Happy Back-to-School! I know some folks have been in school for well over a month and others will just start this week. We have now been in school for 2.5 weeks and so far, so good! But it is around this time that I, as a teacher, have to continue to be consistent and continue to incorporate and review the routines and expectations that I have been trying to set for the past 2.5 weeks. All students will start to push the boundaries, and they need us to hold to them (or make the appropriate adaptations if a new rule/expectation/routine is not working out) for their own good.  

In this post, I am going to mention two great opportunities coming up this fall that will help and support me along the way throughout this school year: the World Language Coaching Collaborative and the Central States Conference Webinars. 

But first, I want to share a nightmare that I had about a month ago before the school year started.   

I woke up at 5:15 without an alarm still during the summer (meaning I do not have to wake up at 5:15) due to a nightmare that I was in a fifth grade classroom with a group of 30 students – and I had no idea what I was doing or how to engage them as the teacher. I don’t even know if I was teaching Spanish, but whatever I was doing or trying to do clearly wasn’t working. In fact, my current principal walked through the classroom, and I looked at him and said I have no idea what I am doing. He handed me a large thermos of coffee and said, “you got this” and left. 

When I woke up, I started thinking about what I was not doing to engage those students and what I should’ve been doing just based on everything that I know about teaching. I was lecturing this group of 5th graders (mind you I currently teach high school) and whatever I was saying to them was not being effective. 

Once I got back to my classroom and started planning for this school year, the nightmare returned to my mind ,but I soon realized that I do remember how to teach and engage my students. As I am starting the year, I wanted to share a few of my expectations for students and myself that are the opposite of the nightmare I had: 

1. I require all students to be actively engaged in all classes. So when we are doing TPR Gestures, they all must do the gestures with me; it is an expectation. I feel these gestures are critical in my novice and intermediate level classes because if I gesture all of the highest frequency verbs and they learn the gesture, it then allows me to make language more comprehensible throughout the year when I use the same gesture with the same verb in any of the other tenses or 100+ ways to say the same verb in Spanish. Oh yeah and in terms of engagement, my students do not have their computers open during class unless we are working on an assignment. They have to be focused and it is my job to help them along the way. 
2.  Along these same lines, when preparing a lesson, I try to think about movement and changing to new activities so that students do not become too bored. I have written about my time traveling in another country here and how I feel it was similar to starting a new class, and it incorporates some of this same sentiment. 
3. Just like in the nightmare when I was left feeling that I could not do it, I needed a coach to give me a bit of confidence. Our students might feel this way too. We MUST BUILD THEIR CONFIDENCE. I cannot rely on the confidence that they built in their last class because just like in my nightmare, I had forgotten it; they too may have forgotten about it over the summer. So scaffolding is key and providing students supports along the way is how we help them build their confidence: Word Walls and Pointing and Pausing to Target Language, Sentence Starters and Conversations that they can copy/mimic and read to produce, and teaching them how to develop their thoughts using word clusters and prepositional phrases.

These are all wonderful supports for us as teachers to incorporate for our students, and ones that help create a classroom culture where everyone can feel successful. This fall there are two opportunities available that are there to help my success as a teacher. 

1. The first is the launch of the World Language Coaching Collaborative ( wlcoaching.org ) that I am a founding member of, and it has been such an important collective experience for me professionally over the past 15 years. We have launched this new nonprofit that aims to provide teachers the guidance and tools for helping us develop best practices in terms of acquisition-driven instruction strategies and honing our own skills and also how to be a Coach to help other teachers along the way. Since 2011, I have been a part of the Coaching Team helping train teachers throughout the country in using Comprehensible Input in our classrooms. This team of professionals has always been a sort of Best-of Team, who have been supporting me along the way because whenever I have a problem I am able to talk with one of my fellow Coach friends and work together to resolve whatever issue I’m having in the classroom. 

It is so exciting to launch this new Collaborative and for members, there will be monthly virtual PLC Coaching Co-Labs where members can to be coached while working out a skill or a new strategy and/or observing other teachers and coaches as we work on growing and honing our own skills. The Collaborative will also host monthly Colabinars, which are webinars but with time to discuss and analyze practices, and additional social experiences. For more information, please check out the new website: wlcoaching.org and join us for a free meeting about the new Collaborative on September 14. More Information is below.

2. The second piece is a webinar presentation that I will be giving for Central States Language Conference’s Best of Series, which is my Best of Ohio and now Best of Central States 2026 presentation about student engagement. I love revisiting this session because it reminds me of all of the ideas that I incorporated into this 50 minute presentation. In fact, the session is called: Extra, Extra: 10 Quick 10 Minute Activities that Engage All. Sure getting 10 activities is great, but I really end up being a bit Extra and going over 30+ activities and ideas, join me for that on Wed. September 23 at 6:00 PM Eastern Time: https://www.csctfl.org/virtual-events/upcoming-webinars  

Extra, Extra: 10 Quick 10 Minute Activities that Engage All – Session Description: 

Ever have 10 minutes extra at the end of the period or just need a new activity to redirect students in the middle of class? We’ve all been there. This session will explore 10 quick, 10-minute activities that require little to no preparation that will engage all students. The presenter will share his how-to Google slides and, since he’s a little bit extra, will also provide a list of additional activities – followed by a brainstorming session for even more ideas. 

Both of these are opportunities that are going to be supporting me throughout the school year and could do the same for you. Have a great one and I really hope to see you joining the WLCC (World Language Coaching Collaborative – wlcoaching.org), and/or joining for the Central States Webinar.

Yes, It’s All For the Best – Gary