Making plans

I've been granted a 3-month sabbatical by my school to visit TPRS (Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling) practitioners and users of other methodologies which differentiate instruction to better serve all learners; study schools with successfully articulated K-12 language programs; and share ideas with educators thinking about the place of language acquisition in 21st century education.

Three snow days and a long weekend in early February gave me the chance to research my options, talk to teachers and administrators in other schools, and start to plan my itinerary. I have four major trips scheduled so far:

1) In early March: A family vacation to Eleuthera, in the Bahamas, to visit my nephew and his partner who teach at the Island School. While the IS does not offer language instruction, it does offer an exciting place-based curriculum, using island and marine ecology as the basis for study of math, literature, art and science. I'm hoping to get inspiration for my gardening-based Spanish curriculum at Westtown. (As a side benefit, all of my family will complete our open water SCUBA certification!)

2) In late March: a New England road trip to Glastonbury School District in CT, to experience their exemplary K-12 language curriculum which uses a set of cross-disciplinary essential questions to guide instruction at each level; and St Johnsbury Academy in VT, a semi-private high school where the language department has embraced TPRS as a key tool for language instruction.

3) In late April/early May: a western trip to San Francisco, where I'll visit the Tamalpais high schools which use TPRS district-wide; and return via Denver, with 3 days seeing various languages taught at various levels K-12 in the Denver Public Schools, using a variety of TCI (Teaching with Comprehensible Input) methods.

4) In mid-May: a Midwestern road trip to Canton, MI to see a friend who teaches upper level Spanish using TPRS at Salem High School, near Detroit; Cincinnati, OH to visit the K-12 language program at Summit Country Day School, where use of TPRS is just part of a school-wide focus on developing global competence; and Pittsburgh, PA to learn about the K-12 program at Sewickley Academy and see how they have succeeded in integrating a Global Studies program into their K-12 curriculum.

Between long-distance visits, I hope to sit in on classes with colleagues at local schools, work in my garden, and reflect on what I learn through entries in this blog.

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