I got back from NTPRS on Friday night. I was sad to leave the people but oh so happy to be back with my family and dry heat. As I have told many people, my "cup" (brain!) has been overflowing since Monday with all the good ideas and support my fellow TPRSers offered at the conference. I have been hoping to get some down time to process it all, but it doesn't look like that will happen for at least another week because the Mr. and I are leaving on our honeymoon tomorrow morning, so I've got my work cut out for me.
Anyhow, I wanted to share my notes from my google docs. It's almost all of my notes except for the ones scrawled on the back of my notebook. Enjoy!
Monday, July 25, 2011
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
NTPRS 2011 - Tuesday
Well, it has been quite the conference already. I've just gotten into my pajamas after day two of NTPRS 2011, and I am exhausted, but in a good way. I am exhausted after being truly inspired, awestruck, humbled, energized, eager, and studious among other things. These are all great things from my perspective, so let me explain a little more about how I've arrived here today.
Sunday was a day for travel and meeting and mingling. I got up at a decent time to make the flight from CO to MO. It went relatively well -- no unexpected problems. When I arrived in STL, my bag was quickly available and the shuttle was conveniently waiting for me outside the baggage doors, so it was on to the hotel. At the hotel is where I was met with the first inconvenience -- my room wasn't ready yet. I had to wait an hour or so, but it was no big deal. I got checked in once it was ready and then met my roommate after a couple minutes of being in the room. I don't think I could have arranged a better roommate situation. After talking for entirely too long, we headed down to the mixer BBQ where we met some really great people and sweated a lot. We finally headed back up to our room after three hours outside and then chatted for a long time about our experiences.
On Monday we began in the beginners group, which was to last 1.5 consecutive days. After meeting Donna Tatum-Johns and Katya, learning a bit of Russian, and listening to an engaging talk by THE Dr. Stephen Krashen, we decided that the beginner track wasn't for us despite that we have only TPRSed for a year. We went to our first "advanced" workshop with Carol Gaab (AMAZING) then finished the day with Michelle Whaley (INSPIRING!) before going to Dave and Buster's with some wonderful teachers. We came home and crashed (not without talking passionately for far too long for sleep's sake...).
Today was another fantastic day. Another great day to be a TPRSer. We started with the infamous Susie Gross and Betsy for some Contrastive Grammar, which was amazingly helpful. Then we moved to Michael Miller and Barb Watson's Personalization workshop, and saw some pretty powerful stuff which made me excited to see my kids again. We ate lunch at the Classroom Management table and met some great people and even snagged a ticket for tonight's excursion to downtown STL. Then we went to Ben Slavic's Beginning of the Year Personalization workshops, which was also very powerful. Then we went to the arch and out to dinner with another group of wonderful TPRSers. Now we're wrapping things up before going to bed. I hope to write more about each session, but at least share my notes on Google Docs, so keep checking back... if you're out there. :)
My last thoughts...It's been really refreshing to have a wonderfully inspirational, supportive and positive group to talk with, debate with, and learn from. The stories that others share inspire me to continue to be the change I wish to see in the World Language classroom. I am so grateful that I've been able to attend NTPRS 2011.
Sunday was a day for travel and meeting and mingling. I got up at a decent time to make the flight from CO to MO. It went relatively well -- no unexpected problems. When I arrived in STL, my bag was quickly available and the shuttle was conveniently waiting for me outside the baggage doors, so it was on to the hotel. At the hotel is where I was met with the first inconvenience -- my room wasn't ready yet. I had to wait an hour or so, but it was no big deal. I got checked in once it was ready and then met my roommate after a couple minutes of being in the room. I don't think I could have arranged a better roommate situation. After talking for entirely too long, we headed down to the mixer BBQ where we met some really great people and sweated a lot. We finally headed back up to our room after three hours outside and then chatted for a long time about our experiences.
On Monday we began in the beginners group, which was to last 1.5 consecutive days. After meeting Donna Tatum-Johns and Katya, learning a bit of Russian, and listening to an engaging talk by THE Dr. Stephen Krashen, we decided that the beginner track wasn't for us despite that we have only TPRSed for a year. We went to our first "advanced" workshop with Carol Gaab (AMAZING) then finished the day with Michelle Whaley (INSPIRING!) before going to Dave and Buster's with some wonderful teachers. We came home and crashed (not without talking passionately for far too long for sleep's sake...).
Today was another fantastic day. Another great day to be a TPRSer. We started with the infamous Susie Gross and Betsy for some Contrastive Grammar, which was amazingly helpful. Then we moved to Michael Miller and Barb Watson's Personalization workshop, and saw some pretty powerful stuff which made me excited to see my kids again. We ate lunch at the Classroom Management table and met some great people and even snagged a ticket for tonight's excursion to downtown STL. Then we went to Ben Slavic's Beginning of the Year Personalization workshops, which was also very powerful. Then we went to the arch and out to dinner with another group of wonderful TPRSers. Now we're wrapping things up before going to bed. I hope to write more about each session, but at least share my notes on Google Docs, so keep checking back... if you're out there. :)
My last thoughts...It's been really refreshing to have a wonderfully inspirational, supportive and positive group to talk with, debate with, and learn from. The stories that others share inspire me to continue to be the change I wish to see in the World Language classroom. I am so grateful that I've been able to attend NTPRS 2011.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
World Wise School Update
So last summer, in the midst of my dive into TPRS, I found this because of my continued interest in the Peace Corps. It is a program in which current classroom teachers are matched up with current Peace Corps Volunteers (PCV) to enhance the classroom experience. I was excited when we were matched with our PCV because she grew up in the community I teach in. However last year didn't prove to be the most successful.
Our PCV recently emailed me with some amazing ideas for the coming year, so we have a renewed sense of hope. It just so happens that I am tinkering with standards-based grading (SBG) this year in order to align myself with the new state and national standards, and these new ideas really hit on the new standards. We are hoping to facilitate proficiency of the standards through video responses by real Hondurans to my students' questions and through short letters.
I am totally excited and trying to be as purposeful as possible, even though I was going to take today "off", but now I'm too compelled to stop. Here's to another year of possibility. I'm getting excited to get back with my students!
Our PCV recently emailed me with some amazing ideas for the coming year, so we have a renewed sense of hope. It just so happens that I am tinkering with standards-based grading (SBG) this year in order to align myself with the new state and national standards, and these new ideas really hit on the new standards. We are hoping to facilitate proficiency of the standards through video responses by real Hondurans to my students' questions and through short letters.
I am totally excited and trying to be as purposeful as possible, even though I was going to take today "off", but now I'm too compelled to stop. Here's to another year of possibility. I'm getting excited to get back with my students!
Monday, July 11, 2011
"Must be nice to have the summer off."
It's no lie that most teachers get the summer "off". But it's delusional to think that all teachers do in the summer is sip on iced tea and go to the pool. Although I cannot speak for every teacher, this effective teacher tries to take some time for myself and continue to work on school-related things.
Now I realize I may be preaching to the choir, but I feel slighted when people say "Must be nice to have the summer off." I worked hard for this thank you very much. Just in the past two weeks in addition to finishing up my last graduate class of this year (much of which involved curriculum mapping/planning), I've spent at least 4 8-hour days working on bettering my craft for the upcoming school year.
I'm working on aligning my curriculum to the new Colorado Academic Standards and to the new national standards from ACTFL. I've done this through moving towards a standards-based grading system, which is something that has always interested me (although now that I'm writing this I realize I need to actually do research about its effectiveness). I have planned out when assessments need to be and begun writing them. But I need to step up my game on my third year class. I guess I'm stuck as to how to best facilitate language acquisition with them. I hope to get this resolved next week.
Next week I will be in St. Louis for the National TPRS conference. It will be 5 wonderful days of learning, networking and reflection. I hope to learn a lot and to be able to better facilitate language acquisition.
But now, I'm going to read Pyramid Response to Intervention by Buffum, Mattos and Weber. This was a book assigned on my summer reading list by my administration. I'm interested to see what this book has to say, how research-based it is (I look at just about everything with a critical eye), and how I can better serve all of my students.
So to all of the nay-sayers who think teachers have summers off (among other things), I hope you realize that not all of us are parked by the pool sipping iced teas for the entire summer.
Now I realize I may be preaching to the choir, but I feel slighted when people say "Must be nice to have the summer off." I worked hard for this thank you very much. Just in the past two weeks in addition to finishing up my last graduate class of this year (much of which involved curriculum mapping/planning), I've spent at least 4 8-hour days working on bettering my craft for the upcoming school year.
I'm working on aligning my curriculum to the new Colorado Academic Standards and to the new national standards from ACTFL. I've done this through moving towards a standards-based grading system, which is something that has always interested me (although now that I'm writing this I realize I need to actually do research about its effectiveness). I have planned out when assessments need to be and begun writing them. But I need to step up my game on my third year class. I guess I'm stuck as to how to best facilitate language acquisition with them. I hope to get this resolved next week.
Next week I will be in St. Louis for the National TPRS conference. It will be 5 wonderful days of learning, networking and reflection. I hope to learn a lot and to be able to better facilitate language acquisition.
But now, I'm going to read Pyramid Response to Intervention by Buffum, Mattos and Weber. This was a book assigned on my summer reading list by my administration. I'm interested to see what this book has to say, how research-based it is (I look at just about everything with a critical eye), and how I can better serve all of my students.
So to all of the nay-sayers who think teachers have summers off (among other things), I hope you realize that not all of us are parked by the pool sipping iced teas for the entire summer.
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