Hi! It’s a million degrees and humid here in Minnesota and summer break is finally around the corner. Maybe you’re already on break and wishing you had some great professional development to look forward to. If that’s you, read on!

It’s been a loooooong year, so of course this is coming to you very last-minute. I’m offering 2 PD courses this summer. One is a 3-session workshop with the wonderful Michaela McCaughey, starting next Thursday, June 15. These workshops will start with Michaela and I sharing units from our heritage classes, followed by opportunities to work collaboratively on new units.

The other course runs Monday, June 12 – Wednesday, August 9, with no class the week of July 3-8. Monday classes will be synchronous workshops while Wednesdays will be drop-in office hours.

You can check out these and other great Heritage language PD sessions here. Dont waste time – registeation closed this weekend and classes start next week already! Let me know if you have any questions, and have a lovely summer!

Hello again, dear readers! I hope you are all hanging onto some shred of paz interior as we race towards winter break! I’m counting down the days until my 2 weeks of blissful, family-filled freedom, but wanted to share some of my students’ incredible work with you, and a bit on how we got here.

Last week, with permission from a student, I shared a letter she wrote on my personal Facebook timeline. Friends like you commented, asking to share it with their own students, and Alex graciously agreed. But before I share it here, let me back up just a bit and share some context.

For the past several years, I’ve worked hard to incorporate ALL of my students’ languages in our work together. One year, this included a student who spoke Hmong at home. Often, it means encouraging students to access any indigenous languages they have exposure to, even if only in bits and pieces. Of course, I also encourage students to use English where it feels authentic, while always pushing them to use their Spanish as much as they can. This year, it feels like my efforts are finally paying off. Students have hit a groove where they are communicating through translanguaging in class in ways similar to the way they do outside of class. It’s beautiful!

I recently met Dr. Itzel Reyes in a wonderful professional development course led by the phenomenal J. Eik Diggs and offered through the University of Wisconsin – Whitewater Heritage Language Education program. (If you haven’t checked out their incredible offering of PD for Heritage Language educators, I highly recommend them!) Itzel shared with us a piece she wrote about Spanglish, and I used a portion of the piece – document here – with my students.

While reading My Dearest Spanglish, I asked my students to make some annotations, in line with a school-wide initiative this year focused on annotating nonfiction texts. With the chaos of this almost-break, World Cup season, a few students missed the directions and instead wrote their own “My dearest Spanglish” letters. The unexpected letters are stunning and absolutely made my day. They speak to the importance of providing students with the space to grow their heritage language, and to build confidence in using their entire linguistic repertoire. They reminded me why I do what I do. To a friend and colleague, I simply said, “And this is why I don’t quit.”

Please take a few moments to read these powerful letters, linked and pictured below, by my students Alexandra Reyes Gavilán and Kimberly Chino Cruz. I am beyond thrilled that they have agreed to share their writing with you all, and moreover, that they had the courage to include their names to publicly claim their beautiful words.

Working with young people can be challenging, especially this time of year, but these letters really reminded me what it’s all about. My students are speaking their minds and sharing their truths within the community we have built together. And now, here, a couple of them are bravely sharing their words with you. I will gladly pass along any feedback or words of encouragement to them, so please drop your thoughts in the comments. And stay tuned, as I’ll hopefully be back soon with more student brilliance to share; we are wrapping up a poetry identity text writing unit in the next couple weeks!

I’m tired. I’m not gonna sugar coat it. Teaching through a pandemic has exacerbated an already tenuous situation. Teaching has always been stressful. It has always been exhausting. It’s always been too much work for too little pay, constantly being pulled in too many directions, being expected to fill too many roles, and never feeling like you can catch a break.

I taught from home for more than a year. It was really tough. My favorite part of my job, the spontaneous, genuine interactions with young people, all but disappeared overnight. They were replaced with soaring anxiety, overwhelming feelings of despair, frustration, deep sadness, and a lot of tears. (My own children fared only marginally better, but there were definitely a lot of tears and frustrations all around.)

Now that I’ve been back teaching in person for a full semester, I find that I’m still struggling, and I get really frustrated with myself about that. I tell myself I should be doing better: our school is taking better covid precautions than many, I’m teaching classes that I enjoy, and my students are so much fun. Instead, I find myself dreading going to work each day. What is wrong with me, I wonder?

What is wrong with me? Well, today, a mere two miles from my home, two students were shot outside their school. One of those kids did not survive. Many are directly impacted by this senseless and tragic violence, many more feel the effects less intensely.

Yet, at the same time as we reel, as we mourn, as we stare into space in a shocked daze, there are adults crowding school board meetings around the country fighting against covid-19 prevention measures. Parents fight to keep school buildings open, no matter the cost to teachers and students alike, because “kids need to be in school.” But they refuse to do anything to make schools safe for students and educators.

The only thing that’s changed in all of this is me. Maybe I’m at my breaking point. Maybe I’ve reached my limit. When I got word of the shooting outside a nearby school, my thoughts went first to my own kids. They were safe. This time. And so was I. But I’m not sure I can continue to sacrifice my own mental and physical health to do the job I love. I don’t know if I even want to.

Hello, incredible teachers. It’s been an awfully long time and I’m really sorry. I’ve been feeling a lot of guilt over not making the time to update my blog. Getting back in the classroom with students this year has been lovely! And difficult. Exhausting. Overwhelming. And so much more.

I decided it’s time to let go of the guilt. This blog is mine, it’s something I enjoy, and I won’t enjoy it if I feel bad when life gets in the way. I hope to someday find time to share some of what I learned in my first semester back in person. For now, I’m going to be satisfied with sharing my outline for the upcoming 3rd Quarter.

We’re starting on Monday with literary analysis. In consultation with my fantastic new colleague, we decided to start our analysis unit by watching some short films. Her students have been begging to watch a movie, so this seemed like a decent compromise. (SPOILER ALERT: I also decided our final timed essay will be a character or theme analysis of Encanto, so they’ll get to watch a movie in the end.)

We’ll start our unit analyzing a character from a common text. After plenty of practice with that, we’ll move on to writing theme statements and then analyzing the development of the theme in a text. Most of our texts (short films and short stories) will be anchor texts that we all read/watch together. For the theme essay, students will choose from a selection of short stories and read in small groups.

Check out my unit outline here and let me know if you have questions or suggestions.

Thanks for your patience with me. If you’re new here, know that sometimes I write 3 new posts in a week, and sometimes I go 6+ months without a peep. I hope you are all managing as well as possible in these impossible circumstances. If you’re struggling, know that you are NOT alone (see these responses on Twitter for proof). Continue to extend yourself grace and patience and love, and let go of everything you can.

Hello again and happy 2021-22 school year! For me, school started five weeks ago and this year so much has changed.

One big (happy) change is that we’re back to in-person school for all students! Our school is requiring masks for all and so far the kids are mostly really great about it. We’re also strongly encouraging vaccination and even had a vaccine clinic at school for students, families and the broader community over the summer. Today we learned that 85% of students our fully vaccinated! I’m so happy to see students again and have those casual interactions that we lost when we were online. Building relationships with my students has gone back to being easy and natural. I just feel connected to them as real people, something that was a struggle when I never saw their faces.

Another huge change is that we’ve moved to a block schedule. Instead of 50-minite classes usually 4 days per week, we now see our students for 100 minutes 2 times per week. I was excited about this change because of how well it works with writing workshop, but I admit I was also nervous. An hour and 40 minutes is a LONG time. Would students be bored? Fall asleep?

So far, class has honestly still felt fairly quick each day. Students seem engaged as we move through different activities. I plan a brief movement break in the middle of each class and make sure to break up the time into smaller tasks. No one has fallen asleep and overall students have seemed to enjoy class. The longer time has left me feeling more relaxed. I’m not trying to squeeze things into a tight time frame anymore. So my assessment after 5 weeks is that I really like our block schedule.

The last and maybe biggest change of all is that I’m also teaching 2 English language arts classes this year! This has long been a dream of mine, but that doesn’t mean I feel confident or even qualified. Still, it’s an exciting opportunity, both for me and for my department. It allowed us to hire a full-time Spanish teacher instead of again trying to find an amazing candidate to teach part time, which has failed year after year.

I know it’s been a really long time since I last posted. I promise I have more posts in the works and they are coming SOON. In the meantime, I hope your year is off to a great start!

I know I don’t have to tell you that this year is hard. Whether you are in person, fully remote, or the dreadful hybrid, teaching this year is extremely challenging and often feels downright impossible.

I know we teachers are all doing our best to check in with our students and make sure they are ok. But do you know what your students are really dealing with right now? The 2 days before Thanksgiving, I asked all of my students, including my AP Spanish Lit class, to complete a reflection that I titled “el peso de la vida.” I explained that this time of year especially people are so focused on gratitude but rarely recognize that sometimes the weight of everything we are facing makes it hard to feel truly grateful. I also reminded them that sometimes talking to someone or just writing about your struggles can help lift some of that weight off of you.

So I asked them simply: ¿Qué peso cargas hoy? And then I gave them time to write in their digital notebooks. I did this last year for the first time and the results were shocking, depressing, and so enlightening. But this year, without ever meeting my students in person, I wasn’t sure if any of them would feel comfortable sharing with me. I was okay with that. I figured even if it was just 7 minutes of silence, of not having to try to focus on a lesson, that would be worth it.

But, as is often the case, my students surprised me. I’d estimate that about 3/4 of my students wrote a reflection (well above my usual quick write completion rate) and many of them shared similar feelings: loneliness, anxiety, depression, stress, fear. They shared that they want to do better in school, they know that they should complete their work, but they just don’t have the energy or the motivation to do it. They shared the struggle to focus on school while also caring for and supporting younger siblings with school. They are worried about their parents who are essential workers, they are worried about their parents who are out of work, they are worried about bills and the holidays and about letting their parents down.

Some students shared deeply personal traumas and it was honestly so hard to read. I could relate to almost every single one of them, and that made me ache so much for my students. Two students said they preferred not to share their struggles, and many others simply did not complete the reflection. Several of my students have been ill with COVID-19 during the school year. Many are dealing with the death of family members.

“I feel like my head is going to explode, like the world expects something from me and I don’t even know what I’m doing in the first place.”

Of course I already knew in general terms that my students, like all of us, we under immense amounts of stress and dealing with all sorts of personal struggles. Asking them to share those struggles with me was an opportunity to get a glimpse into the whole of what they are facing.

“Me pesa que todos mis father figures se han ido de mi vida: mi papa, mi abuelo, mi tío, mi otro tío y mi ex padrastro de 10 años. Me pesan mas cosas pero se me acabo el tiempo.”

Some stories involve personal traumas too horrific to share. Others are more mundane. Those I’ve shared here are among the ones that I referred to our school social workers. I hope they continue to share with me or begin working with one of our amazing (and extremely overworked) counselors, but of course the choice is theirs, and it’s a hard step to take for many.

“Honestamente no sé como puedo explicar como me siento. No me siento ni feliz pero ni triste. No es un sentimiento de sentirse como cualquier otro día, para más rápido la verdad no siento nada. La verdad no sé si es normal sentirse así, como si nada te alegrara pero no te sientes ni triste ni enojado.”

Several students wrote some variation of this sentence: I want to go back to being the person I was before. For some that meant being a better student, for others it meant being more open and outgoing, and for others and meant not living with so much fear and anxiety about the future. It hurt so much to read this, knowing that they are having a natural reaction to such an extremely abnormal situation. It also hurt because I feel it, too. I want to have the energy I had before. The joy for teaching I felt before. Devouring books like I did before.

I have 122 sophomores and 22 seniors. I read close to 100 reflections and wrote a response to each and every one. It took so much time, and so much emotional energy and stamina. I finished today, a full 10 days after they were turned in. During those 10 days, I took 5 days off for Thanksgiving (only completing lesson plans for the following Monday). Each time I thought about reading these reflections during my prep time, I had to resist the urge to just do something else. They can feel so overwhelming when reading more than a few at a time. I didn’t do any grading in these 10 days. It took so much willpower to just sit down to read and respond to them. But when I did, my heart swelled in pride for these amazing, wonderful, beautiful young people. Because even as their stories broke my heart, their resilience, the fact that they show up for online class every day and try their best to do what I ask, makes me feel so lucky to know them.

My students are really great. I know this even though I can’t see them and have never met them in person. Your students are great, too. And behind that smile, or mask, or black box on your screen, they are going through a lot. Even though it is really hard to read/hear it, it might be a good idea to ask what weight they are carrying today. While you’re at it, tell me: what weight are YOU carrying today?