Building relationships in a CI classroom is the first job of the school year - in this episode of Comprehend THIS!, we get into how you do it fast with 150 new students. Learn practical ways to build trust in a comprehensible input classroom before you teach a single unit. If your class went quiet in week two, this one is for you.

Late August is the stranger phase: a roster of names, no rapport, and a pacing guide that doesn't care. Pamela Parks joins me as always - former professional translator, now world language teacher, and the person most likely to ask what your inspiring advice actually looks like on a Tuesday. Guest host Tracey Grogan-Collazos piloted CI at her high school in 2017, has taught French and Spanish for over twenty years, and is currently obsessed with building community in the target language. We cover learning 150 names without losing your mind, why relationship-building in a CI classroom is load-bearing rather than decorative, how to build trust across five periods without it turning into a performance, and the moves that quietly damaged trust before anyone noticed the cost.

Not sure where your comprehensible input practice actually stands right now? Take the CI Proficiency Quiz and find out in a few minutes: https://imim.us/ciquiz

Tired of building every lesson from scratch? The CI Survival Kit gives you ready-to-teach monthly lessons for Levels 1 through 3 in Spanish, French, and German: https://imim.us/kit

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Pamela Parks - https://imim.us/pamela

Tracey Grogan-Collazos

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Good morning and welcome to episode 39.

We're almost done with season number 4.

Can you believe it?

And it's late August and you have 150

people in your room,

actually it's 200 for me, who

do not know you, do not trust you and are

definitely not about to guess out loud in

a language they've had for 11 days.

You've got a curriculum map, a seating

chart and a folder of names

you already are mispronouncing.

What you do not have is a single

relationship with any one of them.

That's the actual starting condition.

Not students arrive eager to acquire.

Strangers, a room full

of them, 5 times a day.

I'm joined by Pamela Parks who spent

years as a professional

translator getting paid

for precision and now spends her days

trying to be understood

by a sophomore who didn't

sleep.

And Tracy Garan-Cayatos, who piloted CI

at her high school way

back in 2017, has been

teaching French and Spanish for over 20

years and still, her

words, looks forward to going

to work.

We're going to interrogate that today.

So today, how you build, trust, fast, at

scale, without it

turning into a performance you

can't sustain past October.

What actually works, what quietly

backfires and what Tracy

does in the first week before

she teaches anything at all.

Stick around, somebody's about to say the

thing you did wrong last year.

We'll be right back

after these short messages.

Is it already August?

Again?

And you're supposed to have a fresh,

engaging, life-changing

plan for the first week?

Cute.

Here's the deal.

Back to school boot

camp is your secret weapon.

10 short, pre-recorded lessons you can

watch in pajamas while

hiding from your admin or

during that mysterious

planning period we keep hearing about.

You walk away with strategies, plans, and

actual confidence, not

just a Pinterest board

full of guilt.

Access it all for a full year.

Go to mm.us slash boot camp and get

yourself together

before the kids show up.

Welcome to Comprehend This, real talk for

real language teachers.

No drills, no dry theory, just honest

stories, practical ideas,

and a reminder you're not

alone in the CI trenches.

Let's dive in.

And good morning, Pamela and Tracy.

How's everybody doing today?

Good morning.

Good morning.

Tracy, I'm so excited to

have another double dipper here.

We teach French and Spanish.

But you're a quadruple dipper.

Yeah.

But what are your four languages?

I'm over my head.

Excuse me?

What are your four languages, Pamela?

I teach French, Spanish, and Japanese.

And then for the last three years now,

they've crammed extra

students in my classes because

they said we need

another English teacher.

Okay.

Well, I'm getting whiplash so badly.

Well, I'm going to say we already talked

about that your school isn't like you.

They got you in the back 40.

I think they like me.

They just have too much confidence in me.

But it's your fault for

getting too many credentials.

I think so.

Yeah.

The overachiever.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm credentialed in English as well, but

I'm not teaching it yet.

So who knows?

We'll keep it quiet.

No jinxing.

No jinxing.

Yeah.

I am not credentialed in English.

Thank you very much.

I've got German, Spanish,

and English language learners.

That's enough.

That sounds wonderful.

I love it.

I don't do Germans.

That sounds great.

Well, I wish I did German.

I'm going to teach it at my school.

So I never get to use

German, but it's still fun.

It's still fun.

So today we're talking

about building relationships.

Pamela, you're not back

to school yet, are you?

No.

We start all of our week long PD tomorrow

and then our school starts.

Tracy, did you start already?

We have started.

We started on the 13th.

So it's been a week and a half.

Wow.

Where are you, Tracy?

I'm in Burbank.

I'm in Burbank.

The high school in Burbank.

Okay.

Yeah.

Wow.

The 13th.

We did the 12th.

Ours with kids came back on the 12th.

So I got one more day on her.

But yeah, we're starting technically our

third calendar week of school.

It's not the...

And I only see my kids

every other day for a block.

So I hate that, but it is what it is.

And they hate it too because they're

like, "We got really

involved in the language and

then all of a sudden we

miss a day and then we gotta...

It's like starting back over again to get

a little mini review every day.

Being houses forgetting curve.

Yep.

Yep.

Yep.

So is all of California that early?

Mostly.

I think so.

And we're late considering California.

We're late.

Yeah.

Because most of the schools started here

around me a week before us.

Wow.

They usually start...

Teachers come back the first Monday of

August and then usually

by the end of that first

week, whether it be Wednesday or

Thursday, kids are back.

Wow.

So yeah.

We start early.

And it's really bad because August is the

hottest month in

where the northern part of

California and all the kids are coming

back and all the sport

practices are really early

in the morning.

Because you can't do them at night.

Because in the afternoon it's 104 and

they can't run football

drills at 104 in pads.

It's just not gonna happen.

So they must be super tired by the time

they get to you because

they've already had a foot

workout.

Well, it really works

well for the ADHD kids.

Yeah.

It might be good to get them exhausted

before they come into class.

And I know I keep doing this and I don't

mean to associate kids

with dogs, but they say

a tired dog's a good dog

and a tired kid's a good kid.

Not like tired as in

physical tired, not sleepy tired.

Sleepy tired, there's a difference there

between being sleepy and

being physically tired because

you just did a giant workout.

Yeah.

So today we're talking about building

relationships and

Pamela pointed out earlier.

This is one of my big things anyway,

doing relationships.

But pointed out that I'm

new to my school this year.

I switched and it's harder because you

wonder if you can build

up a similar relationship

with your kids that you

did at your previous school.

And you can keep that reputation going

like you've done in the past.

And so that was a challenge for me to

make sure, because I knew

none of these kids, it's

not like I had them or their friends have

had me and kind of know what to expect.

They don't.

So it was completely brand new for me.

Brand new, the culture's brand new to me.

The kids were brand new to me.

I would just like the freshmen except the

freshmen at advantage

because they knew each

other.

I had nothing.

So I was building it from ground zero.

How's it going so far?

Is it working?

Yeah, it is working.

And I'll tell you what I've done.

I do every, I only

started maybe five years ago.

And what is really been helpful is I send

out an email before

the, before school starts.

It was a little harder this year because

they don't give us our

class list to like right

before.

So I usually have a weekend or something

that I can give them,

you know, time to be able

to read their emails.

But I send it out to the parents, an

email, a different email

than I send to the kids.

And I let them kind of know this is going

to be a wacky class.

Get ready for it, you know.

Put your big boy britches on, you know,

it's going to be different.

We're going to be doing singing.

I said you're never going to meet a

teacher who sings and

dances as badly as I do.

You know, I just kind of front load the

craziness a little bit.

And then we talked that I give candy for

reading emails to get them

to train to read the email.

So I told them I go by profe.

So I said if you can come and tell me

that as you walk in the

classroom, when you come

in, you're going to get a sucker.

So that's how I know they read it.

And some kids would actually reply.

And then parents, I said, please tell me

something funny about

your child that they wouldn't

mind you sharing, but at the same time

would kind of be, oh my

gosh, don't say that kind

of embarrassing kind of thing to say too.

So I get those things and I use it

against my students later on.

Like I had a kid a couple of years ago,

parents said he's terrified of spiders.

And she goes, you've got to pick on him

about that because he's a

grown boy and he shouldn't

be.

He's broken two of my vacuums trying to

kill spiders in there.

So I would put a little fake spiders

around my room a lot of times.

And you just hear him scream or I put a

random spider slide in my slide deck.

So I just switch slides.

There'd be a giant spider up there.

And the parents on the last day of school

said, you know, it was graduation day for

our eighth graders.

They came and said, oh my gosh, he said

this was the best school year ever.

He goes, he was loving

all the spider tricks.

He didn't know where a

spider was coming from.

And she goes, that was the best thing.

So, you know, it didn't

work to desensitize him.

No, no.

On our class trip, we went we go to Six

Flags, which is about,

you know, an hour and a half

away on a bus and they get

a professional bus on there.

Well, he you can't use the

bathroom while the bus is moving.

That's state law for kids.

They got to be in their seats.

So when the bus stops,

they can go into the bathroom.

Well, he went to the bathroom.

So I had, you know, you go to Halloween,

you buy all those

little tiny spider rings.

They had all those little spider rings.

So when he was in the bathroom, I went to

his backpack and I

dumped a whole bunch of

them in there.

And the kids said the kids said when he

was waiting in line at

one of the rides, he was

getting trying to get a snack out of his

bag and scream bloody murder in the line.

That is funny.

That's good relationship

building to be able to do that.

And parents helped me with that by

telling me something

about their kid that is kind

of funny and a little bit

embarrassing, but not mean.

You know, I don't want

to know the mean stuff.

I want to know the stuff that is kind of

funny and interesting

and I can use it because I

might go something else comes up and I

go, oh, I'll use that for a story.

And it might not come up till October,

but I've stored it away

in my back of my head.

So that's what's really great about that.

So yes, I do build relationships and I

will say that and being yourself

unashamedly, unembarrassingly

yourself really helps because I'm goofy.

No matter, you know, I'm goofy period.

I make bad jokes.

I warned them about my bad jokes.

They seem to laugh at them.

So I'm just unashamedly

myself right away on first day.

I sing really badly.

They know it.

They hear it.

And I think that helps alleviate because

we did our first

reflection this week about about

how Spanish class went.

And I had a lot of kids

say they felt welcomed.

Oh, that's.

And so that was a really nice, sweet

thing because I didn't go

out of my way to welcome

anybody, you know, that kind of thing.

But they felt welcome.

They could be themselves and they didn't.

They just knew it was going to be a

different type of a class.

So so it was it was a pretty good start.

Pretty good start.

How about you, Tracy?

I was it's funny as you were thinking

about saying, you know, you're

unashamedly yourself.

I'm a little bit shy about revealing

little parts of me, but

I am very happy to share.

I'm very proud of the fact that I ride a

tractor and saw your

email right attractor.

Do you have a little farm?

There is a hole in your grass.

It's a big red barn.

Yeah. Yeah.

So my grandparents were from Iowa and

they had a property that

the family used to spend

time on around Yosemite area.

And we still maintain it and love it and

use it as our escape.

And it's four acres

and it has to be mowed.

We have an orchard and everything else.

And so I usually in the first two weeks,

I make sure I show

myself on the tractor, you

know, with my big old hat

and this and that, you know.

And I do have kids that come from

families who have

experienced rural life and they're

always super shocked, right, that their

Spanish or French teacher

is out there riding a tractor

and mowing the orchard and the whole bit.

So I use it when we do kind of a guessing

game about the

teacher, you know, the four

corners.

And I just, we have some fun with that.

And, you know, what thing do you think I

actually do ride on?

You know, is it rollercoasters?

Is it a tractor?

Is it a horse?

Is it a whatever?

And then, you know, the big reveal is

like me on the tractor.

And that's always a fun one.

So, but yeah, they're

always very similar.

You could top that if

you learned to ride a bull.

Oh my gosh.

Okay.

That might be out of my wheelhouse.

Yes, that's a great idea though.

Don't make it a bull.

Just make it a cow.

Just a calm cow that you go.

That's a really good idea.

That would be super fun.

Yeah.

So that helps.

We also talk about my favorite drink and

their favorite drink.

And I am a hot chocolate

person through and through.

So when I'm stressed

out, that's my go-to drink.

I said, if you see me with hot cocoa, you

know I'm having a hard day.

Because I drink it when it's hot.

I drink it when it's cold.

It doesn't matter.

It's me and the cocoa.

You know, we're just going

to barely make it through.

And we do that all in Spanish.

And I support it with English

translations underneath.

And I go nice and

slow and point and pause.

And then we talk about

what their favorite drink is.

And I love to hear the

different flavors they like.

It's so interesting.

There are so many flavors.

Like when I was younger, I feel like we

did not have access to all Ube.

Oh no.

You know, like they love an Ube.

Something or another.

And it's fabulous.

I love it.

So we get to talk about all

the flavors that they like.

That is really fun for me.

And I think it's fun for them.

Especially because I do have students who

bring their favorite

drink to class with them.

You can see that they've swung through

the Starbucks or they

have their favorite juice.

We have a supermarket

really close to our school.

And so students will go to the

supermarket before school.

And then bring it whatever it is they

want to sip on into class.

We have a Dutch brose across the street.

Oh yeah.

Perfect.

It's great.

And you know, it's funny because I read

your email about the beverages.

And I'm going to forget her name.

So I apologize.

She's a Parisian.

She teaches French.

She's in the United States in Denver.

I met her many times.

I even took French class with her.

And I can't remember her name.

I'm horrible things.

I really apologize.

Is it Sabrina?

Yes Sabrina.

Thank you.

Sabrina.

It's Sabrina.

Thank you.

Sabrina.

She at Ajaan.

I watched her, observed her,

and she did the beverage thing.

And I thought.

You can't get tea from her.

This is boring.

How are you?

What are you going to

do with what they do?

Because like half my kids say water.

And then I watched what she did with it.

And she went on for like three classes of

an hour and a half on what they drink.

And I thought, OK, this is genius.

I'm going to bring it

back to my classroom.

And I did.

And I had just what I thought I would.

Water.

Water.

Water.

And I'm like.

So I would say, "Qué aborido."

How boring.

That water is your favorite thing.

And then I said.

I would say in Spanish, I say, "Oh, do

you like the dirty water?

Do you like bottled water?

Or do you like fufu water with gas?"

You know?

So and the dirty waters of water out of

the faucet, I always say.

They're like, "That's not dirty water."

I go, "Go up and look up that faucet and

see what that faucet looks like."

And so we would go and

some kids would probably say,

"Oh, aguasútía.

Aguasútía.

Dirty water.

Dirty water."

But we had fun with that kind of a thing.

So you can.

Something so boring and so easy as what

your favorite drink is.

I stretched that out

for a lot longer time.

So thank you, Sabrina.

Because that was an idea that I never

ever thought of before.

You know, before when I used to ask.

This is my level threes too.

I would ask.

And before I would ask

that my question was.

What made you special?

What's your special

little talent or something?

I didn't get as much play out of that one

as I did with the drinking.

With the water?

Yeah, because I had one kid

who goes, "It's Dr. Pepper,

but I'm not allowed to have Dr. Pepper.

I'm not allowed to have soda."

And he goes, "But I

have one in my backpack.

I sneak it."

So we made it a big secret.

And I go, "If he's like talking class,

do I need to call your

parents about the Dr. Pepper?

Do I need?"

And it just became a class little joke

because he's not allowed to have soda.

And he always brings one to school.

He goes to the closed store and picks up

one and has it in his bag.

And so it was just hilariously funny and

what you can get out of that.

So the beverage thing is a

really, really good thing.

And it breaks down those barriers that

you can get kids to talk about.

Because it's innocuous.

Your drink, you don't have to be

embarrassed about it.

You know, it's nothing.

Nothing.

They drink it right in class anyway.

So it's like it's not that big of a deal,

but you can learn a lot about people.

We had one who said, "I don't know where

you get the pink drink from."

Is it Dutch Bros?

That's Starbucks.

That's Starbucks.

Okay, Starbucks.

So she goes, "Starbucks."

She goes, "Yeah, my dad gets

me a pink drink every day."

I said, "Even on the weekends?"

She goes, "Even on the weekends."

And I said, "How much is it?"

She's like, "It's like seven

or eight dollars each one."

I'm like, "They're here.

It was your college fund."

Because we did the math.

And you're like,

"That's seven days a week."

You're talking, it's almost, you know,

75, 80 bucks a week?

Yeah.

And for--

We talk about like with ice, without ice,

with a straw, without a straw.

And then you can go from that to like

environmental issues about straws.

If you use straws, is it plastic?

Is it paper?

Is it potato straw that's compostable?

They get super into the straws.

I don't know why we

talk about straws a lot.

Oh, and nightmares from the 70s.

They're bringing back

those damn paper straws.

Oh, I hate those.

I hate those.

The texture in your mouth?

The taste in my mouth right now.

Those are my favorite.

Oh, no.

Oh, it's my mouth is all going?

Not only that, they get soggy.

Yeah.

The bottoms get--

I drink my coffee with a paper straw.

You have a paper straw in your coffee?

Yeah, I'm vain about my teeth.

But that's only the talk of that.

I get, I have glass

straws and silicone straws.

Oh, yeah.

Okay, I have metal at home.

Yeah, but metal doesn't

do well with hot drinks.

No, it's not as good.

I burned my mouth.

Yeah, exactly.

Your hot chocolate, you cannot use.

You cannot use a metal straw.

Yeah, only room temperature works.

Oh, yeah, that's the other thing.

You can talk about

hot cold and, you know,

thiebier room

temperature, which is so great.

I don't know.

I feel like there's so

much you can do that.

So it must have come from Sabrina.

I know I put that in

my little thing to you.

I could not remember who my

colleague had learned it from

when we were training in CI,

and it must have been Sabrina.

That's great.

That's right.

I got it from Sabrina.

That was an awesome idea

I've used it ever since.

So what do you do, Pamela?

Well, you know, I always like, I don't

know why they call them

dad jokes when I invented them.

That makes no sense to me.

Yeah, like, I like to get the buy in.

I think we were

talking about this last time.

You know, you have to talk about your

syllabus on the first day.

And I realized I don't want to do that

because that's too dull.

I recorded myself talking about the

syllabus, and I send it home.

And since I CC the parents,

they get the syllabus too.

So now the parents know I'm

weird because when I'm explaining

the syllabus, I'm

explaining I'm eccentric.

I'm a weird lady.

The background of how I

became a teacher is also very weird

because I was a professional translator.

And the reason I became a professional

translator is because

I'm a voracious reader.

And the reason I'm a voracious reader is

because I love comic books.

Okay, so the fact that I worked on 150

cartoons, like immediately

the students are just like,

like, they're like, you're a weird lady.

And I'm like, yes, I'm very weird.

Very eccentric.

Um, yeah, of course, of course.

And, um, the other thing is, um, I've had

kind of a tough life.

I was totally paralyzed 23 years ago, and

I had to learn to walk again.

And then I, a couple of years ago, I

tripped over a student's backpack

because we're a game based classroom.

And so my foot has still hasn't healed

because of the fact that

the nerves haven't regrown

yet in the leg completely.

So immediately I'm telling the kids,

look, learning a language

is not the hardest thing

you will ever do in your life.

And so I think between the two of those

things, the fact that I'm so eccentric,

I'm very eccentric and that I'm like,

like, hey guys, I've

come back from a near death

experience.

You know, the doctors did

not think I would survive.

So, um, I try to get

them on my side that way.

And then of course, once I embraced

comprehensible input, that made the

relationship building

so much easier because, you know, the

students walk in your

door the first day and they're like, Oh,

I'm going to try and

get out of this class

because I heard I have to do

presentations and I'm

so socially awkward.

I don't want to do presentations.

And here we are making up some goofy

story about, um, uh,

purple mouse, trying to find

school supplies and

everyone's just corally repeating.

And then we'll play a

little game with it afterwards.

And like a couple of days there, you

know, I feel like, like,

how long does it take me

to hit my stride is what I'm always

thinking in my head.

You know, how many days is it going to be

before I feel like, Oh

yeah, this feels like

we've been doing it for three years.

And I've only known these

students for three days.

So those are the big things I think.

Oh, and the fact that we play a lot of

games, games always

lower the effective filter.

Yes.

So agreed that that sounds

like you're going to hear it.

Yeah.

And I think just it's so important to

build these relationships

because if you have these

connections, um, then discipline becomes

a lot easier and you can

use the disappointed card.

Yes.

Which is much more

effective than you're in trouble.

Yeah.

And I know Tracy mentioned in her email

and it's something that

I do every day is greet

the kids at the door.

And I even have kids, I'm usually not a

touchy feely kind of person.

I tell you, I, I'm not, but I'm on the

autism spectrum somehow.

Somehow I'm on there.

I don't know where, but I am.

And there's this, I have

these really weird quick quirks.

Um, but touching, I'm not a big touchy

feely kind of person

with strangers, you know,

massages are like the

most terrifying thing to me.

You have a stranger touch

me, those kinds of things.

No, no, no, no.

Thank you.

Um, but I had a kids who volunteer, they

come out, want to fist bump you.

And I'm like, okay, you know, um, but the

greeting them at the

door has been really,

really a great thing for me.

Um, I know that, uh,

some people do passwords.

I don't do the password.

Um, that part, because it, for me, it

slows everything down.

I rather just like make it common about

what clothing they're wearing.

You know, that's a great shirt, good

shoe, something personal.

So I can really build

the relationship there.

And I'm outside the classroom.

So it's not like it's, I have to do

language because I, when

I'm in the classroom, that's

when language happens.

So it's kind of, I'm outside.

So it's kind of like that buffer zone.

So I'm really trying

to connect with them.

Oh, I love that band too.

Or great pair of new

shoes or something like that.

Or, oh my gosh, you dyed your hair today.

It's now purple, pink and blue, you know,

something like that.

So the kids see that I'm noticing them.

They're not just a, a blur coming in.

So I do that, but I do have, like I said,

I do my crazy emails.

I sent them out and my

little secret also for the emails.

I do not speak teenage slang, but I will

type my email out in English.

And then I go to chat GPT and I say, can

you please translate

this into teenage slang?

No cap fam.

And so it's all there.

It's really funny.

Like, like, I know I always put in there,

my end, my Friday is always,

have a good weekend, stay out of trouble.

Right?

Well, one time it translated it to

something about have a good

weekend, whatever it said,

I forgot, but it says, stay out of jail.

I ain't bailing you out.

And it was funny.

And I'll call out a kid, like a kid who's

a little troublemaker.

I'll go and Owen, I'm watching you.

And something, so they go, I got called

out in there, but I

have them sometimes have to

tell me something when they come back in

just that one day a week.

So on Monday, I'm looking for something,

something that was

from the email like me,

what's your favorite animal or what's

your favorite mythical animal?

Or do you prefer unicorns or dragons?

You know, something dumb like that, just

to make sure that they read it.

You sometimes see it on YouTube too.

They go, if you made it this far, put in

the comments, you

know, a dolphin emoji or

a thumbs up emoji or something like that.

So it's same kind of thing to make sure

they got to the end kind of thing.

And then I award with

candy for that type of thing.

But it's really, I find that really fun.

And the kids are like,

oh my God, you're so bad.

It's like, boomer.

I'm not a boomer, but they

call me a boomer anyways.

They call me punk when I do that.

But it's funny because they're laughing

and I know they read it because they're

laughing at me in a good way.

You know, absolutely.

That's a great way to do that.

Let's talk logistics because I find it

very difficult to meet

my students at the door

because I'm changing languages.

So are you meeting your students at the

door or are you

welcoming them when they come in?

I do meet my students

at the door, but I have.

So you know how Scott talks about having

all of his like

expressions and things that he

uses every year and has either in files

or they're already laminated.

So I have whatever my password or my chit

chat is at the door already ready to go.

And I have it at the back of my door.

So my room is set up so I can grab

whatever it is and whatever language.

Also, I have multiple whiteboards.

And so I'll switch like I have a rolling

one that I bought for myself.

It was expensive.

It was like two hundred dollars.

But I have a rolling

whiteboard that I bring out.

And so I'll have one language on the

rolling whiteboard and one language on

the other whiteboard.

And then the whiteboard has two sides.

So I flip the other side if I have a

different level class so that I have

something that I can

use.

And then my other thing that has really

helped me throughout the

years in terms of like,

you know, when I'm circulating and

students are wanting to

know how to say things,

I carry a whiteboard with me.

And you know those little velcro dots?

Right.

I velcroed.

This was my stroke of genius.

I'm sure someone else has thought of it,

but I felt really good about myself.

So I velcroed it to a marker and velcroed

the marker to a whiteboard.

And I was like, yeah,

they're always together.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And the eraser too.

And so when I walk around the room, I can

just give them what they need right away.

And then I use black for Spanish or

French and blue for English.

And so I have a color code.

I do.

I color code them.

So that's great.

And then I would, but I would, so that's

how I do it, but you're right.

It's absolutely difficult.

And I usually, if I'm using slides, I

have, I pull up all

my tabs before school.

I did too.

And they can't slap at me so much because

I've got a million

things open and I'm like,

got to, you know,

have to, because otherwise you lose them

during transition time

or you lose yourself.

During transition time.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I will tell you, yeah, I was going to

say about the slides

and a couple of secrets

I have too that I've done.

One, with the slides, and I know Pamela,

you need to work on this part of it.

I have one tab per prep that I teach.

So I know you do multiple slide decks for

the same class where I

will merge them all into one.

So one slide deck might be

200 slides for the whole week,

but everything's in there.

So I just have to click next.

I don't have to open

up another slide deck.

So that will save you some tabs.

Markers.

But it won't save me time because then

I'm scrolling through it.

And this way everybody gets the same kind

of bones of the TPRS

story and everybody gets the

same art picture to look at.

Well, they do.

They do because it's

all in the same thing.

I guess refresh it.

I go right back to the

start at the next period.

That's all I got to do real quick.

Markers.

You can buy two headed markers.

We'll have two different colors on each

end, but that's for the rich people.

That's true.

Fighting.

That's for the rich people.

The poor people, we take two markers and

we tape them back to back so

that they are opposite ends.

I don't have markers.

I have pins right here.

I didn't think about that.

I got the head when I came back to the head.

So you can go like this and you tape them

back to back like that.

Yeah.

And then you can flip them.

Uh huh.

So that's the secret there.

Well, I'm totally doing that.

Thank you.

And if you have a magnetic whiteboard,

they do have magnetic

markers that will just hang on the

thing.

They have that.

Here's my other secret,

especially with multiple languages.

It's usually multiple levels for me.

Number one, I'll start

neat writing on the board.

Okay.

I'll start neat.

It won't stay that way.

It'll start slanting.

I running out of board space.

So what I do instead is I have one Google

doc per class where that's

where I write all my words on.

I make it 24 size font.

I make it a table.

So it's a two column table.

And I pre color code it.

Now I cannot stand black markers.

They are too hard to erase.

And I need to have my white board white.

So raising it, the

black always leaves marks.

So I don't use black.

I use any color but black.

I do not like black.

And they always buy me black markers.

And I like, here kids, who needs markers

for their white boards?

Because I hate black.

So um.

Send them to me Scott.

Send them to me.

Okay.

So um, I do it color coded.

I like to do blue and orange.

So I have one language

in blue and the other one,

the other language in orange.

And it's pre done.

I don't have to do it.

Set it up.

I set it up beforehand.

I have a template I use every year.

And then, so I had a

Google doc for each class.

And so I could write the words up there.

Pre-write any words.

Like I, when I'm starting off, I always

ask, um, like day one is como estas?

I mean, how old are, how are you?

What's your name?

How old are you?

When is your birthday?

So I have those already pre written.

Because I'm already going to do that.

And then anyone's that come up

afterwards, I write.

But Google added this new thing where you

can keep one doc but

multiple tabs in that doc.

So now I have one doc open, but each of

my classes is a tab.

So I don't have to like, oh my gosh, I

gotta have six tabs open.

So I teach six classes.

I have one tab with all of it.

I just gotta click each one

little, the little part in it.

And that makes it so easy.

So that would work for

multiple languages as well.

Because you already have it pre done.

And instead of having to erase your board

and rewrite your board,

you just click the new

one and it's already done.

Plus, I make this available to my kids.

Not as a vocab list, but if they're

missing a day or they want

to catch some words I wrote,

they can just, I put it up there and it's

a live link to a Google doc.

So it gets updated constantly.

And it's one doc per class per year.

So I'll make a space like on the next day

on Tuesday, I'll make a space.

I'll put the date on the next line and

then I'll start fresh.

So that they, if they want to look at it,

most kids don't look at it,

but the kids who can't take a picture of

that, no, I've got it already for you.

It's already linked.

Nope.

Yeah, it's already linked

for you if you really need it.

So that's a beautiful idea.

I'm in the Pacific Northwest.

We are not a Google school because we

have too many Microsoft parents.

Well, before I did

that, I used Microsoft Word.

Yeah.

So you can use Microsoft

Word to do the same thing.

You just have to deal with a

lot more buttons at the top.

Because Microsoft is way too busy.

But that's what I used

to use before Google Docs,

because I've been doing this since way

before Google Docs was a thing.

Yeah.

So it's the same

thing, same kind of idea,

but you can type it up there and have it

on your screen and be there.

So that's my logistics.

Because it's really

important for me to be at that door.

It really is.

And no matter what's happening, I got to

make sure I'm at the door.

Like if a kid goes, "I need

to talk to you for a second."

I go, "Let's take it to the door.

Let's take it to the door.

I got to be at the door."

That's true.

And I do, as the students walk in, I'm

greeting them by name.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. I try.

Oh, that's what we should talk about.

Okay.

I have 200 kids, and it's going to take

me a long time to get to know.

I said, "If I know your name before

December, it's because

you've been in trouble."

Okay.

So I used to be like that.

And I was just doing the back to school

party with Parfait de

Montparnelle out of Canada.

And this was my speech for that

conference, was my

first couple years teaching,

I was exactly like that.

I think there's something

about us linguistic nerds,

where names and faces

just don't come easy to us.

Okay.

We're just not a market.

No, I'm really good with names.

Are you?

And I'm definitely a linguistic nerd.

Excellent.

Excellent.

Because like all my colleagues at school,

they're all the same as you, Scott.

They're like, "I don't know

anyone's name by December."

And the first couple of years I was

full-time teaching, I was like,

if I had twins, oh my God,

how can I tell them apart?

And it's like May, and I'm finally just

now telling them apart.

And then suddenly I had this epiphany.

It was like, "I'm a memory expert.

What the heck is my problem?"

So I started doing everything I do to

learn a language, to

learn the students' names.

So the very first thing, I know

handwriting is important.

Handwriting aids memory in a way that

typewriting does not.

When I get that student list, and I just

got my student list on Friday,

when I get my student list, I sit down

and I copy over all

their names, handwriting.

And then I leave space next to it,

because I'm going to

write notes next to it.

Then I'm doing all my memory techniques.

I know that making weird

connections is crucial to memory.

You have to, you're going to

hear some weird foreign word.

It's not a cognate.

How are you going to relate that back to

stuff you already know?

So you've got to make some weird little

hopscotch jump to get to that word.

Okay.

And so I'm looking at their name and I'm

trying to make a connection.

I've got, oh my God, Jackson must be the

popular name this year.

I've got like four Jacksons.

Okay.

So I'm looking at

them and I'm like, okay.

His eyebrows look like

he's got little Jacks in them.

Just whatever weird connection, he's got

a square jaw, like

somebody has jacked up his jaw.

So whatever weird connection I can make,

that's helping me

remember the students' names.

So it's all the memory tricks, every

single memory trick we do

to learn a word we can learn

on our students' names.

So by golly, by the first time they walk

into the classroom, I am

going to know all of their names.

And I think this is for summer school

too, because in summer

school, I only have three weeks

with the kids.

So if I don't know their name within the

first hour of summer school,

then my classroom

management is really bad.

And so I really like, I want to know

their names before they walk in the door.