PD
April 23, 2024
O say, can you see, by 2024’s bright sunlight? O’er the schoolyard’s chain link fence, we watch another school day unfurl. Saintly teachers never glare, lest they hurt children’s delicate sensitivities. Bubbles don’t burst in the air, because everyone is too busy evaluating opportunities to use AI. Friends, buckle up for a Sara-Elizabeth post on […]
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August 7, 2023
This is the journey of teachers – another set of graduates moved on, another crop of kindergarteners coming in, another summer gone, another year just around the bend. Perhaps you’ve moved schools, or grades, or classrooms. Perhaps you’re making a really big change like when I was first asked to teach preschoolers when all of […]
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July 1, 2023
Hey dear readers, a quick post to invite you to connect with me in an all-new way! Many of you are already following the Musicuentos public page on Facebook. But now, by joining my private Facebook group especially for Spanish teachers, you’ll see… constructive questions & tips new songs blog posts from the vault suggested […]
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November 20, 2018
From the “icky” test to the Supreme Court: Reflections on teachers sharing (& selling) ideas
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Last year, a fellow homeschool parent sent me a file she’d downloaded from an early childhood education resource site. “I’m sure it’s fine, because it was free,” she wrote. But this email came to me after probably years of disquiet and investigation into what exactly is okay for teachers to use and reproduce in the […]
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October 4, 2018
One way or another, you’ve probably experienced a conference. But have you experienced an unconference? As far as I can tell, the words “unconference” and “edcamp” refer to the same structure of professional development, with “edcamp” being specific to the education sector. The “edcamp” model has been taking hold for several years and the definition tells us […]
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September 12, 2018
I could be wrong, but it seems to me that teacher conferences are in trouble, and have been for a while. As I looked ahead to rejoining the conference scene, earlier this year I asked the language teacher community on Twitter to think with me about problems and solutions with conferences. I hope what we […]
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September 7, 2018
I don’t get to see you at ACTFL this year. For the first time since my first ACTFL in San Antonio (has it been that long?!), I won’t be there. And that is okay. Not only is it okay, it’s the right thing for me. For one thing, a few years ago I made a […]
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May 29, 2018
Is it the year of the podcast? Back when I was asking for your help in identifying the best new blogs for 2018, Maris thought so. I certainly see a lot more buzz around about them- a whole lot more than I did in 2014. Spoiler alert: 2014 was not the year of the podcast. More […]
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May 25, 2018
There is a new song on my radio, and we’re playing it on Alexa about twelve times a day lately. It’s provocatively called “Dream Small.” It’s a Christian song, so the overall message will not resonate with some of you, but I want to extrapolate, if I may, and say something that’s been on my […]
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January 18, 2018
I just opened Bloglovin’ for the first time in… well, long enough that I had to log in. Can you believe it? I had to log in. Honestly, I did almost immediately find a really cool idea: Dom posted about using news headlines as a vocabulary gap activity and it struck me as a great hook […]
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April 11, 2017
A Musicuentos storytelling video
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Over the last few years I’ve been asked several times if I have a video of storytelling in class. I never got around to making one, until now, when my good friend Wendy Farabaugh went solo and obliged the Ohio Foreign Language Association with a reprise of our 2016 session on storytelling. This year the […]
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January 11, 2017
Are you a bad teacher or a good teacher? Will anything about your teaching change in 2017? I’m pretty sure at every Camp Musicuentos, I’ve had a crier. At least one person has broken down in tears. At least one person has talked about applying to work at Starbucks. Teachers are feeling crushed under the […]
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