Episode 105: The Power of Praise

I am SO excited to bring you this episode because PRAISE is such an INCREDIBLY important piece to cultivating a classroom culture where students USE the target language in my World Language Classroom!

Here are the links mentioned in this episode: 

• Episodes 22, 23, 24 on Cultivating A Culture of Risk Taking
• Rejoinders for your Walls! Spanish, French, English
• Trashquetbol blog
• Class points Blog
• Fiestas blog
• I was observed podcast
• Positive Phone Calls Home Blog
• Positive Phone Calls home Podcast

Transcript

Welcome back to Teaching La Vida Loca, the podcast you come to for short and sweet and sometimes spicy episodes full of enthusiasm, magic, and tips and tricks for your classroom. I'm Annabelle, your maestra loca, and I'm here to bring you inspiration, unapologetic authenticity, and ideas to spark more joy in your teaching journey. I'm turning up the excitement and elated to have you right here with me. I'm not just your host, I'm your cheerleader, and I'm thrilled you're tuning in. So, let's do this. Let's tackle Teaching La Vida Loca together.

Hello, hello, and hi. Welcome to episode 105, I think, of Teaching La Vida Loca. I had a plan for what I wanted to talk to you about today, but then this morning happened and I am pivoting. And the plan can go on the back burner because I realized that I don't know that I've ever created an episode that was just about praise, just talking about praise. I know that in episode 22, I talk about radical joyous praise in our classrooms as part of the episode, but it was only part of it. That episode was episode 22, it was creating a culture of risk-taking part one.

That was a three-part series that I'll link in the show notes because those were really good episodes that I constantly reference and they are some of the most listened to episodes that I've ever recorded. I forgot to put on Do Not Disturb. So, you just heard a text message from the one and only Will Adams come through. He was texting me about this morning because I'm seeking to pay him for the workshop that he did for Familia Loca. Will came and presented for us for our September workshop of the month. Will is also a Familia Loca member, but Familia Loca in September historically has always done a workshop of the month around being in the student's shoes, really the student's perspective. I think that this is invaluable and super important as part of the reason that I love Conference in the Cloud. Their summer conference, which by the way, stay tuned. We have the dates set for 2027. I'm excited to talk to you about that. But Will came and just presented to us in Mandarin this morning and we got to be students in their classroom. And the way that they teach is so remarkable and so powerful.

And I think the biggest reminder that I took away this morning was even if I think I'm using a small amount of vocabulary, I need to shelter that even more. And then the majority of people had one of two takeaways. The first was slow the frick down because we are never going slow enough, right? We're never going slow enough. And then there are other takeaways. What I want to talk to you about today, because my goodness, the amount of praise that happened in this classroom this morning in our virtual Zoom room, the praise was insane.

I think we clapped. I would love to go back and count. Just kidding. I wouldn't because that's watching it for an hour just to count the applause would be nuts. But the number of times we applauded in the classroom, I bet it was close to—I bet it was close to 100 times that we applauded. Pai pai shou and pai pai shou was not one of his like target structures. But pai pai shou is how you say applause or applaud, like clap, in Chinese. It was definitely acquired today because it was said so many times because Will was constantly saying like, clap for them, clap for them.

And Will only did it in Mandarin, right? Clap, clap, clap, clap, clap. We were applauding ourselves. We were applauding each other. We were applauding the classroom. We were applauding him. We were applauding Andrea for letting Will know that she didn't understand. We were constantly praising each other and applauding. And it just reminded me of the important, invaluable role that praise plays in a world language classroom. Praise plays. Hopefully you can understand that. It is absolutely essential that we are praising with reckless abandon all the time in our world language classroom, and not just in the novice levels—in every level—but in the novice levels, the more praise we can offer, the more likely it is that students are going to take risks in our classroom. And I'm going to talk to you about the many forms of praise that you can use in your classroom, the many ways that I incorporate classroom praise, but I'll also reference this incredible workshop that we had with Will this morning because I'm just so grateful for him. He's the best ever.

I love you, Will. Okay, I'll start with a disclaimer. And that disclaimer is you do not have to be me or have my energy levels or my enthusiasm or my whatever to do praise well. You can show enthusiasm in a totally different way than me and accomplish this same goal. You can have completely different energy levels to me. And you might be a very quiet introvert, and you can still do praise well in your classroom. It's going to look different for every single person. I will say that Will has a very similar personality to me. Will is very loud. Will is very boisterous. And their approach to praise is similar to mine. And it is loud and obnoxious in some ways. And I love that for us. But that is not something that you have to do in order to accomplish praise.

So having said that, one of the simplest ways to incorporate praise in your classroom is aplausos. Aplausos are a wonderful way to celebrate the students in your room. Aplausos in English is applause. And I even have an aplausos poster in my classroom that has different kinds of applause listed on it. And we can even add to that throughout the year. Some of those are golf, theater. I'll go through them actually as I do it. So, golf is just like an applause with your hands. Literally, you look like you are one of those people that watch golf. And if you are one of them, I'm not teasing you, only a little bit. But it's a very light clap. And you almost make your face look like you are smelling something that's quite disdainful. And you make this face as your applause. And it's just a very, very light, dainty applause. And it's not very loud, not at all. So that's a golf applause.

And then there's the theater applause. And the theater applause is also the ASL applause. It's just your hands are doing jazz hands next to your face. Another applause on my poster is the foca applause, or the seal. And you have your elbows touching at the bottom. And then you clap. And you say, ar, ar, ar, ar, ar, ar. So that's aplausos de foca, which of course kids love what that sounds like. In fact, I've been told that the word for seal in French is even closer to the word that the kids love to think that they are saying when they say foca.

And then what's another one of the applauses on there? Biblioteca. Biblioteca is library. So, the kids just applause using the pads of their thumb and their first forefinger. So, it's a very dainty applause, very quiet applause. And then we have aplausos grandes, big applause. And they're just loudly—it's just a really obnoxious, loud, loud, loud clap. And then another applause on there. Gosh, I have so many. Another applause is cangrejo, crab. And we just get up and we run back and forth very quickly, back and forth like crabs do, and we use the applause of our claws. Which again, it's not a very loud clap, but it's a fun one.

I have aplauso de bebé. And I always ask the kids, the first time the bebé applause is used, I say, how does a baby clap? And they show me different ways that they think. And inevitably, a young sixth grade boy gets down on the floor and claps with his feet. And I say, that's exactly it. So, you all sit on the floor, and you use your feet to applaud. My eighth graders hate this one. And it's always so fun when the hype person chooses it, because we have to do it. Because everybody has to use the style of applause that my hype person suggests. That's a class job. I think I actually talked about it in my last episode. I'm almost positive I did. If you haven't listened to episode 104, go and listen to it. It's all about my first observation of the year and how my world language coordinator—or not coordinator, but department chair—didn't actually leave my room after 10 minutes, like she thought she was going to. She stayed for the rest of the entire class and for just 20 minutes of the next class as well. But she really loved my hype person job.

But you can choose to use applause any time you want, all the time. I frequently just applaud the child that speaks out or takes a risk myself. My kids use it all the time. They learn like, oh my gosh, this is just something. It becomes like a habit. Oh, it reminds me of Tiny Habits with Andrea. It literally does. It becomes like a little habit, because they get so used to celebrating risk-taking and celebrating kids using Spanish, they just automatically applaud any time somebody takes a risk. And I love it. I love that that's the culture that I'm creating is praise, praise, praise, praise, praise. Because I know that what is going to follow is more language and more risk-taking because we're creating that culture where it's celebrated, right?

Okay, another easy way to praise kids is high fives. There are some students that won't like high fives, and they won't want to be high-fived, but you hopefully can read the room and read who those kids are. If you're still new to teaching, you may not be able to read that yet, and that's okay. But basically, if you go up to high-five a kid and they look like terrified, like please, God, do not acknowledge me in front of the class right now, do not high-five me, then back away, back away slowly and change topics. There are some kids that do not want to be publicly recognized for risk-taking. They would rather the quiet recognition after class, like a shout-out one-on-one or a handwritten note. You know, they still want the acknowledgement and it's still important to praise them, but they perhaps don't want the public praise, and that's important. I actually have it as one of my questions on the beginning-of-the-year survey that I give them that says, like, how do you like to receive praise? And many of them don't check the box that says public words of praise in front of my classmates. So that's an important consideration that you can make.

But high fives, I love to high-five kids. It's also very good for slowing me down because physically walking over to the kid who, you know, took the risk, it allows me to get in some rejoinders as well. Rejoinders, I also talked about in my last episode. And I have the cutest new rejoinders, y'all. Oh my God. It was the resource of the month for Familia Loca. Every few years, I like to recycle my rejoinders and I make new ones. Well, this is the year. I made some new one’s last year and people were commenting that they wanted them. They saw them on my Instagrams or in my videos for Familia Loca. And so, I made them the resource of the month, and I decided to put them on my website for anybody else who wants them. But I have them in Spanish, French, and English. So, if you're interested in checking those out, I will also link those in the show notes for you. But they are so stinking cute.

So, rejoinders are expressions that kids can call out, right? And I did some new rejoinders this year and that is something that I'm constantly saying on my walk over to high-five a kid. I'm saying, wow, qué fantástico, qué bueno, excelente, increíble. So, they're expressions that I, the teacher, am calling out and that kids are hearing and they're praise-worthy rejoinders. And then kids acquire those too and they can call them out when they hear each other do amazing things in Spanish. They can say, increíble, bien hecho, wow, buen trabajo.

One of my sixth graders actually the other day said that because one of my kids stopped me. We were playing Trashquetbol, which I mentioned I think in episode three of Teaching La Vida Loca. I'll link that episode too. Oh my gosh, so much linking happening. But one of my kids said, you keep on saying that. Why do you keep on saying bien hecho—and they pronounced it incorrectly, but who cares? And I was like, oh, thank you so much for stopping me. Did you hear what I just said? I praised them. I praised them for stopping me and asking a question. Will did that all the time this morning. Will was constantly thanking, especially Andrea, because Andrea was the bravest person who most consistently was stopping him when she didn't understand. And Will would stop to say, oh, thank you so much for letting me know, or even saying, I intentionally put that word in there to see if anyone would stop me. Thank you so much for stopping me and letting me know.

And it was so powerful. So, I thanked my class for stopping me and I said, oh, excelente. I am saying bien hecho, which means well done, good, like good job. And then somebody else, another sixth grader said, that's not how you would say good job. You would say bien trabajo, which was so freaking good, bien trabajo. And I said, oh, what makes you think that it would be bien trabajo? That was so incredible, increíble, muy bien. Why do you think that? As I high fived them. And they said, because in our story about Olivia, she has a trabajo at the supermercado. And I said, so good. And what is trabajo, clase? Tres, dos, uno, and they all translate. Because anytime I count, they translate. And they said, job. And I said, oh my gosh, that's amazing. And you know bien is good. So, you said bien trabajo. And I said, we just change one little thing for when we want to say good job. We say buen trabajo, buen trabajo. So, I wrote that up and I wrote bien hecho up on the board. And then the rest of the class, anytime somebody did something great, guess what two expressions kids were saying? Bien hecho and buen trabajo. How amazing. And all that happened was on my way to praise a kid by giving them a high five. I was simultaneously saying some rejoinders and that's what happened.

It actually happened in Will's class as well. Early on in the class, Will was repeating the same words over and over, over and over. His name is, her name is, their name is, their name is not, their name is, their name is not, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And when we started answering the questions that Will was asking, he started saying, hen hao, hen hao. And then he would just keep going. Well, Andrea, after, I don't know, two minutes or something, put up the X that she wasn't understanding on Zoom and then unmuted and said, it's just this hen, hen hao or something that you're saying. And Will said, oh my gosh, so good. Thank you, thank you for stopping me. Yes, I'm just saying very good, very good. Like very well done. Excellent, very good, hen hao. And then said, sometimes you'll even hear me say fei chang hao and fei chang hao means very good. Like excellent, very, very good. 

And so, and it happened in the exact same way that it does in my classroom. It's in the exact same way that it happened last week in my sixth-grade class. It came up naturally because he was praising, using that language. And then naturally we acquired hen hao, which Lisa later used in the lesson to say it was a very good pizza, but she did so in Chinese because she acquired very good from Andrea asking the question, what is that hen hao you keep saying? Isn't that cool? It's so cool. So, they're acquiring more language just from us using natural rejoinders to praise. I encourage you to pick like two or three that you're going to use that week for praise and then maybe add another one the next week. Don't throw them with all the rejoinders all at once for praise, but it's really, really powerful.

The next thing I use a lot is my face. My face shows praise and excitement all of the time in my classroom. That's because I like students seeing my shock, my joy, my excitement as they're speaking. And this is one of those things that people who are quieter or who aren't as energetic, your facial expressions are powerful. You can praise with your face. One of the comments this morning in the class was that Will constantly made us feel so good with how much they smiled. Will smiles so much and we feel so good because we know we're doing well because his face shows us, right? Oh, it's so powerful. 

Okay, the next thing that I do that's powerful for praise is I do community class points. I talked about this in my workshop of August, the giant workshop that was open to everyone on how to build community. I love praising risk-taking and community effort with community class points. I do not do an individual reward system. I probably never will. It's just not my thing, but I do love praising the class with whole-class points. And I just run over to the board and stick some points on the board, some tally marks. And my kids know that once we earn a certain number of points, we earn a fiesta. I will link a blog for you to read and the fiesta blog as well. But community class points are really, really powerful. And I think that the reward of the fiesta is powerful, obviously, but it's more that it's a whole-class system that everybody—one person can do something great, and it automatically rewards the whole class. Or if I say, hola, hola, and they are silent right after they say Inca Kola immediately the first time and everybody's looking at me, that is such a great thing that the whole community did right the first time and so that I can give some class points.

But I would say that my class points are the smallest way that I praise in my classroom. My kids really feel praised with my body language, with my facial expressions, with my aplausos, with my high fives. And I am so freaking intentional about it. You can ask any of the adults that took my adult class and they will tell you the same thing—that they, even though it was on Zoom, they felt so good in my classroom and felt so good after leaving my classroom because of the amount of praise that I use. I make them feel so good for the efforts that they're making and the growth that they're showing. 

So, my question for you today is, in what ways are you praising students in your classroom and are you doing it enough? Is it known? Is it obvious? And if it's not, I encourage you to praise more often. Be emphatic. Be ecstatic. Be intentional with the way that you are praising your students.

The final way that I will tell you that I use praise in my classroom is something that has been especially important in Familia Loca this month. We have had our first challenge ever in Familia Loca and the challenge was that for the last two and a half weeks of the month of September, we've been making positive phone calls home. My challenge for the community for the last two and a half weeks of the month was to make 500 phone calls home collectively. So our community had to make 500 phone calls home and after the first week, I was like, oh, I might have set this bar a little bit high, but then I just started talking about it more and talking about the people who had already made the calls and then I started sharing about their—some quotes of their experiences with it and their positive takeaways and then more and more people started filling out the form and as of this morning, we're at 568 positive phone calls home, which is amazing and we're not over, the month isn't even over. So, we still have three more days to make phone calls and I'm just so proud of how many calls we've made. 568 families have been impacted, and 568 students have been called. In fact, it's got to be a few more than that because some people filled out the form and said that they called about siblings on the same phone call, which is awesome.

But these are some of the things that Familia Loca members have said about making these calls and it's got to be a phone call. If you don't believe me, then please go and listen to the entire podcast that I did about positive phone calls home and read my blog, which gives you scripts to use, scripts to use for positive phone calls. It's so important that you make them and they have to be phone calls.

One person said, I feel great, these phone calls get easier and easier the more you make them. This person said, this was such a satisfying way to end the week and my day. I love my last period on Friday anyway and doing this is a great habit. This one said, I love making these phone calls to families, the joy I feel when making calls right afterwards is such a high. Thank you so much for pushing us to make the calls and thank you for creating the challenge.

This one says, makes parents happy, makes me happy and it will make students happy too when they get home from school today. Joy all around. This person said, I can't believe I used to be scared to do this. I'm so excited for this challenge and it gave me the right push.

People really—there's a shocking amount of people who are really scared to make these calls and if that's you, it's okay, it's okay. Use my scripts in my blog and give it a shot. I want you to try one person. And those of you thinking, oh yeah, I totally make positive emails. I love them. It's not the same and I'm not trying to be mean. I'm telling you it's not the same. In fact, positive emails, one, take longer to write. Two, many parents think that it's, oh yeah, that's so sweet. You can copy and paste it and replace the name so you can send it to many different students. Many parents think that it's a mass thing anyways, right? So, you actually are spending more time and then they don't know if it's just for their kid or not and then, even more important, you're opening a window for a back and forth and a back and forth, which is fine. However, a phone call is one and done and I would say 50% of the time you're going to get a voicemail. So, make the phone call. My phone calls take me 30 to 60 seconds and sometimes 90 seconds if the parent wants to talk a little bit but most of the time they don't. They just want to say, oh my gosh, I cannot tell you how much this makes my day. I'm so grateful.

One family member said that the parent they called had just grounded their son and taken their phone for the weekend for some seriously bad choices they were making and the parent cried and said they really needed to hear that there are good things going on too because it's been so hard lately. Y'all, these phone calls are so important, and I promise you it's so much different than writing an email. So, give it a shot and the trickle effect or the thing that happens after is they just work harder. They work harder. They show up with more effort and more engagement because they cannot believe that you actually called home and then they spread the news. Kids in my classes know that I make positive phone calls and they know that I do it every single week and they hope every week that it might be them and they spread the word to each other because then the next week they're like, they'll even say out loud, you called my mom and I'm like, I sure did. You called my uncle, I sure did.

And also in their form that I mentioned earlier at the beginning of the year, I do have a box that's like, please, I would rather not receive a phone call home because every now and then I have two or three kids who would rather not receive a phone call home and those are for different reasons but it's really important to make these calls and it's super impactful and it's a form of praise that takes a little bit more effort on your part but my gosh is the impact profound. So yay, that's all I have for you today.

I hope that you have a beautiful rest of your week whenever you're listening to this and I hope that you make a positive phone call home this week and if you're Familia Loca and you're listening on Tuesday then you know you have today and tomorrow to make some more, just make sure you log it so that you can be entered in for all the amazing prizes including the grand prize of the bedazzled phone that can sit in your room all year long. Oh my gosh, it's so fabulous. And yeah, think about how you're praising in your room and how you can increase that this week. I am grateful for you. I hope you have a fabulous rest of your week and thank you, thank you, thank you for listening to this podcast. If you have an extra minute, go and leave me a review. It's been a while. It's been a while since I've asked for them and therefore it's been a while since I've seen a positive review. Although I haven't seen negative ones, which is great, but I could use a boost. So, if you have a moment to leave me a review on Apple Podcasts, I would be so grateful.

Give me that five-star review on Spotify so it gets me in front of more faces and share this episode with somebody who needs to hear it and needs to be reminded of the power of praise in their classroom. I love you. I'll talk to you really soon. Take care of yourself. And until next time, I'll be teaching La Vida Loca and I'm sure you will be too. Okay, take care, bye bye.