Comunicación

This past week at Lincoln Hall has been another great one! I can’t believe how quickly my time there is winding down. Last week, I set two goals: to learn a lot from the Institute day we have on Friday and to invite the principal to one of my lessons this week. On Friday, the institute day was all about using technology in the classroom. We started the day by hearing a speaker talk to us about technology and how students should research in the classroom. He taught us that instead of having them research on something broad, we have to find a way for students to narrow down their study so they don’t come up with millions of results when they type it into google. He showed us an example of what a student might do if he looked up “china” on google and it came up with 3,140,000,000 results. But, when we refined it to the average rainfall in china and looked up only the “.gov” websites, we were down to 250 results. The speaker was very helpful, because my cooperating teacher (and myself in the future) was planning on having students do reports on different Spanish speaking countries. Instead of having students look up results that might not be credible, or relevant, it can be helpful for them to narrow down their topic and show them how to find a good source. Then, I went to two different meetings where I learned about possible technological resources that I could use in a language classroom in the future. I’m really excited to use some of them, such as Voki, Audio Boo, Spaaze, etc when I’m a teacher and even in my upcoming placement.

As for my second goal, I wasn’t able to invite my principal to a lesson, because I didn’t see her around the school much this week. I think she was gone on Monday and Tuesday at various meetings and then Wednesday and Thursday I only saw her briefly, but she was busy and Friday I didn’t see her at the Institute day. Hopefully I will see her this coming week.

My goals for the upcoming week are to come up with a good project with my cooperating teacher for my students to work on during the upcoming week and to set an appointment with superintendent Mark Klaisner this week for a mock interview and to review my resume and cover letter. (I met him at the Institute day and he invited me to come and sit down with him so that he can help me out with these thing, so I figure it would be great to take him up on this.)

One word to best describe this week is personality. Each one of my students displays such a unique personality, which is great! I have also been able to many of the personalities of the staff this week and their attitudes towards various things that are going on around the school. It has been fun and a great learning process.

Unfortunately, we have not had many opportunities to incorporate members of the community or experts in the field in our classroom. One of the reasons is because we are doing a lot of review right now and are moving though old material quickly. The other reason is because the school has strict field trip, movie, and visitor policies. We have tried to include some real world situations in the classroom, however. For example, we are trying to use this program called “Voki” in the classroom where students can practice their speaking skills, which is essential in learning a language. It is a site where they create an avatar, but record their own voice to make it speak. (You can also type what it says, but they can’t pronounce the Spanish.) It’s a great tool, though, because many students are too afraid to try a new language in the classroom. Students really like using Voki.

Although I have had some trouble trying to incorporate the community, or the world, in my classroom up to this point, I have some great ideas for the future when I have my own classroom. To start off, I would like to set my classroom up with ePals right from the start of the school year. This way, they would be able to talk with them all year round and not have to cram it into a month or so. I can also work out any kinks before the school year starts then too. I think that by using ePals, students are putting their knowledge of what their learning to use and can learn a lot from other cultures around the world.

I would also like to use many of the sites I learned about at my institute day, because I would be able to create active learning that students might really enjoy and find relevant. Many of the reviews that a teacher in Brazil got from her students were positive when they were using the web tools to learn. Some of the websites I want to make sure I use as a teacher are Voki, Audio Boo, Fotobabble, Goanimate, and Live type. They are websites in which students can practice using each of the four domains: listening, writing, reading, and speaking.

Collaboration within a school is also essential. At the beginning of my time a Lincoln Hall, my cooperating teacher and I tried to map out what we wanted the seven weeks to look like while I was there. We also meet each week to go over what I’m going to teach and make any adjustments based on how the last week went. I also usually confirm what I’m going to do the next day so that we are on the same page.

Each week, we meet three times with the eighth grade team as well. One of those days, we also meet with the special education teacher, principal and assistant principal to talk about specific students behavior and what we can do about it. It is really important that we have these meetings so that everyone can be on the same page. We have found, may times, that if we are having a problem with a student in one of our Spanish classes, that the student is also struggling with other classes. One of my students, for example, was really struggling in Spanish and we found out he was struggling in other classes too. As a result, we switched his schedule (with his and his parents confirmation) so that he could be in a lower level Spanish class and have a more supportive Literature class.

Keeping my students on task has been going better. Switching my eighth periods seats made a big difference at first, but it has started to get noisy again. As a result, I made them stay after class one day until we got through the notes we needed to get through (which we got through with ease in the other class periods). This made them listen a lot better and I think it might continue to help, because they know if they take my time, then I will take theirs.

Chapter 11 in the Schmidt book also had a lot of great things to say about communication in the school. Keeping parents informed was one of the most important things I took from this chapter. In the section entitled “ten essentials of effective communication” it helped me realize some important things to include when staying in touch with parents. The ones I thought were most important were being proactive, being positive, being inclusive, and being clear. Being proactive means contacting parents before there are any problems in the classroom. By sending parents a personal note, you can gain the respect of students’ parents and can make a big impression on them. It can also make sure that you will be supported if there is a problem in the future. Being positive is also important. If there is a problem in the classroom, the call or letter home should start out with something positive and then transition into the point of your concern. This way, they see why the problem is a big deal and will usually be supportive in helping you fix this problem. By being inclusive, no parents are left out or don’t know what is going on in your classroom. This may mean different ways of communicating with them. Being clear is also essential, because many parents are very busy. Whenever possible, Schmidt says using bullet points can be helpful. Also, using writing simple is important so that everyone know what you’re trying to say.

Being aware cross-culturally is important too, otherwise we may not understand why some parents or students do things the way they do. We may even see it as rude, based on American standards, but for them, it is what they’re used to. In order to communicate successfully with all the families within the community, Schmidt suggests that we should be cognizant of how different cultures may deal with things such as eye contact, distance between people in a conversation, use of gestures, taking turns in conversations, standards to response time, and even down to the color pen we choose to write with. In her book, Schmidt points out sever specific cultural standards. But, if you’re every wondering about something, it might be useful to look it up, not just assume a parent or student is being disrespectful. I believe this is essential, especially if you plan on being a teacher in a diverse area.