Episode 77: Fast and Actionable- 5 Easy Wins from CI Midwest

Gosh! What an AMAZING weekend! I feel so grateful for the opportunity to grow and learn along side all of the amazing educators who attended CI Midwest!

Here are the people and or links mentioned in this episode:
Meg Fandel Vernon
Sarah Rasay
Will Adams
Lisa Kropp
Adriana Ramirez
Rocio Jacoby
Morgan Bennett
Adult Spanish classes with ME!
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Transcript

Coaching Begins! 

Hey there. It's me, Annabelle, La Maestra Loca, and I'm popping in at the start of this episode to tell you that my group coaching cohorts start next week. We are just one week away from kicking off, and I'm so stinking excited, and I don't want you to miss out. If you've been looking for a supportive space to be able to ask your questions, get fresh ideas and inspiration at this really stinking challenging time of the year, and just grow as a teacher, this is the time. Whether you are brand new to acquisition driven instruction, or you have been doing it for years, there is a cohort just for you. Each session is designed to inspire you, empower you, and give you the tools to walk back into your classroom the very next day feeling more confident and full of joy, which then, of course, will transfer over to your students. Spots are limited to 12 teachers per cohort, just to make sure that everybody's voice is heard and that everybody can ask their questions each week. And you never know what those questions are going to be. You'll walk away with answers you didn't know that you needed. So, grab your spot before they're gone. We do start next week on Tuesday. Don't wait. It's three sessions over the course of the next three months. I am so stinking excited. It's gonna be epic. The link is in the show notes. Make sure you use the coupon code podcast for 10% off. I cannot freaking wait see you soon.

Welcome!

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. Welcome to Episode 77 of teaching la vida loca. I am so stinking excited for this episode, because in it, I'm going to share five revolutionary takeaways from my experience at CI Midwest. Ci Midwest was fire, and the reason it was so amazing is because I got to attend sessions, which I never get to do because I'm always presenting. Especially at acquisition focused conferences, I'm literally presenting back-to-back all day, every day. And at this conference, I got to present two, three-hour workshops on one day, and then the next day, I had the day free to go to workshops. And I literally popped in and out of a million sessions because I had FOMO and I didn't know how to pick so I went to so many, and I gathered my five strongest and greatest takeaways to present to you here. And here's the thing, these are all literally revolutionary, huge, amazing ideas, but they're all incredibly actionable, and easily actionable. Like, you can implement these ideas right now and see the immediate impact, and you don't have to plan or prep or, like, put a lot of thought into it. Oh my god, it's so freaking good. You're welcome in advance, no problem. Shall we dive in? Let's, let's, let's do it.

Such a Great Conference!

First and foremost, I just want to shout out the CI Midwest team, Hyun and Grant and Marta and just everybody that came together, Kelly Ferguson, to make this conference happen. It's an incredible conference. And if you have not been, I strongly encourage you to the next time it's happening, check it out. It's an intimate conference. It's in the Midwest, so everybody is wonderful and oh my gosh, it was just such a great experience. And it was also wonderful to be in a house every evening with the presenters. I got to dance with Adriana Ramirez. I danced cumbia all night and salsa and got to hang out with Diana Castro and Justin Slocum Bailey, Allison Litton, Kelly Ferguson, Grant, Donna Tatum-Johns who's like a mom to me. It was just wonderful. So really, grateful. Okay, let's dive in. Oh my god, y'all.

First Takeaway!

Okay, so the first strategy I'm gonna share, literally in the middle of the session, I yelled out, this is my favorite takeaway from this conference. This is mind blowing. Everybody needs to know about this. Oh my god. And Meg, who you may know. Meg literally was presenting, and she threw herself dramatically to the floor, because, you know, that's just the kind of people we are. And she was so excited. So, Meg Fandel Vernon, if you're not following her on Instagram, it's Meg, underscore. Fandel, underscore. Vernon, I will link her in the show notes. She runs Experiencia Colombia, which one day, please, God, I would love to go. And she was in the middle of her presentation, which was incredibly interactive, run like an actual class. It was amazing. And she pulled out her markers to do a write, discuss, okay? I don’t know whether it was a write and discuss we were doing, but she was talking about, when we write for students, when we provide supports for students, we should always be doing it in color. And y'all, I can't even. I didn't have a piece of paper with me, but I did want to interact, so I did it on my phone, but every sentence, Meg would change the color of the pen she was using. Now this was huge for me. I often, when I'm doing a write and discuss, I have different supports I use to support my students who have IEPs and have, you know, some of them, they might be writing one or two words the entire write and discuss. Some of them might just be focusing on writing one or two sentences. So, I do things like underline sentences or I squiggly underline sentences. But this hack of just using different colors was huge, and I know it doesn't support our colorblind kids, but let me tell you what, when I am doing a write and discuss class, and kids are following along with me and writing with me, which I have students from fourth grade up write with me, every single time third grade, every now and then I have them. But literally, every time I've done a write and discuss in middle school, always have them write with you. I did a one-on-one coaching session last night with my friend Kat, and I encouraged her high school students in French to always write with her. When I write, what happens is students get lost in their place. They can't find where they were. And this simple strategy of my first sentence written in black, my next sentence is written in blue, my next sentence is written in green, is going to revolutionize write and discuss for me. And again, it's one of those moments I'm like, Oh, I'm not in the classroom right now. I'm taking a year maternity leave. Oh, my God, I wish I could implement this right now, but I will in my adult class that starts next week. By the way, if you know an adult who wants to take Spanish, send them my way, beginner Spanish class online on zoom with me, Monday nights, starting next week, be there. It's going to be freaking epic. It's called Beyond Dos Cervezas and Un Poquito Spanish that sticks, because you deserve to say more than just a little isn't that good? So good. Okay. So, what she was writing on the board is, when I write in front of students, I model handwriting period, then she switched to a new color. Students are underexposed to handwriting period, color change. Color coding writing is a visual clue that helps processing exclamation mark, color change. I color code edits in my writing. comma, parts of speech, comma, key, vocab, comma, and advanced options, y'all. This blew my mind. Literally right in the middle of it is when I screamed out and was like, this is huge Meg. And then at the end of it, I didn't even get to finish the end of it, because baby woke up. Karen was holding baby, and Marta was helping, and Ophelia needed mommy, so I had to sprint down the hall because she woke up. That was the other amazing part of this conference, the amount of people who just wanted to love on my baby and tell her how magical she was, and the amount of support I had was amazing. Kelly Ferguson wore her for like three hours straight, and I got to attend the keynote. And, you know, I had people left and right, complimenting her and willing to help. There were two girls who were seniors who babysat for me the whole day that I gave workshops. I'm just blown away by how loving and caring everybody is, especially my Familia members for her. Yeah, I'm just so lucky. Okay, so that was strategy number one, already. Mind blowing. Already. You're welcome. I know you're freaking out.

Second Takeaway!

Okay. Are you ready for number two, this is golden? Sarah Rasay is a teacher in Denver Public Schools. I used to teach with her, and when I was in Denver. She teaches French in two high schoolers at East High School, and her presentation was about how you can, like, milk that beginning routine, like, just the challenge talk and like, hello, routine every single day and make it novel. And it was amazing. Anyways, I only caught about 10 minutes of it, but something that was mind blowing to me that I've never seen before was what she does with cognates. She said she learned this from Grant Boulanger. So, they're giving credit where credit is due, and then double giving credit. When she has a cognate that is forthcoming, what she does is she says orange, which is orange in French. She says orange, and the kids say orange, and then she says the cognate. So, she'll say normal, and then the kids will say normal. She said that she learned it from Grant, who used to say baseball, and the kids would say baseball, and then he would say chocolate, the kids would say chocolate. So, it's like letting them know, hey, the next word I'm going to say is a cognate. I think one of the giant misconceptions that world language teachers have is that all cognates are automatically comprehensible. That is not the case. But if we can draw students’ attention to them and help make them comprehensible and let them know, hey, the next word that's coming is a cognate, they're far more likely to catch on to it. And I love doing this. What I've done previously is I have the word cognado, cognate, hung on my wall. Any time kids hear one, they can yell that out. But I like this even better because it's intentionally drawing their attention to it. Intentionally drawing their attention. Get that? So good. Thank you. Sarah Rasay, I love you so much. Fun. Fact, I taught her nephew, Calder in sixth grade, and he is now 22, and I got to send him a video and talk to him, and it was crazy, and I feel so old. 

Third Takeaway!

Okay, the next one, let's just take time for a little brain break. Okay, the next one literally is brain break takeaway because you know me, and brain breaks. My goal is to blog about this this week, and if I do, then I will stick the blog in the show notes. Maybe I'll even go crazy and blog late tonight, we have a Familia loca meeting tonight. Magister P is our guest of the month, and he's talking about forward procedure. So not sure that I'll have time to blog, but maybe I will. Should I go crazy and blog? Maybe I will. Maybe I won't. I don't know. We'll see. Anyway, Will Adams. This one comes from will Adams, and I love them, and they are amazing. Will Adams, I've met several times previously, when I've gone to Denver to visit family and friends and all my world language peeps there because that's where I grew up. As a teacher. Will teaches at North High School, which was the feeder school where my middle schoolers fed into when I taught at Skinner Middle School with Mary Overton and Will, Hi Mary, Mary always listens. Will presented a session on mini units, and it was amazing. And I'm hoping that he'll be the guest of the month for Familia loca soon. But Will did this brain break that he learned from Sabrina Jansak, who's an amazing French teacher. Will teaches Chinese, Mandarin and, oh my god, this brain breakout. So, you get your students in a big circle, and, like you could do a whole class circle. In fact, he modeled it first in a small circle. I'll link a clip in the show notes. He modeled it first in a small circle, but then he got us in a giant circle, and I got to be the one looking for this object. I was the one in the middle. So, you have one student leave the room, everybody else gets in a big circle, and you give one student in that circle an object. I would of course, use a unicorn. You can use whatever you want. You give one person an object. They hide it behind their back, and then the goal is to pass this object around the circle without the person in the middle seeing because the person in the middle is going to be asking people, Do you have it? Do you have it? Do you have it? I think it's a great way to recycle that vocab from the song, pero no lo tengo from senouli, like the it right? Lot tienes, lo tienes, lo tienes, do you have it? Do you have it? And the kids will say lo tengo or no. So very low lift on language. But here's the beauty of it. I, of course, stopped filming because I got to be the one to try it. I went out into the hall; I came back in. Everybody was in a circle, and then these jokesters started to make it look like they were passing things behind their back, but there were multiple people doing it around the circle, so it was hard for me to tell who had the object. But then Justen Slocum Bailey did something really distracting. And of course, I figured, ooh, if you're doing that, it's probably directly opposite you. And I managed to guess correctly on my first guess, which was like a freak accident, I think, but it was awesome, and I'm so proud of Will. His session was packed to the brims, and it was such a powerful, awesome session. So, yay for this new brain break. I'm gonna call it, I'm gonna call it, pass it on. But I didn't ask Will, what they call it. I will have to ask them. Yay, blog coming soon. Yay for brain breaks.

Fourth Takeaway!

Okay, so the next takeaway was from Lisa Kropp. And Lisa did a session on gamifying things, which was very similar to my session that I had done the very the day before. We just talked about the power of gamification and points and adolescent brains and how important that dopamine is. So, I had this idea that I got from Rocio Jacoby, who was sitting next to me in this session, Chio, and it was only five minutes that I was in there because I had the baby with me, so I had to run. But this was so huge for me. She suggested, like, what could we call points in our class if we don't call them points? Now, I have been doing a point system for classroom management for a billion years. If you are not familiar with it, oh my goodness. Let me link a blog for you in the chat. It's really the rock of what I do for classroom management, and I'm obsessed. But I was like, I just call it Punto. She said, Me too, but if you were to change it, what would you call it? And it was sitting with Chio, and Chio said, Chio has an amazing Instagram. You need to follow her. If you're not, I'll link her in the chat. She said, I guess, I guess I would do, oh, sugar muffins. I can't remember the currency in Peru. Let me look it up, soles. I remember now, I had to look it up soles, she said, I think I went to soles, because that's the currency in Peru. And I was like, Oh my gosh. I had this huge, like, realization that I name all my classes. I know I've talked about this before. I name all my classes country names. I'll link a blog for you to read, and I have some resources on TPT for it too. So, I name my classes, like Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Cuba, Paraguay, etc. So instead of points for each class, I could be doing currency to be able to talk and reference currency with my students, pull up images of currency, but literally, instead of giving them un punto. I could be saying un sole if their class name is Peru or un peso, if their class name was Mexico, right? Like this for me, was like, oh my gosh, this is a brilliant idea. I will totally be changing the way I do this in the future, and I'll probably name my adult class. It's gonna be great. I'm so freaking excited. So that was a huge strategy that for me will be a game changer. For me, it's such a small, simple way to integrate more culture into something that I'm already doing. Again, if you don't name your classes right now and you just call them period one, period two, period three, lame. Let me help you with that. Go read my blog on how simple it is and how mind blowing it can be for building in effortless culture, and it, without any effort, also builds community, because the kids who are in la clase de Venezuela are like, what happens lo que pasa en Venezuela se queda in Venezuela. What happens in Venezuela stays in Venezuela. So, they get so hyped and so into it. Okay?

Fifth Takeaway!

And my last one, my last takeaway is several, and it was from the fabulous Adriana Ramirez, who is an author, a teacher. She has lots of mini novels. She has her own curriculum. She is a phenomenal human being, an amazing presenter, and someone who I call my friend, I'm very lucky to call my friend, and who made me feel like I can dance this weekend, like it was so fun to dance all night with her and have so much fun with her and like, feel like we weren't presenters for a little while, and just be people together. So, I love her so much. There were a few things that she did so well in her keynote. It was my favorite keynote I've ever heard. The first thing was she normalized, which I always do in my sessions, but I loved how, how black and white she was about it. She just normalized the fact that the first three years of teaching with full blown acquisition driven instruction, like if you go only acquisition driven instruction, you ditch the textbook, you ditched what you were used to doing. You ditch all legacy methods, and you go full on with this. The first three years are brutal. And she, I think she just said, like, you, they will be awful. She was just brutal. Normally, I say it's a roller coaster ride, because personally, I find that there are lots of great moments in my first three years, I had lots of amazing moments, but I had way more train wrecks than amazing moments. So, I always call it a roller coaster, but I love that she was just like, the first three years are gonna just suck. They're just bad. It's just bad, but you must stick it out, because, oh my gosh, the reward is phenomenal. If you can just push through those first three years and know what she referred to it as, it's just part of it. You must have that phase. You must have that learning phase. There is no ands, ifs, or buts about it. You need that learning phase. I loved how she framed that. I thought that was really, powerful, and important. So, if you're in your first three years and you're like, oh my god, this is literally so hard. And it may not be your first three years of teaching, it may be that you have taught for a long time, and now you're trying this new thing, and you're like, holy cow. I don't know if I could do this. That's normal, and it's important for that growth. So grateful for her saying that.

Authenticity

She also talked about authenticity. She didn't use the word authentic, but that's exactly what she was talking about. When I present, I always have to start with, there's only one me. There's only one you. You have to take what I'm doing and find your own authentic way to implement in your class. You cannot spend time emulating me. And she talked about this in her own way. The way she introduced it was she said, I hate playing games. I hate it. I do not play games with my classes. I don't enjoy it. It doesn't make sense to me. Culturally, it's not something we do. I am the queen of chisme in my class of gossip. And I loved that. And she was like, we tell stories. I gossip with my students. And in an Adriana way, if you're like, oh my goodness, she shouldn't do that. No, like, in a professional way, of course, but man, it was just so powerful to hear her say, like, I hate games. I don't play games, whereas me, games are like the center of my class. Really, I gamify everything that I can because I find that it helps boost engagement in my students. However, that's because I'm me and she's her, and so we can both reach amazing results with our students by just staying true to ourselves and doing what we know feels best for us and our context with our students, in our classrooms, in our communities that we know right? So that was powerful. 

Fifth Takeaway!

And then the last takeaway for me from her keynote that I was like, oh, thank you. I will be using that and giving you credit wherever I go. Remember, it's much better to say I will be using that and giving credit and always asking that person. First, I learned that from Morgan. Morgan Bennett, profe Bennett, rather than saying, oh, I stole this from instead say, oh, I asked if I could use this in the future, and I was given permission. She always says that we should ask and then accept whatever their answer is, and then always attribute if we do get to share it, we attribute or reference them. So, shout out to Morgan for that. And this I will be using in the future. I love it from Adriana is the idea of students and language learners in general, language students, no matter their age, referring to them as cooking things. No, that sounds weird. I didn't I never script this. You know, I don't script so I should have thought of how to say this better. But basically, like, for example, I am a slow cooker. Adriana says she is too. It takes me a long time to like process language, and sorry I'm so stuffed up, a long time to be able to output, to get to a point where I can output. There are other students, like Paul, my husband, who are microwaves, like you can say a word one time and suddenly, he's spitting it out, right? There are other people who are like frying pans. They are somewhere in between a slow cooker and a microwave. And I just loved that visual reference, and I think it's powerful for when we're talking to our students. I also use the sponge reference if you've ever seen my video on our brains are like sponges. I'll post a YouTube video that is student facing for like, why our brains really need to soak in lots of input, both visual input, through reading and listening, before we start outputting, but eventually it just starts dripping out, and that's really what our jobs are all about. And even if you're in those first three years, I know that the powerful moments for me were hearing my students speak so much Spanish, and not so much like right away, but like those moments where they did and I was like, oh my god, that was from input that I gave you, those were powerful moments. So, I felt more capable of pushing through the challenging because those moments of like, pure joy where I'm like, oh, it's working. Something's working. I rode out that roller coaster. So, like Adriana is saying, take those years of experience and know that it's for a reason you're learning. It's just part of the process. So, I'm so grateful to her and her amazing keynote. I'll link her and where you can buy her books and support her in the show notes, as well as everybody else that I've mentioned. Gosh, I'm just so grateful to learn from them, and I'm so grateful to come back here and share my experiences with you. 

Please Share!

If this was a powerful episode, do me a favor. Do me a salad. Please ready. Share it with somebody. Tell them you loved it and that they should listen in go and write me a review on Apple podcasts. I am loving my score right now. It's beautiful. However, somebody somewhere out there gave me a one-star review one time, and I was like. What? Why? Oh my gosh. So, try not to focus on that. Go and write me a review on Apple podcasts, click the five stars on Spotify. Help a girl out. I'm so grateful for this opportunity to support you. Make sure you tag me in your stories if you're watching on Instagram. That's a great way to help me promote as well. And I look forward to the next time I get to share with you in episode 78 of teaching la vida loca. And until then, I know you'll be teaching la vida loca, and I'm so grateful to be here to support you. Thank you so much for listening. Take care. Bye. Bye. Love you.