Initial Reflections on Tell Collab Austin 2016

from: Photos from TELL Project's Austin TELL Collab 2016

This year's TELL Collab Austin was my first experience with an un-conference. I've attended quite a few conferences with sessions that were mostly seat-time and less learning. The TELL Collab was not one of those -- by any means. Everything started on Friday morning with a quick explanation of the format followed by the posting of questions (pictured above). Based on those questions, the wonderful coordinators from the TELL Project and COERLL then created the schedule for the learning sessions.

The TELL Collab schedule includes notes on all of the sessions, so I'm just going to link to it for future reference.

In the meantime, here are some of my reactions. I'll dig more into some of these ideas in future posts as I study more resources and put more ideas together.

• "No teacher gets up in the morning and wants to be a bad teacher." — I had a principal who used to tell his teachers that parents send the best kids they had to school. I figure, if you combine both these ideas, then you can create a climate for success. Next Step: Plan lessons that teach and encourage proficiency for our teachers, our students, and their parents.
• Being a good teacher isn't a linear growth, it's a 3D continuum (thus the TELL Project logo).
• Proficiency
• Measuring proficiency is like taking your temperature — you'll always have growth and progress, unless you're dead. (I don't remember who said this, but it's brilliant.)
• Students will play video games and hit reset repeatedly to level up. We should strive to make language proficiency the same thing. (from Meredith White, @PRHSspanish)
• Proficiency levels should be things that students can brag about. (also from Meredith)
• Buy-in is important from all stakeholders: students, parents, teachers, and administration. Many teachers have lessons to teach proficiency to students and handouts to send home to parents. Next Step: Research more about lessons and create something that we can use in our classrooms.
• "The only way to earn a zero, is to give me zero." This doesn't necessarily mean "free points" but it does mean that they should receive proficiency feedback for anything that they produce. 
• Authentic Resources
• Resources should be evaluated for tasks with various modes.
• If the resource (input) is complex, keep the task simple, and vice versa.
• Have a good resource but don't know what to do with it? Ask the students to determine: What is it? How do you know? and Where would you find it? An additional follow-up question would be "What else did you understand?"
• There's nothing wrong with asking the students to find authentic resources. And, you can have upper levels find resources that your lower levels can use.
• An authentic photo can be a good prompt (either interpersonal or presentational). A good set of questions: What happened before? What in the photo resonates with you? What will happen after the photo?
• Remember, however much time you give the students to complete a task, they'll use. It's better to give them less time and hold them to it so that they don't get off task and stray out of the TL.
• Adding Culture to the Unit
• The Essential Question is key. With the right question for culture, the resources will make themselves available.
• For units about schedules, ID cards, etc., assign a global ID to the students that they use instead of their own identifications. This gives them the chance to research a different city, country, culture, and so on. Students can then discuss various things their global ID would like: foods, music, television shows and movies, sports, local places, etc.
• It's important to let students and parents know what grading in your classroom looks like. Are you using proficiency based assessments? How does that "translate" to the gradebook (or how does it not translate)?
• Several schools use rubrics for the various modes. Other schools have rubrics for different proficiency levels. Next Step: Research more about the rubrics.

There's more than what I've listed here, but these are the big points that I want to let ferment. In the next few weeks as we prepare for our fall classes, I'll be digging more into these ideas and planning more. Stay tuned.