Visual Ode to Flip Flops (On the steps of the Pyramid of the Moon in Teotihuacan, Mexico)
I am a teacher by profession and more specifically a Spanish teacher at heart. I love learning languages and I love my first language (English), but there is something about Spanish that makes me want to teach it, sing it, and devour it.
English and Spanish have just always been a part of my life. My mom is Mexican and my dad is Canadian. I am a Mexican-Canadian...born in Acapulco , Mexico and raised in Vancouver , Canada Canada and more Canadian in Mexico
In 2009, I started my first full-time contract after putting my time in as a TOC (a.k.a substitute, supply teacher). I was a Spanish teacher at Byrne Creek Secondary in Burnaby, BC and I had the most amazing students to lead me through my first year! It was an adventure to say the least with laughter, tears, sleepless night, headaches, stress...basically a roller coaster of emotions, but worth all the hard work.
After a year and a half into my time at Byrne Creek, my husband was offered a job that would propel him up the experience ladder and open other doors in the future. It was great! ...but it was in Quebec City. Newly married, no kids, and still renting, we thought: Let's do it! That meant leaving behind my dream job, but I was all for it at the time.
We're still in Quebec City just over a year later, and I'm still a teacher, but I've been working at the elementary level...something I thought I'd NEVER do. What a growing experience, however I miss teaching high school Spanish so much!!! The opportunities for teaching Spanish in high school here are limited...
So why am I writing this blog? Well, even though I'm not teaching Spanish right now, I know I will again very soon! And after the year and a half I had as a new teacher, I cannot even explain how excited I am to even delve deeper into my Flipped Classroom research! I feel flipping my class would allow me to do all the things I only thought would be possible in another lifetime as a teacher!
I'm not even sure how I stumbled across it. I'm so sure it was something I saw on Pinterest that lead me to an amazing blog (that I read like a novel and got sad about when I had caught up with the real time posts) by Heather Witten that details her adventures with a Flipped Spanish classroom. Reading her blog led me to other sites and other blogs and pretty soon I was starting to feel overwhelmed by all of the info. So, I'm using my time to research, learn, plan, and contemplate what 'Flipping" is all about. Advice I have seen from many 'Flippers' includes starting some sort of journal to detail your journey. Well, I'm getting ahead and I'm starting my 'Flipping' journey outside of the class, so I'll be a little bit more prepared to jump into it with my future students.
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