Piedad Gutiérrez, a veteran Spanish teacher and CI consultant now teaching in Israel, shares her inspiring journey from grammar-heavy lessons to joyful, story-based communication through Comprehensible Input.

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The CI Story Series celebrates language teachers around the world who are redefining what it means to teach for proficiency. Each episode features real educators sharing authentic stories, classroom breakthroughs, and practical insights to help you make language acquisition natural, human, and fun.

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Hey welcome good morning everybody and

why is my camera all wacky?

There we go fix it up there.

Hey how's everybody doing on this

wonderful Sunday morning? Here we've got

some great information

today. So imagine this you're a Spanish

teacher in New Jersey

surrounded by grammar charts,

verb drills and students who think

"Predder it is a TikTok

filter." Then one day you decide,

"Nope this can't be the whole story." And

it turns out it isn't.

Because today's guest,

Pia de la Gutierrez, is living proof that

language teaching can take

you absolutely everywhere.

Literally and intellectually. She's been

a university professor

of Latin American history,

a trainer of world language teachers

across the USA, Colombia, Argentina,

Uruguay, Israel and the

Czech Republic and a Spanish teacher from

high school down to third

grade. This woman has taught

more levels than most of us have had

coffee mugs. And here's a twist, as much

as she loves teaching,

she may love learning even more.

Cognitive sciences,

neuro linguistics, pedagogy,

she dives into it all like it's a beach

read. After retiring

from institutional teaching,

she jumped into healing centered

education with the Acosta Institute,

continued developing Spanish

curricula and even returned to

researching 18th century regional history

in Quindillo, Colombia.

Because why not add historical researcher

back into the resume? But

since we're all more than

our job titles, Pia de la is also the

kind of person who gardens, paddle

boards, hikes, crochets,

cooks, practices yoga and reiki, goes

boating, makes jewelry,

meditates and because of course,

reads and writes nonstop. So grab your

coffee, settle in and let's

talk with someone who proves

that storytelling curiosity and a whole

lot of heart can take

language teaching far beyond the

classroom. So let's give a hearty welcome

to Pia da after this

short message. Ever feel like

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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.

Welcome, welcome, welcome

Pia da. How are we doing today?

Thank you. Thank you for having me here.

It is a pleasure to see you.

It is. It's been a long time.

It's been a long time. Yeah, for many

years and it's been a long time since

we've seen each other.

So I'm so happy that she's here with us

today. Is there anything

you want to tell us about

yourself that I didn't

already kind of give in the intro?

That I like life and I like to dance and

that we need to live

our lives every day. Like

we can have energy and we can become, but

we need to be fully

present wherever we are.

And that's what I'm going to invite all

of us here today. Just

let's be present. Let's enjoy

being here with each other for these

minutes that we are going to share.

Absolutely, absolutely. It is so

important that life is so

short and that we can actually be

present and be 100% involved in whatever

that we're doing and

enjoying what we're doing. I think

that is a very important message,

especially these times.

We've got so many things going

around around the world that just don't

put a little depression

in all of us. So we need to

just enjoy what we have and take any kind

of joy that we can out of whatever we

have do it going on.

So I think that's a really good message.

So let's go ahead and

start at the beginning and

tell us how you got into using

comprehensible input.

I was very lucky Scott, because I was a

professor of Latin American

history and I had the brilliant

idea to get divorced. So then I had to

start exploring ways to

really be a mother and support

myself. So I started doing translations

and editing and then

just by chance they needed a

teacher at a private school. Of course I

wasn't certified. My first

route was not education at a

lower level. It was education at a higher

level. So I started and I

went to this school and then

they gave me, I had three classes and I

was like 10th grade 11th and 12th. Three

different textbooks.

Three different levels. And then I said,

okay, so then can I

visit one of your classes?

I know how to teach, but I have never

taught Spanish before. I said, no, it's

okay, you can do it.

So then when I started seeing these

books, I said, no, who is going to learn

a language with this?

So I asked if I could deviate a little

and they said yes, but they

need to know this vocabulary

for each unit or each chapter. And I

said, okay, I can't do that.

So then from the very beginning,

I couldn't do this thing of writing 40

words in the blackboard as

the students to copy them

and then quiz them the next day. So that

makes absolutely no sense to me.

Absolutely.

So then I just started in a very

intuitive way. Like, okay, the chapter

was about driver's license,

chatting with the students. Okay. We have

here this list and I

started very intuitive from the

beginning. Chapping words that were not

important, that were not

common and just keeping like the

basic things. But then I was told I

needed to tell the parts of

the speech, like the verse and

the nouns. So then we made a chart and I

started doing that and it

was really cool. I taught for

two years. But the second year, I was

told that my contract wasn't

going to be renewed if I didn't

go into improvement professional plan

because my students didn't

talk too much and because my

students didn't know how to conjugate and

because my grammar exams

were take home exams. Because

for me, the idea of grammar is something

that wasn't important

thing. So end of the first job.

Then I went to a second school. Also

because I needed a teacher.

I needed a Spanish teacher.

It was something very interesting because

the school didn't have that plan.

They needed a Spanish teacher now who

could teach without a

textbook. Oh, that's good.

Give it to me. So the first year I

thought something that the

school never had, it was called

conversational Spanish. Very much I could

do whatever I wanted. I

just needed to fulfill the

school, needed to fulfill the eighth

grade foreign language or requirement. I

love it. And then one

day the supervisor came and said,

"Piedad, this looks like you. This is

called TPRS and it's a

training in South New Jersey, in Mayland.

Would you like to go?" And

then I checked the scene.

It was like six or seven weekends through

the year and I needed to

go from Friday and Saturday

to be there. And I said, "Sure, but then

how do I do this?" And she said, "We will

pay for everything."

The language teachers don't use

professional development. So I have

budget. If you like this,

I will pay for you to do this. So wasn't

I lucky or what? In my

intuition, that's how you teach

languages. And then I got trained very

early. Like it was in

2001. So I got to meet Blaine,

Jason Fritz, Susan Gross, Julie Blair,

and learn how to put like, well, for me,

we were like stars in the sky. I did most

of those things, but I

didn't know how to put it

together. So it was like, they gave me

the constellations. They

gave me the method. And then

I love and I love it. Absolutely. That's

great. So you had the

national intuition right away to

teach like human beings. I think it's so

funny that we all as human

beings, we know how to teach

languages. It doesn't matter whether

you're a teacher or not.

Everybody knows how to teach

languages. We pass it on to our children

without even thinking about

it. But then we go to school

and they teach us an awkward way to teach

kids language, which is

anti-natural. It's not what we

do naturally. And so then we forget how

to teach naturally and our

kids become stunted in their

growth. We focus on the grammar and the

grammar doesn't make sense.

The grammar, the rules for

grammar came out hundreds of years after

the grammar already

existed. They're trying to explain

something that really isn't easily

explainable and doesn't make

a whole lot of logical sense.

It's the language, how it works. But you

have that natural instinct

to stick to the way that you

teach languages to kids in their first

language. And then you found

the method that matched right

with it. That's kind of backwards on how

we do it. We normally

like, for me, I started with a

textbook, but I learned in 2001, just

like you at TPRS, I started with a

textbook, realized it

didn't work and was looking for something

different. Where you were a teacher

looking for a method.

You're already teaching it and you just

needed the method to

organize your thoughts, which is

kind of an interesting approach to that.

So yes, you were

definitely lucky in that way.

I was. I was very lucky. But then the

next year in that

school, they gave me a book.

Now you have to teach it was via haemos.

I will never forget

because I transformed the book in

TPRS. Yeah, I took one of the chapters

made up stories and through

stories. And then same thing

happened at the end of the year. They

told me we are not going to renew your

contract. You don't fit.

You don't fit in the department. So I

said, OK, let's find

another school. And then I was

extremely lucky again. And I found a

school where I was for 17 years. That's

awesome. That's awesome.

Yes, it's so funny. It's changed a little

bit in the United States

here a little bit more,

where it's a little bit more accepting

with CI now that Actful's

gotten on board and such like that.

But it's still in many, many schools.

Those of us who use CI are

the outliers are the outliers.

And so it's unfortunate that way. But

like I just got an email from

one of my students from years

ago. I had him as a seventh grader about

10 years ago. And he sent me

a message on Instagram is what

he did. And he was saying, thank you for

teaching me goes. I'm a nurse

right now. And my Spanish is

far from perfect, but I can use it. I can

get by in my nursing job

every day. And he goes, I took

two more years after you in high school.

And I don't remember

anything from those because that

was all the grammar classes I remember

use because I remember the

songs that we did and I remember

all of these things. And it's so much

more powerful because, you

know, America is, you know,

unfortunately, a monolistic country. We

just there's not many

bilingual people. Most of the

bilingual people in America are

immigrants who've come from other

countries. And they want so

desperately America wants to become

bilingual, but they just

don't know how to go about it.

And so I think CI is a way to do that

because it, it makes class

less like class and more like

actually being immersed in a language,

which is how everybody

acquires language anyway. And if we

were more good at approach, because that

grammar just does not the grammar

approach does not work.

We've done it for 3040 more than that.

It's probably about 50

years we've done that grammar

approach and how many bilingual students

have we made from that

approach and keep doing the same

thing over and over again and expecting

different results is just

ludicrous. So I think it's so

important that we look for ways that

actually connect with

students and get them to actually

be able to use and love the language that

they're learning. Because

you are saying the magic works

is called is like we teach is to get a

relationship with this

because we want to create learning

communities. So then if it's not to get

to know your students, what

at least that was always for

me. I wanted to be in the classroom

because I wanted to get to know my

students. Like if they're

learning Spanish, even better. I said

many times I teach life. And

I thought my 17 years was an

elementary. So then it's like a beautiful

big responsibility that

they give you this little

people and you want them to become nice

human beings, decent human

beings. So then it's through

relationships. It's not through grammar.

It's not through rules. It's

using the language to get to

know them. And that's what I did. And

when you were saying that before, two

things are funny. One,

like even in elementary school, I have

parents coming to me after

the winter break to thank me

because their fifth grader was the one

who saved them in Spain

once they left Toledo.

Once they left Toledo, they were in in a

small places in small

towns, they rented a car

and there is no English anymore. And they

were so happy and so

thankful that this little girl was

the one getting the best that they

wanted, getting the rooms that they

wanted, asking for whatever

they needed. And that was for me like

that is that is better

than the paycheck. Yes, I did

something for someone. And then the other

thing that came to my mind, you are

talking about grammar.

So I'm in Israel and I want to learn

Hebrew. I really want to be able to

express myself in Hebrew.

What do I get? The best program in the

country. Full grammar

based oriented. We have learned

conjugations. I know very well about 57

verbs. They start with

present, now with the past.

Today we were learning the imperative and

some future. No nouns, no

adjective, a few other verbs.

And it's just pure like congruent

translation. This is how you say it in

English. This is how

you say it in Hebrew. Translate. Yeah, I

always say when you do

that way, it just sits on the

surface of your head right here. All that

grammar stuff sits right here, but we

need it to be inside

where it becomes instinct. And so I may

know all the conjugations of a verb,

present, past, future,

subjunctive, passive, junctive. I might

know all of those, but if they

can't come naturally out of my

mouth when I need them, then what was the

point? And I know that with

in German, when I took German

in high school, we only had one German

teacher and she had one

German class for German one, two,

three and four. And so she had a sit in

rows. German one was in the

first two rows. German two

is in the second row. German three was

the first two seats of the

third row. And then German four

was like one seat in the fourth row. And

all she had time to do is to

teach us the grammar and then

move on. There was no interaction. And I

knew how to conjugate all those German

verbs, but I couldn't

put them together in a sentence in real

life practice. And so

when I first went to Germany,

the typical thing happens. I went to

Germany. I spoke to them in my

German and they spoke back to

me in English because they knew that I

was an American and that my

German was, I mean, I could

understand them, no problem. But I didn't

have that experience of

actually speaking in a fluent

way with them. So they resorted. And I

remember the second time I went to

Germany, I was so proud

of myself because I went to Germany. I

spoke in German and they

spoke German back to me. So they

didn't do the English. And that was only,

you know, about a year apart

from each other, but I worked

on that oral proficiency. And then when I

went to France for the first

time, the first time I went

to France, I went for the Agin Conference

and I took French. The last

time I took French was 1992.

And this was 2018. 2018 was the first

time I went to France. So I went in

there. I land in Toulouse

airport. And they told me that everybody

told me, said, this is how you have to

get to Agin. You have

to get out of the airport. You have to

take a bus to the train station and you

gotta take the train

station and get off to Agin. Okay. So I

go into the airport

information booth and she's got a

little button that says, I speak English.

So she's got all those

languages there. So I go to her in

my broken French because I hadn't spoken

French in over 30 years. So, and my

French wasn't good to

begin with. So I go in there. I say in my

broken French, I don't speak

French. I can speak German.

I can speak English and I can speak

Spanish. Can you please tell me in one of

those three languages,

how to find the bus that takes me to the

train station. And so she

proceeds to tell me in French

and I'm like, Oh my gosh, I just told you

that was the one language

that I did not know. I understood

what she said. So I go to the bus

station, I go to the, where the buses are

and it's all electronic.

It's an automat you had to do and I

couldn't find the right ticket. I kept

going to the dry goes.

It's the wrong ticket. I'm like, can you

come and show me which

ticket I need? All in French,

my broken French. I get to the bus

station, take the bus to the

airport, to the train station.

And then the train station, I had to pick

the ticket. At least they

had there. I could switch

it to English so I could find the right

ticket. But then I didn't

know if I was going to miss

the stop because they're all making the

announcements in

French. And I can't tell like,

how do you pronounce a gen in French? I

didn't know if I was

going to be able to hear it.

And it's a small town if I'm going to

miss it. So I'm like, hyper

vigilant on everything to make

sure I get off. Then the next year I go

to Paris and I was only in

Paris for two days because I

heard negative things about Paris. I

forgive me French people, but I heard

negative things about

Paris. They don't like tourists. You

know, they're really mean to

American tourists and stuff.

So I heard all of that. So I said, I'll

just do two days there on my

way to Agin. I was going to

take the train from Paris to Agin. So I'm

there and I speak my

French is a little bit better at

this point. I'm speaking my French and

they were nice. And they

spoke back to me in French. They

didn't insult me. So it was really,

really interesting. I was

there at Karen Rowan and

Karen Rowan, we took French classes

together and she's like, how is this

French rolling off your

tongue? I said, I have no idea. I don't

even know if I'm saying it

correctly, but apparently they're

understanding me and they're speaking

back to me in French. So that

communication is so important

and building relationships. Because I

think as foreigners, when

we go visit another country,

we are an ambassador for our own country

and we can embrace their

culture and show that we appreciate

who they are as a people and a culture,

or like many Americans do,

completely ignore them as

people and culture and expect them to

speak English and do things

the American way. And then

that's why a lot of people just have a

different taste for

Americans because of that experience.

So I think we should be ambassadors. And

I think that, and I opened

my mind to Paris. I really

enjoyed it. I wish I had stayed there

longer. I need to go back so

I can go do some more stuff

there. But it was just that communication

and building

relationships really does make

the purpose of learning a language

because it's not just to pass a test.

It's not just to get

into college. It's to be able to get to

know more people and

learn about them as a people,

them as a culture, and we can all

experience things differently that way.

Yeah, you are totally right. And also

like when we make the effort and we try

to speak the language,

they really feel it. And then they really

embrace you and help you.

And that also, as you said,

it expands because if I only speak

English here and I only

find people that are speaking

English or Spanish, I'm not going to be

able to expand my

social life with Israelis.

Absolutely. And that's why I love just a

plug out to the Ajaan

Workshop conference that comes

every end of July. If you get a chance to

go, you don't have to speak French.

Ajaan, the city is a

small city. You can get by very easily.

It's all walkable. But what

I love about this conference,

and it's unlike any other conference that

I have been to, is number

one, it embraces the French

culture. So we have two to three hour

lunches. So you have the

morning sessions and then you have

a two to three hour break. Then you have

the afternoon evening

sessions. So because you

cannot do lunch in France in a half an

hour. That is an American

thing. You cannot do it.

But what's great about this is we have

people from all over the

world. We have Asians, we have

Africans, we have Europeans, we have

Americans. We have all these

people that are coming together

and we're having conversations

simultaneously in three or four languages

at once. All sitting

together. We're not trapped in a hotel

because the conference is held in a

school. And then we all

spread out to the city. It's the largest

suburb of Toulouse, but it's

a tiny, by American standards,

it's a really tiny, very walkable. You

can walk from the train

station to your hotel and we walk

all around. We don't use Ubers. We don't

do any of that stuff. We

just walk around. They have

scooters if you really want a scooter,

but I've never needed a

scooter. And just being able to

communicate. I'm having a conversation

over here in French. I'm having a

conversation over here in

German. I may have a conversation over

here in Spanish, having a conversation

over here in English.

And we're all multilingual and we're all

embracing that and we're

flowing back and forth. That is the

best experience we have in the, you know,

the NTPRS conferences,

which I've been to many,

many times. They used to have the

immersion dinners where

you'd go and, you know, speak the

language you want to speak during that.

But that was a whole

different and seemed very artificial

way of doing it. I love them. I used to

do the German one every

time because I like German food

and like speaking German. So I love doing

that, but it was much more of an

artificial construct

than how natural it happens in Agin. And

I just love that experience.

So if you ever have a chance

to do that, it's the end of July every

year. I highly recommend

doing that. You'll meet so many

great people. You have opportunities to

learn other language,

observes other teachers from other

cultures, from other countries. It's

really a great, great, great

experience. And Judy does an

awesome job putting that together. She's

tireless on that. It

exhausts her every year. But I just

want to say it's a really good experience

if you get a chance. You

know that I am mentoring right

now a teacher from the Czech Republic.

She teaches English. And I've been doing

this since I retired.

I have been doing one-to-one. I coach or

mentor a teacher through the

whole year or two in how to

use all the strategies and the skills

from TPRS because as you

know, and as I know, it's like

it's overwhelming at the beginning for a

person when they get to

know TPRS. Oh my, how I do that

and this and that and the sitting and the

movie talks and this and

that. So then I've been doing

that. And for me, it's also like a gift

to myself that I have been

able to share one-to-one with

another teacher. So I met Mila in

September through one of our

groups, the Facebook group.

She asked for some, like she needed some

professional

development, but she couldn't go.

I don't know if she went or she couldn't

go to the one that you were

talking about, but she knew

about TPRS and CI and she wanted to learn

more. So I've been doing

that with her. She teaches

English. It's the first time that she's

in a school. She used

to have like the little,

after a school private program, but she

used to teach English and to

young kids. Now she's doing

that and it's so, it's sort of rewarding

to me to see how I can help somebody

understanding all the

pieces of our methods, of what it is to

stay about, to be, to teach

nationally. And I also did it

for RIFLA, the Rhode Island Foreign

Language Association. I did

a little conference just a

few months ago. It was a talk. It was a

presentation on becoming

a comprehensive teacher,

because it is a process. It's not that

overnight you become a good

TPRS or you become a natural

teacher. It's just you create your own

style. Like we have these

parameters, we have these

strategies and you develop yourself as a

teacher. And I have become

like now my very own Hebrew

teacher. So after classes, I take the

vocabulary that they taught

us and I made up my stories.

That's awesome.

And I teach myself is like, this thing is

not just boom, boom, boom.

No, it's like what's going

on here? They went to the market. He

bought a computer because we

were left those expressions

and then connected and it doesn't work.

You have to check it.

But they teach these things

as like this jaunty. So then I just

create and you know what this is really

is 22 years of experience

making up stories. So I can make my

stories in second and then spend two

hours teaching to myself.

And as you said, we don't learn only with

our mind. I need to

draw. I need to act it out.

And then it's not to turn like it's live

not in Hebrew. No,

it's live not live. Yeah.

And it's very interesting. I'm doing this

in zoom and it's five

hours looking at the face of a

teacher and she shares the screen and

write down the words and what

they mean and how to say, how

do you say, how do you say, and we know

congruent translation doesn't

go to the back of the brain.

Absolutely. You are so right with that.

And there's a point I

was going to make you say

something and I would just escape me

about that. But I think it's very

important to get to be able

to, oh, that's not gonna say, you know,

that grammar and you

talked about having to mesh that

grammar teaching with the book and stuff

in the beginning and you weren't

reelected. I have to

currently this current school that I

went, I left middle school and I went

back to high school.

So this is my second year back in high

school. And it's very

different from when I left high

school, because when I left high school,

what now it's 14 years

ago in 2012 was my last year

teaching in high school before I started

back up. It was before the

pandemic and after pandemic,

it was a very different, it's a very

different ballgame. But like you, I'm

finding a way to mesh

that the textbook with CI because I

don't, I can't teach from the

textbook. I tried it for three

months at the beginning of my career and

I sucked at it and I couldn't

do it. So what I do like you

is I take the vocabulary and I pick the

most important because each

chapter has like a hundred

words and most of them are useless. You

know, who cares if my kid

knows thumbtack in Spanish? It's

not a, it's not a high frequency word,

but I take those, that vocabulary and

then I make up stories

about the students in my classroom. So I

have a template that I use

about what my lesson plan is

going to look like. We do conversations

on Monday. We do stories on Tuesday,

Wednesday. We do readings

on Thursday and Friday. So I have that

template, but what I have to do every

year is come up with

new stories because I've got new kids in

my classroom. So I come

up with completely new

stories about my kids or something funny

that they say or what, and then I use

that grammar and the

vocabulary that we're working on in those

stories. And that's what works really

well and the kids love

it. Last year I had a kid, a freshman

kid, he's like, why do I

look forward to these stories? I

hate reading, but I like reading in

Spanish. And I'm like, so I asked, I

already knew what the answer

was, what, what the difference was. And I

kept going, okay, so why? What is

different between the

stuff you read in English and the stuff

that you're reading in Spanish? And he

couldn't figure it out.

And another kid goes, these stories that

are about us and they're

funny stories about us. You're

taking things from our lives and you're

putting them in it. It's

just so true. And one of my best

stories I came up with in, I've been

teaching now 24 years was one

because a kid made an error,

not an error, but he, um, he was

circumlocuting to the best of his

ability. It was the Spanish two

class. And I teach at a section of our

school where they are

learning a career at the same time.

So it's called career tech, uh, career

tech education. So, um,

this kid was in the culinary

program. So he takes half his classes are

in culinary and then he's

taking Spanish. So he takes,

he's at my part of the school two periods

a day. So I asked him, do

you want to be a chef? He goes,

yes. I go, do you want to have your own

restaurant? He says, yes. I said, and

this is all in Spanish

and I'm saying, so what kind of

restaurant do you want? Do you want an

elegant restaurant? Do you

want a fast food restaurant? He goes, I

want an elegant restaurant. Okay.

Perfect. What do you

want to serve? Like what type of food?

Well, he didn't know how to

say, um, steak. So he said,

bucca cow. Now I knew what that meant. I

knew what he was going

at. Stirkum locution, right?

It's perfect. That's what you want kids

to be able to do. And they

can't use a word. He didn't

go to English. He took any other word

that he already knew and

he took it, but I twisted it

and made a whole story about him being a

chef at a elegant

restaurant, but they don't serve steak.

Their customers are cows. And so they

serve all this other kind of

food. They serve grass pizza

and all this other kind of food that cows

would like to eat. And

so it came from that,

his circumlocution mistake, they're not

knowing the word be steak.

And if he had said, if he knew

the word be steak, then we would not have

gotten that story out of that. But

because he made that

circumlocution, it gave me a whole nother

idea to write a story. And

it was hilarious. And the

kids liked that. And that's how you make

those connections and

build those relationships. And

they make some want to learn the

vocabulary because they want

to know how the story ends.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know what you just

reminded me Susan Gross, we

don't teach the book. We teach

the students. Yes. If the students are

the center and we really want to do that,

like, yeah, we don't,

but that's the sad part that grammar

teaches the book. That's the students

don't need to be there.

Yeah, exactly. And I know my life would

be so much easier if I could

just reuse the stories year

after year after year, as I can less than

plan really quick. But,

but it takes me so much time

and people say, why do you keep writing

the stories over and over

again? I write the stories

because I need to connect with the

students that are in front of me. And I

do make my work a little

bit easier. I write a story for level one

and I write a story for

level two and I write a story

for level three and I mix my kids. So I

might have a couple of kids

from period one in there and a

couple of kids from period two in there.

So I don't have to write one

story for every class period,

but still it's time consuming, but I

think it's well worth it

because the benefits I get from

that and what my kids can learn from that

is so much more

incredible. Like for me that is like

now that I'm retired and I feel sad that

I never publish my

collection of stories, but that was

like what always stopped me from

publishing because every

year I came up with a little

different story with some modified

something here. And I

wanted the teachers to know that

if I publish the stories could be good

for reading, but not for

teaching because then it's,

it's like, it's not your story. It's not

your students. And as you

said, I did the same thing.

I do remember once in one of my classes,

I was teaching, it was

maybe about the body. And so

then it was about cleaning and washing or

whatever, but those

were like the words, like

being dirty and having to clean. And then

I was asking that the

students, because I know that most

of them had pets. So then if it's

somebody went with a pet for

a walk and the pet came back

totally dirty. So they had to clean the

dog and the dog didn't

like to be cleaned. So the dog

beat them, something like that. And then

I said, okay, in the same as

you also, I wanted to say that

that we learned so early in TPRS is

called that we need to have

routines. I was like that too.

I have my students for three days in a

row. So they one was the new

vocabulary, the repetitions,

the personal stories, collecting

information. They two was

creating the story and finishing

writing the story. That was the homework

to illustrate the

story. And then the third day

was writing, was reading and playing and

whatever. So then we were in

this part where I was fishing

and then one is still in board with

tears. He had a cat.

The cat was always dirty.

And cats cleaned themselves. So then I

took advantage of that.

I have to teach them to

clean oneself, not just to clean

something. And then we were

talking about that. And then

it's unusual because cats usually clean

themselves. So no, they

think that we had two cats.

They got one, the female cat and the male

cat. But then the male cat died.

And the male cat used to clean the male

cat. So after the other one

died, that cat didn't know

how to clean himself. Didn't want to

clean himself. And has

been there for three years.

So then, as you said, like, who is not

going to laugh with you in

class when you are fishing

and creating this story that is about

this specific cat? It's

only that cat. So then

I think that that's also the joy of

teaching the way that we

teach. We teach in the,

we create this relationship. They are

important. Their

experiences are part of our stories.

We validate them. And then they remember.

One, because it's

theirs. And second, because,

as we know, we need to make, I never

thought about making

anything bizarre or ridiculous,

but funny. Yes. Yes. And the Latin

American culture has

things that are so bizarre that

you don't need to create. Yeah. Our

culture has everything

in it. Pick any country.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's so

powerful because when

we're teaching to those kids,

like I just asked as a reflection

question last, was it last week? I can't

remember. It's really

recently. I asked them what their

favorite story was of the year so far.

Because we at my school,

we teach a whole year in a semester. So I

lose my kids in three

weeks. So at winter break,

they go, you know, after winter break,

they go to a new classes so they don't

have Spanish anymore.

So I asked them, so we've done, you know,

17 weeks of stories. And so

I asked them and every kid

wrote the story. They knew the story

about themselves and it

may have been their story

came way at the beginning of the year,

but that's the one that

stuck with them the most.

And, you know, like if I wrote the

stories 10 years ago, TikTok

would not have been a thing.

But what's in a lot of my stories now,

TikTok, because a lot of my

kids are on TikTok. They either

watch TikTok or they are making videos

for TikTok or they're doing

their dances for TikTok. So you

can't, it's like a textbook. When a

textbook gets published, at

the moment it got published,

all the information in there was current.

But we keep textbooks for

seven to 10 years and it's

no longer current anymore when they're,

you know, the stuff that

they're talking about is not as

popular. So that's another thing. When I

adapt our stories to our

kids, we can update them with

the current culture. And although you

might not be able to, if you

want to kind of make it a little

bit easier for yourself, you can keep the

same skeleton of a story

and then just adapt it to

the kids that are in your class. That

also works. But I just have

so much fun. I truly enjoy

writing stories about my kids and my kids

just like them. We just

made one the other day.

We did. And this is why I love chat GPT

for. I use this for

chat GPT, which is amazing.

I came up with a story about the terrible

date because we were teaching, let's see,

going to the mall, you know, and

activities, playing the

clarin, playing music,

singing and dancing. So we made a date.

They went to do an open

mic and the date was horrible

at the stuff. And so it was just a funny

little story. But we put

kids in this, in that story and

kids, my kids are freshmen and sophomore,

so they're all in that

dating thing. So they

kind of know what that is. And so it was

really fun and

interesting. But then I took my story

because I had my skeleton of a story in

my brain and my skeletons

always are five steps. It's

characters, problem, failure, success. So

it's four steps because the

fifth one is oh no, oh no,

I own Problima. That's the fifth one. So

there's four steps. So then I had chat

GPT make comic strip

pictures of each part of that story. So

the characters, the

problem, the failure, the success.

And I took pictures of my kids from my

class pictures. They know

their pictures they took

in our attendance program. It's got their

little faces. I didn't put

their names in there. So they

didn't know, you know, they didn't know.

It's not like chat GPT is memorizing my

kids. But I uploaded

their pictures in there and made cartoon

versions of them. And I put

that into a story. So we've got

this girl and this boy going on a date

and their kids in my

classroom and they look like kids in

my classroom. And last year we had a kid

who liked Elmo for whatever reason. And

the other kid wanted

his Elmo. So he was going to steal his

Elmo. So I put the story, I made the

story up about the kids

with stealing the Elmo and I put it in

chat GPT to make the pictures and it

looked like the kids

they could tell right away who it was.

And he's sneaking in the

boy's bedroom while he's sleeping

with his Elmo and he steals it out. Chat

GPT made these pictures for

me and it was really a fun

experience. And again, it's another way

of personalization. You

know, I can draw, but I

like to draw animals. I draw realistic. I

don't draw comics. So it

would, I could not have ever done

it. And in the olden days I used to have

kids do it. I would say,

here's my story for Spanish too.

And I'd give it to my Spanish one kid and

say, who is a good artist and

you draw the picture for me.

And that's what I would do. And I would

scan them so they were

digital and I could keep them.

But chat GPT is so much more efficient

and I can make really good

pictures for it. And it's funny.

And sometimes the pictures that chat GPT

comes up with are funny.

Like one girl knows, goes,

why does she have four fingers on one

hand and three fingers on the other?

And we just made fun of that.

We let that go and just say,

so it was, you know, we just made fun of

it and it makes for fun

things. So it's another way to

personalize. And you know, also Scott,

you are bringing another

topic that is very important.

That is artificial intelligence. We

cannot deny it. We cannot leave it on the

side. We need to use

it. We need to use it in our advantage.

So, and I totally agree

with you. I don't think that we

should have artificial intelligence to

write the stories. But it's like to

compliment whatever we

think that we need to compliment. So

yeah, that is perfect. This

Czech teacher that I'm mentoring,

she did it for Halloween, but it was not

for teaching. It was for

reading. So she did it with,

I think that is with Gemini. She said

like, she gave all the names of the

students and they were

going to visit like a house of horrors

for Halloween. And then

she gave the vocabulary

that they knew and this created for her

with images. The kids

going from room to room in this

house, being terrified by monsters. And

the characters were the

students and they were

moving to one section to the other one.

And it was a really nice

exercise. And then if we can do

it that simply, I think that is okay,

because if not, one thing that can happen

is that as a teacher,

you will have to spend more time

correcting what the program that

application does for you,

because sometimes like not exactly what

you want. So then, oh, you

need to give so many specific

instructions that if you are going to

spend that much time doing

that better write the story.

But we need, since the students are using

it and we are working with

younger kids that are in,

like you mentioned TikTok, we need to go

with where they are. We

need to meet them where they

are, not only the knowledge of the

Spanish or the language,

but where they are as people,

where they are as a person, what is that

interest them? What is the data doing?

Absolutely. I use it as a teacher's

assistant. So it saves me lots of time

because when I need to make

a quiz, I'm really bad at making up

questions because my

questions kind of follow the same

patterns and the same answers all the

same time. So I will type up

my story in chat GPT that I'm

going to use. And I'll say I need 20

questions. I need them not to be, you

know, don't give away

any answers in the questions, but I also

need at least 20% of them

to be inference questions.

So they have to think a little bit more.

I need them at the A1

level of language because these

kids are low. And so, and I want them in

English and then they come up with my

questions, my answers,

everything. All I do is put that in my,

you know, on my test. So like, I'll come

up with the stories,

but they can come up with the questions

because yes, it's so much

easier. And I was going to show

you, I found some of those pictures that

I made. I was going to share

with you. So here's one picture

with the kids, um, stealing the Elmo in

the middle of the night. So

it was really a funny picture

there. And then we had another story with

a girl going on a date. So

she was going on a date with

um, Big Bird. So this was just like the

girl and she was going on a

date with a Big Bird. And at

the end of the date, she thought, um, you

know, Big Bird wanted to show

her all to all of her friends.