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Continue reading →: “Unearthing Joy” – Spotlight on ways to transform our curriculumThis is the second installment in a series of posts about the book Unearthing Joy by Gholdy Muhammad. Background: I have launched a Slow Book Club to explore this text with like-minded educators. I am eager to share what I am learning about Muhammad’s Historically Responsive Literacy Framework, about joy, and about…
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Continue reading →: Powerful prompts for content-based reflectionsIn 2021, I attended a webinar hosted by the multiculturalclassroom that elevated student reflection and quite literally transformed my practice. During the workshop, Lorena Germán called on educators to intentionally build time into their units for critical student reflection. I had been working for years to transform my curriculum with…
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Continue reading →: Beyond “We Already Know the Story”: Three Ways to Rekindle Reading EngagementIf you have been following this blog for a while, you know how much I love storytelling. I usually tell the story orally first, through Movie Talk or Story Listening, and then we read the text together. However, sometimes my students are not very excited to read afterward because, well,…
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Continue reading →: “Unearthing Joy” – a Slow Book Club
As I was sitting in the audience during Dr. Gholdy Muhammad’s keynote at an antiracist conference a few years ago, I felt something shift. Her words about literacy, identity, and power resonated deeply and I devoured her first book, Cultivating Genius. It was the first time I encountered the Historically…
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Continue reading →: More Hands in the Air: A Simple Participation HackIt is hard to gauge true understanding when the same students keep raising their hands. Even with wait time, it is often the usual suspects who respond. Sounds familiar? If so, read on. To help with this, I use strategies like choral response to hear from everyone at once. Still,…
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Continue reading →: It’s Here! Book 2 of The Gray Planet Series Has Landed!After months of dreaming, writing, rewriting, agonizing over my characters, exchanging with my illustrator, Alkinz, and asking trusted friends and colleagues for critical feedback, I’m thrilled to finally share book 2 of The Gray Planet series: The Mission—now available in French and Spanish. As with the rest of The Gray…
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Continue reading →: Jumpstart your inclusive classroom library with $300The 4th annual Toward Proficiency classroom library grant is here! This year again, I will be providing a book grant ($300) for a World Language teacher to develop their inclusive classroom library. This is just one of the many ways I enjoy giving back to my World Language community and…
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Continue reading →: Building Intercultural Competence in the Novice ClassroomFollowing my recent post on Building Empathy and my 2024 ACTFL session, I had the pleasure of joining Claudia Elliott on her podcast Growing With Proficiency to discuss an essential topic: how to build intercultural competence in the Novice language classroom. To me, building empathy, reducing bias, and fostering intercultural…
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Continue reading →: Two Strategies to Transform Student Feedback into Growth OpportunitiesReceiving feedback from students can be both validating and frustrating for educators. As a teacher and department chair, I’ve seen my share of student feedback. From “Your class is boring” to “Your class is so fun and engaging! ” from “Can we stop doing songs?” to “Can we do more songs?”…
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Continue reading →: Making the Uncomfortable Accessible: Discussing Hard Topics in a New LanguageShawna Sache is a high school French teacher and a Language Education Advocate with the BC Association of Teachers of Modern Languages in British Columbia, Canada. She also shares insights about her Comprehensible Input (CI) teaching journey on Instagram @pourquetusaches. I invited Shawna to share her approach to making challenging…
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