Things I've been working on: ChatGPT and accessibility in Canvas, with code you can copy!

Someone told me this week that I should make more blog posts, so here I am. 😁 I've been working on a ton of things and then don't make a note to make a blog post about those things. 

This summer I went to a Canvas workshop and learned that my daily activity list in Canvas wasn't accessible to students who use screen readers because I used tables to organize my content to make it easier to move things where I wanted them. I spent all of last year moving from an unformatted list to 

tables, and I was not thrilled to learn that I would need to redo all of that work. I was less thrilled when I thought I was going to have to go back to unformatted lists, because adding that little of organization made it much easier for students to find the list for each day (I have a page in Canvas in each module that contains the daily activity list for every day that week). 

I have limited code-editing skills, but I can't write code, so I thought I didn't have any other options than unformatted lists, until I remembered that ChatGPT exists. I asked it to create code that I could use in Canvas that would be both accessible to screen readers and to students who need to navigated the visual elements of the page. It took a few rounds of going back and forth, but eventually I got this, and it's perfect. Click on the arrows to expand the boxes!

Collapsible boxes

Expectation: Complete all daily activities on the daily activities list and be actively engaged in class activities for full participation credit.

lunes el 

1. Placeholder

martes el 

1. Placeholder

miércoles el 

1. Placeholder

jueves el 

1. Placeholder

viernes el 

1. Placeholder

Want this code? I've shared everything in Canvas Commons (you can search my name: Anita Saalfeld) so you can import the pages, but I also asked ChatGPT to make some boxes to be able to share it here!  You can edit color by opening the HTML editor, and the Canvas accessibility checker will tell you if the color(s) you're using are accessibly to people with visual impairments.

Code snippet for collapsible boxes (copy & paste)

<p><strong>Expectation: Complete all daily activities on the daily activities list and be actively engaged in class activities for full participation credit.</strong></p>
<details style="border: 2px solid #0c8571; border-radius: 12px; margin-bottom: 1em;">
    <summary style="background-color: #0c8571; color: white; font-size: 1.2em; padding: 0.5em 1em; border-radius: 10px 10px 0 0;">lunes el </summary>
    <div style="padding: 1em;">
        <ol>
            <li>Placeholder</li>
        </ol>
    </div>
</details>
<details style="border: 2px solid #0c8571; border-radius: 12px; margin-bottom: 1em;">
    <summary style="background-color: #0c8571; color: white; font-size: 1.2em; padding: 0.5em 1em; border-radius: 10px 10px 0 0;">martes el </summary>
    <div style="padding: 1em;">
        <ol>
            <li>Placeholder</li>
        </ol>
    </div>
</details>
<details style="border: 2px solid #0c8571; border-radius: 12px; margin-bottom: 1em;">
    <summary style="background-color: #0c8571; color: white; font-size: 1.2em; padding: 0.5em 1em; border-radius: 10px 10px 0 0;">miércoles el </summary>
    <div style="padding: 1em;">
        <ol>
            <li>Placeholder</li>
        </ol>
    </div>
</details>
<details style="border: 2px solid #0c8571; border-radius: 12px; margin-bottom: 1em;">
    <summary style="background-color: #0c8571; color: white; font-size: 1.2em; padding: 0.5em 1em; border-radius: 10px 10px 0 0;">jueves el </summary>
    <div style="padding: 1em;">
        <ol>
            <li>Placeholder</li>
        </ol>
    </div>
</details>
<details style="border: 2px solid #0c8571; border-radius: 12px; margin-bottom: 1em;">
    <summary style="background-color: #0c8571; color: white; font-size: 1.2em; padding: 0.5em 1em; border-radius: 10px 10px 0 0;">viernes el </summary>
    <div style="padding: 1em;">
        <ol>
            <li>Placeholder</li>
        </ol>
    </div>
</details>

  

Tip: Colors meet WCAG AA contrast against this gray. Keyboard users can Tab to the Copy button.

Choice board

How you see this in Canvas will depend on how big your monitor is.  It will adjust the boxes to be side by side in pairs or groups of 3 on a wider monitor, or one box at a time on a smaller monitor.

Choice board - choose one activity

Complete one or more of the following activities. [Teachers, edit text as needed to reflect what activity options are available. Good to know: Sometimes copying and pasting text messes up the formatting. Delete instructions for teachers before releasing to students.]

Activity 1 — Guided reading

Read a short text and answer questions

Open activity (Teachers: click on "link options" and paste the correct link)

Activity 2 — Interactive vocabulary

Practice key words with definitions and examples.

Open activity (Teachers: click on "link options" and paste the correct link)

Activity 3 — Video + questions

Watch a short video and answer questions.

Open activity (Teachers: click on "link options" and paste the correct link)

Activity 4 — Matching

Match terms with definitions or photos.

Open activity (Teachers: click on "link options" and paste the correct link)

Activity 5 — Conversation

Follow the prompt and complete with a partner.

Open activity (Teachers: click on "link options" and paste the correct link)

Activity 6 — Writing practice

Write 5-7 sentences using vocabulary from this unit.

Open activity (Teachers: click on "link options" and paste the correct link)

Code snippet for choice board (copy & paste)

<div style="max-width: 1100px; margin: 0 auto; padding: 1rem; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: inherit;" role="region" aria-labelledby="cbTitle">
    <h2 id="cbTitle" style="margin: 0 0 .75rem 0; display: inline-block; background: #0c8571; color: #fff; padding: .6rem 1rem; border-radius: 10px; font-size: 1.5rem; line-height: 1.2;">Choice board - choose one activity</h2>
    <p style="margin: .25rem 0 1rem 0; color: #4a4a4a;">Complete one or more of the following activities.<strong> [Teachers, edit text as needed to reflect what activity options are available. Good to know: Sometimes copying and pasting text messes up the formatting. Delete instructions for teachers before releasing to students.]</strong></p>
    <div style="font-size: 0;" role="list">
        <div style="display: inline-block; vertical-align: top; width: calc(33.333% - 16px); min-width: 260px; max-width: 100%; margin: 8px; font-size: 16px;" role="listitem" aria-labelledby="c1t" aria-describedby="c1d">
            <div style="background: #f6fbfa; border: 2px solid #0c8571; border-radius: 12px; padding: 1rem; min-height: 190px; display: flex; flex-direction: column;">
                <h3 id="c1t" style="margin: 0 0 .5rem 0; font-size: 1.1rem; line-height: 1.25;">Activity 1 &mdash; Guided reading</h3>
                <p id="c1d" style="margin: 0 0 1rem 0; color: #4a4a4a;">Read a short text and answer questions</p>
                <a style="margin-top: auto; display: inline-block; text-decoration: none; background: #0c8571; color: #fff; padding: .6rem .9rem; border-radius: 10px; border: 2px solid #0c8571; line-height: 1;" href="https://example.com/lectura" aria-describedby="c1d">Open activity (Teachers: click on "link options" and paste the correct link)</a>
            </div>
        </div>
        <div style="display: inline-block; vertical-align: top; width: calc(33.333% - 16px); min-width: 260px; max-width: 100%; margin: 8px; font-size: 16px;" role="listitem" aria-labelledby="c2t" aria-describedby="c2d">
            <div style="background: #f6fbfa; border: 2px solid #0c8571; border-radius: 12px; padding: 1rem; min-height: 190px; display: flex; flex-direction: column;">
                <h3 id="c2t" style="margin: 0 0 .5rem 0; font-size: 1.1rem;">Activity 2 &mdash; Interactive vocabulary</h3>
                <p id="c2d" style="margin: 0 0 1rem 0; color: #4a4a4a;">Practice key words with definitions and examples.</p>
                <a style="margin-top: auto; display: inline-block; text-decoration: none; background: #0c8571; color: #fff; padding: .6rem .9rem; border-radius: 10px; border: 2px solid #0c8571; line-height: 1;" href="https://example.com/vocab" aria-describedby="c2d">Open activity (Teachers: click on "link options" and paste the correct link)</a>
            </div>
        </div>
        <div style="display: inline-block; vertical-align: top; width: calc(33.333% - 16px); min-width: 260px; max-width: 100%; margin: 8px; font-size: 16px;" role="listitem" aria-labelledby="c3t" aria-describedby="c3d">
            <div style="background: #f6fbfa; border: 2px solid #0c8571; border-radius: 12px; padding: 1rem; min-height: 190px; display: flex; flex-direction: column;">
                <h3 id="c3t" style="margin: 0 0 .5rem 0; font-size: 1.1rem;">Activity 3 &mdash; Video + questions</h3>
                <p id="c3d" style="margin: 0 0 1rem 0; color: #4a4a4a;">Watch a short video and answer questions.</p>
                <a style="margin-top: auto; display: inline-block; text-decoration: none; background: #0c8571; color: #fff; padding: .6rem .9rem; border-radius: 10px; border: 2px solid #0c8571; line-height: 1;" href="https://example.com/video" aria-describedby="c3d">Open activity (Teachers: click on "link options" and paste the correct link)</a>
            </div>
        </div>
        <div style="display: inline-block; vertical-align: top; width: calc(33.333% - 16px); min-width: 260px; max-width: 100%; margin: 8px; font-size: 16px;" role="listitem" aria-labelledby="c4t" aria-describedby="c4d">
            <div style="background: #f6fbfa; border: 2px solid #0c8571; border-radius: 12px; padding: 1rem; min-height: 190px; display: flex; flex-direction: column;">
                <h3 id="c4t" style="margin: 0 0 .5rem 0; font-size: 1.1rem;">Activity 4 &mdash; Matching</h3>
                <p id="c4d" style="margin: 0 0 1rem 0; color: #4a4a4a;">Match terms with definitions or photos.</p>
                <a style="margin-top: auto; display: inline-block; text-decoration: none; background: #0c8571; color: #fff; padding: .6rem .9rem; border-radius: 10px; border: 2px solid #0c8571; line-height: 1;" href="https://example.com/match" aria-describedby="c4d">Open activity (Teachers: click on "link options" and paste the correct link)</a>
            </div>
        </div>
        <div style="display: inline-block; vertical-align: top; width: calc(33.333% - 16px); min-width: 260px; max-width: 100%; margin: 8px; font-size: 16px;" role="listitem" aria-labelledby="c5t" aria-describedby="c5d">
            <div style="background: #f6fbfa; border: 2px solid #0c8571; border-radius: 12px; padding: 1rem; min-height: 190px; display: flex; flex-direction: column;">
                <h3 id="c5t" style="margin: 0 0 .5rem 0; font-size: 1.1rem;">Activity 5 &mdash; Conversation</h3>
                <p id="c5d" style="margin: 0 0 1rem 0; color: #4a4a4a;">Follow the prompt and complete with a partner.</p>
                <a style="margin-top: auto; display: inline-block; text-decoration: none; background: #0c8571; color: #fff; padding: .6rem .9rem; border-radius: 10px; border: 2px solid #0c8571; line-height: 1;" href="https://example.com/convo" aria-describedby="c5d">Open activity (Teachers: click on "link options" and paste the correct link)</a>
            </div>
        </div>
        <div style="display: inline-block; vertical-align: top; width: calc(33.333% - 16px); min-width: 260px; max-width: 100%; margin: 8px; font-size: 16px;" role="listitem" aria-labelledby="c6t" aria-describedby="c6d">
            <div style="background: #f6fbfa; border: 2px solid #0c8571; border-radius: 12px; padding: 1rem; min-height: 190px; display: flex; flex-direction: column;">
                <h3 id="c6t" style="margin: 0 0 .5rem 0; font-size: 1.1rem;">Activity 6 &mdash; Writing practice</h3>
                <p id="c6d" style="margin: 0 0 1rem 0; color: #4a4a4a;">Write 5-7 sentences using vocabulary from this unit.</p>
                <a style="margin-top: auto; display: inline-block; text-decoration: none; background: #0c8571; color: #fff; padding: .6rem .9rem; border-radius: 10px; border: 2px solid #0c8571; line-height: 1;" href="https://example.com/write" aria-describedby="c6d">Open activity (Teachers: click on "link options" and paste the correct link)</a>
            </div>
        </div>
    </div>
</div>
  

Verb chart 

It looks like a table, but screen readers won't interpret it as a table so it's fully accessible to both sighted and visually-impaired learners: 

Conjugación: hablar (presente)

Persona

Forma

Persona

Forma

yo

hablo

nosotros/as

hablamos

tú

hablas

vosotros/as

habláis

él/ella/usted

habla

ellos/ellas/ustedes

hablan

Code snippet for verb chart (copy & paste)

<div role="region" aria-labelledby="verbChartHeading">
    <h2 id="verbChartHeading">Conjugación: hablar (Presente)</h2>
    <div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 1fr 1fr 1fr 1fr; border: 1px solid #444; border-collapse: collapse;" role="list" aria-label="Conjugaciones">
        <div style="padding: 6px; border-bottom: 1px solid #444; border-right: 1px solid #444;" aria-hidden="true"><strong>Persona</strong></div>
        <div style="padding: 6px; border-bottom: 1px solid #444; border-right: 1px solid #444;" aria-hidden="true"><strong>Forma</strong></div>
        <div style="padding: 6px; border-bottom: 1px solid #444; border-right: 1px solid #444;" aria-hidden="true"><strong>Persona</strong></div>
        <div style="padding: 6px; border-bottom: 1px solid #444;" aria-hidden="true"><strong>Forma</strong></div>

        <div style="padding: 6px; border-top: 1px solid #ccc; border-right: 1px solid #ccc;" role="listitem" aria-label="yo: hablo"><strong>yo</strong></div>
        <div style="padding: 6px; border-top: 1px solid #ccc; border-right: 1px solid #ccc;" aria-hidden="true">hablo</div>

        <div style="padding: 6px; border-top: 1px solid #ccc; border-right: 1px solid #ccc;" role="listitem" aria-label="nosotros: hablamos"><strong>nosotros/as</strong></div>
        <div style="padding: 6px; border-top: 1px solid #ccc;" aria-hidden="true">hablamos</div>

        <div style="padding: 6px; border-top: 1px solid #ccc; border-right: 1px solid #ccc;" role="listitem" aria-label="tú: hablas"><strong>tú</strong></div>
        <div style="padding: 6px; border-top: 1px solid #ccc; border-right: 1px solid #ccc;" aria-hidden="true">hablas</div>

        <div style="padding: 6px; border-top: 1px solid #ccc; border-right: 1px solid #ccc;" role="listitem" aria-label="vosotros: habláis"><strong>vosotros/as</strong></div>
        <div style="padding: 6px; border-top: 1px solid #ccc;" aria-hidden="true">habláis</div>

        <div style="padding: 6px; border-top: 1px solid #ccc; border-right: 1px solid #ccc;" role="listitem" aria-label="él, ella, usted: habla"><strong>él/ella/usted</strong></div>
        <div style="padding: 6px; border-top: 1px solid #ccc; border-right: 1px solid #ccc;" aria-hidden="true">habla</div>

        <div style="padding: 6px; border-top: 1px solid #ccc; border-right: 1px solid #ccc;" role="listitem" aria-label="ellos, ellas, ustedes: hablan"><strong>ellos/ellas/ustedes</strong></div>
        <div style="padding: 6px; border-top: 1px solid #ccc;" aria-hidden="true">hablan</div>
    </div>
</div>
  

Games and activities I'm using right now

 We play a lot of games in my classes to work on building form-meaning associations, both for vocabulary and for grammar. One of the things I've been having trouble with is coming up with fresh ways to work on these things because if I do the same games over and over students get bored and stop participating, so I'm thrilled to have learned about new game types in the last year or so. Here's what I'm using right now:

1. Bingo: I use this more at the beginning of the unit when I want students to hear a lot of repetitions of how the words are pronounced. I use the site bingobaker.com and post the game links in Canvas, and then students use digital bingo cards. This is a huge improvement over my old paper bingo cards since I no longer have to pass cards and bingo dots.
2. Quizlet live: There's team mode and solo mode. This is pretty quick so it's a good activity when we don't have a lot of time, and in team mode, it's good when I want students to get up and move around a little. 
3. Gimkit: My students love Gimkit. There are a ton of different games, so it's easy to change it up so it doesn't get boring, and the games are so compelling (I'm looking at you, Fishtopia) that I frequently hop on and play because it's fun. There's also an option to assign a set (called a kit) as homework. 
4. Blooket: My students also love Blooket. Like Gimkit, there are a lot of different game modes so it's easy to change it up so students don't get bored, and you can also assign some game modes as homework. 
5. I started using NearPod to do listen and draw activities. I also have a class set of whiteboards, but I seem to get better engagement when students are drawing on their Chromebooks and they can see their work and their classmates' work on the screen. For our clothing unit, I might describe an outfit and have them draw it, and for our health and hygiene unit, I describe monsters and have them draw the monsters to work on body part vocabulary. 

I used to use pictionary and Go Fish a lot more, but found that it was harder to keep students on task so the time wasn't always well spent. I still do them occasionally to shake things up, but not regularly anymore.

One more activity that I use to work on numbers is a simple number guessing game. I put useful phrases on the board (mucho más, mucho menos, un poco más, un poco menos) and then write down a number within a given range on a small whiteboard. I have students try to guess the number until they get it, and then put them to work in their own groups doing the same thing. I have them write down their number on a little white board to make sure that they're not messing with their classmates, and then they work in groups of 2-4 to guess each other's numbers. It's simple, but students seem to enjoy it and it's an activity that they can do entirely in Spanish. 

*tap, tap* Is this thing on?

 Hello from the world's worst blogger!  It's been a long couple of years that have completely drained me, but things are slowly getting back to being more manageable. Since my last blog post in 2021, we finally moved from our house that was a 25-minute drive to my school and my son's school to the town that our schools are in, so instead of driving 50 minutes every day, my commute is a 5-minute walk each way. It's been pretty great!

Mostly I felt inspiration to write a blog post because it's Sunday and instead of spending the entire day working and stressing about the school week starting tomorrow, I've donated platelets, read several magazines for fun, had lunch with my family, gone for a walk, and listened to a podcast. This is a new development in my life since switching to teaching K-12, and I thought it was worth writing about. People generally say that by about year 4-5, you kind of have everything set up how you want it and it's not so much work. I teach four different classes and have been making my own curriculum as I go, so it's been a ton of work and I'm not close to done yet. But it still felt like it should be easier than it has been (this is my sixth year teaching K-12), and this year everything finally clicked. It wasn't because I magically figured everything out; it was because this is the third year we've been using our LMS. Because LMS's didn't exist when I started teaching and because I haven't switched very many times, I never remember how much work they are to set up. When I was a grad student, the university set up the courses for us so we didn't need to (and in fact couldn't) set them up on our own. The last few universities I've taught at all used Blackboard, so I was able to export the materials I developed and import them into the new school's Blackboard so I wasn't starting from scratch. But when I started teaching K-12, my school was using Google Classroom, so in addition to teaching a new student population, I had to set my courses up in a new LMS. Three years ago we switched to Canvas. It was the right decision because Canvas has a lot more features that make remote teaching much more feasible, but suddenly setting up a new LMS while dealing with both in-person and remote teaching was next-level exhausting. I didn't really have time to consider what would make the most sense in terms of course organization, so it was a hot mess, but it was the best I could with the time that I had. 

Last summer I had some time (not a lot because I was packing and moving, but some time) to think about how I wanted my courses to look, and during the last school year, I spent ridiculous amounts of time setting up all of my courses, recording videos, etc., and getting my courses set up how I wanted them. It will always be a work in progress, but I've worked on processes to make things easier. For example, I give students assignments from a reading platform (https://garbanzo.io/ is amazing!), but there doesn't appear to be a way to save and re-assign the readings each year. Two years ago I took a bunch of screen shots of my assignments from the previous year to get my new classes set up, but that was pretty tedious, so last year a light went on and it finally occurred to me to make a Google Sheet with all of my assignments for the year as I made them so that when I'm setting up the course each year, I can have my Google Sheet open in one window and the reading platform in another window, and then it is extremely easy to set up the reading assignments. I'm working on a lot more Google Sheets as directories for all of my materials because I realized that I was making lots of new materials and not re-using some of the materials that I'd already created because I would just forget about them. So my task for the next year or two is to catalogue everything I've created so that I'm not re-inventing the wheel all the time. (Yes, this is very obvious, and pre-covid I was doing a pretty good job of making notes for myself, but my organization took a major hit during covid.) 

Still, the thing that's made the biggest difference this year is Canvas's course copy feature. I literally just copied my classes from last year and put in the new dates, and I have all of my assignments, links, activities, lesson plans, and EVERYTHING SET UP FOR THE ENTIRE SCHOOL YEAR!!!!!🎉🎊🎈🎉🎊🎈 I was able to copy content in Google Classroom my first three years, but because it was limited in terms of features, it still took a decent amount of work to put my classes together every year. But this year, I have finally hit my goal of getting things ready for Monday on Friday afternoon, leaving for the weekend, and doing very little or no school work over the weekend, and it's almost entirely because I don't have to go digging through layers of files either online or in my computer to find my lesson plans and activities. They are all in Canvas, neatly organized by week, and they basically need the dates edited, plus some minor pacing tweaks because every class is different. 

So here I sit at 7:00 on a Sunday evening, drinking tea and listening to my son play, enjoying the view of my string lights on my new porch because I'm not sitting at school all day working like I have pretty much every year before this one. I'm finally to a place where I can really start fine-tuning things, so next year I'll start overhauling things by tightening up my unit objectives and incorporating more activities that will get us to those objectives (more interpersonal speaking activities and writing activities of all kinds and assessments that are more communicatively focused now that I have more time to do things that take longer to grade), in addition to speeding up my units and starting to use this free online textbook for my Spanish 4/4th semester college Spanish course: https://acceso.ku.edu/.  I'm not totally crazy so I'm going to phase everything in so that my curriculum overhaul will be complete in 3 years (editing a level every year). 

I'm thrilled to see how well my students are understanding Spanish. We still have plenty of room for improvement, but we've come a long way from what I was doing 5 years ago, and I'm proud of them (and me!). One of my students who graduated last year took two years of Spanish with me took the language placement test at one of the universities I used to teach at and placed into 4th-semester Spanish! (One year of high school Spanish = one semester of college Spanish, so she skipped a full year/semester when she tested into fourth semester, and I was over the moon when she told me!) I hear my students using Spanish in the halls and I can now have full conversations with my upper-level Spanish students. This has been my goal since I started, and it's been frustrating not to have been able to get here faster, but it is so satisfying to have gotten this far.  Life is good!

Online shopping activity template

Once upon a time I needed a book that was written in English but published by a German press. It was before Google Chrome/automatic site translation, so there was no just translating the page. I didn't speak any German, but I was able to successfully order the book by copying and pasting a few essential phrases into a translator, and using my existing knowledge of how online shopping works. 

We're currently in our house unit in Spanish 2, and I thought one useful skill for students to have would be to navigate a Spanish shopping website. So I picked a website (IKEA Spain), made a shopping list, set a budget, created a spreadsheet that tracks their budget, and created a slide presentation for them to copy and paste photos of their items in. 

This activity could work with a lot of different topics...if I have time, I will make one for school supplies, clothing, toiletries, and anything else I can think of. In addition to the benefit of having students navigate a Spanish-language website, it also exposes dialectal differences. For example, my students were confounded when a search for "refrigerador" only turned up one item, but when I told them to try "nevera" (a more commonly-used word for "refrigerator" in Spain), they had a lot more options. Most students really enjoy it, and if you make your shopping list long enough (like furnishing an entire house), it's an activity that can take most or all of a class period. 

If you have Google Classroom or Canvas with Google Assignments integration, it's incredibly easy. Just copy my slides presentation and spreadsheet into your Google Drive, and then make an assignment that makes a copy for each student. If you don't have those, you can copy them to your drive and make them visible to but not editable by students. Post the link and have students make their own copy of each document, and then submit the link to the finished products.

Here is my Google Slides template.

Here is my Google Sheets budget. 

Overcoming depression

My sister is a licensed mental health practitioner, and she recently started a podcast on mental health.  After aggressive lobbying on my part, she interviewed me about my experience with depression. (It wasn't really aggressive lobbying; I had offered because I thought it might be useful, and despite the fact that we've known each other for almost 40 years, she thought I might be offering just to be nice. I reminded her that I never offer to do something just to be nice. 😂😂😂)

Anyway, here it is. I was about as low as you can go, and today I'm thriving. If you are dealing with depression, you can feel better. If you need to connect with someone, email me at aksaalfeld AT gmail.com. If you are suicidal, PLEASE call the Suicide Hotline 1-800-273-8255. Crisis textline-74174.

Resources for giving feedback on pronunciation online

During the COVID-19 closure, I'm still doing weekly questions to make sure students are getting a little practice speaking. I could use FlipGrid for this, but one thing I've learned in teaching with technology is that simpler is better than more complex, and every time we introduce a new tech tool into the classroom, it adds a layer of complexity. When I was on a tech committee, one of the tech people at my university reminded us that even if we're only asking students to learn 2-3 new tools, if every teacher is asking students to learn 2-3 new tools that are different, that adds a lot of extra work to their load. Since we're already using Google Classroom and Google Classroom allows students to upload video files, I've just been using that for the weekly question. The upside is that they're already used to submitting assignments via Google Classroom, so there's little to no learning curve. The downside is that Google Classroom doesn't currently have an efficient way to leave audio or video feedback. (You could make a video and post a link in a comment, but multiply that by 100 and you can kiss doing anything else goodbye.)

I can give feedback on comprehensibility, sentence structure, and vocabulary choice using the comment feature, but giving feedback on pronunciation without using audio or video files is harder (and this is where FlipGrid may yet convince me to use it, since this feature is already integrated). But for now, when I notice a pronunciation issue, I put Google Translate and Word Reference to good use. Both websites include the option to play audio of whatever word you put in. So I send a link for the word or words that students are having trouble with, and then they can listen to the Google Translate or Word Reference pronunciation. I prefer Word Reference because it appears to be a real human voice rather than a robot voice, and it also has options for a few different dialects of Spanish. But either one will give students the main idea of how a word is pronounced.

Customizing Google Slides masters to save time

A little while ago I read this post by Amy Lenord and realized that I wasn't using Google Slides to their fullest potential.

When I was making slides for my son's homework assignments, I realized that I could save time by customizing a master slide to fit my needs so that I could just click the slide type I wanted with the text already on it instead of retyping or copying and pasting.

I made custom master slides for words, sentences, and nonsense words for my son's homework so that I could just click the "add" button and my slide had everything except the homework word.

I use Google Slides to make my vocabulary lists for my Spanish classes, and then students go on gallery walks with a notes page to get their vocabulary for our unit (in normal times; not right now when we're not in school). I put the images in sheet protectors so I can re-use them, and put little sticky labels indicating whether they're for Spanish 1, 2, 3, or 4 since I frequently do our vocab days on the same day for all classes. I thought that was pretty clever, but then I realized that I could eliminate that step and save time by customizing my slide master.

I added a custom master slide layout with Spanish 1/Spanish 2/Spanish 3/Spanish 4 on the side.

My master slide layout menu.

The nice thing is that once you've used the slide layout, when you click the add button to add a new slide, Google Slides keeps using the last one you used until you tell it to use a layout. So I don't have to copy and paste to get the layout I want; I just click the add slide button and it gives me the layout I want.

Moving online for COVID-19

The nice thing about my school is that we're already 1:1 with Chromebooks, and pretty much everyone has internet access at home (I know I am extremely spoiled). So I've already been doing the kinds of activities that will work well online and just need to make a few modifications.

To keep things simple, I created a weekly activity list for each class in a Google Doc that I shared with students, and will stick to the same or similar activity types. During our normal class, I have a weekly question that I ask students every day Monday-Thursday. However, when I've been gone for illness or professional development, I've had students submit their answers as videos, and what I've learned is that it takes me a LOT longer to give feedback on 100 videos than it does to quickly move around the room and give feedback during class time. So I decided that instead of having students make a video every day, we'll do them on Monday and Thursday. I'll give feedback on Monday so that they can make adjustments, and then have them try to answer without notes on Thursday, just like we do during class. 

I'm using Google Meet to do a few games online. For the sake of simplicity and organization, I set one time for both sections of Spanish 1, one time for both sections of Spanish 2, and one time for Spanish 3 and 4. I posted the link to Meet in Google Classroom, and then I share my screen to do Quizlet live on Mondays, and I'll call bingo games on Wednesdays (all of my bingo games are online here, and my Quizlet sets are available here). 

I'll keep doing my listening and reading comprehension activities using a Google form, but I'll make a YouTube video for the listening activities and add it to my Google form so that students can do it on their own. Edited to add: I've created a public Google Drive folder where I'm putting copies of all my materials here. 

My other concern was trying to get information out to parents, and having everything in one place so parents could easily access it. I had already created a course website using Google Sites when I started teaching at my school, but I hadn't really used it for anything except posting pictures of Spanish Club activities. But it's really easy to edit Google Sites, so I embedded my weekly activity list document into each course page, and then as I edit my Google Doc, the edits will show on my course website. 

Then I thought that maybe other people would like to have a ready-to-go website that they could use to push information out to parents, so I made a copy of the site and turned it into a publicly available template here: https://sites.google.com/a/ftcpioneers.org/sample/. If you'd like to use it, just click the "Use this template" link on the top of the page and follow the instructions to make your site. You'll need to change your permissions to share when your site is ready, but you could have the site up and running in a matter of minutes. I hope it's helpful to you! 

Homework hack for parents of new readers

My son started kindergarten this year, and I'm thrilled that he's starting to sound out words he sees and words that he uses! I really get into asking him how he thinks words are spelled, and he does pretty well for about 5 minutes, and then he's over it and wants to do something else. He's starting to have short homework assignments every week (basically sounding out words and reviewing sight words that they've learned in class), but it takes longer than 5 minutes, so after the first 5 minutes, it's been painful trying to keep him on task long enough to finish the assignment. The assignment would take maybe 20 minutes if he just did it, but he starts saying random words when he gets tired of doing it, so it's been dragging on for around 3 hours every week and getting split into multiple days just to get through it.

A few weeks ago, it occurred to me that he might do better if he only saw one word at a time instead of the whole list of words, so I made a Google Slides presentation with his homework one week just to see if it would go better, and BOY was it SO. MUCH. FASTER! As an added bonus, having the homework in Google Slides means that it's always available on my phone, so if we have a few minutes here or there while we're out and about, we can go over some of the words.

It's not fancy, but it's been working really well for us. I made a few customizable templates that are available here: http://bit.ly/2QQPSKi.

New activity types: Speed dating, PearDeck, and Conjuguemos games

As I have more of my materials developed, I've been working on improving or modifying existing activities to better meet learning objectives.  I have a number of activities where I ask students to interview classmates, and in the past I've done this as a free-for-all where they get up and move around the classroom. This worked pretty well in higher ed, but in K-12, what usually ends up happening is that I get a few big clumps of people that are answering the questions as a group. Efficient, yes, but part of the goal of the activity is to get them repetitions asking and answering the questions. So I borrowed an activity that I read about online (with apologies, because I can't remember where I read about it) and set up interviews in a speed dating format. To make it easier for me, I arrange all of my classes to do interviews on the same day so that I can arrange the desks the day before. I make a set of questions for each class, and give them 2-3 minutes to interview their partner. When the time is up, one partner moves on and the other one stays, and the process repeats. This has the added benefit of holding all students accountable for participating, and it's easier to plan for how long it will take. It also makes it easier for me to walk around and make sure people are talking in Spanish, and there's a lot more focus and a lot less off-task talking. Pretty much every time I've done it, I've heard students negotiating meaning in the target language in a way that surprised and impressed me, so it's been a great addition to my rotation of activities! I still do the free-for-all for short activities, but I've really been enjoying the speed dating set-up for more detailed interviews.

My school bought a subscription to PearDeck for all teachers this year, and it has a lot of great features. (It's a Google Slides add-on that lets you make your slides interactive, kind of like Kahoot but with more options.) It has a lot of features that I haven't tried yet, but my two favorites so far are drawing and dragging. For drawing, I'll give students a description of something and have them draw it. So in our housing unit, I might describe a room with furniture and students will draw what they hear. In a clothing unit, I describe what someone in a picture is wearing (or I just make something up) and they draw the outfit. I have also made a mental note of what someone in the class is wearing and described that for students to draw, and then asked students to tell me who in the class is wearing that. You could just as easily go low tech with this and have students use paper or mini white boards, but the added bonus of this is that I can show everyone's responses on the projector, and they enjoy seeing each other's drawings. (There is a feature that allows teachers to select specific responses to avoid projecting anything that might not be school-appropriate.)

The other feature I've been using is the dragging feature. With a draggable question, students can drag up to five icons to a specified place on the slide. There are a lot of potential uses for this, but I've found it to be great for working on location prepositions. So I might say "The red dot is in the center. The blue dot is to the left of the red dot. The green dot is above the blue dot. etc."  I can add shapes or drawings to my slide and then give students directions on where the dots are located in relation to items on my slide. For example, "The red dot is in the center of the circle. The orange dot is underneath the rectangle. etc." Once I've modeled it for students and we've practiced (over several class periods, I have students work in groups doing this activity on their own. So one student will put the dots in a pattern on the slide and describe it to the other students in the group, and at the end, they'll compare their screens and see if they match.

I work hard on creating activities that are meaning-focused and rarely use drills, but I do think it is very important that students know verb endings because so much meaning is conveyed in verb endings in Spanish (tense, aspect, mood, and subject in one tiny verb ending!). For the last two years, I assigned timed Conjuguemos quizzes with a required minimum percentage and number correct for a particular grade. It was not a popular assignment, which in itself would not be enough to dissuade me, but some of my best students were getting frustrated because they didn't type very fast, and their knowledge of verb endings was being conflated with typing speed (it also resulted in lots of cheating, as students who didn't know the forms just handed their computer to a friend who did to complete it for them). However, when students took their first unit test this semester, they did far worse than students in previous years in their ability to recognize who a verb was referring to and produce the appropriate verb ending. So I made two changes. First, Conjuguemos has a set of games that I hadn't been using, including Battleship. Students didn't like the timed practice, but they were pretty excited to play Battleship with each other, and it's a nice low-prep activity for days when I have a lot of other stuff to prepare, or days when I have a sub (I have students submit a screenshot of their game to Google Classroom). The other thing I started doing was having a required but ungraded practice time at the beginning of every class period. I pick a different pronoun to work on and students set the timer to 5 minutes and conjugate as many verbs as they can in 5 minutes.  Some of them still hate it, but now that it's just practice and not for a grade, it's more palatable, and now that they're doing it in class, I can walk around and make sure that each student is doing the work themselves, so it's easier to identify who might be struggling.  My pedagogical commentary on this subject because I can't not make this disclaimer when I'm writing about using drills: My main focus is always on making sure students can interpret language and produce intelligible language, so a lot of my activities push students to associate form and meaning.  We do not recite or chant verb endings, because those types of activities don't push students to make form-meaning connections. Conjuguemos also does not push students to make form-meaning connections, but it does push them to produce forms that will allow their listener/reader to understand what they're saying. Even if you firmly hold the line on explicit grammatical instruction not being converted into implicit knowledge, there is value in students knowing and being able to produce a grammatical form because it makes them more intelligible.

Assessments using Chromebooks and Google forms

Our school switched from iPads to Chromebooks this year, and I am all kinds of excited about the possibilities with Google forms and locked browser mode. A few weeks ago I spent about 30 minutes making my first vocab quiz in a Google form, and it went great and the kids said they liked the format better than paper. So a few weeks ago I spent about an hour putting my unit test into a Google form, and I am ridiculously excited about being able to get it all graded in 30 minutes or less.

In case it's useful, here's how I set it up: I divided the test into sections (4 different Google forms) so that students can choose which section they want work on first, just like they can with a paper test (but unlike a paper test, they can't go back to a previous section).

To streamline entering grades in the gradebook, my first two questions are "What is your last name?" and "What class are you in?" Then I can open the spreadsheet for the form and sort by class period and last name when it's time to put grades in.

I made a draft post of the different test parts in Google Classroom so that it's ready to go on test day, but when I post the draft, I only release it to students who are in class on the day of the test. If students are absent, I just release it to them whenever they come in to make up the test.

I tested it myself to see what students can and can't do. They can decide to exit the form without submitting, but if they re-open it, you get an email notification. Chrome disables the ability to take screenshots in locked browser mode (I tried it to just to make sure), and they can't open any other programs, tabs, etc. without exiting the Google form. I've used this in class for formative assessments where I don't want students to use a translator, and have discovered that it erases their progress on any other Google forms that they have open. Other than that, when they finish and submit, their browser should go back to what it was before they opened the quiz.

I should say that most of my test isn't multiple choice, but it will still be a lot faster to grade than paper because I can use the "grade by question" option in Google forms, which is a lot faster even than my grading-by-page method on paper.

After giving the test and a few quizzes this way, here are a few tweaks I've made:

1. I have a vocabulary section where I ask students to ID a certain number of words and another section that requires students to use what they know. I had these combined into one Google form, but in the future, I'll split it into two forms. The reason is that I give students a bunch of words that they can identify, but they don't need to identify them all. So there are maybe 10-15 points possible on the vocab ID section and another 5-10 points on the vocab in use section, but the Google form just gives me a total, and the total might be 50 or 60 if they identified all of the words that were in our unit vocab. So there are 15-25 points possible, but students might have more than that, and then I have to go in and look and see how they did on the second section where there aren't extra items (they don't get extra credit for identifying more than the required number of words). With the two sections separated, I'll be able to see quickly that they got the minimum number of words identified for 10-15 points, and in another spreadsheet their score on the second vocab section.

2. When grading: Don't try to grade anything while students are still taking the test. I thought I'd be efficient and get things started, but every time a student submits a form, the Google form refreshes, and you lose any work you haven't saved.

3. I only released it to students who were in class using Google Classroom, but it's theoretically possible that a student could share the link with someone who wasn't in class. So I also started adding passwords to Google forms that I change as soon as every student has opened the quiz or test. I used instructions from these two sites to set it up: https://eduk8.me/2016/05/passsword-protect-quiz-google-forms/ and https://www.schooledintech.com/password-protect-a-google-form/

4. Create two sections for every form. I like to scramble question order, but if I only have one section, the last name and class section questions get scrambled in with the actual test questions . So now every test and quiz has section 1 that asks for last name, class section, and a password, and section 2 that has the actual test/quiz items.

Teaching pronunciation in high school world language classes

One of the great things about teaching high school is how long I have all of my students. I'm now in my 3rd year with some of them, and it is so much fun to see how much they've learned in the last two years! One of the things that I've been doing in my classes is reinforcing basic concepts that students need to be able to function in the language. So for example, at the college level, I taught numbers and the alphabet in the first few weeks of first-semester Spanish, and then almost never worked on them. Partly this is a reality of teaching at the college level...the expectation is that a lot of material will be covered, so you don't really have time to spend building a solid foundation.

At the high school, and especially as the only Spanish teacher at my school, I can move at a pace that's conducive to deep learning. So we do go over the alphabet and practice sounds a lot at the beginning of Spanish 1, but I've been building on that by doing a weekly pronunciation lesson. My first year, I did the same lesson for Spanish 1, 2, 3, and 4, and then with each new year, I build a new set of lessons. So in year 1, I went through the alphabet letter by letter starting with vowels. In year 2, I did that again with Spanish 1, but for Spanish 2, 3, and 4, I went through vowel combinations and we practiced pronouncing vowel sequences (ae, ai, ao, au, etc.). In year 3, we're still working on vowel sequences in Spanish 3 and 4, but we're getting a little bit more detailed and comparing what vowel sequences sound like with and without accent marks on weak vowels. This will only take about half the year, and I'm still debating what we'll go over in the spring. In Spanish 1, I have students practice the vowels every week all year, so by the end of the year, they're doing relatively well with vowels for the most part.

So here's what it looks like so far:
Spanish 1: individual letters (a, e, i, o, u, and then all consonants starting with b and ending with z)
Spanish 2: 2-vowel sequences (ae, ai, ao, au, ea, ei, eo, eu, ia, ie, io, iu, oa, oe, oi, ou, ua, ue, ui, uo)
Spanish 3: 3-vowel sequences, diphthong vs. hiatus contrasts, still deciding between allophonic variations and accent patterns/rules for the spring semester
Spanish 4: TBD next year

The one thing that I realized this year that's missing is that I haven't been doing any perception practice with them. I want them to be able to hear words and have a basic idea of how they're spelled, but without doing listening practice, most students aren't going to make those connections. So I've started incorporating listening practice to help students make associations between the sounds and the letters that represent them. In the interest of not overloading myself with prep, I'm doing the same listening practice at all 4 levels with words from the bottom of the 10,000 most frequent word list of the RAE so that I'm using unknown words.

We have short days every Friday, so I take a lot of stress off myself by making Fridays my pronunciation and culture days (basically one lesson plan for all 4 levels of Spanish). I have a short reading and map activity about a different Spanish-speaking country that students work on while I'm circulating through room having them all pronounce the word list to me. I'm working on putting all of my lessons into one big presentation so that they're easy to access. I'm not done yet, but this is where you can find them if you're interested:

Spanish 1 pronunciation lessons
Spanish 2 pronunciation lessons
Spanish 3 pronunciation lessons

Spanish 4 pronunciation lessons

Why pronunciation? I know the trend has been to move away from teaching pronunciation since the audiolingual era, and some of that is a good thing...students don't need to sound like native speakers. But they do need to be intelligible in order to interact successfully in the target language, and the longer I teach, the more I realize that even in a "phonetic" language like Spanish, in the absence of direct instruction, most students aren't going to make the sound-letter correspondences. (And the results of my dissertation research suggested that even a small amount of time spent on training learners to perceive sound contrasts is enough to help them measurably improve their perception even over a relatively short period of time...not gonna lie, I really want to do a longitudinal study on this with my current learner population. Some habits die hard. :D)

Google form template and header images

I've mentioned before that I use Google forms every day in my classes for a variety of purposes. Last year I made a simple change to make it less time-consuming for me to track form completion that I discussed here. This year, I've made two changes to my forms to make them work better for me. First, I created a folder of form templates on my Google Drive. I have a series of forms that I use as bell-ringers to practice things like days of the week, units of time, etc. So I made templates of those forms and then just copy them each week. I also made a basic template with my class section and last name questions, and then whenever I make a new Google form, I just copy my basic template so that I don't have to re-type those two questions every time I make a new form.

I also looked at my bland purple Google forms and decided to use the header to incorporate images from the Spanish-speaking world. So I went to Pixabay and grabbed some (free public domain!) images of different places in the Spanish-speaking world and started making my forms more visually appealing. Google also pulls colors out of your picture to make possible palettes to use as your background colors, so you don't need to have any sense of coordinating colors to make a reasonably attractive form (which is great for me, because although I keep trying to do this, I have no sense of color combinations and it always ends badly).

Sad, boring Google form

Google form that reminds me of my trip to Puerto Rico

Advice for the Spanish Praxis test

I've had various requests for help with the Spanish Praxis test over the last few years (since taking it myself to get my K-12 certification), and I thought I'd put a few thoughts together for people who are going to take it soon or need to retake it.  While the test-taker agreement (and my own memory) do not allow me to disclose the nature of the items on the test, ETS's practice test and prep materials offer a good starting point for study. So here's my advice (I received a 200 on the Spanish Praxis, Praxis Core Reading, and Praxis Core Math, and a 196 on the Praxis Core Writing).

1.  Pay to take ETS's practice test. I had been teaching Spanish at the college level for 18 years and was pretty confident that I'd do well on the Praxis, but I still like to prepare for tests. So I bought the ETS practice tests for the Praxis Core and the Spanish Praxis and did all of them as if it were a real test (timed, no use of outside resources, etc.). If you have test anxiety this is especially important because you can get used to the exam format and how the timed sections work.  When you take the test, it will show you your correct and incorrect answers, but it won't save them when you exit, so if you want to remember what you got wrong, you'll want to make sure that you leave enough time to go through your answers after you're done taking the test. For free, you can check out ETS's World Language Study Companion.

2. Do as much as you can in the target language.  The thing to remember about the Praxis test is that the goal is to see how well you can communicate in the target language in terms of both receptive and productive skills. It helps to know what the test looks like, but if your ability to understand and communicate in the target language is limited, there are no easy fixes. If you've taken the test and haven't passed, you probably need to amp up your time in the target language. Some ways that you can do this:

• Change your settings to Spanish on apps, social media, email, etc.  The more exposure you have to Spanish (and the more you're doing in Spanish on a daily basis), the better you'll do, because you're picking up incidental vocabulary, giving your brain a chance to process different sentence structures, exposing yourself to cultural knowledge about the target language, etc. We need lots of exposure to input (listening and reading) in the target language to become fluent, so the more exposure you can give yourself, the better off you'll be.
• Read and listen to the news in the target language. If you look at the practice test, you'll see that a lot of the listening and reading comprehension passages are pulled from the news. So the best thing you can do to prepare for the reading and listening comprehension sections are to read and listen to a little news every day. That's actually advice that I've been giving my students for years before taking the practice test, because that's basically how I learned to read with some degree of fluency. I did my study abroad in Costa Rica, and I was struggling to read academic texts because there were so many words that I didn't know. So I would sit down with a dictionary every night and try to plow through my readings, but it was slow and painful. I needed to be reading at a level that was more accessible to me in terms of vocabulary (and topic familiarity), so I started buying magazines and newspapers and reading them, and that's how I built enough vocabulary (and reading skill) to read at a higher level.  For students who are generally interested in Spanish but who aren't taking the Praxis, I recommend finding articles, videos, and podcasts on subjects that are interesting to you, because you'll be more invested in learning Spanish. For students preparing for the Praxis exam, I recommend mixing it up. Do read and listen to news about topics that interest you, but also read and listen to news on topics that are less interesting, because there's a high probability that you will not care about some of the topics, and this will help you prepare for trying to recall information about a topic that you don't care about (which is always harder than recalling information for a topic that you're interested in). 
•  Talk to yourself. Speaking is a skill like any other skill, and you get better at it by practicing.  Use ETS's practice test speaking prompts to get started so that you know what the tasks will look like and practice those task types, but even beyond that, spend at least a few minutes every day talking through your day. If you struggle with verb tenses, work on past, present, and future by saying what you did yesterday, what you're doing today, and what you're going to do tomorrow. I know I'm a weirdo, but I did this when I took French, Portuguese, Italian, and Mandarin. I wanted more speaking practice but I was poor and couldn't afford to pay a tutor, so I just talked to myself to work on the language. You don't get the interpersonal side, but you do get practice speaking, and that helps even if you're just talking to yourself.
• Talk to other people. If you have the chance, have as many conversations in the target language as you can. A number of universities have started to offer conversation classes for teachers and teacher candidates because it is HARD to maintain fluency when you're teaching lower levels, and these would be a great opportunity. My own alma mater, UNL, is offering this type of class online this summer (SPAN 432/832), and the University of Colorado's Certificate in Language Teaching offers a telecollaboration course to practice speaking, so you could do this from anywhere (and potentially get started on graduate classes to move up that pay scale!). You can also pay a tutor, or if money is an obstacle, you could join a language exchange site  and trade your English knowledge for practice in the target language (Google language exchange websites and find one that works for you; I don't have any recommendations because I haven't used any of these for a long time). 
• Practice writing. Again, look at the writing prompts in the practice test, or check out the prompts in ETS's World Language Study Companion. Practice writing those specific genres of writing so that you're familiar with the task and the structure. I taught Spanish composition for a number of years, and one piece of advice I frequently gave to students was to use more specific words. Words like bueno, malo, interesante, cosa, etc. are pretty generic, so work on expanding your vocabulary enough to be more descriptive with your adjectives. For example, if you're writing a persuasive essay, the odds are that you think whatever you're trying to persuade someone to do would be beneficial. So instead of saying "XYZ would be good because...", you could say "XYZ sería beneficioso porque..." If you're arguing against something, you might use the words dañino (harmful) or consecuencias negativas. These are relatively minor changes that make your writing sound more sophisticated. If you're working on interpersonal writing, practice controlling register. Is the situation formal or informal? If you're testing in a language like French or Spanish that distinguishes between a formal and informal you, and a singular and a plural you, practice using those verb forms in your writing. 

3.  Follow directions and organize your ideas. In the free response sections, make sure you're following the directions. You may be able to speak and write fluent Spanish, but if your response doesn't follow directions, it isn't going to get a very good score, even if your Spanish is flawless.  The scoring rubrics are available here in ETS's study companion. Note that for any score above 0, you must address and complete the task. 

If you look at the scoring rubric for the Praxis, you'll see that a well-organized response falls into the 3 score criteria (the highest score) for all types of free response tasks. There are a lot of other criteria, but organization is the most easily controlled characteristic for a non-native speaker. Realistically speaking, you may not have great control of grammatical structures or pronunciation, or a wide range of vocabulary. It takes a long time to acquire some things; I was still having a lot of trouble with preterit and imperfect during my master's degree program, and I really didn't grasp it until I was working on my PhD in Hispanic linguistics. However, everyone is capable of organizing their responses coherently. In addition, a lack of organization can create the impression of disfluency, especially for non-native speakers. This isn't exactly the same thing, but in a study on pronunciation, Munro (1995) found that non-native speakers were judged to be harder to understand when they uttered untrue statements than when they uttered true statements. So even if your grammar and vocabulary are generally good, a lack of organization combined with even minor language errors typical of a non-native speaker may create the impression that you're not fluent.

If you are an aspiring educator and want more individualized language practice, I would recommend a site like LinguaMeeting (I have not used this site but have seen it recommended by trusted colleagues in world languages). I am not offering tutoring at this time, but if you would like to schedule a brief chat (free), please email me. My PhD is in Spanish linguistics with a certificate in second language acquisition and teacher education, and I've taught a variety of classes in Spanish at all levels of instruction, from first-year high school to advanced graduate courses in Spanish linguistics. See my CV here for a full list. For more information, please email me at aksaalfeld AT gmail.com.

I don't receive any form of compensation for any of the products or classes that I've recommended here.

Life and happiness after the tenure track

Updated May 17, 2020 to add the following: 

 My sister is a licensed mental health practitioner who recently started a mental health podcast. She interviewed me about my experience with depression, and you can listen here:
 
Original post:

I've been pondering this post for a while, because it's a personal topic and I haven't been ready to talk about this publicly yet, but I'm in a good place now, so it feels like it's time.

When I graduated from college in 1999, I didn't know what I wanted to do. Someone told me that I could apply to go to grad school and keep getting school paid for with an assistantship, so I applied for a master's program at my undergrad university, got a teaching assistantship, and promptly fell in love with teaching. On the advice of my professors, I decided to apply for PhD programs so that I could keep teaching at the college level and hopefully land a tenure-track job so that I would have some stability and earn a living wage. I was accepted with funding at all of the schools that I applied to, so I picked the one that was the best fit and went off to do a PhD in linguistics. In my 5th year, my dad had a major heart surgery, and I started feeling like I wanted to be a lot closer to home. However, I was still working on my dissertation, and had another two years left. I starting looking at HR websites at schools in Nebraska just for kicks, not really seriously thinking about leaving because I still had two years left, but then I found an ad for a job that looked like it had been written for me. I decided to apply, because I realized that if I didn't, it might be years before another job in my field opened up in Nebraska. I ended up getting the job, and my husband and I moved back to Nebraska. I was thrilled to have landed a tenure-track job (and to have avoided the academic job search), and to be within a few hours of family again.

The first two years were stressful because I was adjusting to a new place and finishing my dissertation a few states away from my dissertation director. But when I finally graduated in 2009, I thought things would get better. I still liked teaching most of the time, but there was one class I REALLY hated teaching that was a regular part of my teaching rotation, and I was getting really tired of whining from entitled students. I started having stomach pain that got worse and worse until it was pretty much non-stop, and I started saying that I hated my job in my 3rd year. But I felt trapped, because I had no idea what else I'd do, and I'd literally just finished 15 years of schooling to get my dream job as a professor. At some point, I remember thinking that everything would just be easier if I were dead because then I wouldn't have to work so much, and I finally realized that I was dealing with depression. I was surprised, because I didn't feel sad or any other emotions that I associated with depression. I was just tired and feeling like it wasn't worth it to be alive anymore. So that was good because once I realized that I was depressed, I went to the doctor and got a prescription. But what I didn't realize is that there are a ton of meds out there, and you might have to try a few before you find something that works. So I tried one and things got better, and I felt like I could function again. So I felt OK for a while, but then 2012 happened.

In the spring of 2012, I was scheduled to teach the class I hated again (senior composition in Spanish), and I also ended up with a TON of students. I had a course release from a grant that I'd written, but two sections of that one class somehow ended up being 47 students. So I was only teaching a class I hated, and it was hugely overenrolled, and a ridiculously labor-intensive class on top of all of that.

Because I started the job before I finished my PhD and didn't know to negotiate to have my tenure clock start when I finished, I was also slated to go up for tenure in the fall. I knew that my odds were bad since my publication record was modest and I'd been looking for other options. The dean scheduled meetings with all faculty slated to go up for tenure in the fall, and that meeting was the catalyst for a free-fall. I know it can't be easy to be an administrator telling a faculty member that she probably won't get tenure, but it does not need to be a debasing meeting that leaves a person feeling like she has spent the last 5 years draining herself for absolutely nothing. When I walked in the door, the dean told me that it didn't look good, and I told him that I knew, and I was looking for other employment. At that point, the best possible thing would have been to just express empathy and wrap it up. But instead, I got to hear about how my case wasn't great anyway, but because I'd been hired the same year as a literature professor in my department who published early and often and had gone up for early promotion the year before, my case looked especially bad. I don't remember most of what we talked about, but the dean going to great lengths to tell me how crappy my research profile looked compared to my colleague's is emblazoned into my memory. (This is beside the point, but it also made me angry because while we were in the same department, my field was linguistics and I did human subjects research, and my colleague's field was literature. These are very different disciplines with very different publication expectations. I should say that my colleague is a lovely person, and I am genuinely happy for her. She worked hard and earned her promotion and tenure.)

So after that train wreck, I started looking for jobs while tanking from depression. I should have taken a medical leave, but didn't realize that it was an option, so I just kept trying to finish the semester. But it was a train wreck and I couldn't manage it. So my summer was also a disaster, but I was cautiously optimistic because I had a job lined up. But then the job fell through, and I was back to square one. I decided to submit my tenure portfolio because I didn't know what else to do, and in the past, the RPT committee had tenured weak research profiles without promotion. (It's also worth noting that my university jumped from a master's degree institution to an RU-D during my first year, and while in theory I was hired under the old guidelines, in practice, the expectations for publication became more stringent.)  So I submitted my portfolio and had the great pleasure of going to a meeting with my colleagues where my mental health became the main topic of discussion. When I left that meeting, I went back to my office, shut my door and shut the light off, and cried until everyone was gone for the day. Then I went out into the main office and pondered hanging myself. In the end I emailed my department chair and withdrew my portfolio from consideration, because I realized that if my portfolio went through the full college committee review and I didn't get tenure, I would probably decide to end my life. (For what it's worth, I was on an antidepressant, but it obviously wasn't working.)

I was in a dark place, but I kept moving forward, and was thrilled to discover after about 7 years of trying, I was finally pregnant. The hormones and happiness of finally getting pregnant gave me the boost I needed to get through the semester, and I was feeling pretty good until the Monday after Thanksgiving, when I went in for my check-up and the ultrasound tech discovered that there was no heartbeat. So I miscarried in early December (but I was still looking for jobs and went on a job interview while I was miscarrying). This is not the point of this post, but because I'm putting everything out here, I will say that my OB-GYN added to the misery by telling me that it would be like a heavy period. It was for a few hours (during my job interview), but then I started having contractions, and my OB-GYN hadn't prescribed any pain meds and sent me home to miscarry. So I labored all night to deliver a dead baby with ibuprofen as my strongest pain med.

Honestly, I don't really remember much from that time except crying every night when I went to bed. It was a terrible 5 months. But I got pregnant again in April, and my son was born the following January. I worked with my doctor to get off of my antidepressant to lessen potential side effects to the baby. In the meantime, I was in my last year at my school, still trying to find a job and sending out resumes and applications to anything that looked like it might be a decent fit, and getting 0 interviews or call-backs. My job ended in May 2014 and I still hadn't found anything. Over the summer, I applied for a job and finally got a call-back for an interview, but at that point my depression from my ongoing employment stress was combining with postpartum hormone drops, and when the person told me that they wanted to interview me, I remember thinking to myself "Why?" Pro tip: Just go ahead and turn the interview down if this is where your mental state is. It will not go well. I prepared, but as it turns out, when you're in the middle of a major depressive episode, you don't make great impressions. This is the lowest I've ever been. I sincerely believed that my family would be better off without me, and started looking into taking care of that. I dug out my insurance policies and made sure that they would pay out if I ended my life, and I looked for the most effective (and most immediate) method. Fortunately, we did not own a gun, we did not have any money to buy a gun, and I wasn't quite miserable enough yet to do something that would be less immediate.

I picked up some low-paying work rating tests online (which I emphatically don't recommend unless you have no other options, but it did not require an interview), and decided that I couldn't afford to be unemployed so I would go back on the job market and move away from our families. At that point, I got back on an antidepressant, but I didn't feel any better and it made me hungry all the time, so I gained back the 10 pounds I had lost since having my son, which made me feel even worse about myself.

I decided to see if I could find an anti-depressant that would work with me instead of working against me, so I Googled to see if there were anti-depressants that had statistically significant side effects for weight loss, and discovered that bupropion has that side effect. So I asked to switch to bupropion and FINALLY started feeling like myself again. I had several Skype interviews while taking the previous anti-depressant that went nowhere. I had a few interviews late in the semester after I'd been on bupropion for a few weeks, and I got invited for campus visits for those interviews. I ended up with 2 offers. One was for a full-time non tenure-track job in a major US city, and the other was a 1-year visiting position in Nebraska for a sabbatical replacement, but the department was hopeful that they'd be allowed to replace someone who had retired a few years earlier. In the end, the salary at the permanent position was so low compared to the cost of living that when I calculated it, I realized that we'd be better off financially staying in Nebraska with me still being unemployed. So I took the 1-year visiting position. The department didn't get approval to replace the faculty member who retired, so at the end of the year I was out of a job again. At that point we had decided that we'd rather stay in Nebraska and figure something else out rather than moving away for a job that I probably wouldn't like anyway. There were two college jobs open in my city as my 1-year job was coming to a close. I interviewed for one of them but didn't get it, and the other one got canceled for financial reasons. I cobbled together a few more freelance jobs, but I didn't like what I was doing, and it didn't pay enough to make our financial situation manageable. Sometime in there, our insurance company stopped working with Walgreens and we had to switch to CVS. When I went to switch my prescriptions over, for some reason they couldn't get my bupropion switched over. I don't know what it is about CVS, but if my prescription expired at Walgreen's, they called it in and got it filled immediately. CVS said they were doing that, but it didn't happen, and when I requested a refill myself, my doctor's office sent it to Walgreen's because the part about having to switch to CVS apparently got lost. So I ended up cold-turkeying off bupropion without planning to. (That said, cold-turkeying off of bupropion had 0 side effects, compared to tapering off of venlafaxine, which was hellish.) But I felt pretty good, and decided to just stay off of it.

I was still looking for jobs and saw a job teaching high school Spanish at a private school come up. I had lamented the year before that there were a ton of jobs teaching high school Spanish in my city, but I didn't have my certification (because you don't have to be trained to teach in order to teach at the college level...). Since certification isn't a requirement at private schools, I decided to apply, but then started looking into certification programs because most schools want you to at least be working on a certification. I figured I could afford to do a certification program if I had a real job, and then discovered that there was a program that allowed you to teach in a shortage area on a transitional certificate while completing a full certification program. So I went ahead and applied just to get the ball rolling. I had an interview at the private school, but it didn't go anywhere, and in the meantime, a job at a public school had come open. I applied and interviewed, and felt like it went really well, but I didn't hear anything by the date that they had indicated, so I decided to apply for another job that had just come open. I got an interview, and while I was at that interview, I got a call offering me the job at the first school. But I really loved the second school. They had told me to let them know if I got another offer, so I did, and they offered me a job the next day. So when I was going to start in the fall, my mom and sister suggested that I preemptively go back on an antidepressant so that I didn't tank from stress in a new job. For once, I actually listened. It took a little while to adjust my dosage because I had lost 30 pounds, so my previous dosage was giving me serious side effects (like bloody noses and a panic attack during my in-service), but once I dropped down the dosage, I got the side effects under control. I hadn't felt bad before I went back on the anti-depressant, but when I got back on, I had an amazing revelation. I had thought for the last decade that I was just cynical and bitter due to a job that sucked the life out of me and life kicking the crap out of me, but it turns out I just needed to be on the right medication. I have been ecstatic to discover that I am still an optimist! This sounds small, but I just assumed that the sweet optimist that went off to do her PhD was gone forever, and that I would always be bitter and cynical due to my crappy experiences. So discovering that I am not really a bitter and cynical person has been an amazing feeling. It has also been amazing to get back to 100% health, so to speak. I had been functioning at a degraded level for so long that I had forgotten what it felt like to not be depressed. So what I considered "not depressed" was still depressed, and my family recognized that I still didn't have my personality and sense of humor back.

So now I'm finishing my second year of teaching high school, and I LOVE it. I feel like I'm doing something meaningful, and I love being in an environment where I can build relationships with my students instead of seeing them for a few months and then never seeing them again.  I thought college would be better because I'm an introvert and I had more alone time, and it has been a challenge to adjust to being around people all the time, but what I've found is that as an introvert, I need more time to make connections, and I was never going to have that time at the college level. I connected with a few students and felt like I was doing something meaningful a handful of times, but for me, knowing that at this point I've forgotten way more students than I remember, it felt pointless. Especially when coupled with the pressure to publish research that maybe a handful of people will ever read.  So I appreciate the opportunity to see my students every day and have them in my classes for 2-4 years so that I really get to know them.

I've lost about 67 pounds over the last 5 years and have developed healthy coping strategies like exercise to deal with stress, and I've realized that I will always need to be on my anti-depressant. My sister was working on a counseling degree while I was going through a lot of this, and in addition to getting me to go see a counselor, she also helped me by giving me strategies to keep me from getting stuck (she cognitive behaviored me 😀).

For anyone who's reading this who is in one of the dark times, there is hope. Life will get better. For my fellow ex-academics, life is better on the other side. It just takes a while to get there.