My first summer out of college, I was basically willing to take any teaching job anyone would give me. I interviewed a number of times, and I apparently did not make a good first impression, because I didn't get any callbacks.
I finally called my university to get some tips on interviewing and what I might be doing wrong. I continued applying, and found a job opening at a middle school. At this point, it was late July. They were desperate, and so was I. So I took the job.
I spent the year there, but found a job closer to home for my second year. I was told that the school used something called TPRS (Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling) to teach students. It was apparently something about story-telling to teach the language. Their curriculum was based on it. So I requested to go to a conference so I could know how to do it.
Mind. Blown.
I had just spent a year working with students, seeing some find success and some struggle to learn a language. I tried to be really creative and make the class fun, but it was tough! We were just working through a textbook, and it was often boring. Some of the kids were able to pick up the language while some really struggled. As I sat through the conference, I just kept thinking, "Man, this would be so great for some of my students that had a hard time."
I was so excited. I couldn't believe that I had never seen anything about this before. Unfortunately, the next time that I spoke with my principal, I found out that the high school had actually JUST gotten rid of their TPRS curriculum. Apparently they were finding that their students weren't getting enough grammar instruction or were struggling with grammar-something along those lines.
So. I was back to a textbook. But this time I knew there was something better, I just couldn't use it!
I spent the next four years attempting to align the Realidades curriculum with all of the methods I had learned. I also read more and more about TPRS, and started to read about this concept called CI (comprehensible input). It basically argued that the best way for students to learn was to hear, read, and understand the language little by little, as opposed to memorizing the grammar rules. So instead of teaching that my students how to conjugate the verb tener (to have), I would tell them a story about a boy who "has" a cat. I would ask them questions using that word "has" over and over, all in the target language, until they began to internalize that the word "tiene" means s/he has. But this concept wasn't limited to storytelling. There were a whole host of different ways I could bring comprehensible language to my students.
I discovered readers, and their potential in the classroom. I was able to purchase a class set of Brandon Brown Quiere un Perro for my students, and go through that book with them. The first time I heard a kid say, "No quiere su mama ve" (his attempt at "he doesn't want his mom to see him") I was awestruck. (Keep in mind, this was middle school level 1 Spanish). I couldn't believe what they were able to produce! It was incredible! Was it broken? Imperfect? Yup. BUT. Were they getting a message across in another language? Yes.
I also had the chance a few years in to attend the IFLT conference over the summer, and that further encouraged my love of all things CI. I literally got a selfie with Sr. Wooly. It was a nerdy language teacher's dream. I had signed up at one level above very beginner, and was very encouraged by feedback from my peers that I may have even been a little more advanced than that. It was a reminder of how awesome CI was, and I left with a few more skills and ideas than before.
There were some great things about my job, but my fourth year, my schedule changed so that I had 16 different classes, and only an hour for both my lunch and prep altogether. It was horrible. I would have 8 classes one day, and then 8 different classes the next. We ran on an A day, B day schedule. So on A days, Spanish was your 5th hour class. On B days, it was gym or art or whatever. In addition to my insane schedule, I had a really tough group of kids that I couldn't seem to get through to.
Mid-year, I was decided. I was not doing this again next year. I would do literally anything else. Barista at Starbucks? Sure. I would probably enjoy that more than what I was currently experiencing. (If I had actually started working at Starbucks and got to experience the joys of the service industry, would I have stuck with that statement? Who knows.)
This tiny little private school contacted me, asking if I would consider their open position. They had found my resume on a job posting website. I gently turned them down at first, citing my concern about low pay compared to public school. They responded with a competitive salary to my current job. Hmm...
I came in for an interview, and it ended up being a good fit. Now, I was the only Spanish teacher at a high school. My administration was pretty open to my ideas about the job, so I got to choose what curriculum to use in my classroom. SOMOS was a no brainer. Martina Bex was already my idol at this point.
And...here we are. Three years later, starting my fourth year as a high school teacher, fourth year of full on CI. It has definitely been the most rewarding part of my teaching career. My current seniors are in AP, and I have had the privilege of teaching them since they were little freshmen who knew next to nothing about Spanish. I've got to watch both their vocabulary and their confidence in the language grow. They amaze me all the time.
The high expectations I've learned to have for students has forced me to push for higher standards for myself.
And it only gets better from here.