Apr 19 2020 29 mins
Your lesson, should you choose to accept it, is to teach students how to use a foreign language using authentic resources and relevant units, with the goal of making proficient speakers. The special agent assigned to help you with this task is Rebecca Blouwolff of Wellesley Middle School in Wellesley, Massachusetts.
Rebecca and I share a similar background: we both started our careers intending to teach Social Studies, and we both found ourselves teaching French instead! To make a long story short: in my second year of teaching I was given a contract that included teaching French because I was the most qualified of the unqualified, and then I fell in love with it. (If you’re interested in the much longer version of this story, I spoke about my journey to becoming a language teacher on Kris Broholm’s Actual Fluency podcast.) Along with going back to school to become qualified for real, I was able to become better by finding role models online who represented the kind of language teacher that I aspired to be, and Rebecca Blouwolff is definitely one of them. And I’m not the only one who thinks she is amazing; the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (or ACTFL) named her the 2020 National Language Teacher of the Year!
In this episode we discuss:
- Rebecca’s transformation to a proficiency based teaching model
- Why she chooses to use authentic resources
- How she’s still learning how to let go of accuracy in favor of proficiency
- How to help parents understand new ways of language learning
- Her favourite unit: “Un Meilleur moi” (“A Better me”)
- Why she’s so generous with her resources
- Her experience (so far) with distance learning
- What she looks forward to for when she’s back in the classroom
- Advice for beginning teachers
- Areas she’d like to improve in
- Rebecca’s inspirations: Lisa Shepard, Amy Lenord, Natalia DeLatt, Creative Language Class, We Teach Languages, ACTFL books, Paul Sandrock, Leslie Grahn
- How listeners can contact Rebecca through Twitter or her Blog
Lesson: Impossible’s Website: www.lessonimpossible.com
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If you have suggestions for a teacher who would make an inspiring Lesson: Impossible guest, please email me at [email protected]