BER Musings

Day three of this BER road trip. I'm at the point where I never look at my notes and sometimes forget that I haven't told this group something important - just like I used to do with period 5 when I taught the same thing 5 times a day. "Did I forget to tell you guys about this?"

I've now been pretty much all over the country making presentations and it's fascinating! Some observations:

1. Within 5 seconds of meeting another foreign language teacher I feel at home. No matter what, who, or where we teach there is an immediate common ground.

2. Someone in every single group writes on their evaluation that the room was too cold.

3. In every single group there is at least one teacher that is extraordinary. Today it was the young woman who is teaching Japanese 1,2 and 3 in the same class, also teaches ESL, and had a long coversation with me after the seminar to brainstorm ways she can help a very struggling student in Japanese 2. In Tulsa it was the Spanish teacher who left her job in Missouri and moved back home to help her sick grandmother. Grandma is doing better but she, meanwhile, is adjusting to a new teaching job gotten mid-year, is a newlywed, works part time at another job, and is taking night classes at college. In Lansing it was the teacher who has two very short flipper type arms but was such an engaging, upbeat personality that I totally did not see her disability. Tomorrow I'm told there will be two people with hearing losses who will be accompanied by a sign language interpreter. Every group has a number of heroes - women who are juggling a career with several little children at home. It's very humbling!

4. In every single group there is someone who simply doesn't get it. In Phoenix I had a wonderful conversation with a woman prior to the seminar. Seems she grew up in Northbrook and went to GBN. We "bonded." She later asked a couple of questions during the seminar that made me think she wasn't getting it and, when I saw her evaluation, I knew for sure that she hadn't gotten it. She rated me low because I used English for everything, that I seemed to "teach Spanish through English". What she didn't get was that my examples are in English so that the teachers of many different languges can all understand the activities - but of course everything is all done in the target language in the classroom. Duh!

5. There is always a "nitpicker". Today a French teacher was upset that I had an incorrect accent on a French poem. I acknowledged that I knew it was incorrect and would fix it for next year....but she couldn't let it go!

6. I'm embarrased to admit the next thing, but there is always a native speaking Spanish teacher who engages me in an involved conversation about methodology or something in Spanish. After years of teaching level 1 and having little opportunity for travel, I admit that I'm not as fluent as I was 20 years ago. Fortunately, I usually manage to fake it pretty well with these españoles.

7. The more expensive the hotel, the more annoying it is. Tonight I'm in a Holiday Inn - not expensive - BUT the internet is free, there is an adequate desk, there is plenty of lighting and a nice easy chair in the room. The fancy Wyndham in Phoenix had extremely uncomfortable Asian style furniture, wall sconces that gave almost no light, NO desk, and charged $10 a day for the internet.

8. This final observation is nice. Every group laughs at the appropriate times in my presentation. No one has yet laughed at something that was not funny. Every group claps when I am finished. Yeah!

Tomorrow my supervisor is attending my seminar. He is a delightful, extremely supportive man and much like my first "boss", Dorothy Bishop, who had the uncanny ability to suggest an improvement while making me feel like a million bucks. Nonetheless, I still feel like an non-tenured new teacher when someone is in the back of the room taking notes! Some day maybe I'll feel "grown up" and get over such insecurities :-)