A birthday gift from me to you!

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”

“I do not study to know more but rather to ignore less.”

“If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door.” (Thanks to @SpanishNYC for sharing this quote on Twitter!)

My two main rules for my classroom, “No laziness” and “No meanness” (Thanks to Dave Burgess for this second one!).

“Think outside the box”—Riffing on this design on Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/pin/84583299222661292/

“Keep calm and speak Spanish”

On Student Evaluations

As I anxiously anticipate beginning my new job as a high school Spanish teacher, I’ve spent the last few days truly beginning to plan in earnest for the upcoming year. As I’ve done so, I’ve been not only trawling my PLN’s tweets on Twitter and looking at the wonderful resources beginning to appear in the #wldropbox, but also looking back on my own teaching at UC Davis to consider which practices I wish to continue and which I feel I would be better off leaving behind.

One such practice involves a polarizing aspect of teaching at the university level that seems to be slowly but surely trickling down to secondary and even primary schools: the Dread Pirate Roberts Student Evaluation. Now, it may just be me, but my experience with evaluations my first few classes led me to react something like this:

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¡Bienvenidos!

Hola and hello! Welcome to my new blog, Español in the South!

My name is Caleb, and I teach Spanish. After spending two great years in California for grad school, my wife and I are packing up and moving back home to Georgia, where I will be teaching at a private high school. Though I have been teaching English as a second language and Spanish classes in different capacities part-time for about five years, this will be my very first full-time gig! I am very excited and hope to chronicle my teaching and learning experiences here on this blog.

As a new teacher, I feel it is all the more important to reflect upon and receive feedback on my teaching and learning. Here I plan to not only document the positive things that go on in my class but also the questions I have for you (my PLN!) and the struggles I face.

As I am a high school Spanish teacher, the posts here will be most often about secondary language classes. My particular professional interests include Spanish maintenance in the U.S., heritage language education, adult community language endeavors, linguistic human rights and language policy, and technology in the language classroom.  However, some of the discussions I look forward to having with you may apply to teachers more broadly, and I will likely post general and Spanish resources (in addition to reflections and experiences) here, on Twitter (@cbloodworth), and on Pinterest (@caleb).

Thanks for stopping by, and look for more posts over the next few weeks as I prepare to begin my teaching.

Muchos saludos,
Caleb