Episode 99: My NUMBER 1 Takeaway from the La Familia Loca PLC Conference

This year's conference was AMAZING! I am so grateful for each and every Familia member who presented and shared their genius! I am ALSO grateful for every member who showed up, listened, learned, contributed, and grew with me and our community! If you want access to these recordings, jump on our waitlist! We would LOVE to support you this year!

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Transcript

Hello!

Hey, La Maestra Loca here. If you're a language teacher who's been feeling drained or like you've lost the joy in teaching and you're eager to get it back, maybe you're somebody who's constantly scrolling the internet, Facebook, or Instagram for new ideas to implement. I've got something really special for you. La Familia Loca PLC is a community that I started seven years ago, and it is full of 250 teachers from around the globe who get monthly live webinars with ideas and strategies that can implement immediately, ready to use resources in French, Spanish, and English every single month. There's group coaching and a private Facebook group that feels like family. That's why we renamed it La Familia Loca. If you are ready to feel joyful again in your classroom and ease like you've never felt before because of the support of this community, head on over to my website or follow the link in the show notes and add your name to our waitlist so you can be the first to hear when we open the doors in August. I would absolutely love to support you this year, and our community is ready to welcome you.  

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 Annabel, 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. It's me and it's you and you're here and you're listening to episode 99 of Teaching La Vida Loca, which means next episode is going to be 100, which means I don't even know what to think. That is wild. I am so happy you are here, though. I can say that much. I am really excited to record this podcast because I'm sharing my number one greatest takeaway from the La Familia Loca PLC conference. I was really disciplined this time around because I knew I wanted to record this podcast episode with my takeaway for accountability for myself and just to show my familia members that I do the same thing that I ask them to do as their coach and cheerleader, so I kept a notepad next to me, and I took notes during every session to try and identify my top three takeaways from each session. There were 15 total, but I was one of them, so I didn't have to come up with takeaways from my own session. And then from those three takeaways, I narrowed it down to one from each session, and then I had to pick my one overall favorite takeaway from the conference that I want to implement in my own classroom this year, and that is the one that I'm going to share with you. And I asked my members to do the same thing-not to record a podcast, but to go into our Padlet and name their one thing that they are going to do and the date that they're going to do it by, and this I think is so vitally important because how often do you go to a conference and you leave so freaking full and inspired and energized and excited, and then you go back into your classroom and you go straight back to doing what you're normally used to doing, and that's normal. Like so many people do it, we do it all the time, and that's one of the reasons I love Familia Loca because you can't really get away with that because we have learned every month, and then we come back together as a community to troubleshoot and to talk about what went well and what didn't. So, there's a lot of support and community involved. So, your kind of like have to try the things and then give feedback on what went well and what didn't, and you're motivated to do so because there's so much support. You know that you'll get help if something was tricky. So, what we all did was in the Padlet we put our one thing, and we put the date that we want to try it by.

Kate’s Workshop

So my one thing actually came from Kate's workshop, which was the one that I was most excited about because I always learn novel ideas for games from her, and she shared not one, not two, not three, not four, not five, not six, but seven games with us for our world language classrooms, and only two were games that I knew and played. Only two. That is bananas. As somebody who travels all around the country and all around the globe, consuming PD on a monthly basis, it is insane that this phenomenal woman taught me five new games that I had never heard of for my world language classroom, and I'm so freaking excited about all of them, as I am about all of my takeaways from all of the sessions. All 14 major things that I plan to implement this year, and my number one is definitely going to be the lucky word game from Kate Walker. I am so excited! I can't even tell you how stupid excited I am about this game, but I'll attempt to do so. I know that for me personally, I have set a completion date for this game, like my goal of trying this out, for September 25th. And you might think, oh my gosh, that's a long time before you implement your one thing from your summer conference, the reality is I may end up implementing some of the other things along the way. But because this is my greatest takeaway, I have to be realistic about the date that I'm going to implement it by. Because the game of in and of itself, I can't implement before doing a lot of other things, both classroom culture and community building wise, and language acquisition flooding them with input wise before I can play this game, it's still my number one takeaway. I still plan to use it as my thing, and I'm going to implement it by the 25th of September because that's the realistic date that I can try it out with, and that's because I am teaching a lot of sixth grade novices, and I'm also teaching eighth graders who have had a lot of incredible instruction before me because they had Teresa York, who teaches with acquisition-driven instruction, is one of the most incredible ADI teachers I know, and I don't want to implement something brand new and a game that I know is going to be a favorite until I have a lot of time to build the kind of classroom culture and community-it's going to take for this game to work really, really well. We know, or maybe you don't know. 

My Love of Games!

Maybe this is your first ever time listening to Teaching La Vida Loca. Welcome! I am so glad you're here. If that is the case, if that is not the case, then you know that I love games. I love games for many reasons. The greatest reason of all is because they are easy ways to inject joy and boost dopamine in my class. So that is the easiest explanation as to why I love them. But outside of that, I also love games because they boost engagement in a way that nothing else does. They boost engagement because of the dopamine. There is just inherently more engagement. It also the way that I play games, and Kate and I align so much with this, which I loved about her presentation, is I am creating healthy competition when I play games in my classroom. I am not creating that kind of toxic competition that feels really heavy and feels really hard to manage and ends up causing a lot of division and it's just gross. Like I, I cannot handle the toxic competition, and that is a very common thing in middle and high school classes. Is like they are so competitive, it gets to this really unhealthy level, and it makes it not fun. It just makes games not fun to play, which is why I think a lot of teachers avoid them. So, Kate and I have that in common. We we when we play, we create a lot of healthy competition. We award creativity, risk taking. We award sportsmanship, teamwork.

Lucky Word Game

So, there are so many ways to earn points when we are playing games in our classrooms, that there's no way for it not to be fun, both for students and for us, and it's eliminating the toxic competition that feels gross. So, this specific game, the lucky word game, I'm so excited because it's one of those games where it's going to make risk taking super, super low pressure. It's going to make risk taking one of those things that is just going to feel like, oh yeah, I can do this because they're going to be so. Driven by the chance of the game, the luck of the game, all kids are participating all at once sort of piece of the game. The fact that their writing will not be on display in front of everybody per se. There are so many elements that make this a really phenomenal game for buy-in, engagement, and risk-taking with writing. Like kids will be outputting without really thinking about it as output, without really thinking about as production. But that's what's going to be happening, and they're going to be awarded with points, regardless of what they write. 

Kate

But the thing that's going to manipulate them, hate to say it, but don't hate to say it, kind of love it. The thing that's going to manipulate them into writing more is the element of luck and chance. This woman is Incredible. Granted, Kate-not granted-she is just incredible. End of story. She was a really excellent presenter because she gave credit from like who she learned things from all the way along and said how she adapted things. So, this game she created, but she was inspired by somebody online named My Class Bloom. Is what I wrote down My Class Bloom. So, she took this idea that she learned from My Class Bloom and then made it her own and put a twist on it so that it could work for the world language classroom. So, you're like, okay, Annabelle, tell us, tell us what it is. I know, I know. Now, can you imagine how incredible it is to have five of these in my pocket, five games, seven if you include the two that I already play, and all the other 14 freaking presentations that I got to watch and have takeaways from. I know, I know. I am literally sharing one tiny tidbit of this conference with you. But don't worry, you. I will tell you how you can get access to all the recordings very soon, because the doors to Familia Loca are opening very, very soon. So, all you have to do is get on the wait list, and you'll be the first to hear. And then, boom, you can binge watch all of them and get all of the actionable takeaways right away. 

Lucky Writing Game

Okay, the lucky writing game. You give students a prompt, and the prompt can be anything. And I think that's another reason that I love it is the low prep aspect is so beautifully attractive? I am all about low to no prep, and I think that we all are because we are all teaching so many preps and so many levels, and our contexts are all wildly different. Now I'm not teaching in the scenario where I was a few years ago, where I was teaching nine classes a day and four to five different preps depending on how much work I was putting in, nope, that's not my scenario anymore. But regardless, I will always opt for a game that is low to no prep, and that's what the lucky writing game is. So, you give them a prompt. I like the idea of a prompt in the form of an image, and that's partially because I use a lot of clip chats in my classroom, and so images are very easy to pull from there with screenshots. If you use a lot of clip chats in your classroom, I'm going to give you a link to a blog that I wrote. I don't even know how many years ago about an app that I use for getting screenshots really easily from YouTube. It's a Google Chrome extension, so I'll link that in the show notes if you're a person that loves Clip chat. But for me, since I use a lot of Clip chats, that sort of image would be easy. I also use one-word images. That would be easy. When I teach culture, I do it through picture talk, so it would be very easy to throw up an image from a culture talk that we did the day before. Maybe, for example, if I if I taught about Maya Pedal on Wednesday. Then on Thursday, when kids come into class, we would do a reading on Maya pedal, like a review. And then on Friday, kids will come in, and our plan will be to play this lucky word game. And so, I'll put up pictures of what we've learned from Maya Pedal one at a time. I'll throw up a picture, and then kids on whiteboards are going to write as much as they can about that one picture, knowing that they're going to be earning points for what they write, based on like their communication. Right? Are the points awarded for, correct? Grammar and spelling. No, do you know me? Hello, absolutely not. It is about whether they are communicating and using those high-frequency words. I'm looking to see whether they've acquired the language that I was targeting. And when I flip to the next slide, there are two to three words that have a bonus point value if they were included in their paragraph. So, these would be the high-frequency words, or maybe words like Bicicleta, maquina, bicycle, machine. If I'm using the example of my pedal, then that's what I would be looking for, and if the students included these lucky words in their paragraph, they get bonus points awarded to what I already gave them. So, if I gave them five points, then they would count. Oh my gosh, I wrote bicicleta three times. There's my there's that lucky word. Oh my gosh, I include maki now one time, so I get bonus points for that, and you can vary the points awarded to those lucky words as well. 

The Workshops

Kate said that she can also repeat those words, which would be again very easy if you are using images from a story that you did together or a lesson that you taught that week on culture, or in my case, clip chats, it would be very easy to have some words repeated, which is again just building the confidence of the students. Because if they know, oh, this is a word that was before, I wonder if it'll be a lucky word again. It's building their confidence in in using and recycling that high-frequency vocabulary. Now, you could literally use the words that you have gestures for, as well as some of the lucky words. The possibilities are endless here. You get to decide, and that's the thing. Is like, I'm already telling you my slightly tweaked version. I need to go back and watch this whole session again to really take it in because since I'm hosting these workshops, I'm hosting, I'm letting people in, I'm monitoring the chat, I'm interjecting questions from members, all of these things because it's all live, right? So, we're getting like coached as we go through these workshops. So, I need to go back as a participant and just glean information as a student. However, this was something that I was like, "Oh my gosh, done and done! I cannot wait to play this game. And remember, I said that it's going to be for me really important to just wait to not rush to play it, because the reality is, until a strong classroom community is built where students feel confident about taking these risks in front of each other and really putting themselves out there writing wise, it's not going to be nearly as fun. I really need to spend the time up front creating that culture in my classroom where kids feel like they can take risks and cultivating that culture of risk-taking takes a lot of time, because building a classroom community can take a lot of time. But there's a lot I can do in the first few weeks to do that, so that I can get to a place where I can play the lucky word game. So, thank you, thank you, thank you, Kate, for this amazing new game, and I'm so excited to play it and then follow up with all of the other things that I learned from you.

Familia!

Thank you, thank you, thank you to all of the Familia Loca members who showed up and shared your genius with us in this conference, in our fourth annual conference, I'm just blown away by what we've created together. I am just so grateful. So, thank you to Wendy, Michelle, Stephanie, Heidi, Vivy, Sylvie, Chantal, Shane, Lauren, Cecilia, Manette, Kate. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, and most of all, thank you to every single member who showed up and partook in this incredible PD and shared your own ideas and asked the questions and showed up to the bonus events. Thank you, thank you, thank you. What a special year it was certainly super memorable. I am really grateful. It was wild how everything was kind of interconnected. If you're a familia member and you haven't watched yet, then go to your portal. The recordings are already all there. All the resources that were shared are linked to those sessions, and you'll also find the chat because, as per usual, we couldn't shut up in the chat, so we were sharing our own takeaways, our own connections, our own thoughts, our own adaptations in the chat along the way. So, make sure as you're watching, you're scrolling and reading the chat as you go. 

Join!

And if you're not familiar loca, but this has piqued your interest and you're thinking I would really love to watch these sessions and get new ideas for the school year ahead, then join the wait list. We would absolutely love to have you. And the doors are opening soon, and we are waiting with open arms to welcome you and support you in this new school year, and all those sessions are waiting for you too. There are so many amazing, actionable ideas that are simple and quick to implement that I am positive are going to have immediate impact on your students, especially engagement-wise and joy-wise. I am so freaking excited for the school year ahead, and I actually would like to just hang on to my summer for a little bit longer because I actually do have a whole week and a half left. So, jump on that wait list. I'm gonna link it in the show notes. And until next time, I'll be continuing to live my best teacher life while simultaneously getting excited about the upcoming school year and thinking about all of the new things I can implement thanks to this conference and thanks to Familia Loca. And until next time, I hope that you'll be still living your summer best life as well. And if you're already back in the classroom, then yay for teaching La Vida Loca. And soon we'll be once again teaching La Vida Loca together. Thank you so much, teacher. I'm so grateful for you for listening. Thank you for this opportunity to support you and your students. And I'll talk to you really soon. Take care. Bye bye.