My son left for bootcamp two weeks ago. He did two weeks of quarantine and today we got the call that he has been medically cleared and he has started bootcamp. I've been a mess. I keep expecting him to walk in the room or to call me and tell me he's on his way home. I go from full on tears to complete excitement for him. I'm a HOT mess!
Mamas. I have one piece of advice for you. You may be dealing with diapers or potty training or the temper tantrums or pushing the boundaries from your own children. You need to savor those times. I WISH my son was here having a temper tantrum right now. They grow up so quickly and then they are off into the world. So hug your children and tell them you love them while you can still do it every day! If you've read my story, you know that my husband and I have been planning for this day! We sold our house and live in our RV right now on our property in southern Arizona (8 miles from the Mexican border). We plan on building a house here someday but for now it's just home base. Now that our last child has left, it's time for us to pull this RV off this property and go explore the USA! We've got plans to head north to Lake Powell and then into Utah. I'm not sure where after that. I think getting out of here will help pass the time until my son graduates bootcamp and can at least have his phone again! I will continue to create products for my store but at a slower rate until school starts up again in the fall! For now, please check out my two latest stories: Los peces de Pancho and Las llamas elegantes. Both stories are written in comprehensible language. More difficult vocabulary is translated (only after a click so the students must try to figure it out first). They are both good for 1st year students in any grade level. In fact, I read Los peces de Pancho to my elementary kiddos today and they loved it! Please check them out! Now please go hug your children (and/or pets). <3
0 Comments
I'm still alive...just processing my son going off to Bootcamp! I'll be back soon!
I'm going to be honest with you. I don't like teaching grammar. I never have. My first teaching job was all about the textbook. I was miserable. Until I started the teaching program at college, I had no idea what the different tenses were and I felt like I was communicating just fine. You can imagine my excitement when this man named Blaine Ray did a workshop WAYYYY back before anyone had heard of TPRS and CI wasn't even a thing (at least with a name). I went to the workshop and walked away excited because I had learned more German in 3 hours with him than I had learned in an entire semester at college! All was well for a while. When I moved to California the school was all about teaching grammar. I quietly did my own thing in my classroom and slowly worked on them to implement Blaine's techniques. I moved again and started over. And then again and again. Maybe I move too much? Now I am teaching online Spanish for a full time online school. The curriculum is built and I just guide the students through it, teaching live lessons once a week. It's 100% grammar based and there's no changing it. I have, however, found a way to get as much input as possible into their grammar lessons! I created Grammar and Cultural Slideshows! These slideshows "teach" the grammar, allow the students to practice and then whisks them away to a Spanish speaking country where they see that grammar concept used in a comprehensible and cultural way! I've used these to introduce the topic to the students as a whole class. They are engaging and fun. It's super easy to email a copy of the presentation to students who were absent or to students who need a little more practice too. The last slide is a blank movie theater so you can add a cultural video (that's what I do...) or a grammar video from YouTube. I use my bitmoji in the ones I show in class but do to copyright laws I can't sell anything with a bitmoji on TPT so I've purchased clipart characters. They work great and are ready to use but I love the personalization I can do with my bitmoji! If you teach grammar, you will love these slideshows! It's a sneaky way to get in that culture that is missing from so many textbooks too! Thank you for reading my blog. I appreciate it so I would like you to have the Tener and Tener Expressions Grammar and Cultural Slideshow. Since I'm not selling this, I'm giving you the fun Bitmoji version! Enjoy! Let me tell you about Ashleigh. Ashleigh was a sophomore in my Spanish 1 class. Her class was HUGE! There were 40 students. (Sadly, 40 students is nothing in Arizona!) Many were juniors and seniors. Few were freshmen. About a month into class, I introduced Special Person Interviews. (I'll circle back to this in a bit). I chose Ashleigh and she came to the front of the room. It was routine. I asked her questions, she answered. The students took notes on what she said. Nothing happened. Until later that week... It was the end of class. I didn't plan very well and we had some extra time. When that happens, I turn on some Spanish music and we jam! So that's what I did! I turned on some music. The kids were tapping their toes. But then one girl said, this song reminds me of Bruno Mars. Another says "Ashleigh, you said Bruno Mars was your favorite. What song does it remind you of?" Ashleigh named the song. Another says he doesn't know that song. And that's when it happened. Shy, shy, shy Ashleigh bursts into song. You guys. She started belting out When I was your man like she's been a pop singer for years. She had an amazing voice. One we rarely heard. ALL of my students starting singing backup for her and we had this Bruno Mars concert where Ashleigh was the star. IT WAS AMAZING! Ashleigh was a star that day. We talked about it all year. In fact, we still talk about it and I don't even teach at that school anymore. (My son is still friends with those students). Ashleigh didn't sing in Spanish. But I didn't care. What happened that day was incredible because shy, sweet Ashleigh felt comfortable to be herself in my classroom in front of 39 other students who were mostly older than her. That was the day that my class became a community, a family. From that day forward, those students became friends who helped one another (and not just in my classroom). When your class becomes a community, they feel empowered and valued and every student thrives. If you haven't done a Special Person Interview or Star Student, try it. I do a couple of interviews in class each week. The students take notes on what their classmates say. We turn these notes into a paragraph about each classmate. Then we create a yearbook to remember our time together. I have a slideshow with questions as well as instructions HERE. You'll be glad you tried it and if you already do special person interviews, let me know your experience with it below in the comments! It's been a year now since schools have been closed and we were forced online. How are you all doing? I personally love technology and enjoy working on my laptop but I miss seeing kids every day. Their energy was contagious. It's been a hard transition to full time online where I rarely even speak with my students. On the other hand, I'm happy I made that transition because I don't have any of the problems that my old colleagues seem to be having this year!
How can I help you? Are you hanging in there? Are you thinking of leaving the profession? Sadly, I've heard that more times than I should...and I don't blame you. You have one life to live so why suffer through it. Let me know how I can help you. I have tons of lesson plans, ideas, tech tips. Just reach out via email and let me know and I'll do what I can! Our kids need us to work together and the thought of teachers leaving the profession breaks my heart. I'm here to help, listen, brainstorm with you. Today I'm going for my second COVID shot. I feel lucky to be able to get this vaccine and I feel hopeful for the future. So let's talk about how COVID has changed my life. I don't know about you but COVID 19 has certainly changed just about everything in my life. A year ago today I was on Spring Break with my husband. We went camping in Lake Havasu, Arizona. (Sidenote, Lake Havasu may be my favorite place in the US...it's right up there. Go visit if you get a chance!). I remember taking the ferry across the lake to the casino.We were hearing about how COVID was wreaking havoc on Europe, specifically Italy. We questioned if it was safe to take the ferry and visit the casino but we decided to go. In hindsight, I'm glad we went because that's probably the last time we were really out in public in a year! By the time we were supposed to go back to school after break, we got word that school would be shut down for a few weeks. No problem. I've been teaching online part time for YEARS. I quickly put my class up on Canvas and shared what I had done with my department. I copied my course for those who were interested and off we went. We never went back in person last year and it was hard not being able to really say goodbye to my students. Over the summer we thought a lot about what we really wanted to do with the rest of our lives. We aren't old yet. I mean we aren't even fifty! But we were at the point where our oldest was about to be a senior in high school. What did we really want to do with the rest of our lives?! We knew we wanted to travel, hike, swim, enjoy nature, and go on adventures. We were over living to work instead of working to live. This led us to the realization that we needed to make a BIG change. We have things to do before we die and COVID has made us realize that we could die at any time. At the end of July, I called my superintendent and let him know that I wouldn't be returning. I called my son's school (actually the school where I was working) and let them know that he wouldn't be returning. We put the house on the market. I enrolled my son in an Arizona online school where he could graduate a semester early and I found a job teaching Spanish online. By Labor Day, my husband took the dogs and went to live in our RV on our property in Southern Arizona. I cleaned the house, sold all the furniture, and donated most of our clothing. Every weekend in September I drove down to the property with a trunkful of photos on others things that I just can't part with. Luckily, our property has a garage on it so we can keep some things! Our house was on the market for just a week. We had 27 offers, all of them well over asking!! The housing market in Phoenix is insane right now! By the end of October the house had sold and my son and I also moved to the property. My parents think we're nuts. Live in an RV? Let me tell you, it's been SO nice! I can clean it so quickly! Plus, we spend most of our time outside anyhow! We would have taken off and started exploring now but my son has signed with the Marines and he needs to stick around to go to training once a week. So, we've been hanging out here all winter. The desert is beautiful in the winter and we've really enjoyed exploring. I even bought a rock tumbler! I've found some of the most beautiful rocks and now I've got them all shined up! Next Sunday we drop my son off at MEPS (Military Entrance Processing Station) in Phoenix. He will go off to quarantine and then boot camp. He should graduate boot camp in July. He will then go to school for a year before being sent to his duty station. So what will we do? I'm not sure. First thing we're doing though is going to Hawaii. We leave in a little over a week. We've never been before and I know I'm going to need something to keep my mind off of my son. Plus, it's time to start our adventure. I don't know if I will have my job next year. It all depends on enrollment and I may not know until summer. I've sort of been looking at jobs teaching abroad. I've written a few letters. My husband gets excited when I apply somewhere where there's a beach! Now THAT would be an adventure. We've talked about renting an AirBNB somewhere like Ecuador for a month and then going to the next country for a month. (That one is hard to do with dogs and I'm not sure I can give up my dogs). We've talked about hitching up the RV and going north.The only thing I know is that we will not be in this desert this summer. It's too hot. We've chosen to have the freedom to live our lives FINALLY. It feels amazing! I think it's so important to live. So many of us are not really living. We're going through the motions and doing what society tells us to do. Get married. Buy a house. Have children. Go to work. We're living for the weekend. It doesn't have to be that way. Every day can be an adventure. I want to hike, swim, snorkel, go boating, go RVing, travel the world before I get so old that I can't enjoy it! I hope my story sparked something in you. I hope it makes you think about what makes you happy and how you want to live your life. Get out there and experience everything you can! COVID has made me realize that the time is now. COVID has taken time away from so many people. I am choosing to live the rest of my life doing what I love. I have two beautiful German Shepherds. Damon is a big, white, fluffy boy. He's a year and a half. Engel is just one year. She's all black and absolutely beautiful. They are so smart. But man are they naughty. I admit, with the pandemic, we haven't really taken them anywhere. When we still had the house, they pretty much lived inside and in the fenced in backyard. The way the fence was, they couldn't even see other people (or dogs). Since moving to our property, they bark at pretty much anything that moves. We are in a neighborhood and the lot is completely fenced in. On two sides we have a tall brick wall. On the other two sides it's a short brick wall. Engel can and will jump the wall. Damon has jumped it but only to save Engel from the vicious little stray kitten next door. The snowbirds are in Arizona right now. They enjoy walking, biking, driving their side by sides, and stopping on our corner to talk to their friends for what seems like forever. So my dogs bark. Constantly. Damon growls and acts like he wants to eat them all. It's horrible.
Because we don't go anywhere right now, I've been watching the dog trainer from CaliK9 on Netflix. And duh. It has clicked. Dogs can be mischievous and naughty but that doesn't mean they are bad dogs. These two pups just need positive reinforcement and little treats when they do well. I need to get their attention away from the snowbirds talking on our corner and redirect them to another activity. I need to keep them active. I need to calm their fears. They are barking at the knocks on the door or the bikes because that's how they communicate fear. They need me to let them know they are safe. I need to treat these dogs how I treat my students! DUH! Students come to our classrooms full of excitement, joy, stress, fear and who knows what else. You're got amazing kids from day one and then you have a few that really test you. They aren't bad kids but they certainly can have bad days. They just need to know they are loved and that we have their backs. The crave praise. Some students crave the "Bien hecho" and some crave a sticker. We learn what makes each student tick. When there's downtime in my classroom, students have a tendency to be loud. I work tirelessly to fill the entire class period with something meaningful so they don't misbehave. Some students don't want to participate but slowly we lull them out of their shell. They know it's ok and nobody will laugh. We're all in this together. I've been doing this for 25 years and I know the tricks of the trade. Why did it take CaliK9 to help me make that connection? So if you are like me with naughty dogs, treat them like your students. Fill their day with meaningful activities, praise them, and let them know you love them. Or if you are having trouble in your classroom, think of how you train your dogs. Give them positive reinforcement, make them feel safe, fill the class period with activities that make them feel like they are doing well! People and dogs need to feel safe, secure, and loved to learn. Once we get our basic needs met, we can ALL be our best. Love your students. The rest will fall into place. Here's a pic of my pups. Aren't they adorable? ![]() It's been a tough month but it's almost (my) Spring Break! I'm throwing a sale during my break AND to celebrate having 100 followers in my shop! Plus, with my son leaving for Boot Camp on the 14th, this will keep me occupied and not thinking about him leaving (ok, probably not...but it's wishful thinking!)The sale will be March 11-14 and everything will be 20% off! Go wishlist items that you may need/want to purchase to be ready for the sale! If you have any questions about any of the products, let me know! You can find me on social media or email by clicking on any of the social media links on the right side of this page. I remember how excited I was to take Spanish in 9th grade. I could not wait. I guess I thought it would be all fun and games. It wasn't. It was all conjugating and verbs and a condescending teacher. I did not like it at all BUT I was determined to take it for four years because I knew I wanted to go to Spain one day. I learned that in geography class in 7th grade when the teacher shared pictures. I suffered through Spanish 1 and 2. I'm not sure I learned much - just some lists of words that I couldn't string together in a sentence and how to conjugate verbs. I didn't know what the verbs meant but I sure could conjugate. Then my teacher got pregnant. She took my entire junior year off and we had a substitute. I can't remember her name but I can picture her. She didn't know a word of Spanish and back in those days there was no internet with amazing lessons. So she learned along with us. We listened to music. ON CASSETTE TAPES. If you're old enough, do you remember how they would write the lyrics on those little foldable covers? I'm not sure my eyes could even read the words today because they were so so so small! Mrs. Substitute Teacher brought in tons of tapes and told us to choose one. I chose the Mecano tape. She told us to listen to it and to choose a song that we liked. We all spent the class period sitting on the floor and listening to cassette tapes of random Spanish music groups/singers. The next day we went to the library and looked at books (encyclopedias too) on the country where our singer/group was from. We wrote up a big report on that country. I found it fascinating. Of course, Mecano was from Spain so I was researching my dream destination! A few days later we were told that we were going to figure out what the song we chose was about. My song was Mujer contra mujer. Talk about a controversial topic in 1988!!! But I figured out what the song was about with a Spanish/English dictionary (thankfully there was no Google translate back in the day). I learned more from deciphering that song and seeing those verbs and nouns and punctuation marks than I ever learned from a vocab list. I was hooked. This substitute teacher with no knowledge of Spanish had taught me so much from music. The teacher happened to have an art major so what do you want to know about Spanish and Latin American art? I STILL remember! We watched a lot of videos on the different countries that year too. The CULTURE is what made me fall in love with the language. It made me want to learn the language. It made all that boring conjugation work have meaning. We have to add culture to our lessons EVERY SINGLE DAY. As you've probably already read, I am currently teaching for an online school full time. I have students from grades 2-12 but I am responsible for teaching live lessons for only Spanish 1 (my colleagues teach the other levels and my students go to their live lessons...it's messy but it works). Basically my students work online asynchronously. If they have questions, they shoot me a message or make an appointment. The curriculum is boring vocab lists and grammar. I feel so bad for them. Luckily, there's also quite a bit of cultural readings to spice things up. But sadly, those cultural readings are mostly in English. Anyhow, when I see them for their live lessons I make sure to teach the grammar in the most comprehensible way I can and I ALWAYS sneak in culture. I've created Google Slides presentations that teach the grammar, practice it quickly and then the students are whisked off to some far away Spanish speaking country! It's magical. I have a very short video at the end of each of these presentations of the country. We were learning Tú Commands last week and that one is in Cuba. While we were watching the video, a student typed in the chat that she felt like she was there. After the video, all of the students wanted to know more about Cuba. The questions were amazing! I know I'm sparking something in these kids. They may not all go on to be linguists but if I can instill an interest in different cultures and different peoples, I've succeeded. You can find two of these Spanish Grammar/Cultural Slideshows (as I named them...clever, huh? LOL) on my Linktree above (or HERE). These are free for you to use anytime. Although sometimes I switch them out with others. At this moment the two that are on there are the Imperfect (in Colombia) and Gustar and similar verbs (in Costa Rica). I have 28 grammar topics for sale in my TPT store as well. Culture, my fellow teachers, is the best way to hook your students. And for those of you who love Mecano, like I do, here you go... ![]() Well, I did it! I created a webpage/blog! I'm so glad you found me! I am Jennifer (from Saguaro Spanish by Jen Hoffmann). This is my 25th year teaching! It's crazy to think that I've been teaching more than half of my life! I've taught in four states in brick and mortar classrooms and I've taught students online from all over the USA and the world. I started out teaching high school and was asked to help out with an elementary program while I was still in Michigan. Since leaving Michigan, I've been back at the high schoool level! I teach online now and I have students from all levels (elementary, middle, Spanish 1, 2, 3, 4) but I only teach the live lessons for Spanish 1. That's where I belong! I've been teaching with Comprehensible Input since before I left Michigan. It's amazing how much language students can acquire with CI. I started with TPRS way back ( I don't want to date myself too much) and I couldn't believe what a difference it made with students. Unfortunately with my new online position, I was thrown back into grammar teaching. I've made the best of it and even found ways to make grammar comprehensible! Well, sort of. I have some examples on my Linktree of what I've done with grammar lessons (you can always find the link in the menu above). When I'm not teaching or designing resources, I'm spending time with my family. I have a wonderful husband, Kevin, and three kids. The girls are grown and gone and my son is 17. He graduated early and decided to join the Marines. He leaves for bootcamp in TEN days. JUST TEN DAYS! I'm going to be a mess because he's leaving!! I do have two dogs too but they just aren't him. I'm incredibly proud of him and his desire to serve the country (but my teacher heart wanted him to take the scholarship to college too). Our plan is to travel full time in our RV when he leaves. Thanks to COVID, we came up with this plan to enjoy life a little more...hence, the online teaching gig :) I'll update you on my travels here too because why not? My hope for this page is to be able to share resources with you that I have used and love and also that I have created. I really am so glad that you're here! |