First, Updates

¡Hola! To say “it’s been a while” would be an understatement, but it really has. So much has happened since my last post in May. First, in June I took a group of students to Costa Rica, and it was a truly incredible experience.

Three days after we got back, I accepted a new position at a new school, and that has been an incredible experience, too. I am no longer a department of one, but rather a member of a team, and boy has that been an adjustment! I love that I have two other Spanish teachers (plus a French teacher) with whom to chat and commiserate and share ideas, but I’ll be honest – there was a definite period of adjustment in which I worried whether I was doing my students and my department justice and meeting expectations with what I was teaching. It turns out I was stressing over very little, and things are going very well now! Of course, I love only having 2 preps each day, and I love that I get to teach beginners in level 1 for the excitement, and intermediates in level 3 for the growing depth and capability that I see at this level. I lamented some of my favorite units and novels from level 2 that I don’t get to teach this year, but overall I’m looking at way more positives than negatives. I’m so sure that this change will be part of many future blog posts as it is definitely the area where most of my thoughts are focused and growth is coming from right now.

Finally, this summer my family got some big news – my husband and I are expecting our first child in March and we couldn’t be more excited.

With all that, this fall has been hectic to say the least, and to be honest, I was really just keeping my head above water for quite some time. It’s only in the last week or so that I have felt like I even had anything to add to all the great language teaching voices out there, nevermind anything worthwhile. I haven’t attended a #langchat (or tweeted at all) this school year so far – at the beginning of the year, I was just too tired on Thursday evenings to even think about staying awake and alert until 9 PM (seriously? Yes.). And since then, I just can’t seem to remember which Thursdays are the 1st and 3rd of the month and so I usually don’t realize that I missed one until I look at Twitter the next day. Oops. I’m going to try to do better with that over the next few months. After mid-March all bets are off.

There you have it. I haven’t fallen off the face of the earth or given up language teaching (though to be honest, it is always a consideration during DEVOLSON and this year was no exception!) or anything like that. Hopefully now that things are finally starting to go smoothly, I’ll be able to share with you about what I’m doing in my classroom more frequently. Who knows, maybe with a little luck you’ll even see something helpful to you.

It’s late to say this, but I hope everyone has had an excellent start to the school year, and I really hope everyone is looking at a restful, relaxing, and fun-filled winter break!