Day 2-Spanish with Blaine

Today in Spanish class, we had some teacher questions about discipline. I agreed to be the obnoxious student so that Blaine could model discipline for us. The thing that that taught me is the dynamic pesonality that Blaine has is truly magical. I really really really didn't want him to be mad at me. I'm not sure if that's a representation of Blaine or of my people-pleasing nature... He reacted to everything with love. He turned to me when I was talking and said with a smile, "Hey kiddo, this is not going to work if you are talking. For this to work, you can't talk, write or sleep. That's a pagame" He explained that pagame are worth 5 points of participation points per grading period (100 total possible). They can earn these points back by making a nice card for him, shaking his hand to have a genuine bonding moment or writing a 100 word essay. He validated me so much during that "class period" and said at the end that those kids who are attention seekers or having a bad day are the ones that his heart goes out to. Those are the kids that he really wants to reach. People pleaser? Maybe this will work for me.

On to the notes!


Whenever there is a choral response to an info-seeking question, don’t take that answer so that they are shocked! I love this idea. As a student, it really made me sit up and take notice. I think I blogged about this already, but if I didn't...I'd be happy to re-explain in the comments section.

Add extra details that you “forgot” the first time through the story. Blaine would go to re-tell the story and then get "stuck" on some tiny bit of information that he forgot to create interest and extra reps. For example, we were continuing with a story that we had been working on for 3 hours. In this story, there was an elephant in an internet cafe in New Zealand who saw the facebook of the most beautiful girl in the world... There's a ton more to the story, but this was all basic information established very early. He came back to it. Class, there is an elephant...where is the elephant...was he alone? (new information) No! He wasn't alone! I forgot to tell you! He was there with his mom and his dad! Then we talked about them. They were divorced. The mom lived in Minneapolis and was friends with the mosquito we had been talking about...it went on and on describing these two super-minor characters that he had "forgotten" to tell us about the first time through the story.

Basic structure of story-telling
1. Establish problem 2. Character development 3. Go somewhere and try to solve problem/doesn’t work 4. Resolution

When Blaine is "lesson planning," he starts with a couple of sentences and he knows the resolution before he begins. The middle can go anywhere.

More on discipline: We talked about rudeness rom students. He gave the example of using a student and asking: Is there a girl or an elephant? A student yells out "Elephant!" Blaine goes to the student and says: This does not work if you do that. You cannot say that she’s an elephant. She’s not, she’s a girl. What we’re doing does not work if you’re doing that. –Blaine
Take care of discipline problems in English.

One of the greatest tips that I saw was to use the actors to verify information, using you and I… This adds a ton of interest for the students, increases reps, and introduces 1st and 2nd person.

Part of my "acting out" was begging to be in the story. When I asked to be the elephant, he came, hugged me, and said “Honey, I love you, but this is my story…we’ll get to you another time” That hug shut me up. I think I've always been afraid to touch my students because of the fear of being sued or something. I'm going to get over that. Seriously.

This is a quote from one of the teachers in our class. Her name is Jammie and she was trying to explain why you don't correct speaking when a student makes a mistake:
"When you correct a child learning a language, they are not developmentally ready for the correction. When you say “no” to form, they think you are correcting the content. No, you don’t say I goed to the store, you say I went to the store…That’s what I said! "