a small space for big thoughts

I'm Melisa, and I'm a workaholic. It's true. If you ask my husband, he'll tell you that if I'm not at school, I'm working at a winery. If I'm not at the winery, I'm working on helping put teacher's guides together. If I'm not doing that I'm helping a friend with lesson plans. I could go on, but I think you get the idea.  I keep myself busy.  After being on a computer all day though, I needed to step away for a few hours. On Tuesday, I peeled peaches that I had bought over the weekend and canned them along with freezing some to make cobblers later. To the average person, this seems like a pretty boring task or even one that would be at the top of any pioneer woman's to-do list. I'm not usually one to spend hours in the kitchen, so this was a new experience. I had started making jam during quarantine, so this seemed like the next best thing. On Wednesday, I was given an opportunity to help bottle wine. I'd never done this before, an...

I've been compiling my thoughts on remote teaching for about a week now, and I needed an outlet to be able to get them all out.  Here's a little background about me though before I get started. I'm in my tenth year of teaching high school Spanish, and I'm currently in my second year at a new school that's transitioning to proficiency-based instruction with a strong emphasis on using comprehensible input approaches. I've been a full CI teacher for about 7 years now, and I don't really remember the last time that I picked up a textbook. I use readers, songs, stories and anything else that helps communicate with my students.  It's my goal to make my classes the best part of their day...what can I say? It's pretty fun when your kids think they get you off topic, but you're really just able to give them more opportunities to hear language.  Last spring was a mess.  You were all there for that craptastic show known as "remote learning".  I sa...