Category Archives: film

That One Time I Had An Idea…

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I have so many ideas that I don’t even know what to do with them. Finding the time and energy for all of the things swirling through my head is a daunting task. Once I have an idea, and I think it’s great, I automatically think about how I can make it better…and then I get overwhelmed and it becomes a vicious cycle. 
I actually had so many ideas for blog posts, and they all live in my head and I haven’t found the time until now (because I have to) to actually compose my ideas in this blog…woops?
Anyway. My most recent idea came from Lacy Matthews: 
She’s the best! 🙂

who made an announcement about immigration over the loud speaker one morning during prayer in first period. I got inspired in that instant to assign my Spanish 3 Honors students the task of writing a personal narrative of an immigrant coming from a Spanish speaking country during this time. Students were to write their story in the first person from the perspective of an immigrant (obviously in Spanish).  First they were required to pick a scenario: which country? What is this person like? What is their family like? What challenges or successes arose from the immigration process?

Students researched social media posts, news articles, blogs, vlogs, pretty much anything available to them to get the most accurate, authentic perspective they could find. And they really enjoyed it. They were tasked to work in groups, and produce a dramatic, first person perspective narrative of what an immigrant might go through in various scenarios.
My students found themselves learning about government policies regarding immigration, polarizing perspectives, the daily struggles of someone living in a war-torn country or a country with limited economic opportunities. They found themselves feeling compassionate toward individuals that they had never encountered before. They learned things that weren’t readily available in a textbook or a lecture, and that’s awesome.  Oh, and I guess they learned some Spanish along the way too 😉
I found that my students were really into this project. They took pride in what they were doing,  and they wanted to do it well. They were meticulous with the grammar, conjugations, subject verb agreement, adjectives, and the best word choice, because as one student put it: “I want to do these people justice. Their story is important, and I owe it to them to do a good job.” 
(And then my teacher heart exploded into a million happy pieces!) 
I later found out from one of my students who has Lacy for religion class that she was simultaneously teaching about immigration and was showing a film titled: “Which Way Home?’ (I think that’s what the movie was called, my brain turned to mush during Christmas break, correct me if I’m wrong, Lacy). Students in her class were also privileged to see a guest speaker who discussed immigration policy and bills regarding the issue. I was delighted to know that several of my students in my Spanish class also share Lacy’s class and we were discussing the same themes.
This unintentional collaboration happens more often than not with my classes. Somehow whatever I happen to be teaching completely coincides with another discipline, and then BAM! Interdisciplinary teaching. The only problem is, I don’t want to have to find out from my students what’s happening in other classes, but it’s a welcome blessing anyway. I love to see that my students are making the connections on their own without it being forced. I like when learning is organic, and when students can come to their own conclusions on their own. 
Back to what I was saying about so many ideas…I like this project…It has been great so far, but I want to do MORE with it. I’m open to more ideas and suggestions because I want to expand on this topic. I don’t want to just leave it as an essay. Let me know your thoughts! 

Film Clips on Schoology

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When I was a student, I saw a lot of great films, once.  My professors exposed me to marvelous images and sequences but I really needed to pay attention.  Each viewing was unique and not to be repeated.  Like my current seventh period film student, I fell asleep in class often.  Sometimes I could find the same film at a video rental but I rarely tried. 

Daily, I show the students many clips and stills from all type of movies.  I want to flood their mental image banks with possibilities.  I also want them to have access to everything I show in class.  Some of it may be on youtube but they will rarely try to find it there. 


Using an open-source program, VLC player, I am capturing stills and sequences from dvds (for my educational purposes).  It is a simple task and it takes a few minutes but it is much faster than trying to cue up that scene from a dvd player during class! Whatever I show them in class, I also put on a Schoology for the students’ reference.  At then end of the years, I will save my clip library as a resource and expand it with new clips next year.

You can talk to our IT department about downloading it on your device.  I have learned that it works much easier on a PC than the MacBooks. I am mostly using a faculty room pc for this operation.

If you merely want to use it once in a while or for a single project, I will help you do it!

A great resource for hi-res film stills

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Looking at film stills is a significant portion of our film studies class.  I usually clip my own shots from our dvd collection but often want images from other movies.  It seemed like there should be a library of these images out there so I looked around a bit.  I found Film Grab and think it is worth sharing. On this site you can search by a few criteria to find the right collection.  The quality of the images is fantastic well curated.  It was such a delight that I start to imagine if other disciplines might be able to see possibilities.

image from Atonement, Joe Wright 2007





partial page view 


¡Conduzcamos por la Ciudad!

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I have been taking a course at UC Berkeley for six Saturdays since September, and I finally finished my last course this past Saturday. During these courses, I have begun to move even more away from simply memorizing vocabulary and grammar and truly incorporating the material into real-world applications. 

In Spanish 2, which is a combined Sophomore and Freshman class, students are learning about city vocabulary: streets, signs, turn, go straight, keep going, and also store names: fish market, fruit stand, park, supermarket, bakery, bank etc. I have also heard several of my students chatting about getting their licenses, or taking their permit tests…or failing their license tests.. 🙁 
AND THEN I HAD AN EPIPHANY:
I wanted to make city vocabulary as real as possible for my students.
 In groups of 3-5, I had my students open Google Earth and investigate a city in Latin America that they had heard of, or that they were interested in. They basically virtually traveled through all of Latin America, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Spain and were able to see street names and people’s houses, and a lot of trees. They also got side tracked and searched for their own houses and Carondelet as well…but back to the assignment. 

Once students became excited about looking at cities through Google Earth, I had them pick a city and try to replicate it in the most basic from onto butcher paper. Some students drew Cartagena in Colombia, others drew cities in Mexico and Puerto Rico. 
They drew streets, and labeled the street names and round abouts etc.
Next, they researched common shops based on the vocabulary that they could find in or around the city. They were able to make cultural comparisons and realize that there is a CROCS store here in the US, but also in Colombia,  and the students were surprised to see this. They labeled their stores with the Spanish word, for example: pescadería for fish market, and they labeled the name of the market. 
Next students, learned the “nosotros” commands “Let’s drive” “Let’s go” and they also practiced their informal commands as well. Once they were relatively comfortable with their commands, students finished coloring their maps.
When the maps were complete, each group received a “Hot Wheels” car that I had gone out and purchased. They got to pick their cars: the truck, the garbage truck, the race car, and they were excited to drive their cars.
Students took turns filming each other giving one another directions using commands and listening and “driving” their cars according to the directions their peer was giving them to get from one place to another. Students had a blast doing this activity and they were able to integrate culture, grammar, and vocabulary into a fun, innovative, creative project in a group.
What surprised me the most, is that students went completely off script and started to spontaneously incorporate vocabulary from earlier chapters. They decided to make their cars have accidents and they needed to go to the hospital because the driver had an injury. Hospital and injury vocabulary happened way back in chapter 1, however students were still able to recollect the information and use it in an unrehearsed in a spontaneous way to make a story with their maps. This is what pleased me the most. As a language teacher, my goal is to have my students produce the language as spontaneously and unscripted as possible, and they became excited to create their own individual scenarios spontaneously.
Overall, I enjoyed this assignment, and so did my students. I got a lot of great feedback that they were able to use real-world applications in class. 1 week later, I quickly quizzed students on the vocabulary and the commands, and they were all able to produce accurate answers without having studied before.
Here is a sample video: