Hello, World!

It’s been a long long time since I’ve blogged.

I haven’t felt the urge in a long time. I used to write daily. I met and maintained multiple friendships entirely through blogs for many years. But kids happened. And the internet also started to seem just a little too big. I realized my students could find me, and I also realized that something I wrote here could have an effect on how things went in the classroom. I became a lot more private. I tend to lurk more than post.

But then I won a couple big teaching awards, and people started asking me to lend my voice to the conversation online. They told me I should share what I know or what I’m learning with others. I started to view myself as a mentor, not just for my own students but for new teachers in the field as well, and I started to see my role at conferences differently. It may sound strange to you, dear reader, but even after 18 years of teaching I still sometimes feel like a novice teacher. I still feel like there’s so much more to learn and so many other people to learn from.

Yet, I have been given a tremendous opportunity to have a job that pays me to both teach and research, to try new crazy stuff, and to participate in a lot of training workshops. It’s selfish to keep all that new knowledge for myself, or only publish or present it in places inaccessible to the general public.

So here I am. Sharing. I’m going to talk about whatever I’m reading, or writing, or teaching, or thinking about that pertains to any of the above three. And I’m going to imagine that my audience is anyone from new teachers to experienced teachers looking for inspiration. I’m going to try to add to the conversation. I’m not saying anything here I talk about will be ground-breaking or amazing. I’m not trying to pretend that I’m *the* expert here. But I have some expertise, and I have some knowledge, and I have some experience, and maybe that will help someone else.

I will also probably do some techie stuff, because at my heart I’m a computer person (if you hadn’t figured that out from the subject line).

But anyhoo. Here goes nothing! Welcome to my blog!

-Dr. B (a.k.a. die kleine rote Tomate)

Blog posts for PD

Making sure I don’t lose this so I’m posting it here:

A list of helpful blog posts, compiled by Meredith White (https://twitter.com/PRHSspanish/status/1021076081393262593  )

Mindset and Feeling Overwhelmed:

Don’t Get It Twisted

The Power of Pause

Highlight Reel or Highlight Real?

Comparison: Challenging Tool or Thief of Joy?

Can It Wait?

Taking Back Sunday

 

Goals and Planning:

Proficiency Has Made Me a Better Teacher

Technology Doesn’t Create Learning; It Captures It

Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation In The L2 Class: Is There Balance?

But first, let me take a selfie…

‘Tis The Season

New Year’s Revolutions

 

Professional Development:

High Tide, Low Tide: The Ebb and Flow of Professional Development

ePortfolios on Canvas

So.. what have you been up to this summer?

Me? I’ve been reworking the curriculum for the first two semesters of German to include multiple portfolio assignments that students will curate into an ePortfolio with reflective statements on Canvas.

Why?

Well… Great question! So there’s been a lot of research done on ways to foster deep learning (which is not, Deep Learning, the AI thingy, which I just accidentally learned by signing up for the wrong workshop… oh, dear). One of the things we’re struggling with both inside our classes and in the larger world as a whole is this misunderstanding that language learning is 1) just about memorization, 2) can’t promote critical thinking, and 3) progresses linearly and evenly in a way that can be easily assessed and tracked. I’m trying to combat these misconceptions both to give students more agency in their language learning experience but also to manage their expectations and help them understand their role in the course.

Revamping the Methods Course

Every language instructor who teaches at the college level has been through it. The “Methods” Course. Usually a one-semester immersion in everything your professors think you need to know about teaching another language.

These courses typically use one of the same five standard textbooks, or they use one similar to those from an author they know personally, and the structure of the course is usually pretty much the same. First you start with a history of language teaching through the ages. You spend a little time learning different teaching methods that have been popular in the past which are no longer so ubiquitous, such as the Audio Lingual Method, or the Silent Way, or Suggestopedia, or something else, which, when taken to extremes (as is usually the case when explained by someone who does not use that method), appears equally ridiculous and ineffective to new teachers. All of these are to demonstrate that whatever method the instructor is currently using is far superior to these past methods, etc. etc. Then the course usually moves on to breaking up how to teach Listening, Reading, Writing, Speaking, Grammar using the preferred method, and maybe a little Culture is squeezed in there as a Very Important Afterthought. The graduate students are usually filmed teaching and this video is dissected by the instructor, often in front of the class. There is an assignment to write a Teaching Philosophy, and usually some sort of research report or presentation on a topic of interest.

I’ve been teaching this course off and on at the University of Kentucky since 2010 (I usually switch off with a colleague every two years or so), and I’ve also been a TA for this course twice when I was a grad student at UCLA. What I’ve learned from my own experience and the experience of my colleagues is that despite the material for this course being pretty much second nature for those of us who teach it, this is a very difficult course to teach.

Why? Great question. I’ve discussed this many times with colleagues inside and outside of academia and here are the things we’ve put together so far:

die kleine rote Tomate

Ok, so first, what’s up with that name?

The year was 1994. I was big into second-hand flannel, Anne Rice, Smashing Pumpkins and NIN, playing the viola, and of course all things German.

Me being emo in a New Orleans cemetery, 1994

I’d been taking German since 1990, and I’d already participated in one GAPP exchange, but high school was really where it started to click.

In 1994, our high school hosted about 10 German students from our exchange school in Cologne (Köln), Germany, the Kaiserin-Auguste Schule. I hosted one young lady, Tatti, and my best friend hosted her best friend, Tini, so the four of us became even closer than one might perhaps expect from a normal exchange. Gossiping about your classmates in a language they can’t understand is great motivation to improve your language skills, let me tell ya. Petty, but total truth.

I was pushing and pushing myself with my language production, and no matter how ridiculous the things I was saying sounded, I enjoyed laughing at myself and my mistakes, and kept on trying. And I said some pretty ridiculous stuff. I kept our guests in stitches fairly regularly.

Then one day, after the group had made an excursion to the beach or hiking or something else outdoorsy, I walked up to one of the very sunburned German students and said, “Du bist so rot wie eine Tomate.” (You’re as red as a tomato.)

Their eyes got big and their mouths dropped open and loud exclamations of surprise could be heard from the entire group. The sunburned one opened his mouth and almost shouted, “Brenna!! That was a perfect sentence!!! That’s the first thing you’ve ever said right completely in German!!”

I was a little taken aback by their enthusiasm, but my success was celebrated the rest of the day and on into the week, with each student passing on the news to the next, “Did you hear? Brenna said something right in German!!”

This incident also earned me the nickname die kleine rote Tomate (the little red tomato), since I also had a whopping mass of red hair (and still do, though decidedly less of it). I embraced this moniker, as well as the designation of person-who-once-got-something-right-in-German. And I vowed to be person-who-often-got-multiple-things-right-in-German. Which took some effort and a few years, but I finally got there.

All this is to say: you are going to say some pretty ridiculous things before you get to that point that a perfectly crafted sentence falls from your mouth without any effort or preparation. Don’t be afraid to be ridiculous. That’s how you learn. Laugh at your ridiculousness and celebrate your fails as well as your victories.

And get yourself some people to gossip with in the language you’re learning. That’s golden.

Question for the audience: What was *your* moment that really stuck out as an important turning point in your language learning journey? You can leave a comment or send me an email (brennabyrd@uky.edu). I’d love to hear it, and I’d love to share it with my students if you don’t mind.

Till next time,