Episode 12: Magic, Movement, and JOY with Music! - with Special Guest - Bertha Delgadillo

My Blog

My YouTube

My Instagram

My Website 

My TPT store

This episode is available on Spotify and Apple podcasts! Subscribe so you're notified of new episodes!

Transcript

La Maestra Loca 

Welcome to Teaching La Maestra Loca, the podcast for World Language Teachers seeking inspiration, unapologetic authenticity and guidance in centering joy, and facilitating language acquisition to the people who matter most are. I'm your host, Annabelle. Namaste Aloha, and I'm an educator just like you and inspiring teachers is it? Hey, everybody, welcome to teaching Vida Loca, Episode 12. I'm so excited you're here. And I'm really, really, really happy because this is my first ever interview on the podcast. Oh, my God, it's literally first interview, it was actually something that I wasn't even sure if I was going to do because I was so nervous about like, the how. And so I don't even know if I'm doing this, right. So we're just going to experiment and try and I'm super grateful and honored today, to be joined by someone I consider to be a dear friend, mentor and great, brings me a great deal of inspiration on a weekly basis. And her name is Bertha delgadio. You might know her as Professora Delgadio. And yeah, we're coming today to talk to you about music and how much we love integrating it into our classrooms. Welcome, Bertha.

Bertha Delgadillo  

Thank you so much Annabelle for having me here. I did not know. I mean, I listened to your podcast, but it hadn't, you know, come to my head that I will be the first interview. So I am honored.

La Maestra Loca 

It's so exciting. It's really, really, really exciting. I was, again, like I didn't know about the setup and how it would work. And I was like, let's just, let's just do it. Because I especially as we're going into this new year, you know, I do a lot of community building in the beginning. But then what I dive straight into is exposing kids to music. And, and, and I just I'm like this is the perfect time to get with you and talk about music.

Bertha Delgadillo  

I am the same way. I am the same way. And I learned a lot of the things that I used to build community from you, many years ago when I first started talking to you but I am the same way I build community. And when I'm ready to transition into a unit, I love to lead it with music because that increases student buying. And I mean, there's so many doors that one song we can open for learners. Yeah. 

La Maestra Loca 

And that's a good place for us to start. Let's talk about like, what are some of the pros for using music in our classroom? I think one of the number one for me is like the the buy in because it's like their language, right? Even if it's not a artists that they listened to, or even a genre that they're familiar with. Music is a universal language. And students like sometimes even in our classes with their little air pods in their ears, like they're constantly listening music. So for me, absolute number number one reason I'm already thinking is like Byun.

Bertha Delgadillo  

Absolutely, I have to agree with that 100% It is the student's language is something that they feel comfortable with. And as you mentioned, maybe it's not the type of music that they listen to. But we want to bring different variety for them. And that's important. And that goes back to I know we're talking about the pros, but I just wanted to kind of share I always love to share from my mistakes in the past. And I think I have mentioned to you Annabelle that my first three years, all my learners listened to what Selena. Yeah, love her. Marc Anthony love him. And Shakira. And that's all I brought, because that's what was popular. And then something hit me later on. You know, as I grew more as a as an educator, that I needed to bring different voices to my classroom. And I started being a little bit more proactive with that. So now, I bring them everything, and I try to always be on a constant search for that. Which leads me to another reason why music is so important in the classroom, which is that they are the some of the most powerful, authentic resources. The song itself is a it's an authentic resource for learners. And on that note, teachers don't have to use the entire song. Sometimes we can just focus on a verse. Sometimes we can focus on the chorus. We don't have to do the entire song. But it's a powerful authentic resource we bring into the class, the video could be another form of authentic resource as well. But the song itself, it's just powerful. There's so many idioms, so many expressions that are like everyday language for the target culture, and that's powerful.

La Maestra Loca 

I thank you for saying that because I think for me Betha one of the reasons that I hadn't really done song of the month or used authentic cultural music in my classes for years. I use send your Willie all the time. And I love everybody knows I'm a big Willie fan like I love Willie. And I still do. But I,  it was because I'm so focused on acquisition and those high frequency words and what my students know. And I was like, oh, no, I'm so overwhelmed by how many words are in that song that are, you know, out of out of bounds is what I say. Right. And so it was, it was one of the reasons I was so hesitant or resistant to it. But that's such an important point. That is, it's, it doesn't have to be the whole song, you can play the whole song and use the whole song, but the lyrics don't have to be your focus. Which, which leads into like that whole idea of, if this is an authentic resource, you're also digging into real authentic culture, right?

Bertha Delgadillo  

I mean, it's so important what you what you just said, because it's, it's a matter of not just the culture, it of course, we want to dig deep into the culture, and its integrated culture, but also many of the videos, they, they also are a great opportunity to spin up a story, if you especially if you teach with acquisitions or instruction, and you already know how to integrate stories, some of the videos will allow you to do that. And even if the video is not, because sometimes that happens Annabelle, sometimes the videos are not clean, the song may be clean, but the videos aren't clean. So we can't use video in the class for that reason. Even as a high school teacher, there are some videos I just don't bring to the classroom, but I'll bring the lyric video, and maybe I create, there's a theme in that song. And I can create a story based on that theme. So that's, I mean, there's so many for us, because we can get so creative as teachers, and we can allow our learners to be co creators of what we create, in the learning experience as well.

La Maestra Loca 

Totally. Um, I think that also like, another pro would be just the movement in general, obviously, I'm obsessed with movement, I do a brain break most episodes. But the movement that can be incorporated so easily with music. And I'm not just talking about dancing, like there are so many different ways you can integrate movement and kinesthetic activities into music. It's really, really powerful. And ultimately, I think for both of us, this is something that we talk about all the time, but then I present together on music frequently, because we love it so much. But ultimately, it's the joy that it brings both my students and me. And, and it's not something that I can replicate, it's actually not something that is, is matched by any other activities in the same way. Because it's the only thing that students consistently are going outside beyond class, looking up the artists following them on social media, finding new songs that they like. And that's, that's for me so powerful that I'm inspiring my kids enough to like, go beyond my classroom and continue that searching on their own like, oh, you know, that gives us teacher?

Bertha Delgadillo  

It's a wonderful community builder, for sure. And like you said, the beauty is when your learner finds out something about an artist you talked about in class, you haven't even heard about it as a teacher, or you haven't even heard the latest song and they're like, profit or miasta. They've you know, and it's just like, what, it's a great weight and wonderful feeling.

La Maestra Loca 

Yes, it's, it's so special.

Bertha Delgadillo  

And to be and to be able, like you said, to be able to feel empowered, as a teacher, let's just say you're going through a rough week, and you know exactly what you can do. And maybe you're going to use the song one day, only one day, or maybe you want to create a song unit for I thought what songs for as long as six weeks in a row, like one song. So many activities, just build a whole, you know, theme out of it. And, or maybe, but I can do it for one day too. Because maybe I just need a day because maybe we have been going at it or maybe it's you know, the worst month like November or like, April, February and February. And then that's what I mean. That's not the only time we've ever used it. But it's wonderful to have that as a resource and say, okay, my, my class is not going to be dry. I am going to bring joy for myself and my learners. And music allows us to do just that.

La Maestra Loca 

That's awesome. I have can I ask you three questions related to I'm like, we could literally talk so long. I'm already looking at the time like dang, we've already talked so long about that. Yes, yes. Yes. Let me ask you some questions. And I'm I'm 100% certain of one of them. You're going to be so mad at me for because it's going to be a really hard question like So I'll save that one. But the first one is, you spoke about how, in the past it was like, okay, for me, it was always my favorites, right? How how do you go about selecting songs and finding them. 

Bertha Delgadillo  

Well, several things, you can always follow the top 100. In on online and see what's out there. I mean, you have to be a consumer of the music. And, and you have to kind of like, stay a stay on it, but you don't have to be on it every day. That's not what I mean by that. If you play like, literally, there's one of the units that I have, it's called a spec handle and is the unit that I use at the beginning of a semester. And that unit talks about safe driving, okay. And it's a Mexican song. And it's, it's a song that it's, I love it, because it's so engaging, and it's so easy. It's very short. I mean, it's maybe like two minutes and a half. But it's the Lyric is very short. And it's a lot of really, you know, useful words for Spanish students. So I love you know how I got the idea for that song. I was driving, and I was listening to a radio station, a Mexican radio station, and that song is actually very old. I don't remember how old it is. But I know it's not any. It's not new in the last 10 years, okay, it's older than 10 years. And I heard a song and I was like, Oh, my God, this is my next lesson. So I got to work. And that's how it happened. Another way you can do it, I know, you can go into the Facebook groups. And Rachael Lucas recently shared a post about a music list. Or you can go to any of the Facebook groups and maybe search music database or music list, because you know, how they're like clip chat, movie talks, databases, or novels, databases, there's also music that databases out there. So you can search for that some people have already contributed to that. That's a great way to do it. But I most definitely like to listen to radio from the target culture, whether it's, you know, sometimes I'm listening to a Mexican station, sometimes I'm listening, I go on, like, I Heart Radio, and I find something from another country. And I, you know, I find radio stations that I like, and that's how I, you know, the summons just come to me. That way, that's kind of my favorite way to do it.

La Maestra Loca 

I think it's really important that you use the word consumer. Like, you have to be somebody listening to the music in order to find the music. And I think on top of that. Don't pick a song unless you love it. Like if you love the song, like yes, it's so important, right?

Bertha Delgadillo  

Yes, yes, absolutely. Definitely. I mean, it's this that is so important. But see, this is my test my own personal test, because sometimes I purchase units, and they have songs. And there may not be songs that I've heard or that I like. And if I don't like them, I don't use it. But sometimes if it's a song I never heard, I listened to it three times. Because sometimes there might be a song I never heard. And I think I'm not interested, just like our learners. But by the time we listen to it a couple of times we're invested. So we find that, and that's a good, that's a good rule of thumb. But on that note, that's why I decided to start creating my own go to activities, because I did not want to rely on the songs that were created somewhere in a book or on TPT or wherever I want it to be in charge of like, I know what to do with the songs I want to bring to the class, because I know what my students are going to like. And even if you know you might, that teacher may be thinking, There's no way my students are going to like or if you're not Americana music, let me tell you, you need to try it. So we need to bring different genres. That's the word genre that I say correctly. Yep, yes. Okay, I use I usually say that or incorrectly. So we need to bring different genre or genres to, to our learners because they do need to be exposed. We have so much music in Spanish speaking countries, so many different styles, so many different instruments to explore. We don't want to limit ourselves to just some so we ourselves if we maybe don't like a specific type of music, like I'm sure you can find one song in a different genre that you're going to like that you can bring to the classroom. So I want to challenge teachers to do that.

La Maestra Loca 

And on that note, like, not just in Spanish speaking, like obviously, we are so lucky. We teach Spanish and there's like so many different countries and so many, but same thing goes for French music or German teachers or whatever. Make sure you're exposing your kids to various artists, various genres, because not every kid is gonna love every single song, but they will connect with a piece throughout the year I guarantee and probably more than just one piece. You just mentioned activities and this is the annoying question. Are you ready?

Bertha Delgadillo  

I was ready.

La Maestra Loca 

I want to know, I know like, you and I are the same we have like, so many activities. And what we do is we have one template that we can then just like take and like put a song into and use this activity for this new song, whatever. What is your number one favorite activity? So sorry to do with, with songs? What's your favorite thing to do?

Bertha Delgadillo  

Okay, well, I love there's that's a hard question Annabelle, okay. But the one that I enjoy the most has to be TPR with songs. But I do it in a very strategic way. So I learned TPR from you many years. Okay, so and then you know, because I shared this information with you. Before that, I took that idea. And then I added another idea. So I created it and then I have somebody a student to throw them off. So that comes there. And, my studies about that student is doing correct gestures, and sometimes different gestures. And then from there, on another day, we do that same sequence, the student with gestures. And then the third day, we actually play the song. And then while the song is playing, they are doing the gestures and that and they're keeping tally in partners of who's doing who's getting how many points, so it gets really intense. And then we have a championship. The reason I love this activity so much is because it allows them a lot of time to process, the vocabulary that I want to target. I do more targeted. I know some people do more on targeted, but I'm more like I really like to work with target type vocabulary. So whatever it is, I'm targeting in the song, I, it gives the students just, it's a very enjoyable way to process they don't even know they're learning the song, the the words, and the song itself brings a lot of joy. And

La Maestra Loca 

that's one of the reasons we use gestures right to link to language. I did this with a song after learning it from you. And I did it with a song that I did care more about the lyrics in the song than worrying about like the other stuff. And I had to drive a student home from our retreat because she was really sick. And it came on my playlist, like the song that we had done in class and bola and she immediately was like maestra and she started doing like all of the gestures of the song as she was listening. And it had been a couple months since we had done it but it's such a powerful anchor and it's something that like they're going to hear that you know years from now and still be like I remember the gestures this and I remember the meeting because of that so I love that and you and you cheated a little bit that you did you did you said well TPR was songs and then you shared like four different ways you

Bertha Delgadillo  

Well, I mean, you actually you know have to see it and to understand how how it's all you know how it all comes down. But what I would say I'm gonna cheat some more Annabelle but I would say the reason why I love this activity so much is because we're talking about over the span of three days. And we're gradually working processing vocab same same same. And then when we're done with that song unit, let's say I'm done with that song. I did everything I wanted to do with some later on. I use those gestures I play that song and I'm like, Okay, that's a brain break today. Listen to this song. Okay, we're gonna gesture and how many can you remember? They remember them all. So that that though that turns into a beautiful break, unique brain break for my class, because we were all invested in that song as a class community.

La Maestra Loca 

There you go, y'all. There's your brain break of the day. I'll play this the music right here for a second. There you go. There's your brain break the episode. What a brilliant idea about I'm obsessed with that. I hadn't even thought about that. But that's perfect.

Bertha Delgadillo  

I mean, can you imagine depending on how many times you replicate this, let's say you do just let's say to just do you know, five songs per semester you have five brain breaks with those kids, new ones really your class.

La Maestra Loca 

It's so good. I love that. Okay, Chica, I have one more question for you. And what is just one way don't cheat. One way that you integrate culture into or you use songs to expose your students or dive into culture with the song.

Bertha Delgadillo  

Oh my god, okay, so some limited to only one way I was They, one of my favorite ways is to do map map talks. When I introduced the artists, maybe this is because many times the songs do not have any relevance to anything cultural. And sometimes, I mean, that's not the songs, the videos, but I can, the artists can be a starting point. So I started by talking about the country of origin from from that artist and the region, I go, I take it as far as, like, let's focus on that region of that country, what's unique to that region, and that I can go as deep as I want with that that mean, you know, with geography that tells us like the type of food people eat in that region, that tells us the history of how it's connected. What kind of people live there, I mean, we can explore so much with a map talk. And we don't ever have to do a unit on countries and capitals if we don't want to, because we are always talking about different places.

La Maestra Loca 

That's so good. And when you talk about like, so many teachers, and I'm moving to a school now where now more than ever, I have to show that I'm like, you know, reaching across contents and touching other subjects areas. That's such an easy way to say look at I'm constantly talking about social studies, geography, etc. That's such a great one. Thanks for sharing.

Bertha Delgadillo  

I tried to keep it as one who did? 

Bertha Delgadillo  

Well, you did well, you tried to sneak it in with our speak about the artists. But on that note, do you want to share our most exciting fabulous out of this world extraordinary news that we have been waiting to share for months now?

Bertha Delgadillo  

Oh, my God. Yes. Yes, I have been like keeping it all bottled up for the last month or so. Yes. So Annabelle and I have come together. And because I've learned so much from her, we, we created this massive course. That's called music to my ears. And it is all about integrating music in the world language classroom. We have dozens of strategies in there. So if you get excited, just by listening to the strategies that I was mentioning, and you want to see them a little bit better see them come to life, most definitely, you will get to see all of that inside the course. And we talked about music lists, we have curated some of those resources already for you. We talked about. I mean, there's just so much in it, we talked about maybe how I was mentioning, I can do a song for six weeks if I want to like as long as I've done a song. Or just being in charge. If you want to gain more confidence, integrating music in the classroom, you want to go beyond the closed activity. We have mapped it all out, y'all. And it is I mean, I'm so proud of that course, I really cannot wait to hear what teachers are going to say we already had a few teachers who got into it through a presentation we did recently. And they are just you know, talking about it, I there was a unit, not a unit, a lesson in there that talks about social emotional learning, plus music, the perfect combination. I mean, we have mapped it out to have pre listening activities, processing activities, output activities, everything related to music. And I mean, I'm just so so excited. 

La Maestra Loca 

And literally every single thing that either of us knows or has ever done related to music is in this course. And one of the other things we mentioned, this episode was like that idea of templates, like there's templates in there, there are everything you could possibly imagine. Because we realized like, oh my gosh, every time we get together, we're talking about another strategy we do related to music. Can you imagine like how powerful it would be to have all of these things in one place. Another thing that I really appreciate about the course because I'm of course consumer, not as much as you thought you were a huge horse consumer. But like, I love how manageable and doable that you've chunked it out like that, that took a lot of time to like, make sure it's in bite sized chunks. So I mean, it's over like five hours of content, but it's broken down into these bite sized three to 10 minute segments. I know I have one really like 20 minute one in there, I'm sorry. But like, these little bite sized chunks so that you can like, process it and then go and implement it right away. Because we know and you hear this from both of us all the time. If you follow us or you're on our email list. We know that none of this means anything unless you go and actually try it and implement it in your classes with your students. Right. 

Bertha Delgadillo  

Yeah, so we give you suggestions for action steps as well after each lesson. It's so good.

La Maestra Loca 

And we're so excited to be able to talk about it with you this week. And yeah, I just I'm really grateful that you were able to join me about that and we could talk about our core and talk about our love for music. I know that you also just started a YouTube channel, do you want to tell us about that as one way people can connect with you after the episodes,

Bertha Delgadillo  

Definitely go to YouTube and search professoria Delgadillo, and you will find me. And it is I actually had a YouTube channel for longest, but I wasn't really using it and I was used you using it to house longer videos. And I realized that I will after what I went through last year, as you know, I had an several episodes with anxiety attacks throughout the year that were not pleasant at all. And that taught me a lot. So I decided that instead of creating long videos that teachers don't have time for, we're gonna go through short videos. And so I decided to create shorter videos for YouTube instead. Because in Facebook, I love Facebook groups, and I love Instagram, and I'm on both of those places to its proper sauna delgadio. But everything gets lost. And I put so much work into videos as as you as well. And so I like I decided to go on YouTube, because that way I can find everything so quickly. And I'm making a commitment to myself and to teachers to create by site bite size videos in YouTube, that you can maybe if you're just watching it for five minutes, you're gonna get a great strategy to use the next day, or sometimes, like I was telling you earlier, I talk about the real, the raw and the imperfect, because I consider myself to be an imperfect human being, and I want to embrace that, as well. We're always working to get better. So I share about that in my YouTube channel and my Instagram and social media. But definitely, I'm really excited about this new new relaunch of my YouTube channel. 

La Maestra Loca 

I think people appreciate that so much about about you. And I know that people appreciate when I'm wrong and real to about like, we are imperfect. And we have the same struggles as other teachers, like yes, we're presenting, and yes, we're blogging and doing all these things. But we ultimately are still full time teachers with facing the same struggles and the same frustrations and the same like life issues outside of the professional world. You know, like just being people. And so thank you for always being so real about an authentic about your, your experiences with everybody,

Bertha Delgadillo  

Thank you. Likewise, I feel you are the same way as well. So and that's so important. That is that is key, we cannot like like I was saying earlier to you, my videos are not don't have the party transitions, they don't have any editing. So if I make a mistake, and whatever, it's gonna be there because if I have to edit and if I had to make transitions, I will never put out content. So I but I am honored and grateful to be able to share all these ideas and strategies with with people in the virtual space.

La Maestra Loca 

Well, thank you, thank you. I'm so grateful. And thank you all for listening. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please make sure and leave a review or a rating and make sure you go and check out our course because I really we are so proud of it. And we the reason it's taken so long is we just really wanted to make sure that truly everything that we have ever done related to music is in there in a very real authentic way and in a way that you can have immediate takeaways and find immediate success and joy with your students in your own classroom. So thank you again for joining me betta buffet and we will see y'all next time and in the meantime, we'll be teaching libido low carb, won't we?

Bertha Delgadillo  

Yes, we will. Thank you so much and bye bye.