The world is not enough
Time in class is not enough.
Extra classes are not enough.
Edmodo updates straight to their phones are not enough.
Exciting topics are not enough.
Contextual activities are not enough.
Steady input is not enough.
These kids just won’t do their work.
Or they won’t turn it in.
Hard to tell which sometimes.
So what do I do? Do I dumb it back down to translation vocab quizzes & grammar lessons? Do I fall back on those cushy, cushy worksheets I’ve amassed over the years? I think I hear them calling me…
But no. My next step is feedback.
Perhaps they don’t see the relevance of their journals because I respond to their journals a week after I assign them. I must get to what they’re conveying quicker and make a real conversation of it!
Also, I must arrange more one-on-one time. If this means taking the extra enrichment time to let 10 kids run wild while I walk 1 through a paragraph, so be it. Perhaps I can get away with one-on-two time, provided the twos are selected carefully. Perhaps I will need to make two-by-two seating arrangements at our trapezoid tables.
Of course I know about stations, and have had a fair amount of success with them in the past. I just think it’s really unfair that I have to be able to triple plan when I’m working so hard to SINGLE plan things like the Afrolatinos unit.
And small groups are really not enough for some of these kids I have falling behind. They need me there…at least until I can find them some kind of magic feather. I can’t group the needy ones together because they become mobius strips of distraction, and I can’t separate them, because the greater the distance between me and them, the less work gets done–even when I lay out what they have to do & how much time they have to do it!
Yes, yes, perhaps I am not clear enough & need more sentence starters for these journals I want them to write with this time in class & limitless reminders. Perhaps I need a rubric for every journal topic. They are, after all, only in Spanish 2, and did not have to do all this in Spanish 1, before I knew any language acquisition theory or anything.
Will feedback be enough?
Will one-on-one time be enough?
Will more structure be enough?
And will there be enough hours in the day to pull all that off?
