Making Connections

I started teaching in 1995. Things looked the same as my student days. I stood
in front and imparted my knowledge. They accepted the information readily,
and later restated it to me in the form of an assessment. But then everything
changed. Students no longer needed me for information; they could find it
themselves. What I deemed as important no longer seemed all that important.
The 21st century arrived and it was time to adapt.
Every teacher has to arrive at his or her own definition of 21st century learning
and what that looks like in their classroom. For me it took designing my first online
course to see that I could move out of the 20th century and provide my students
with better learning opportunities. When I was making changes, one word kept
coming back to mind: connections. I had to help my students make
connections with the language, the people who speak the language, the
places where the language is spoken and the importance of learning a second
language. (ACTFL, 2016) I took a hard look at what we were spending our class
time doing and discovered that we were spending the too much time learning
about the language, not using the language. The students were connected to
their textbook, not learning, not understanding and not Spanish. (Tucker, 2013)
I knew that to make these important connections, I had to find more time in my
classes. First, I flipped my classroom. Because teaching a concept live takes a
large chunk of time, this instantly freed up time to engage. (Tucker, 2013) By
creating teaching videos, I gained valuable time in my classroom. I also reaped
various unforeseen benefits from flipping. In the past, absentees had to be
individually taught missed concepts. Now they wouldnt miss a thing. Also I
found I would use videos in different levels as review. If you want to learn more
about flipping, check out Jonathan Bergman and Aaron Sams book Flipping
Your Classroom.
The newfound time in my classroom could now be used to continue my quest to
make connections. Next, I needed to implement authentic resources in my
classroom. An authentic resource is one that is designed for native speakers of
a language, not for language learners. (Hamed Al Azri,, Hilal Al-Rashdi, 2014 )
I would use these resources to reinforce vocabulary and grammar concepts,
but they also could provide excellent opportunities to hear Spanish spoken by
native Spanish speakers. For years I let my textbook dictate what I did and how I

did it. I let the textbook provide for my classroom and it left all of us wanting for
more. I started developing a Professional Learning Network on Twitter to find
authentic resources, and I found myself surrounded by teachers attempting to
do the same thing. These teachers were sharing ideas, resources, triumphs and
failures. I found a treasure trove of teachers that blog their lessons and ideas,
and I went to work. I could take their ideas and adjust them to work for my
classroom. The unexpected benefit of this was that, as I became more
connected to other teachers, my teaching became more connected for my
students.
If you want to start making connections for your students, you first need to
connect yourself to your subject matter. Here are some suggestions:

Find out if there is a Twitter chat for your subject. Read this article from ISTE
to see if there is something that works for your subject matter.
Follow some blogs. Chances are you will discover some of the people on
Twitter who also blog.
Can you live without your textbook? Textbooks are stagnant and dont
change as quickly as the world does. Check out Matt Millers Ditch That
Textbook for some great ideas.
Get to some conferences. Budgets are tight for professional
development, so you may have to get creative for funding for this. But it is
worth it!

Making changes is not easy; actually it is hard. If you are comfortable in your
teaching, force yourself to get uncomfortable. Pick one or two units, topics or
activities and bring them into the 21st century. Things will go well, and things will
go wrong, but you wont regret moving forward.

Works Cited
21st Century Skills Mat, (n.d.) Retrieved April 1, 2016 from
https://www.actfl.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/21stCenturySkillsMap/p21_worldlanguages
map.pdf

Hamed Al Azri,, R., & Hilal Al-Rashdi, M. (2014). The Effect of Using Authentic Materials in
Teaching. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SCIENTIFIC & TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH, 3(10),
249-254. Retrieved April 20, 2016, from http://www.ijstr.org/final-print/oct2014/The-EffectOf-Using-Authentic-Materials-In-Teaching.pdf
Tucker, C. (2013, March). The Basics of Blended Instruction. Retrieved April 24, 2016, from
http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/mar13/vol70/num06/TheBasics-of-Blended-Instruction.aspx