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You Can’t Out-Candice Candice, Sane Saturday, + more!

In this post: 1. You Can’t Out-Candice Candice (reflection+video) 2. Sane Saturday (May 9), a perfect mix of relaxation, camaraderie, and PD 3. Low Prep | High Success online workshop (Saturday, May 16)   You Can’t Out-Candice Candice The summer between when I was hired to create a Latin program at a school in Los […]

Pick Your Health—The Stakes Are Incredibly High

This post is a personal reflection and a challenge on the topic of my teacher mantra video #3, which you can watch here or at the bottom of this page. During the last two weeks, I have had two physical and mental crashes—times when, due to poor self-care the previous several days, I spent an […]

Do You Really Care about Human Beings?

Nothing is as important as human beings. Not ideas, not subjects, not institutions, not goals, not lessons, not information, nothing. This hit me harder than usual in the past week during some fraught threads on social media. I realized that I was drawn to some views more than others not just because of the overall […]

Introducing: Tuned-In Teacher Mantras

Both during my summer travels and in online teacher communities a recent pattern has stood out: anxiety for the new school year, often in spite of—or perhaps because of—extensive prior experience. Others experiencing anxiety are new to the profession or, like you, are boldly trying new ways of teaching. I identify so strongly with this […]

1 Like 1 Answer – ‘We Teach Languages’ Edition

Dr. Stacey Margarita Johnson of the We Teach Languages podcast recently kickstarted this fun, instructive, community-building game, “1 Like 1 Answer.” For this post, I thought I would simply share my responses without comment (but with links added!). Feel free to join the discussion in the comments section below or on Twitter, and to let […]

Four Things to be Relentless about in 2019

A year is a bit like a class session: You plan some things before it starts, but only in the thick of it do you see what you really need to do. So, yes, I do have a classic resolution: to visit the dentist in 2019. (Don’t chortle through your splendent teeth—this is a serious […]

My Outfits Are Ready for ACTFL

Are you? Tomorrow I head to New Orleans to join old and new friends in the CI Posse, a growing group of twenty-odd teachers and content creators working together to boost joy and success at ACTFL 2018 and beyond. If you haven’t discovered it yet, check out the CI Posse blog, which includes my “Why […]

YOU Are What’s Best for Your Students

Your students are tremendously fortunate to have YOU as their teacher. Don’t let anyone–including yourself–tell you otherwise! No one else cares about your students like you do. This makes you uniquely able to exercise the patience that teaching often requires and to advocate for your students–with the administration, with other teachers, in the community, with their […]