// Langwitches Blog

Spanish teacher and student ALERT!!!

The official launch of TeachJeffSpanish.com has been announced by Chris Craft from Crucial Thought.

Dear Jeff,

We are a class of sixth graders at CrossRoads Middle School in Columbia, SC. We enjoy your show. We’ve noticed that you have used some Spanish on the Jeff Corwin Experience. We are going to help you with your Spanish so you can become even better.

This is not just for Jeff Corwin! If you want to practice your Spanish this website will help you too! We hope you enjoy this letter and of course this website. Remember, keep up your Spanish!

Sincerely,

Mr. Craft’s Sixth Graders at CrossRoads Middle School

I was impressed when I saw the first episode as a scavenger hunt video. What a great way to allow the students to be creative and at the same time teach others while learning. I was even more impressed when I learned that the video was created by the students themselves with minimal input from their teacher. WOW! That says a lot about the students’ motivation.

I will be at FETC (Florida Educational Technology Conference) in Orlando in January presenting Travel through Space and Time. It just happens that Jeff Corwin will be the Opening Keynote Presenter.

Wouldn’t it be great if Jeff hears about Mr. Craft’s project and effort of helping him learn a language better. If Corwin is inclined, this might even be the start of a great collaborative project between him and these students. What a motivator to learn a foreign language!We all know that, especially here in the USA, foreign language learners need all the support and motivation that can be found. They are up against:

• school boards who will not fund foreign language instruction at the elementary or middle school level.
• school administrators who don’t understand the importance of early, sequential, and uninterrupted instructions.
• their High School counselors who are telling them that they “only” need to take the two required years and are not understanding that it will take many more years in order to become fluent in a second language.
• And in the end, they are up against an entire culture where the majority (including most of their parents) are monolingual themselves with no motivation or understanding of the importance of knowing another language.

As a former Spanish teacher, I applaud Mr. Craft and his students. Their enthusiasm will make the difference in actually acquiring another language. Being able to connect their studies to a meaningful and interesting real life purpose (teaching and sharing with a celebrity what they are learning) will give these students an incredible boost of self confidence and the necessary fuel to continue studying Spanish.

Way to go! Can’t wait for more episodes of TeachJeffSpanish.com . I will make sure that I pass the link on to all the Spanish teachers I know as well as FFLA (Florida Foreign Language Association).

[tag]teachjeffspanish[/tag]