Tweet
Harry Wong’s advice in the language classroom.
Welcome to the 5-week Linguist Show. If you want to learn a language or you teach a language, you’ve come to the right place. Join Janina each week for tips, resources, and advice for making engaging language learning happen anytime, anywhere.
Welcome to the 5-week Linguist Show. Over the next few weeks, I really wanted to talk about starting the school year. I’ve been teaching for a long time, teaching languages since the early ’90s. I’ve taught in a variety of settings. I taught university level English. I’ve taught some private language, done some private language teaching, but the majority of my time has been in that sort of K through 12 environment. I’ve taught language immersion. I’ve taught FLES, Foreign Language for Elementary School. I’ve taught languages, English and Spanish.
I wanted to share with you for a world language classroom some essentials to start the year. The things that I know now that I wish that I knew in the ’90s when I was a young, inexperienced language teacher that would have made my life so much easier. Today, I really want to talk about Harry Wong. So early in my career, I taught at a private school and then I taught at a university. I didn’t have a lot of training in language teaching. Of course, I had a degree. I went into it intending to see what it was like. It was a private school, so I didn’t need certification. In the university, I didn’t need certification. Then I found that it really suited me and I decided to seek certification.
In doing that, I was working at a public school and I had the privilege of hearing Harry Wong, the author of The First Days of School present. I’ve never heard of him. I didn’t have a big background in education. I had one in languages and in drama. It was really transformative to me. So it was a whole day with Harry Wong speaking, and then you had these breaks to really think about how to apply the things that he talked about.
Harry Wong and classroom language.
The things that really resonated with me, there are many, but some of the ones that really truly resonated with me, the first one is don’t ask kids how they’re doing. You’re their teacher. Say something positive to them. Say something, “It’s nice to see you. I’m glad you’re here today.” Things of that nature. Don’t get in a conversation. They’re teenagers, a lot of times they’ve got their own issues with friends. Just be consistent and let them know how nice it is that they’re in your class today.
So I thought, well, that’s brilliant as a language teacher. You get to just say the everyday things all the time, and then you get to really say positive things. For example, how great is it to see you, all those greetings. You’re looking forward to seeing them the next time. This is perfect for a language teacher. I just need to make sure that I’m saying as many of those things as I can to my students. That’s total CI. That’s total immersion.
Also with regard to comments. So I got really into target language stickers and stamps and comments. I think it’s from Spanish plans,
