MIWLA Connect

I was first introduced to the Zumba Fitness Program on the Princess Cruise we took to the Panama Canal.  There was a free Zumba class every morning we were at sea.  Since this was a 15 day cruise with six stops, we were sailing a lot.  Up at 7:00 AM every morning, breakfast at 7:30 AM, Zumba at 8:30 AM, before the tropical sun got blistering hot.  The leader was a young woman from Chile named Bernie (Bernadina?  Bernarda?  Like Bernarda Alba?!!!!  Let's just keep it at Bernie.), who spoke English with a British accent and a British wit.  She had previously lost a lot of weight and showed us the "little bit" of a spare tire she had yet to lose.  Puleeze!  But I ended up liking her very much.

So, for 45 minutes every morning, we would move and dance.  And sweat!  I ended up chatting with a lot of other people on the ship--"Oh, you're in the Zumba class!  Isn't it fun?  Are you going tomorrow?  Where are you from?"  Some of these people were also in the Line Dancing class every afternoon (which is American culture, but I'm not sure if a detailed description belongs in this blog).    When I weighed myself when I got home, I had LOST three pounds on the cruise.  I ate moderately on the cruise but did not totally pig out.

I got so obsessed with the program that I bought the basic Zumba set.. It contained four CDs and the Zumba training sticks, which are a cross between light weights and maracas.  I followed the CD and learned the steps--merengue, salsa, cumbia, calypso, quebradita and more.  Skinny b*****s with rippled ab pacs teach you the steps on three levels.  I'm not super coordinated, but I can at least follow with moderate success.

Then, after you learn the steps, you meet Beto, the creator of the program.  He does have an amazing body, but you can tell that he's really into himself and that he's made an awful lot of money off of suckers like me who are following this program. (I also wondered how many of the instructors were sleeping or had slept with him, but that's the little devil talking!)   I did the 20 minute program for several weeks before advancing to the 45 and 50 minute routines.

So, why am I writing this on a language teaching blog.  Simple--the teacher in me still looks at how anything can be used  

in the classroom.  While I was messing with the DVD, I switched the language of instruction to Spanish.  The Spanish, though voiced over (and at times the instructors look like characters in a badly dubbed foreign film) is simple and very easy to understand.  They use the tú commands in Spanish over and over.  Commands in Spanish are so hard to teach, but hearing them over and over could make a positive impact with all the comprehensible input the students could hear.  They could participate in the Zumba class (with an alternate assignment for those who choose not to participate for some reason).  Both girls and guys will be looking at some very attractive people.   Bodily motion linked with language is a very brain friendly activity.  Zumba is also great for teaching and reinforcing the parts of the body--I did not know what el eje was until I became a Zumba freak!  

So, this whole experience has been very positive for me.  I'm two sizes smaller.  I don't huff and puff when I go up the stairs,  I climbed the Castillo San Felipe de Barajas in Cartagena, Colombia, and lived to tell about it.  I found something that was fun, educational and brought out another aspect of my love of Spanish.  And--shh, no one else knows--the advanced Zumba set is being delivered next week.  

We had a wonderful experience last night before the Tigers' game (which we won, 4-2!).  Vicente's Cuban Restaurant is located on Library Street in Downtown Detroit, about four blocks from Comerica Park.  

My husband and I had eaten there once before, last September after a Michigan State football game that was played in neighboring Ford Field. Vicente's serves a mixture of Cuban and Spanish food, and I was eager to try it out.  We had tapas which were very good, and I left pleasantly full but not over stuffed.  

Yesterday I was in need of a good, full meal, so I wanted a salad.  (Any meal with salad is healthy, no?)  I ordered a pear salad that was made up of greens, sauteed pears soaked in sambuca, dried cherries and Manchego cheese.  Yum yum yum!  Who writes these menus?  Everything sounded so good!  I ordered ropa vieja as my entree--no, it is not old clothes!  Ropa vieja is a Cuban dish of shredded beef with tomatoes, spices, onions--it was not overly spicy, but extremely flavorful.  I am also very picky about my meat--I do not like even one speck of fat or gristle. The meat was very tender and there wasn't any fat in the whole dish.  The ropa vieja was accompanied by rice, black beans and fried sweet plantains.The portion was huge and I could not finish it.  I was sad not to be able to take it home, because we were going to the ball game.

My husband Pete ordered two tapas--one beef and one seafood.  Both contained mushrooms and other vegetables, and were served in very generous sized portions.  Accompanied by fresh bread, these two tapas were enough to fill my husband up!

My friend Marge ordered a gratinado, which came in a beautiful puff pastry box.  It contained seafood in a delicate cream sauce.  I tasted it and it was out of this world!  This is something you could not make at home unless you were an expert chef.  Marge's husband Jim, an all-American boy, ordered the sirloin steak, which he enjoyed.  Both Marge and Jim's dinners were accompanied by crisp fresh sauteed vegetables.

Vicente's has a website and their full menu is posted.  It's a bit pricey, but you get what you pay for and you could even split one of their meals.  Two tapas, as I said above, is more than enough--I would suggest three tapas for a meal for two people.   I highly recommend Vicente's and look forward to eating there again.  Who knows?  I may show up for their salsa nights one weekend!

One technological twist of this exhibit is the use of cell phones as a personal listening device to hear the narration of several pieces.  When you got to a point in the exhibit where there was a narration of the piece, you could dial a number on your personal cell phone.  You would hear an explanation by one or more of the exhibit's curators.  This saves having to pay extra for a listening device provided by the museum.  If you did not have a cell phone, the museum provided a printed version of the narration.

We found another technological innovation in the Rivera Court.  By presenting your driver's license and a credit card at the nearby information desk, you received an iBook with the entire DIA explanation of the Rivera Court Murals.  There is no charge on your credit card; they just want to make sure that you return the iBook.  My husband and I played with it for an hour and we learned more about the murals and how to use the iBook..  Very rewarding!

By the way, if you are a Francophile, French teacher or just love Paris, see the exhibit in the Albert and Peggy LaSalle Gallery of André Kertész' s photos of Paris in the 1920's.  Dream of sitting in a Paris café and viewing the shadow of the Eiffel Tower in the mist before all the streets were paved.

During the Central States 2011 Conference, one of the "buzz" phrases that I heard several times was, "A teacher should be teaching in the target language 90% of the time."  Well, I am going to play devil's advocate and take several points of view.  You, Reader, can decide where you are on the scale and then comment as you wish.

OK, so it used to be that teachers should speak only the target language in the classroom--100% of the time.  That may be a bit impractical, so we need a little wiggle room.  But isn't that a cop out?  Who set the 90% rule?  Why not 95%?  Or 80%?  Or any other number, for that matter?  Where's the research, as an administrator would ask when a teacher asks for a practical solution to a problem that probably would work, but doesn't have the numbers for backing up the claim.

A teacher has to begin, in the first level, by teaching expressions in the target language that students need every day to communicate requests and necessities.  I had many of these on charts taped to my closet in my classroom, where students could easily see them.  Students were instructed in ENGLISH on the first day of class in September that they were to use these terms or I would not be speaking to them at all.  Believe it or not (and I'm sure you can) I had students ask to use the restroom in English even at the end of the semester.  They wouldn't understand why I wouldn't speak to them until a classmate would say, "En español, ¡estúpido!  (In Spanish, you idiot!)  

This use of the target language must continue throughout the course of the students' study.  This is easy to do if you are the only teacher in the department that teaches your language.  Piece of cake!  But what if you have a department of 10 members, with varying proficiency levels?  How easy is it to get a group of language teachers to agree?  It's not!  Additionally, some teachers will pretend to agree with the group "consensus" and then go back to their own classroom and do their thing.  Believe me, I've seen it happen.

Let's go back to the 90% figure.  Personally, I don't care what the number is.  My point is that a number can be dangerous if it gets into the hands of a person who doesn't fully understand what's going on.  I'm talking about administrators who love numbers.  If an administrator estimates that a teacher is not using the target language 90% of the time in the classroom, could he or she write a bad evaluation of the teacher?  Could the teacher be fired?  When I was teaching Spanish 4, I used Spanish almost exclusively.  I was evaluated by an administrator who told me, at the end of her observation, that she would have to come back to observe again because she didn't understand anything that was going on in the class because it was all in Spanish.  Sheesh, I couldn't win!  

I am a student teacher supervisor now, and I personally mentored 10 student teachers when I had my own classroom.  I got sick of hearing, "Would you please stop talking?", "Write this on the board." and "Where's your homework?"  I reamed those young people out on the first day.  I encouraged them to go at least 60% in the target language in beginning levels, because I figured that it was more than half and it was a compromise on ACTFL's magic number of 90% for a beginning teacher.  This figure was increased in the upper levels.

But I used a lot of Spanish when I taught.  I used many gestures and spoke slowly most of the time.  If this brought me to the point of exhaustion, I would use English.  If I wanted the students to move quickly, or If I was particularly annoyed, my emotions would take over and take me into English.  If you look at some of the comments on the Internet about me, they will say that I spoke a lot of Spanish and so did the kids.  (They will also make comments about my awful dancing and my love of food!)  I don't think I could ever come up with a percent of the time I spoke Spanish in the classroom.  I will only say that the classes I taught were called "Spanish 1, 2, 3, 4 or AP", and if the students wanted to speak English, they should have gone upstairs, where English was taught.  

Let's just say that a teacher should use the target language whenever possible in the classroom.  Ninety percent is a good goal, but I don't want any target language police in my classroom.  In any case, there is absolutely no excuse in a language class to hear a world language teacher say "Who's got number one?"

On Thursday I crashed the Delegate Assembly, and I'm glad I did.  I spent a very pleasant three hours with Anne Violin-Wigent, our MIWLA President, and Angelika Kraemer, our Second Vice-President.  Also sitting with us was a lovely young Spanish teacher from Plymouth, Erin Parris, who had also come to the meeting just to see what it was about.  Keep an eye on her, people, I see a potential leader and committee chair for the MIWLA.  The workshop was conducted by Todd Bowen from Illinois and included several activities for advocating world languages.  Also speaking were Steve Brock, CSC Board Chair; Lisa Lilley, 2010 ACTFL Teacher of the Year, and Brett Lovejoy, Marty Abbott and Howard Berman from ACTFL.  (No, I did not partake in the traditional Ice Cream Break; I was a good girl!)

Friday's activities began with the Keynote Speech, by Yong Zhao.  I thought the speech was very good, but there were times when he pushed the envelope on education.  Maybe that's a good thing.  One thing I did understand from his speech--he stated, as he discussed America's standing in world education (and I got this off his blog) "I worry that in the push for accountability we lose what has made America’s higher education system the best in the world: diversity, autonomy, and academic freedom."  I kept thinking "Blueberry Story" throughout the whole speech.  For those who don't know what that is, Google it.  Every teacher should know about it!  

As I was exiting the hall after the keynote, a young Latino man came up to me and introduced himself as Alejandro.  I immediately looked at his name tag and recognized him as Alejandro Diaz-Andrade, who had presented a session at CSC 2010 in Minneapolis called "The Calendar Method", a system for teaching different tenses at the same time. He introduced me to his co-presenter and wife, Ginna Shultz.   I thought the session was brilliant, so I blogged about it when I talked about last year's CSC Conference.  Alejandro had read the blog--it seems that some of his students found it on the Internet (I guess students Google their teachers all the time!) and showed it to Alejandro!  Alejandro, thank you for your kind words.   I know that your session was well-attended this year, and may you and Gina keep up the good work!

Best session of CSC this year?  Well, I have two, and they were the last two sessions on Saturday.  I'm so glad I stayed!  I attended Anne Violin-Wigent's session on French bread (she is a baker's daughter!) in Michigan and learned so much.  In Michigan, Anne presented the session in English, so that all teachers could enjoy and learn about how French bread is made and what to look for in a good (and bad) loaf of French bread.  In Indianapolis, Anne, a native of a small town in the French Alps, presented in French.  Now, I have never taught French, but it is my minor (though I am not highly qualified to teach it anymore).  I was able to follow the session sans probleme, and I enjoyed it so much more!  Anne's enthusiasm for her culture is contagious.  Anne, you rocked it and hit it out of the park!   

Speaking of rock stars, Laura Terrill is one when it comes to World Languages.  I attended Laura's session on grading entitled "Does It Count?" during the last block of the conference.  Laura is one of those presenters who makes your brain hurt from thinking so hard.  You question everything you do.  You don't always agree with her, but it challenges you to make what you do in your classroom even better.  I am delighted that Laura is coming to the MIWLA Conference in October and will present a keynote speech and a workshop.

Indianapolis is a wonderful city.  The Hyatt is a centrally located hotel with a nice health club (which I made time to use) and great service and food.  Get the business plan if you go--your breakfast and Internet are included.  There are a lot of things to do downtown and many shops and restaurants.  We had two great dinners at the Weber Grill and Harry and Izzy's before coming home on Sunday.  (No, I did not have dessert at Palomino's with Marge and Suzie!)

So, will I see you in Milwaukee next year?

Check to see if your cable service offers a channel called Wealth TV.  There are fascinating programs that have to do with culture, history, and a fabulous lifestyle.  I saw a program on the Alhambra on Christmas Eve as I was preparing my share of the Christmas feast for our family.  Today there was a program on Easter Island.  Tomorrow I'm recording a program on Shopping in Argentina and another on the Louvre, just in case I'm not home to see them.  I have seen programs on the Roman Empire.  Keep surfing and you'll find programs from all over the world.

A great way to travel and fantasize a life of luxury from your couch!

This territory's official language is Llanito, a mixture of English and Spanish.

I panic.  I've neve heard of Llanito.  It really means flat, or flat plane.  I take an educated guess:  Since England owns Gibraltar and Spain borders Gibraltar, I say "What is Gibraltar?"  She shoots, she scores!  But she doesn't win any money.

Llanito seems like a British version of the Spanglish spoken in the Americas.  I searched on Wikipedia and found this link.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Llanito

Check it out!  It sounds like fun!

http://www.juneauempire.com/stories/062608/foo_296013124.shtml

Dear Colleagues:

 

 

Below is the link for a petition which was started in support of our colleagues and their programs. I am asking that you assist us by singing the electronic petition, and forwarding it to other colleagues or other listserves.

 

 

Question:  What do you call a person who speaks three languages?  Answer:  Trilingual.

Question:  What do you call a person who speaks two languages?  Answer:  Bilingual.

Question:  And what do you call a person who speaks only one language?  Answer:  An American.

I hate this joke.  It's not funny.  In fact, it kind of pisses me off.  Sure, many Americans only speak English (and it's American English and its many varieties, not the Queen's English).  But it's not like we're not trying.  Many more schools and states are now requiring language study to graduate from high school, and more colleges and universities want to see a world language study on a student's transcript before acceptance th their institution.  ACTFL is very involved in training language teachers to make language study accessible for all students.  I could sit and defend our beloved country all day...

But it hit me between the eyes last night as I was watching the Beyoncé special on television.  Beyoncé recently completed a world tour that covered six continents. (The poor penguins in Antarctica didn't get to see her!)  No matter where she performed, be it Rotterdam, Barcelona, Abu Dhabi, Beijing or New Jersey, the members of the audience were able to sing her songs when she pointed the microphone at them.  People from all over the world (with maybe the exception of the President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (or Mahmoud I'm a Nut Job, as Jay Leno says) love American Pop music.  They download it in vast numbers, listen to it over and over, follow along with English lyrics from the Internet, find a translation in their own language, and sing it until they have it memorized.  Not only does this help their English speaking and pronunciation skills, it gives these students from all over the world and intimate insight to our pop culture.

Music is a powerful tool in language learning.  It stimulates many different parts of the brain that normal speech does not touch. There are many ways to use music in the World Language Classroom.  Play classical or folk music while your students are working.  Find a song that is simple enough for your students to sing.  If you feel a song is too difficult, teach them the vocabulary.  Do a cloze activity where students fill in the blanks or choose from a multiple choice or matching list.

Find a song that emphasizes a grammar point that you are teaching.  Give the students extra points for singing the song in front of the class either solo or in a small group.  Tell the students that if all the students in the class sing, they'll get an extra point or two on the next quiz--they will police each other!  Teach the students some simple dance steps, push the desks aside and let them dance to break up the class period a bit!  I'm sure that many other teachers have some ideas on using music in the language classroom and may like to leave a comment at the end of this blog.

And then maybe we can stop telling that stupid joke!