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2022 Planning Setup
2022 has started off on a challenging note for me in terms of pandemic childcare issues. As I pulled up to drop off my daughter the first day of school, we learned the school had to unexpectedly close for the day due to a staff shortage. She got to go back the next day, but…
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Virtual Exchange with the Stevens Initiative COILed Classrooms
In addition to all of the other excitement this semester, I’ve also been participating in a virtual exchange program with our fourth semester Arabic class, through the Stevens Initiative Connected Classrooms program. While I’ve done virtual exchange before, it’s generally been pairing my students with individual language partners, rather than a classroom. So, I thought…
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Taking the stressful edge off of November
After 22 years as a student or professor on semester systems where fall semester runs mid August to mid December, I feel pretty confident saying that November is the most stressful month in this semester, and possibly the entire academic year (April, the spring parallel month, is also a contender). Early in my career as…
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The energy drain of the language enrollments issue
In two previous posts, I’ve addressed structural aspects of the language enrollments issue as well as some ideas on what language teachers can control. In this post, I want to address a final aspect of this issue: energy, and the energy-draining nature of being asked to justify a central part of one’s existence.
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The enrollments issue: What can language teachers do?
Two weeks ago, I wrote a post on structural aspects of the language issue, and promised a future one on things that I think are within language teacher’s control, and that we can work on. Today, I’m back with that post. I have to admit this one was kind of a struggle, as most of…
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Staying on track with a Sunday Basket
For me, a key part of making everything work is setting up systems at home to ensure that we eat, get to bed on time, aren’t scrambling for masks or clean clothes in the morning, and are generally on track to move through the week without things falling through the cracks. The main part of…
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Structural Aspects of the Language Enrollments Issue
In response to the problem of declining enrollments in language classes, the message given to teachers is “get your enrollments up!” While this may seem like an obvious solution, it actually creates even more anxiety and frustration as it is a request for overloaded language teachers to take on additional work, in which they have…
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What if I’m not organized enough for the Organize Your Language Teacher Life course?
For today’s blog post, as the end of the Fall enrollment for my Organize Your Language Teacher Life course approaches, I thought I’d address a response I hear over and over from language teachers about this course: “It seems like exactly what I need, but I don’t know how I will get organized enough to…
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Systems for setting up a Language Learning Center
As most of my energy the last two months has been consumed in taking over as Interim Director of our Language Learning Center, I thought I’d take this blog post to describe what that experience has been like, and the systems I’ve been using to stay on top of a lot of new information.
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Summer Blog and Podcast Recommendations
I traditionally take the summer off of blogging, so this is my last post until August! So, I thought I’d provide a roundup of some of my favorite blogs and podcasts for you to consume, as if you enjoy my blog you will probably enjoy some of these as well.