Welcome!
Welcome to Teaching la vida loca, a podcast for World Language Teachers seeking inspiration, unapologetic authenticity and guidance in centering joy and facilitating language acquisition for the people who matter most our students, I'm your host, Annabelle. Most people call me La Maestra Loca. And I'm an educator just like you, and inspiring teachers is what I do. Hey there, welcome to episode 26 of teaching la vida loca. I have to record this tonight because I'm feeling so inspired and motivated. But I am a little freaked out because my microphone connection cable was left at school. Because it's the same cable that I use to hook up my personal computer to my HDMI cable, because the computers they give us at school. So, so bad. So, I'm just hoping this sounds okay. Can you just put up with one episode maybe not having the best audio? Okay, great. Thanks. Because I have to tell you about this. While I'm feeling so excited and motivated and inspired.
Class Jobs
Welcome to Episode 26, which is all about my most favorite class jobs. Okay, so those of you who've been following me for the past few years, know that the thing that I talk the most about, because I am so obsessed is my PLC community called La Familia Loca PLC stands for professional learning community. And I created this community to connect with teachers on a deeper level outside of conferences, and really be able to have follow through those conferences never seem to give me like I get to do these workshops with people and inspire them and send them off with awesome strategies to implement in their classroom. And I never actually hear how it went, or what felt hard or challenging and be able to, like help them with that beyond that. So that's why I created la familia loca but in August, so every month I hire a guest speaker for the community. And I try and hire somebody who is an expert in something that maybe I don't feel as confident in or something that I want to learn, and I can't share with my community. And so, this August, I hired John Seifert, and he came, he's an author in our community of acquisition driven instruction teachers, and he is an expert in using class jobs. And I've heard John present on class jobs before, but I literally have only ever had two class jobs in my entire career. And this year, I hired him to present for la familia loca, he gave this phenomenal presentation. And I promised myself this year, I would start with class jobs. And I am so glad I did because I have 25 class jobs in my classroom. 25 And it has completely transformed my classroom. I felt like I had a well-oiled machine already. I didn't feel like I needed class jobs. I felt like it was another thing to try and keep track of. And another thing to juggle because I already have enough in my brain. Why would I add something else? And then John presented, convinced me and oh my gosh, you know, I can't.
25 Jobs
So, in my most recent, not podcast blog, this is the podcast. In my most recent blog, you can find more details on how kids applied for jobs, how I rolled them out, how it's ever changing and ever growing because I know right now, you're listening to this message. It's November and you're like okay, cool. Annabelle, you could have shared about this a lot earlier. And my response is joining la familia loca. So, you find about this stuff at the same time as we do. But my response is also, I didn't implement these class jobs until 11 weeks in of school, and I'm not done implementing class jobs. And the 25 jobs I have, are ever changing and ever growing. And ever, like even today, we edited one of the class jobs. And today, I reassigned three different class jobs. So absolutely, it's November and you can totally implement these. Now. If you're listening to this episode, and it's February 2023. And you're just now listen to this. You can totally implement these tomorrow.
Technology Ambassador
I'm going to share right now my top three favorite class jobs. My number one that is just an adaptation from something that John shared is my technology ambassador. I have a technology ambassador in every single class. It's a really fancy word. I don't even know what it necessarily means, but I will tell you what they do. My technology Ambassador when they come into the classroom, they are one of the first two people in line always coming into my classroom. My kids come in in a line. Now when I worked in middle school, they filtered in, you know, when they got there from their passing period, same thing in high school. So, your technology ambassador is somebody that you want, if you teach middle or high that you want them to be there early, it's somebody who's there early on the technology ambassadors’ job is to go straight to the computer and switch the slide from the welcome slide. To the do now slide as soon as they see at least three people in their seats with their journals ready for the day. Now. The technology ambassadors’ other job is to ensure that the next classes slide deck is loaded and ready to go before the next class comes in. So, at the end of class, after they've put away their own things, they're going straight up to my computer, loading the next classes slides, it is insane. How much stress this has taken off. Like I didn't even realize the tiny amounts of stress that was induced after every class like trying to prep for the next one. Because this year, and I know I've shared this before in the podcast, I have, I end one class, and I have a five-minute transition. But in that five-minute transition, I have to take two minutes to walk the kids to their next class and two minutes to walk my next class back to my class with 30 seconds in between either side for wiggle room. So inevitably, my entire five-minute transition period, I'm literally doing air quotes right now is lost, right? So, this job is invaluable to me because I know as the kids are leaving class, and we're resetting the room, somebody's already taking care of the prep of my next class for me.
Class Custodians
On that note, when we're leaving class, I have two class custodians. This is another favorite class job. My class custodians, ensure that my chairs are reset. If I could go back in time to my first-year teacher self and say, don’t fix the freaking chairs. Don't move the chairs, let the children move the chairs. What are you doing, don't touch a chair ever? I wish I wish; I wish, I wish I wish I could go back. Anything that a child can do let the children do. So, I have two class custodians that go through really quickly re organize the chairs. And they also pick up any leftover pencils, they grab any Lost and Found stuff like if a kid left a jacket or a water bottle, it's their job to bring that with them to the next class and then figure out who it belongs to. So that I'm not dealing with lost and found ever so that my class looks clean, organized, and beautiful when the next class comes in. And I don't have to lift a finger. I don't even have to remind kids because now that they've been doing this job for five weeks, my custodians know they know exactly what they need to do.
Teacher Assistant
My final which one I want to share as my third favorite, y'all I literally have so many class jobs I don't know what I want to choose as my next favorite. Hold on. Let me think let me think let me think I told you this podcast is just going to be unfiltered. unedited. I'm not even taking that out. Because that's real-life teacher brain at 9:41pm because that is when I'm feeling inspired to record this for you. So, there you go. Here you go. Ready? Are you ready? Are you ready? This one is my number one favorite, and I can't believe I couldn't think of it. And my husband is rolling his eyes next to me on the couch. It is my class teacher assistant. So, each class has a teacher's assistant. And they are in charge after their due now every day to go and get the teacher assistant notebook. Each day the teacher's assistants have one page in that notebook. The page is titled with the date. And then each class lists its name. So, for example, if my first class comes in, if you don't name your class country names and you're wondering why I do that, or how I do that I will link a pod or a blog for you. But my first class is named Peru. My student comes in the class assistant, she labels it Peru, and then when she's done taking any notes that I have her record that day, she writes the next class name, so it's already ready for the next student. So, she writes Kuba, Kuba is my next class. My next student comes in, she records the notes for Kuba and then records the next classes named Columbia. Columbia comes in and takes any notes I have them take and therefore this is all important. Some days it might be one word. Some days like today, we did a clip chat on de los muertos . What goes on days like today, I had them write down the name that they named the character in the video, and how many minutes into the video we got. So, I can quickly tomorrow look and see. Okay, Peru, we're starting from second 53. In the video, Colombia, we're starting from second one minute and 13 seconds. And El Salvador, we're going all the way back to 30 seconds in so I can easily quickly see, and I don't have to try and track that for myself. Nor do I have to try and keep track of okay, this class named her Lily, this class name term is Stefania. And this class named her Jiuquan and this class whatever it is, I don't have to try and remember that because my classroom assistant is taking notes in class when I asked them to, on that paper that I can quickly rip out and use the next day. Or keep in there and just glance or have them remind me on the spot because they have it written down. It's an awesome class job.
Thank you!
Okay, so this was another short one. I know I didn't share a brain break. I'm sorry, not sorry. Okay, here's a brain break. I did today. Go noodle. Hello elementary teachers. If you're not using go noodle dances, it is epic and hysterical to watch your kids dancing to go noodle. And I'm not gonna lie. I totally did it with my middle schoolers too. And you could totally do go noodle with high schoolers. I don't care what you say. It's all about your mindset as you present it to your student’s hashtag just say yen. If you'd like to learn more about class jobs, how I use them in the classroom, how awesome they are, how much kids love them, I encourage you to read my latest blog post. And, again, don't hold back in implementing them late in the game. It doesn't matter do it now. And if you want to join la familia loca the next time we open, and if you join this year, the next time we open you'll even get access to John's original recording about class jobs for us, the one that inspired me to start using class jobs in the first place. If you'd like more info on La Familia loca, I will of course, link it in the show notes. Otherwise, I hope that you have a beautiful rest of your day and an awesome rest of your week. And until next time, I'll be teaching la vida loca and I'm sure you will be too. Take care. Are you still here listening, are you waiting for a joke or something? Okay, I've got you don't worry. Student told me this one today. Why didn't the skeleton go to the party? Because he didn't have no body to go with. Oh, God, okay. Have a good day.
