't.  But I am not comfortable with the future of our state or even our nation to be put into the hands of someone who cannot tell me what an IEP is and why it's so important.  I am not comfortable with someone teaching our youth who has zero grasp of the different socioeconomic and behavioral factors that can make or break a student's ability or desire to learn.  I know many people who could even be considered experts in their field that would drown in today's classrooms.

Please do not move forward with your proposal.  I implore you.  Education is the most important tool we can give students and you are cheating them by letting anyone just pass a simple content test in order to teach.  There is already so little respect toward teachers as it is.  Please don't add more disrespect by making it even easier to get a teaching license.  We should be investing in finding the very best teachers, not handing out a license to just anyone.  Teaching IS and should be considered an elite, distinguished and respected profession.


Respectfully,
A teacher who easily has another 35 years before retirement, therefore another 35 years to make one heck of a difference in this world.

image from test.com

#JeSuisUnePersonne

It is hard to believe it's been almost two weeks since three Muslim gunmen opened fire on a Paris magazine office killing a dozen people and wounding many more.  This is one of those few events in life where I will always know what I was doing when I found out about it.  I was home because school had been cancelled due to extreme cold and a friend texted me asking if I had heard about Paris.  From there I watched it all unfold.

Within hours, my Facebook newsfeed was filled with #JeSuisCharlie, a sign of support for the magazine that was targeted, especially those who were dead or injured.  As time went on, #JeSuisCharlie became a symbol for much more: solidarity, rights, freedom of speech, the list goes on.

Let's look at what "Je suis Charlie" really means.  In French, it literally means "I am Charlie".  Charlie stands for the name of the magazine, Charlie Hebdo. So, anyone using that hashtag in a literal sense is literally calling themselves the magazine.  However, after the attacks, the magazine began to represent much more, especially freedom of speech, so using the phrase was a way to stand by them.

Going back a few more steps, let's see what Charlie really is.  Charlie Hebdo is a weekly satirical magazine.  The purpose of satire is to mock and criticize, and Charlie definitely lives up to that description.  Their pages are often filled with cartoons mocking religions, races, politicians, genders, you name it.  The cartoons that prompted the attacks from these gunmen were ones that exposed Muhammed, who is the prophet of Islam.  Nevermind the fact that many branches of Islam specifically prohibit any drawing or reproduction of the likeness of Muhammed (they consider it to be a sacrilege)...many of these cartoons have been directly inflammatory of Muhammed, and by association, Muslims themselves. And Islam is not the only religion to be openly and offensively mocked in these magazines... Charlie Hebdo has made it clear that just about nothing is off limits.

I do not condone the actions of these murderers. But I have to say that I cannot, in good conscience, say that I am Charlie or that I support their actions either.  It is not because I have no French pride.  It is not because I don't support the French.  On the contrary.  I love France and consider it my home away from home.  Despite the fact that I find these attacks appalling, I cannot stand behind a magazine that makes its living by targeting and mocking specific groups of people.

Our world is in a precarious situation.  Hate is abound.  Muslims are hated because they are supposedly terrorists.  Christians are hated because they are supposedly homophobic women-oppressors.  Blacks are hated because they are supposedly thugs.  Those receiving state aid are hated because they are all lazy and supposedly milking the system.  I could keep going, but I think you get the picture.  Pretty much every group is hated for some reason or another.

I had a discussion about this situation with a French friend of mine last week and she said I was taking Charlie Hebdo's cartoons too seriously.  "Oh, it's only meant to be funny," she said.  But, mind you, she isn't a part of any group that is regularly mocked by Charlie.  Look at the list I made in the previous paragraph.  Much of that hatred stems from one thing: stereotypes.  And what does satire do?  Use humor to exaggerate stereotypes and mock certain groups.  There is nothing funny about mocking people for things that are a pillar of their lives.

See where I'm going with this?  They are adding to the division and hate in this world.  In Charlie Hebdo's situation, not only do they add to the division, but they openly mock and purposefully offend people.  PEOPLE.  How are we supposed to teach our children to respect all people regardless of religion, race,  nationality, etc when we are applauding a magazine who uses their constitutional rights to do just the opposite?  If we are ever going to make the world a better place, we need to continue to teach our children that even if we disagree with someone in any way, they are still a PERSON and ALL PEOPLE deserve respect.

Despite disagreeing with what they have to say, I still support Charlie's (and everyone else's) right to say what is on their mind.  The law is very black and white for a reason.  If we start adding gray area and say, "well.. you can say what you want as long as it doesn't mock or offend..." then we start getting into that slippery slope.  Cue a bunch of frivolous lawsuits, right?

So here is MY proposition.  Let Charlie Hebdo publish what they want.  Stand beside them and give them support because they are PEOPLE going through a horrific situation.  But let's get our voices heard too.  Promote the respect of differences.  Promote the "other side" of any story, rather than just the side that promotes hype and stereotypes.  Shut down hate.  Shut down stereotypes.  The world is only what we make it.  As teachers we have the tools to change the world for the better.  So why don't we give it a shot?  Love is stronger than hate after all.

Buche de Noel

Yeah I've been super lazy about posting lately (apologies).  But I just had to share the overflow of the amazing Buches de Noel that my kids made!  We have a holiday party every year before Christmas break and I decided to mix it up from the normal crepes.  I told the kids that if they made a Buche de Noel (they could work in groups in the class) and brought it in, they could get extra credit.  Well a lot of kids in one class (the photo is the cakes from a 30 student class) decided to take me up on my offer and made a TON of them!  They were so creative though.. the one in the bottom right of the photo even has acorns made of hershey kisses and nutter butters!

I hope everyone had a restful Christmas break.  Bring it on 2015!

Kahoot Trivia Game

If you have never heard of Kahoot, I strongly encourage you to read this blog post.  Why?  Because Kahoot is AWESOME.

If you have ever played trivia in a bar, it is the same concept, except YOU get to write the questions and your students get to answer.

To start, you must go to getkahoot.com  and sign up for a free account.  Then you are ready to get started.  First you must create a quiz.  Then, you write questions which can be text, photos, or both (they also have a beta version going with videos, but I haven't tried it yet).  You then write the four different options of answers and indicate which is the right answer.  Keep clicking add question until you are finished, then click save and continue.

Once the quiz is done, you can launch it, projecting your computer image onto the screen.  Your students will go to kahoot.it and enter the 4-5 digit pin code for said game and then enter their names.  As they enter, you will see their names pop up at the front of the room.  Once everyone is in, you launch the game.

As the questions pop up, students must choose the correct answer from their own device.  The faster they answer (correctly), the more points they get.  If they answer wrong, then no points.  Between each question, you will see a leaderboard on the main screen.

My students LOVE Kahoot.  The fun thing about it, too, is that you can do the same one more than once because it only further reinforces their remembering of certain facts.  I know I'm a foreign language teacher, but really, any subject could do this.

Check it out! I promise your kids will be begging for more.

Conjugation Pasting

My French 1s are currently in the throes of learning ER conjugations, and they were having a hard time understanding the connection between things like "parler", "tu" and "parles" for example.  I wanted them to see it as a whole picture rather than just copying and pasting more verb charts, so I came up with an idea that I think would work well for a LOT of different verbs (especially those four main verbs).

What I did was write 6 different infinitives on the board and put each of the six subject pronouns underneath.  Then, I had the class help me define the infinitives.  Next, I cut out different conjugations of all of the verbs and gave one or two to each student.  Then, they had to tape their conjugation to the right spot.

This activity, while simple, worked SUPER well.  They definitely started to see how everything worked together with the infinitives and the different endings based on the subject.  Give it a shot sometime!

I am not a number.

4: the number of years I have been teaching
120: the number of students I teach on a daily basis
50: the number of my students who got an A first quarter
25,000: the number of dollars I am in debt from my education
15: the average number of hours per week I spend doing school work outside of contracted hours
5: the number of classes I teach in a day
3: the number of levels of French that I teach
94: the number of minutes per day I am paid to prepare for the aforementioned classes
25: the number of hours I have spent doing paperwork for the most recent educator program/evaluation system since the beginning of school


In reading the above numbers, what does it tell you about me?  Can you determine how good of a teacher I am?  Am I effective?  Do I care?  Am I energetic or burnt out?  Am I optimistic or pessimistic?  Do my students know how to use the target language?

The makers of state and national policies and programs seem to think that numbers like that along with other numbers (like test scores, student evaluations, and student achievement) are what dictate my worth as an educator.

They are wrong.

For anyone who is familiar, Wisconsin (my home state) has adopted a new system.  It is called Educator Effectiveness.  In a nutshell, you are evaluated 50/50 on two things: student achievement and professional practice.  To prove student achievement, you must write a Student Learning Objective (SLO).  You do so by giving your students a pre-test, analyzing the results, and then deciding where you want your kids to be by spring based on said pre-test.  If your students do not reach your goal for whatever reason, you lose points.

The other half, as mentioned, is the professional practice.  You must go through the six standards of an effective educator, each of which has about 8-10 sub categories and rate yourself as a strength or a weakness in each category (so we are talking roughly 50-60 statements are made and you have to say whether it is a strength or weakness of yours).  Then, you must write a short reflection on each standard.  Then, you must write a professional practice goal.

Sounds simple right?  Not so much.  The above stuff is only if it is NOT your rotation year (each teacher goes every three years.. some are this year, some are next, and some are the following).  If it's your rotation year, you ALSO must upload artifacts and proof that you are meeting the aforementioned six standards.

You also must survey your students regardless of your year.  They recommend asking your students to rate you on things like how inclusive you are, how enthusiastic you are, how sensitive you are to their issues, etc.  I've given surveys like that before.  Asking a student to rate you from 1-5 on any number of topics will not illicit a constructive response.  By the end they are just checking boxes to be done.  A few years ago I started doing a simple survey about three times per year and asked only four questions.

     1. What kinds of activities do you like/help you?
     2. What kinds of activities do you not like/don't help you
     3. What does Madame do that you like/helps you (teaching style)?
     4. What does Madame do that you don't like/doesn't help you (teaching style)?

It's AMAZING the responses I get from these kids.  They are thoughtful, constructive, and everything you'd want a survey to be.  Imagine my frustration when I was told that a survey I've been using (and improving my teaching styles with) for three years now isn't good enough because I can't report any sort of numerical data to the people who likely aren't even going to take the time to read it.

The time this program takes is astounding and exhausting.  And I know we are not the only state to have programs like this.  We already are spread very thin with things like IEP meetings, parent contacts, extra duties and more.  Why add another program that takes an average of 2 hours out of my week to make me a "better teacher"?

Taking a teacher away from his or her classroom/prep time does NOT make them a better teacher.  It makes them rush through thing preparations because they don't have time.  It makes them not take the time to stop and reflect on a poor lesson because they have to submit their SLO by the end of the week, so they better work on that instead.  Time is GOLD for a teacher and by filling up a teacher's time with tedious tasks you are only making them worse, even if it's designed to make them better.

I read a story the other day about a teacher from Long Island who received a very poor evaluation score because her students did not show much improvement.  Why, do you ask?  Because they already score so high.  BECAUSE OF HER TEACHING.  How does that make even sense?  She is now suing for reform.

When you think back to the teacher who really made a difference in your life, chances are you think of the teacher who reached out to you when nobody else could.  The teacher who gave you a hands on lesson rather than just lecture you.  The teacher who brought in that electrically charged ball, made you hold hands with your classmates, and then touched the ball to show static electricity.  The teacher who summed up a unit on French cuisine by organizing a day for you to cook authentic dishes and taste them.  Those are the teachers you remember.  Not the ones that gave you test after test, maybe not even the ones you got the best grades with.

It's when a teacher CARES that he/she makes a different.  When he/she is PASSIONATE about his/her subject area and wants to IGNITE that passion in students.  It's the teachers who stay after school to HELP you understand that new concept and then CHEER with you when the lightbulb finally goes off for you.

How can you measure caring, passion, ignition, help or cheering with numbers?  It's simple.  You can't.

So instead, how about we trust teachers to do their job.  Trust teachers to effectively evaluate not only student progress but their own.  Good teachers do all the things a program like Educator Effectiveness entails anyway.  I am not a number.  So please stop treating me like one.

Taken from teachingtheexceptional.tumblr.com

Using Cups for Preposition Practice

A topic I just completed with my French 2s was a topic regarding location prepositions: on, under, near, far from, etc.  I am a very hands on teacher and feel that being able to move and feel some of the actions can help students learn, so I do that whenever possible.  To prepare them for the exam, I would tell them where to put their pencil in relation to their notebooks.  "Mettez le crayon sous le cahier."  "Mettez le crayon devant le cahier".  It worked alright but things got messy when you tried to do "in" and the notebooks were just plain awkward.  Not to mention some students don't have notebooks (by choice.. I don't get it... but hey that's another story).

My next idea was to have them make a small cube out of paper by folding and gluing flaps.  So I set aside 10 minutes one day for them to make a cube (and keep the top open) to do this exercise.  Well.. 30 minutes later... the cubes weren't even finished yet.  Not to mention.. where do you store 15 cubes that are 3x3x3?

Then it hit me.  Cups!  They store easily, still have an inside/outside and everything in between.  All you have to do is go to the store and pay a few dollars and these cups can be used for years to come.  If you get the sturdy red plastic cups, you can easily store them for years and years and bring them out whenever you do this unit.  It's also nice to have them on hand in case you have a few minutes at the end of class with time to kill.  All you have to do is whip them out and review location prepositions.  Cleanup is a breeze as well and they are much sturdier than paper cubes.


And because it's that kind of day, here's a little bit of cup happiness for your Tuesday morning.  Bonus points if you know what awesome TV show this photo comes from :)

Bundle Sale!

I've decided to throw a bundle sale in my TPT store through the end of the month!

All big bundles are now $9.99!  AND!  If you purchase two bundles from me, leave me one piece of feedback and fill out THIS FORM (click), you will be given free lifetime access to my shared Google Drive!  Everything I have ever made, shared, used, etc is in this drive which is organized by topic and/or book level and chapter.  I'm talking hundreds of easy to find and searchable files.  And it updates as I make things because it syncs to my computer.  Normally one needs to spend $25 in my store to take advantage of this offer, but I am throwing it in with my bundle sale. 

Just head on over to my Teachers Pay Teachers Store and click on "bundles" on the left hand column to see what bundles I have on sale.  Once your purchase is made and you leave me feedback, fill out the Google form and I will share the folder with you!

Interactive Travel Assignment Idea

I discovered something awesome the other day, which then resulted in me spending about three hours playing around with it.  But the results are AWESOME and I feel like I must share.

If you didn't know this already, you can create custom Google Maps with your own locations.  This is an AWESOME way for students to go on a virtual tour of a city or even countries that speak a specific language.  You can also personalize it to have the information that you want them to know.

For starters, go to http://maps.google.com/mymaps.  You will want to click on create a new map.

The FIRST thing you should do is give your map a name so you can come back to it later if necessary.  The cool thing about this is Google usually autosaves your work every few seconds so you shouldn't lose anything.

Next you can create your "stops" either by searching an address or landmark in the search bar, or even just going to the spot and dropping a point.  The point will start out as green.

Then you need to click on it and select "add to map".  At that point, it will add it to your map as well as your list on the left-hand side.

To edit your point, click on it and then click the little pencil to edit it.  If you don't want to the google places link in it, then click "remove" in the gray box. In the edit box, you can change the title of your point, you can add text, and you can even add a photo by clicking on the little photo box.  Another idea is to add the link to the official webpage of said monument for students to look around.

Once your box is complete, make sure to click "Save", otherwise all of the information you put in will go away. Once the box is complete, it will show all of the information you want when someone clicks on the point.

You can do this for each and every location you wish to highlight.  You stick to one city and highlight landmarks, or you could even do capitals and countries that speak a specific language.

Once you finish each location, you can play around with the settings in the side bar to determine how you want your points to be labeled.  Different colors, letters, words... all are possibilities.

With my map, I chose to make a worksheet to accompany the activity to make sure the students actually go through it and get things out of it.  I start out by making them label which monument goes with which letter.  Then they must match the photo of the monument to the name and write down key facts.

To make sure your students get the map, you can click "share" in the upper right hand corner of the map and it gives you share settings.  You can copy the link or even send it directly to them if you have a list of their e-mail addresses.  You can also make a tinyurl for them to access it easily.

I love activities like this because it is much more fun to them than a random powerpoint slideshow or lecture.  It allows them to move at their own pace and even kind of feel like they are visiting the locations you want them to see.  It's much more affordable than the cost to actually go there.

Want a copy of my Paris Interactive Map Activity?  Click this link.

One Positive Contact per Week: A Challenge

I came to the unfortunate realization last week that 99% of the times I initiate contact with a parent, it's because of something negative.

I generally try to be a positive person, so this kind of concerned me.

Because of this, I decided to make a challenge for myself: at least once per week, I will initiate contact with a parent for something positive.  My positive e-mail of this week was to a parent whose daughter generally does OK in my class, but averages about a low B to a C.  She failed her first test this year which took her class grade to a D+.  However, she decided to take the time to come in, get some help, do some extra work and then retake her test.  She did so well on the retake that her class grade from a D+ to a B.  How awesome!  I told her father about the improvement and he was very happy to hear about it.

So... I extend this challenge to you my readers.  Send a positive e-mail this week.  And another one next week.  Keep the ball rolling!  Parents will stop cringing every time a teacher e-mail comes in.

From legacyproject.human.cornell.edu