Category: Reflection

NBCT Standard 2: Knowledge of Language

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As part of our deep dive into the first National Board World Language Standard (Knowledge of Students), I’ve spent the last few posts focusing on different ways to gather and leverage information about students. Today we’re going to move on to Standard 2: Knowledge of Language (pages 22-24 here). First, the standard statement:

Accomplished teachers of world languages function with a high
degree of proficiency in the languages they teach. They understand
how languages and cultures are intimately linked, understand the
linguistic elements of the languages they teach, and draw on this
knowledge to set attainable and worthwhile learning goals for their
students.

Standard 2 is where the National Board holds us accountable to practice what we preach in terms of our own language learning. This is not easy, and NBCT does not let us off the hook. To become a National Board Certified Teacher, we are required as language teachers to prove that we maintain an Advanced language proficiency level in our target language by submitting ACTFL certificates with ratings of Advanced Low or higher on both the speaking and writing assessments. (More on my tips for passing these tests in a future post).

In addition to requiring that we are Advanced speakers of the languages we teach, this Standard requires that we do, in fact, use the language beyond the walls of our classroom. It asks us for proof of the ways we use the language in authentic contexts, whether in our community or through travel abroad. Accomplished teachers read, write, listen to, and speak their target languages as often as possible, authentically as possible, just as we ask our students to do when we are in class.

In addition to asking for proof of proficiency and language use, this standard devotes an entire section to knowledge of how language works. It briefly mentions a knowledge of linguistics before moving onto knowledge of how the language fits together in different cultural and geographical contexts. For Spanish teachers, this means that we are well-aware of the many different dialects and are able to teach the differences between the slang in Madrid and Mexico City. This is also the first time the modes of language are mentioned: we should understand and be able to teach the importance of the interpretive, interpersonal, and presentational modes.

This standard, for me, is the first time National Board really requires you to hold yourself accountable to a higher level. If you aren’t a native speaker of the language you teach, it demands that you practice what you preach in terms of lifelong language learning, which is something that goes well beyond the usual duties of your classroom. In the upcoming posts, I’m going to share my tips for staying on top of your language learning game, and also my advice for passing the ACTFL speaking and writing assessments.

What are your favorite ways to maintain your Advanced proficiency level? Share your favorite teacher language practice activities below!

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Post-Unit Reflection Form

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As part of our deep dive into the first National Board World Language Standard, I’ve talked in two of my last posts about the student and parent surveys I use to gather up information about students at the beginning of the year. The weakness of those types of surveys is that they are generally one and done. A tool I’ve used to gather information about students throughout the year is the post-unit reflection form.

The post-unit reflection is a survey that I give after our summative assessment at the end of each unit. This is what the kids work on after they turn in their assessments. Usually given as a Google Form, it has three parts:

1) Where do you think you are based on our learning objectives?

In the first section I ask students to rate themselves on the can dos for the unit they just finished (as a self-post-assessment) and on the can dos for the next unit (as a self-pre-assessment). I ask them to rate themselves on a sliding scale: I can’t do this at all yet; I can only do this with a lot of help from my notes; I can do this pretty easily, maybe with a little help from my notes; I can do this and teach someone else how to do it. Doing this keeps kids focused on the things they are, in fact, learning how to do, and they get a sneak peek of the things they’ll be learning how to do next. I find it keeps all of us honest and focused on what our goals are.

Also, giving out this survey as a Google Form gives you a lot of very specific data about each objective and each student. There’s a ton you can do with it. You can see the trouble spots from the unit you just finished that you’ll need to integrate more practice on, and you’ll see the goals that kids are already familiar with for the next unit. You can also pick up on the outlier students: who is struggling and needs to come in for extra help, and which students you can tap to help out the kids who are having trouble. You also might pick up on kids who aren’t giving themselves enough credit; if a student self-evaluates way lower than what you know they can do, it gives you an opportunity to give them a little pep talk.

2) Let’s reflect on how you’re learning.

The second part of the survey contains a few metacognitive questions. I’ll ask which activities helped them learn the most and the least for that particular unit. Sometimes I’ll do this as a multiple choice question listing the main learning activities for that unit and sometimes I’ll just keep it open-ended. This is a huge help for me to check in with them about which tools and lessons are working and which aren’t so that I can adjust my practice accordingly.

I’ll also ask each kid to tell me what they’ve done well this unit and what they want to improve upon for next unit. Usually I do this by asking them to think about the goal they had for learning Spanish at the beginning of the year. With that goal in mind, I’ll ask them what they did well on the way to their goal and what they could do better. This helps me to celebrate everyone’s successes and also gives everyone a chance to grow, going into that growth mindset message that no matter where they are grade-wise, there’s something they’re doing well and something more they could be doing.

3) What information do you want me to know?

In the last section I’ll include a couple open ended questions like “What is the most important thing you’d like me to know about you today?” or “What comments or concerns do you have about Spanish class this month?” You’ll get answers like “I’m stressed about soccer tryouts” or “I really hated that project we did last week.” Not every comment is going to be positive, but you’ll be learning a lot about your kids and your instruction as you go through this exercise.

Concluding thoughts

I find the post-unit reflection to be a very useful pause for me and my students to self-evaluate. For the students, it gives them a chance to reflect on their learning and keep our learning objectives in mind. For me, it helps me to keep my finger on the pulse of how my kids are feeling and to know how to better tweak my instruction moving forward. If you’d like to adapt this practice for your own classroom, you can make a free copy of an editable Google Form template here.

Recommended Listening

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This is a quick mini blog post to say that the little language teacher nerd in me was so happy today listening to Cult of Pedagogy’s Jennifer Gonzalez interviewing everyone’s fave French teacher, Rebecca Blouwolff. I strongly recommend you take some time this week to listen to this delightful podcast episode about the modern world language classroom.

Rebecca is such an honest, enthusiastic, articulate ambassador for proficiency-based language teaching, and listening to the real world examples from her classroom is so inspiring. I loved hearing how she makes her communicative goals relevant with e-pals, how she has to get permission from her students to speak in English, how she turned her standard free time unit into a unit about sleep and screentime because that was super relevant to her specific students. She’s also got an outstanding corresponding blog post full of top-notch resources backing up the best practices she outlines in the podcast. Genius!

I could gush all day, but I hope you’ll play the conversation next time you’re in your car or doing dishes or on a run or just sitting on the couch chilling because you deserve it. It brought me a lot of joy and inspiration, and I hope it does for you too!

NBCT Standard 1: Know Your Students

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Today I’m diving into the first National Board World Languages Standard: Knowledge of Students  (pages 18-21 here). (Read my last two posts to play catch up on why I’m talking about National Board Standards and what the heck NBCT even is).

First, the Standard statement:

Accomplished teachers of world languages actively acquire knowledge of their students and draw on their understanding of child and adolescent development to foster their students’ competencies and interests as individual language learners.

In three words: KNOW YOUR KIDS. There are some great reminders sprinkled throughout these pages that focus on why investing time in student relationships is so important. For me, there are three main take-aways.

1. Learn about the kids in every way you can.

Accomplished teachers use every method at their disposal to learn as much about their students as possible. The Standard references three ways to do this. Firstly, engage directly with the kids: informal conversation, personality surveys, informational surveys, attending extracurricular events, and baseline language assessments. Secondly, gather information from the other important adults in kids lives: their families, other teachers, counselors, and administrators.

Thirdly, make sure to stay informed about adolescent development in general. Being aware of how teens communicate and develop socially, and staying informed about the challenges your particular community of students is facing, is critical to developing appropriate learning goals inside and outside the classroom.

2. Leverage what you know about them to engage them.

As you gather as much information as possible about your students, you’re able to leverage it to drive your instruction. The Standard references the enthusiasm and energy that adolescents naturally have about the things they’re passionate about, and their intrinsic desire to talk about themselves and their interests. Luckily, our whole goal as language teachers is to get students to express themselves, so it’s just a matter of tapping into their natural tendencies. I’ve written before about how I love differentiating my instruction by giving kids an opportunity to inject their passions into the thematic units typically required by school curriculum. Our challenge is to find ways to do that day in and day out.

Beyond letting student interests drive instruction, the Standard also reminds us that teaching students skills to help with their social and personal development is key to helping them succeed not only as language students, but also as individuals. Learning a language requires taking risks, setting goals, making mistakes, and developing the confidence and self-efficacy to continue trying and failing over and over again. As language teachers, we give them the tools and opportunity to practice doing so in a supported environment, which engages them on a level that goes far beyond our learning content.

3. Take advantage of your learning community’s network.

For me, the most challenging part of this Standard is the repeated reminder to utilize the learning community connected to your classroom as much as possible. The best way to do this is to increase family involvement. Engaging family members through frequent communication helps you to learn more about the students’ needs and goals, and having support at home can only help you work as a team to get each student where they need to be.

Additionally, family relationships provide you with a wealth of experience that helps you bring language learning to life. Using family members as guest speakers, or even just guest judges in a PBL project, reminds students that what they are learning has real world implications. Students who speak a different language at home can bring to life the importance of being bilingual and the richness that comes with being a part of different cultures. The Standard challenges us to be informed about what resources we have available in the family networks we become a part of each school year, and also to bring those resources into the classroom whenever we can.

Concluding thoughts on Standard One

This first Standard to me affirms the natural tendency we all have to build and leverage our relationships with our students in order to drive instruction. However, there are many things in this Standard listed that are difficult to accomplish on a regular basis. For example, I’d love to say that I had a beautiful monthly e-newsletter and an Instagram account for my parents to follow, but systemic parent communication isn’t something I thought I had the time to prioritize. This Standard reminds me that a little effort in that arena can go a long way.

With this in mind, as you read these Standards, give yourself a high five for the things you know you do on a regular basis, and pick one or two items that you aren’t doing already to help support your teaching. We all have items in each Standard that we are naturally drawn to, and ones that are more difficult for each of us. The goal is to affirm what makes you a good teacher, and help you to become even better, not to get overwhelmed by all of the things you aren’t doing yet. Good luck to those of you on your NBCT journey, and to those who are just getting to know your students to start the year! This Standard is a good reminder that the time you invest in building those relationships is well worth it.

To read about some of the tools I’ve used to get to know my students better, see my posts on Student Survey Questions, Parent Survey Questions, Post-Unit Reflection Forms and Six-Word Memoirs.

National Board Standards: a Primer

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As I mentioned in my last post, I’m currently working my way through the World Languages National Board standards and sharing my journey with you. Before we dive in with the Standards content, let’s take one step back and do a quick intro to National Boards for those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about (ain’t no shame!).

The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards heads up the National Board Certified Teacher process. Directly pulled from their website, “National Board Certification was designed to develop, retain, and recognize accomplished teachers and to generate ongoing improvement in schools nationwide. It is the most respected professional certification available in K-12 education.” Basically, the National Board certifies the very best teachers in the country by putting them through a rigorous (read: difficult, time-consuming, and expensive) process, and then allows those teachers to operate with four precious NBCT letters after their name. 

In many school districts around the country, becoming a National Board Certified Teacher is one of the only ways (in addition to getting a graduate degree) that you can increase your salary. It links you to other outstanding teachers in your area and around the country, and it truly forces you to hold yourself and your teaching to the highest possible standard for your students in a way that no other professional development does. If you’re interested in learning more about why to go through the process from a teacher’s perspective, read the venerable Cult of Pedagogy’s take here.

The National Board maintains and produces Standards documents for a couple of dozen different disciplines and age groups, outlining what makes for an exceptional teacher in each one. To get certified, you submit mountains of evidence to a panel of judges trying to prove that you exhibit these standards every time you step into the classroom. For that reason, merely going through the process of reading the standards is immensely helpful if you’re looking to up your teaching game. You can download and read the World Languages standards here, and two of my absolute favorite language teacher bloggers, Rebecca Blouwolff and Laura Sexton discuss their takes on the process here and here.

Every standards document starts out the same way, with the National Board Five Core Propositions and the Architecture of Accomplished Teaching. In a nutshell, the Five Core Propositions state that accomplished teachers:

  1. are committed to students and their learning.
  2. know the subjects they teach and how to teach those subjects to students.
  3. are responsible for managing and monitoring student learning.
  4. think systematically about their practice and learn from experience.
  5. are members of learning communities.

I recommend you check out the Architecture of Accomplished teaching here; it basically illustrates the keys to excellent teaching in one infographic. To summarize: accomplished teaching starts with the kids; establishes appropriate learning objectives based upon knowledge of the kids, the subject, and pedagogy; implements instruction to achieve those goals; evaluates learning in light of the objectives and the instruction; reflects on the learning; then sets new goals for the kids (and begins the cycle all over again).

My favorite sentiment from all of this is the National Board idea that everything you do should start with THESE students in THIS setting at THIS time. It doesn’t matter if I’m teaching a group of professionals or a group of 11-year-olds, every day I’m teaching I remind myself of this line and force myself to think of my instruction in terms of THESE students in THIS setting at THIS time. It helps me to put my teaching in perspective (it’s all about the learner!) and gives me a starting point to make sure that the instruction is actually effective for the people sitting in front of me. You can design and implement world-class lessons, but if you don’t start with who your students are, what they know, and how they’re feeling in THIS setting at THIS time, you risk selling everyone in the room short.

The World Languages Standards take the five core propositions and adapt them into nine standards specifically for World Language instruction. I’ll be going through each standard one by one in future posts, but I do think it’s instructive to start with the overview. I hope this primer helps for those of you who are new to the NBCT process!

 

My First Blog Post Since Becoming a Mom

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Happy August everyone! I hope that those of you who have started up the school year are enjoying these first weeks of getting to know your new kids. I don’t have any new First Day of School content this year (though you can scroll through my First Day Prep series starting here), but my teacher brain is definitely yawning and stretching itself back to life in the face of back-to-school sales and a slight (SLIGHT) hint of crisp in the morning air, one that quickly dissipates and makes way for some very heavy Virginia humidity. It is definitely still summer around here!

My last twelve months have been focused on becoming a mom! Our smiley son Augie (David Augustine!) is about to be six-months-old (born March 2!), which is completely insane. It seems simultaneously as if we’ve known him forever and we left the hospital with him last weekend. He still doesn’t have the sleep thing down, but he’s good for a laugh and a snuggle and generally making your heart melt. We are definitely in that place where you feel so happy and lucky that all you can do is be grateful and try not to take it for granted.

Becoming a working mother has been its own transition, one that I could probably write about for weeks, but I will spare you and suffice it to say that I love my job, I love my kid, I love my ridiculously supportive husband, and I finally almost feel like a functional human again. Enough that I was recently exploring a new volunteer opportunity where I could have the potential to work with teenagers for the first time in a while. And honestly, it’s like the Spanish teacher side of my brain woke up and has been annoying me ever since. It’s crazy how being a teacher is something that just becomes a part of you, no matter where you are in life. I still genuinely love my professional development work and am hopeful that I am getting better at it every day, but I didn’t realize how much I missed being in the classroom with kids until the possibility presented itself, albeit in a volunteer capacity.

When I got home after my volunteer meeting, my feet found themselves walking up the steps to our attic to dig through a bag of old school files until I found my trusty National Board certification binder. For some reason starting with the flagship standards of teaching just seemed like the thing to do.

To put this into context, my last year teaching, I embarked on the NBCT journey and was obsessed with the quality of the professional development and the way it forced me to examine my craft. There are many insights I gained during that time that I still actively use on a daily basis when designing my instruction for a professional audience. Although I switched jobs before I was able to complete my first NBCT component, I still have all the materials representing a LOT of work I did getting ready for the process.

Because I have the teaching itch (or at least the teacher blog itch), I’m going to work my way through the National Board standards. My hope is that they inspire some blog post content, refresh my own instructional design process after maternity leave, and give this teacher part of my brain an additional outlet. Stay tuned for a few National Board related posts as I get the creative juices flowing. Hopefully they’ll help out those of you considering the NBCT plunge, and help the rest of you keep some rock solid standards at the forefront while your school year starts. Happy August folks!

Keeping Novice-Low Students in the Target Language

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I’m going to open up to you a little bit today. One of the hardest best practices for me to follow as a language teacher is the 90% Target Language rule. As a teacher of Spanish 1 and Spanish 2, this was far and away the most difficult battle I had to fight with myself every day. The temptation to slip into English to bond with/encourage/scaffold my students was often too great for me to overcome. The joys of teaching for me felt diminished when I spent all day as the English police, and as I taught in a district where many grammatical concepts were still emphasized and tested, sometimes English felt necessary. Those moments when inside-jokes and aha moments and student collaboration occurred in Spanish were, as I’m sure they are for all of you, always such joyous victories, but sticking to a 90% TL rule in order to make those moments happen is, well, hard for me.

I know many of you have the discipline and strength and backbone to keep everyone in the Target Language from Day One, and I worship you for it. If you are one of those heroes with a TL participation system that works for your students, this post probably will not be super helpful to you (also, tell me all your secrets please). If you’re teaching Spanish 1 or even Spanish 2, and you’re having one of those beginning-of-the-year moments where getting your students to stay out of English feels like pulling teeth, this strategy may be helpful. It’s (not-so-creatively-but-super-effectively) called “Estamos en español.”

I used this strategy in as many different classroom situations as I could muster, but I used it most of all 1) during interpersonal communication practice, and 2) when students played review games in their groups. The basic premise is pretty simple.

  1. You give kids an activity that requires TL communication. The country partners activity I wrote about last week sparked this post and would be a perfect example. You want to pick something where the entire purpose is to spark authentic communication. This could be anything from a pretend marketplace in class to a game of vocabulary review charades to a simple “here’s a list of questions, discuss in groups.” You get the idea.
  2. You tell kids they’ll be working on the activity for a set amount of time. My middle-school students usually could do this for about ten minutes before pandemonium or mental exhaustion or excessive pointing at the clock set in. I found it’s good to give them a set starting point and a strong finish line so they don’t get totally overwhelmed.
  3. You remind kids of the expectations. 100% Target Language means 100% Target Langauge. Kids CANNOT write notes, whisper, look things up, or type in English. Gestures? Definitely. Acting things out? Yes. Weird sound effects that aren’t words? Sure. Coming to the teacher for a quick “¿cómo se dice…?” NOPE. They’ve got to make do with the language they know, no matter what.
  4. Be prepared to enforce the expectation. For me, I would give kids a specific five-point formative assessment grade for staying in the TL during whatever activity it was. I would wander the room, write down the names of any kids I heard using English, and gave repeat offenders tally marks. If I hear you speak English once, you get a 4/5. If I hear you speak English twice, you get a 3/5. Kids will start to police each other on this (lots of pointing and yelling INGLES!!!), but I would only take off points if I heard it myself. It only takes posting this grade once for the kids to know the importance of staying in Spanish for these activities.
  5. Take some time for pre-game language brainstorming. I’d always make sure to ask the kids what Spanish language they thought they would need to know before the activity started. If I was getting them to review specific words and phrases (likes and dislikes, for example), I would provide a lot of language either on the board or on a dialogue sheet in front of them, but having the students generate expressions in addition to the ones I provide creates more buy-in. If we were playing a review game in Spanish, they’d request language like “my turn,” “I win,” you’re right,” “let’s go,” etc. I’d write up the words they thought they’d need on the board and then make sure to give them time to think about any other expressions/phrases that could be useful before rushing into the activity. I love this as a way to give them an opportunity to drive the learning.
  6. Use classroom cues to help students flip the Spanish switch on. In my classroom, I’d ALWAYS make them countdown and turn the lights off when we were in Spanish-only mode, and I also had a rotating disco ball that I’d turn on. (I shamelessly stole this tactic from one of my teacher heros Liz, who, shameless friend plug, runs a food blog you can check out over here). The lights-off-disco-ball-on would also help if a kid came in from the office/bathroom/late. They’d look around, look at me, and nod as if to say “okay, yes we are Spanish, I get it.” If that didn’t happen, a kid might look at them and scream “NO INGLES!!” which also always made me giggle.
  7. When time’s up, debrief. In early level classes, we usually take some time after this activity to talk about how it went and how it made them feel. At first, kids talk about how it felt like their heads were going to explode, but then we talk a lot about how it gets easier and easier to stay in Spanish the longer the lights are off. We’ve had a lot of really good metacognitive discussions about how being in Spanish-only mode forces them to take risks and produce language, and to stop worrying about it being perfect. These conversations help you to start making Spanish-only mode the norm as the kids realize how much they can actually do.
  8. NOW is the time for kids to ask the “¿cómo se dice…?” questions. As part of your debrief, go back to the board where you wrote down the expressions kids thought they would need, and ask them to add to it. What language did the kids need that they didn’t know how to say yet? Nothing forces a kid to learn a word or phrase like being in a situation where they are going CRAZY with a desire to say something they can’t yet. I love that moment where you can give the kid the phrase they wanted, and they’re like “THANK YOU THAT WAS DRIVING ME NUTS.”

Like I alluded to earlier, this strategy was a crutch I used when 90% TL was really just failing (because, hey, sometimes I need scaffolding too). Incorporating it more and more helped me to keep trying to build my classroom up to the Target Language haven of my dreams.

What are your favorite strategies for keeping novice-low students in the target language? Teach me your ways!

#oneword

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I’m behind the times on the #oneword trend (if you’re in the same boat, you can read some great posts here, here, and here). I love the idea, and know there are a TON of things you could do with it in a language class. I am a huge fan of the six-word memoir to end the year (a post on that another time), but starting with #oneword seems like such a fabulous idea for the start of school, or even as a solid January resolution goal after Christmas break. I can see it as a way for kids to really dig deep to find that one Spanish word that describes them, or that one Spanish word that they want to describe their year. You could have them make a poster or a Slide or a Google Drawing or a photo project or a even turn it into a coding animation project on Scratch (hello, cross curriculum). Sure, #oneword doesn’t present a good opening in itself for interpersonal/interpretive/presentational practice. I mean, it’s ONE word. But what if kids have to write and react to blog posts about their word and their classmates’. Or have a Spanish-only convo about their word in their tables. Or present their word to me or the class. There seriously are a ton of possibilities; I’m getting excited.

ANYWAYS, beyond the applications of #oneword for the language classroom, it obviously has been such a useful tool for so many reflective teachers. Take a moment to hop on Twitter and search #onewordedu, or #oneword and #langchat together (so many hastags). People in our community are coming up with some good stuff to hone in on for the year, and it’s inspirational to get that extra energy from other people’s goals.

I didn’t have to put much thought into my One Word for this school year. It’s “Focus.” As I’ve shared previously, my 2016-2017 was marked by a lot of exciting personal change. Wedding, new house, new job – all of the happiest stressful things at once. As I enter Month Two of newlywed life, and a new passion project for turning my teacher resources into shareable materials, my focus for this school year needs to be, well, to focus.

Cult of Pedagogy had a great post recently on “Decision Fatigue,” the basic premise of which is that all the hundreds and thousands of little decisions you have to make every hour as a teacher really wear you out. The post is about finding your routine, and planning so that you don’t have to stress about every little warm-up every single class or how you’re going to spend your precious planning periods every day or even what you’re going to wear. I know I’ve had so many days when that planning period hit and I was so worn out that I would dive into mindless scrolling on my phone and look up and half my only allotted productive time of the day would be gone.

My goal for this year is to plan that time better. So that I can eventually focus on the task at hand, and ONLY at the task at hand. To put my phone in my bag and focus only on developing a lesson. To check my e-mail only at certain times a day instead of losing a line of productive thinking when that notification turns on. To have quality conversations with my co-workers and friends instead of half-hearted catch-ups while I’m working and trying to do a million other things. In the classroom, this would manifest itself as focusing on the kids in the room, instead of losing my mind behind my laptop prepping that PERFECT document to print in the five minutes I have between classes to sprint to the copier and have the right amount of copies for next block (we’ve all been there…right?). Because by focusing more in the time we have to work, we can focus more on the things we love to get home to after work, and focus more on the people and students and work we love in front of us, and do so guilt free.

There’s no answer to the eternal teacher problem of never having enough time. But this year, my approach is to, in the words of the great Laura Sexton, take a chill pill, and focus on the tasks and projects and people in front of me that really matter. Have you found any good #oneword posts? What’s yours? Would love to hear what’s going to inspire you this year.

First Day Prep Series: Intro

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So I’ve been living under a pre-wedding/wedding/honeymoon rock for several weeks now (yes, it was a beautiful and amazing day and my name is Mrs. Erwin now yippee!). Because of this about two days ago I had the shocking realization it is August. This year the knots in my stomach that form when I see back-to-school displays in July have been a little bit muted since now I am a year-round teacher in the business world, but I definitely did a double take when my rockstar third-grade-teacher cousin posted a “first day of school” Instagram picture of her classroom WITH KIDS IN IT. Where did summer go y’all???

In Virginia, we’re on the start-after-Labor-Day school schedule, which means when August hits the reality and excitement of a new batch of kids is really starting to heat up. For me, this usually means three straight weeks of prepping and planning for the first day of school. And ONLY the first day of school. I don’t know why, but Over-prepping-for-the-First-Day-Syndrome plagues me every year. I always get sucked down a wormhole of post after pin after article after tweet about building community and setting expectations and establishing relationships and creating the environment and the First-Day-of-School is just really important!!

If you’re also in this mode of overplanning, my message to you is this: take a deep breath. The First Day of School yes, is important, and yes, presents a ton of opportunities to start the year right, and yes, only happens once a year, but at the end of the day, you only have one class period with each group of kids. For me, this was 90 minutes. There’s only SO much you can do in 90 minutes to set the tone and get to know every child and establish behavioral systems and introduce proficiency and get kids excited and ready to start the work of learning. You have to pick and choose what you do in those 90 minutes. And for the kids, the first day of school is such a blur anyway, that the real good stuff doesn’t start until a couple weeks in. Give me September 15 and the start of Hispanic Heritage Month, when a kid gets really pumped to talk about his obsession with a Colombian soccer player and realizes that 1) no one is judging him and 2) we all WANT him to be excited and 3) he can use that passion as part of LEARNING AN ENTIRE LANGUAGE. I wish I had the time (don’t we all) to put just as much love and nervous planning energy into every day of learning, not just Day One, which is such a weird day anyway.

That all being said, my goal for the coming posts is to go through my standard August First-Day-of-School crunch with you. I’m going to present to you a lot of ideas (most of which I’ve tried, some of which I just have never had enough time to put into action), with the hope that you can pick and choose at least one to put into action during the first day, week, or month. Part one of my First Day Prep Series: the best free classroom decorations for the proficiency-based classroom and where to find them. Get excited!

For more in the First Day Prep Series, check out my free decoration ideas, infographic syllabus, and fave First Day stations.