The first day of school for most teachers was Monday, August 26th.  My first day was more than a month ago.  I teach on a modified year-round schedule.  Unfortunately, the transition from middle to elementary/middle has required a great deal of my time in creating new materials and planning new lessons.  It has been making my fellowship difficult, as when I would normally sit down to tag resources, I now have to cut out manipulatives for K-2 and 3-5.

The good news is that as I am finding and tagging resources online, I have the opportunity to implement them in the classroom.  Thus far, I haven’t implemented a full item or lesson that I have tagged into my classroom, but I have incorporated several pieces of lessons and items.

From lesson plans including puppetry, I have introduced into my lower level classrooms ‘Miguel la Mano’, a decorated rubber glove, stuffed with poly-fill and tied off with string.  Miguel lets students introduce themselves to him over and over, and he’s a lot less intimidating than towering, fast-talking Ms. B.  From the video series ‘SALSA’ created by Georgia Public Broadcasting, I’ve internalized a mindset that helps students acquire and retain vocabulary: theatricality and repetition.  From an elementary curriculum project in a university education program, I’ve incorporated several silly songs that I never would have had the whimsy to invent nor the guts to try myself if they hadn’t been previously tested.

Having not taught anyone younger than 11 years old in my life, this fellowship is like an exercise in pedagogy.  What I never learned in professional development that addressed the middle school learner, I am now gleaning through the lesson plans and instructional items of other teachers.  These skills and mindsets are being transferred to my teaching in real time, and it’s incredibly formative and exciting.

Don’t reinvent the wheel

-Every veteran teacher ever

I have been teaching for seven years.  I’ve heard the phrase ”Don’t reinvent the wheel” more than I can count.  But as a Spanish teacher who has taught in a socioeconomically low school and then a charter school, I’m used to cobbling together my own resources.  For better or worse (although I’m pleased to say, usually better), I have created the vast majority of my teaching resources.  I don’t have textbooks at my current school and we didn’t have enough textbooks even for a class set at my previous school, so I’ve had to adapt.  Also, being a world language or fine arts teacher presents another challenge.  Often, at the middle or elementary school level, you are the only teacher from your subject in your school.  Depending on your district, you may or may not be allowed to leave your school to join teachers of your subject in a different school on PLC or other professional development days (I was never allowed to leave, but was encouraged to work with the ESL teacher).

The good news is that I am now very skilled in creating objective driven lesson plans that are scaffolded for multiple learners.  The bad news is, I am deep in the habit of creating things entirely on my own.  I have become extremely self-reliant.  Formative assessments, lesson plans, dictations, summative assessments–they all come from me, from scratch or heavily modified.

In my fellowship of tagging quality resources for Home Base, I have come to the humbling conclusion that there are world language teachers from all walks of life doing what I do better than I do it.  Something in me initially rebelled against Open Educational Resources (lesson plans, units, and other items that anyone is free to take and use) in the first place–years of carefully citing my work in scholarly work makes me feel somehow that it’s plagiarizing.  But in coming across so many websites and databases of Open Educational Resources, I’ve realized it makes perfect sense to collaborate across the web, especially in areas such as elementary fine arts that may be isolated in their own schools.  My biggest ‘aha’ moment in this fellowship has been the recognition that there is a wealth of resources on the internet that is not only free and accessible to teachers on the internet but that contain quality, innovative teaching strategies that you might never think of yourself until you come across them in someone else’s work.