If, perhaps controversially, you think of yourself as the ‘manager’ of your students, this article (entitled "Why Good Employees Quit") will get you thinking!

You could start by changing its title to “Why Students Quit?”

As I read it I kept thinking of the students I lead mainly in their Language learning journey and started asking myself some questions.

For instance, looking at number 1 in the article I wondered: Are we ‘overworking’ our young at school? Number 4 got me asking myself: Could my students think I don’t care about them? And with 6 and 7 I thought: How are students being asked to use their creativity (thinking of it not as “artistic skills” but more as “problem-solving skills”)? Finally, after number 9 I had to ask: How are we allowing students to follow their passions in our teaching?

As we are getting to a stage of the year in which we can perhaps start thinking about 2017, these are some ideas for your consideration.

​Good reading and reflecting on these ;)

​There might be some truth in saying that change (radical change) often occurs once we are in crisis mode. Have we hit rock bottom yet in the learning of Languages in schools in NSW? In many ways we can think we have. And it is not just about the seemingly constantly declining number of students doing languages in their Senior High School years, but also the fact that many young people in our schools do not see the relevance of studying another language (in their present or in their future).
 
However, if we try to put ourselves in their shoes, perhaps we can understand how we might have gotten to this point. Unless there is an immediate need to communicate with other people in a particular language, which is not the one spoken by close family and friends, they might rightly ask themselves “why would the effort be worth it”?

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​We are empowering each other.
 
I literally get excited, occasionally emotional too, when I read someone else’s thoughts and they match or challenge my beliefs. I get restless and my head starts spinning with ideas. My close family members know when I am in that mode. They know I am not available then… For many years I realise now I was ‘stuck’. I was only challenged by own thoughts on education and learning. (My husband could do so much nodding and trying to engage but, like me when he talks about mountain biking, there is a limit…)
 
My Twitter ‘acquaintances’ and most of all those active #aussiED participants have been like having a group of friends always handy when I have craved an interesting conversation but have been too busy with the routine to spare the time to set up and get out for an in person chat. 

Picture taken from https://www.classdojo.com/

I have used ClassDojo for my French lessons. I create a few classes in which my 'students' are the words or expressions we are learning. I do revision of these by randomly choosing them (my 'fake students') and children have to either translate to English, to French or give me the opposite of the name shown on the screen.

I have also used it for "brain breaks" using the principle of the website gonoodle.com. I have created a class where I have the names of a few games or actions just so students get a break from working. I might get them to just jump, breathe or do some counting in an unusual form. 

Please add more ideas in your comments if you have used this tool for your language lessons too!

A few months ago I discovered this fantastic app thanks to the amazing @joedale. However, it is only this week I am finding the time to explore its potential for use with languages. 

It's called Opinion. Have you hear of it? It was designed to create podcasts. However, it is just perfect for languages teachers! You can so easily cut pieces of audio and move them around (for students to easily create dialogues for instance). 

The best use I have found for it has to do with preparing students for speaking tasks (or even just getting them talking in response to specific questions). So, today I recorded myself asking some questions in Spanish and French to the students (in preparation for their orals). I sent them the audio file (with all questions included). Now they can then grab that audio file and cut where each question ends to add their own answers to my questions!

And then I thought we can actually use it for oral feedback too! We would just cut where students need some (oral) feedback and record ourselves giving the correct pronunciation or sentence structure and voilà! So exciting! 

I find the app incredibly easy to use so I am confident anyone can figure out how to use it without specific explanations here ;)

I hope you will find these ideas as useful (and exciting) as I do! And please don't hesitate to add more in the comments below.

Let me start by making the point: we, languages teachers, need students to do some work outside of lesson time if we want them to improve at a meaningful pace. This is the premise I use to develop my argument here. 

There is currently this debate about whether students should be given homework. Those who believe it is a waste of time and it essentially rots family and children lives presumably have the concept of homework being a set of randomly assigned tasks to fill up time and fulfil the requirement of some school to assign it to its students.

I was very much in shock when I became a mother. Nobody had really hinted to me how challenging it is at times. Parenthood, even from the pregnancy stage, can be testing and, for sure, a life changing experience. Yet, in the media we predominantly see the nice “happy family” pictures of beautiful children with their joyful parents. Far from the reality in most households I dare to say.

I feel the same way about using technology in the classroom. The Internet and education literature are full of articles, videos and podcasts on the great advantages of using technology in schools.  Yet, like parenthood, none of those articles seems to address the potential challenges its integration brings.