Taking Advantage of an Interruption

For my second day back with my Spanish 4 classes, I was ready to share a story about a boy whose father buys him a magic carpet. I introduced the new vocabulary, asked some questions to practice the vocabulary, and then began to set up the beginning of the story. It was then that I noticed a student in the front row (the desks are arranged in a U formation so there are many students in the "front" row), slyly reaching into his bookbag on the floor. Inside the pocket of the bookbag I saw a shiny wrapper - you guessed it, chocolate wrapped in yellow foil, most likely from Easter.

Suddenly, my story wasn't so important any longer. What had my attention, and in short time, the attention of many of the other students, was... What was José reaching for in his bookbag? I continued asking questions as I walked towards José, both of us smiling knowing he was caught red-handed, and sat down in the student desk next to him, all the time continuing my questions, now directed to José, about the first few sentences of the story. As I asked the questions to José, I continued to look at him and then at the bookbag, then back at him. It was a little unrehearsed game and I was enjoying it, José was enjoying it, and the other students were enjoying it. By the time I stood up and moved away from José, everyone in the class knew that José would not be reaching into his bag again to snack on candy.

But, the best part was when I added a new sentence to the story, only to glance at José to see him licking his fingers. I couldn't help but zero in on José again and ask him what he was doing. He explained, in Spanish of course, that there was "chocolate en mis pies". ¿en tus pies? What a great time to review parts of the body, fingers and toes, and all the while with the attention of the whole class. It was at that point that I realized that this was "flow" that some TPRS teachers mention. The students in the class, including José, were so focused on what was happening with José and his bookbag and the chocolate, that the emphasis was not on Spanish, but Spanish was being used to follow and narrate the events. Personally, I didn't care that the whole chocolate episode took 4, 6, or 8 minutes out of my planned story, it was communication in the target language and they were focused in on the action.

Turns out, José said (in Spanish again, of course) that he was going to give me the candy when I was seated next to him, but I stood up too soon. Naturally, I sat next to him again, he gave me the candy, and I placed it on my desk for later.

Let me assure you that I know, without a doubt, that José wasn't embarrassed nor did he feel put on the spot, at any point during this interaction. He is a great student with a super, super, SUPER personality and I knew this little "game" was just as fun for him as it was for anyone in the room. He helped create the "flow" and nobody else, at that particular point, could have drawn the rest of the students' attention into the conversation like José did. Was it an interruption - certainly. But it was time well-spent. There's time tomorrow to continue the story. THANKS JOSÉ for helping with the lesson.

Just one of those days I have to ask myself, "and they pay me for this?"

MAGIC happens when you least expect it

One thing I love about TPRS is that you never know when the students will help to spin a story that turns into MAGIC. I'm learning that many times this happens when you don't follow your plan A. Susan Gross explained to me that the story I have planned should be considered "Plan B", one that should only be used if all else fails. After she said that, I realized that the day before, I had experienced exactly that with my Spanish 3 students. Below is how I shared the story with Susan Gross last week:
I can relate to what you said about my story being plan B. That happened to me on Friday. I wanted to review le/les gustaba(n) and en vez de. But, during PQA I found out I was the only one in the classroom that had never heard of the singer "Drake". When they asked me what music I like and I said Brad Paisley, one of the students (a great guy that has a great sense of humor) said, "oh, you're country" and then made kind of a "duh" sound. And a that moment I remembered a story about a guy that goes into the town village every day. All the villagers think he's dumb so they offer him a nickel or a dime and he always picks the nickel because it's bigger. They laugh at him because they think he's stupid and the next day the same thing plays out. This continues every day. Then one day a stranger sees this take place and pulls the guy aside to tell him he should pick the smaller coin because it's actually worth more. The guy then says that he knows that, but if he picks the dime, they won't offer him the choice every day and he won't be able to pocket the 5 cents every day.

I knew that the words for city and country were coming up in the near future so I decided the "dumb" person would be from the country and he would go into the city every Wednesday. When I asked the kids who the person from the country is, of course they said "Sra. Hitz". (The previous day we had a discussion, in Spanish, about how I live on a farm and that I wake up at 4:10 a.m. every morning to feed the cows before I come to school and at times help deliver calves - yes, even to the point where my hands go where no hands should ever go in a cow. If you live on a farm you know exactly what I'm talking about.)

So, I chose actors to play the other parts, and of course I played myself, and you know what Susie?, I had a blast and the actors were awesome. The students were so focused on what was going on in the story. It was PURE MAGIC! Of course then the story was over and I laughed when I saw my "focus words" of gustar, etc on the board and someone said, "Yeah, whatever happened to the person going to the Drake concert?" and right on the heels of that comment another student said, "I like stories. I learn a lot" (or something similar).

I know I can't expect that every day, or at least not until I relax more and learn to let things play out in a natural way, but WOW, it was enough to energize me and make me want to see it happen again.

That happened last week and to my surprise, my students in my two Spanish 4 classes served up more MAGIC yesterday when we talked about the fears of some of the students. (Who would have thought that a high school student would be ok with acting like a bird?)

Be assured, this MAGIC doesn't happen every day in my classes. Admittedly, there are days when the story just falls flat and I'm left wandering what went wrong. But, just knowing that the potential for that energizing MAGIC to pop up at any time is there, makes the start of each story an interesting and unpredictable adventure.

Thanks Susan for telling me to move my Plan A to the Plan B spot and leave the door open for MAGIC to enter the classroom.