“Que significar ‘reglas’ en Ingles?” Carissa Tobin asked the Webster elementary homeroom clase Monday, Aug. 29.
“Rules,” many of the students answered. Some of them already speak Spanish, others will be learning, through her efforts, to use the language about 95 percent of the class time.
On this first day of school, they were learning how the classroom would run, with visible and audible clues like all raising hands to focus when the teacher wants to make an important point – or at least, that’s how I interpreted it, hearing “dame cinco,” writing down “gimme five.”
Making a twisting motion with both hands by her ears, she exclaims, “Zshoop! I’m going to go into English for just a moment,” and when she’s explained what she needed to, “Zshoop” again like turning down volume knobs, and back into Spanish. Such pantomimes, gestures, and pictures on the whiteboard screen make all the instructions reasonably understandable in any language.
“The listening is helping,” she said at one point, reinforcing their efforts to pay attention. For the rest of the 30 minute period, the students followed instructions to put their names on papers “Me llamo _______” and to at least start to draw a picture using las Crayolas.
At the end of class, “Tu te levantas, caminar a la fila, ponerse en la fila.” (She asked them, on instruction, to rise – respectfully we might add – push their chairs in and form a line to exit the classroom.) She called their tables, mesas, by their colores; verde, rojo, anaranjado, amarillo – green, red, orange, yellow, and so on.
“Voy a ver Miercoles,” I’ll see you Wednesday!
Tobin, in her new specialist role at Webster Elementary School, “layers in the Spanish”
for all classrooms twice a week for 55 minutes and once a week for 30 minutes, explained Webster principal Ginger Kranz. On Friday, they do their integrated movement or physical education clases en Español.
Last year, Tobin taught kindergarten at a full Spanish immersion school, her efforts winning her one of two Presidential Awards for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching (PAEMST) awarded in Minneapolis. According to the PAEMST website, the awards “are the nation’s highest honors for teachers of mathematics and science (including computer science).” Indeed, Barack Obama is quoted in the news release announcing the awards.
Minneapolis Public Schools Superintendent Ed Graff visited for a portion of the Aug. 29 class, sitting in the “take a break” chair to the side of the room. He’d visited Webster before, touring on the day of his first press conference June 17. This time, he noted how the kids’ tennis shoes squeak on the flooring.
Graff congratulated Tobin, both acknowledged that this is a new assignment, and they talked about best practices in the FLES model of immersion instruction (Foreign Language in the Elementary School).
Graff’s next stop on his ceremonial first day of school: lunch with Northeast Middle School 8th graders, before heading south to congratulate Morgan Fierst at South High School, the other Presidential Award recipient. She incorporates social justice issues into her math lessons.
Graff started his day at the Central Kitchen on Plymouth Avenue North, rode a bus, visited a southeast Minneapolis school and two Northside schools on the way to Northeast. After South High School, he visited two other Southside schools. A day full of points to make and things to observe and celebrate.
Webster Elementary School teacher Carissa Tobin infuses Spanish and movement into her class time. (Photo by Margo Ashmore)