My Philosophy of Education

There is no greater experience on earth than that of immersion in an educational environment, where learning is taking place, where students are free to acquire skills and talents, and where teachers are facilitating, coordinating, and coaching learning activities, sharing knowledge, and inspiring students in their course towards success.

Education consists of not just learning, but acquiring useful, necessary, practical, and intellectually stimulating skills that can be used throughout life. In order for success in education to occur, students should be taught to their style of learning, and a teacher should be familiar with different learning styles to set up the stage for students to be successful, and not fail in the course towards acquisition. Students should be giving hands-on, activities, thought provoking tasks, reading, speaking, writing, listening, and analytical assignments with constant teacher interaction, feedback, input, and demonstration. Both teacher and student should work together, each growing together. Students learn from each other and from teachers, and teachers learn from each other and from students. The team or community approach is so important in education. The student who sits at his/her desk, a being all alone, yet surrounded by other students, and not allowed to participate, be engaged, challenged, praised, and taught using creative teaching and learning styles, is often not going to be an achiever. Variety of topics and tasks, diversity of ideas, praise, constant practice, and a positive atmosphere, are the necessary concomitants to a successful student experience.

The classroom is just one facet within the educational community. This community the department, school as a whole, staff, parents, community resources, community experts, and the internet, all need to be included in a successful classroom educational experience.

In important purpose of education is to allow, and encourage students to experience, respond to, and see the value of other cultures, and a second or third language. Communication brings harmony, and in the realm of communication there exists different languages. Students should leave their formal education able to communicate in one or more foreign languages that are useful, and practical to the students future endeavors and community relationships. A strong foreign language curriculum should be a priority in every school. It is not possible to truly understand others and their cultures, without having acquired the necessary skills to communicate with them in their language. We live in a universe of words, and everything is about words. Students who are good at foreign language studies are often good in other life skills as well.

Education is a universe of creativity, possibility, and functionality. It is not a moment in time, but a process of moments working together with goals, objectives, and more goals and objectives. It goes on through life without stopping to rest. Each classroom student brings value to education, and when engaged, brings even more value. Education is engagement, and teachers are also engaged in the process of learning and acquiring knowledge and skills. Teachers within the educational center are also students.

Living in your second language

A good university foreign language program, will, or should require the student to live in a region of the world where that language is spoken. If the student is studying French, the student should live at least for a semester in France, Montreal, or other French speaking region. If the student is studying Spanish, there are many countries that the student can select to live in. In fact, students can even get paid in those countries by teaching English in a language institute or privately.

Although, I grew up exposed to the Spanish language, I did want to go to the University and get formally trained in Spanish linguistics, language and literature. I did do what was required, and that is to live in a Spanish speaking country. I chose two countries during my formal university Spanish language studies. I went to Mexico, and lived there for a summer, and later, went to Paraguay, and lived there for almost three years. The rewards of living abroad are innumerable, and wonderful: friendships are formed, more language is acquired, and cultural appreciation is enlarged and enhanced.

There are two important elements to a good foreign language program at a university: 1. Good teachers that care for the students progress in acquiring the language, and 2. living in a country where that language is spoken, and earning credit for that.

Give me corazon in Spanish

The Spanish word, “corazon,” is used so much in Spanish. “Corazon” is in songs, poems, stories, and conversation. It is a good Spanish word to know, since it metaphorically refers to the divine, love, sweetness, kindness, goodness, romance, honey, baby, home, and more. Of course, “corazon” directly means heart.

I heard this word so much in my life, that I became bored with hearing “corazon” this, and “corazon” that. However, I finally decided to think and ponder upon this word, and get a better feeling for it. Now, I like hearing it since to me, it define the heart of the many Spanish-speaking cultures around the world. The people do have big heard, and do demonstate a lot of “corazon.”

I could only hope to have a big “corazon” as I found many having in my experiences in South America.

Spanish teacher and classroom desk arrangements

The way desks are arranged in a Spanish classroom, or any foreign language classroom has an effect among the students in getting them motivated and interested in learning, or acquiring language. I think that most Spanish teachers, certainly I can speak for my years of teaching, want students to have the best learning atmosphere. We start by arranging the room in a certain way.

In my six years of teaching Spanish (hopefully there will be many more), I was always unhappy with desk arrangements. Can anyone relate to that? I moved desks in this order and that order, trying to find the perfect fit for the room. Sometimes, I even rearranged desk positions and order more than once during a day. This became a nightmare, a ridiculous chore, that I know I had to eliminate from my list of tasks to do. Once I found TPR, I found the perfect arrangement for desks.

TPR is Total Physical Response. I strongly endorse TPR for teaching language, any language, because the results are visible quickly, and it works on the right hemisphere of acquiring language, in which students internalize and not memorize language. I did not start out using TPR strategies until I went to workshops, read books, and saw research and demonstrations online about the TPR ways of acquiring language, the natural way we all acquire our first language. TPR works because it gets the students out of their seats responding to and acting out language. It is not a worksheet, and memorization way of learning language. It is about making language inherent in you, making it be one with you. In essence internalizing words, phrases, syntax, and semantics. The ways the classroom desks are arranged in a TPR classroom, allows the students to interact easily with language commands, and stories in the target language.

I followed the way TPR classrooms are supposed to be set up. I divided the desks into two halves, each half facing the others, allowing a space between the two sections so that students and teacher can be seen by everyone, and so that staging, acting, role play, and language responses can be more easily performed. At the end of the space area between the two sections, and against the wall, maybe the chalk board, or white board, are three chairs. The middle one is for the teacher and on each side sits a student. The teacher can now get up followed by the student on each side of him, and say the language, and act it out with each student acting out language with the teacher. For example, the teacher gets ups and says, “Anda a la caja.” “Walk to the box.” the students on beside him go with teacher to the box, and wait for the next command, or language, to respond to.

At the other end of the space (or stage area) between the two divisions of desks in the room, is a table. In a TPR room, box, basket, and other props become very important. They need to have a fixed place in the room. A storage closet is useful.

After having arranged my classroom in this manner, I had better student performance overall in my Spanish classes, and had better discipline in the room. The desk arrangement is important. Students should be able to be seated in a way so they can be engaged in the subject, and be able to engage each other. In my classes I always allow ample interaction among students, since students like to practice, and demonstrate what they know. The old way of long rows and columns just do not fit in a foreign language classroom.

My goal for the classroom, and for children and adults that I provide private Spanish tutoring to, is to provide opportunities for language acquisition. I am not following the old school ways of language learning, because I want students to retain what they learn. To acquire language is the higher level of learning language. To acquire is to make inherent, and to possess it, says the dictionary.

Get out to your classroom, and rearrange those desks. My students seemed to have liked my arrangement, after so much time trying to find that ideal placement for desks.

A good site to practice your Spanish with others

I recently found a good language learning website called LiveMocha.com. Here, you can practice the language you are learning (I rather say, acquiring), with others who are learning your language. So, you and they, mutually benefit from this language acquiring platform.

When you find a language buddy on LiveMocha, someone who wants to learn English, and the buddy’s first language is Spanish, and you want to learn Spanish, then you both can acquire each others’ language through conversation. He asks you where you are from, what you are into, where you go to school, and you do the same. You correct his English, and he corrects your Spanish. On LiveMocha, you can also turn on the audio or your webcam and actually hear and see each other. LiveMocha offers language tests, and lessons. You will be asked to correct someone’s writing. This is a very popular use of LiveMocha.

When you are searching for a language buddy, you can view profiles which have pictures, where the buddy is from, and what is motivating the buddy to learn English or whatever the language may be. LiveMocha is for other language learners too, like French, Portuguese, Italian, and many more.

As a Spanish teacher, I look at the profiles of language learners from Spain, Mexico, Central and South America. I have made friends in Colombia, one place I am most interested in learning more about. LiveMocha for me is not about learning Spanish, since I have long since acquired Spanish, but about making friends in other cultures, and learning about Spanish speaking cultures and the speech patters, and forms in those cultures.

If you hear of other good langage site please share with me so I can share with others.

Stop memorizing Spanish but start acquiring it

If we are going to become fluent in Spanish, or any language, we acquire it, not learn it. There is a big difference between learning something, and acquiring something. Learning is short-term, and not build-in like a rock. What we learn, we can forget shortly. However, if you acquire something, such as language, it is built-in like a rock, and not easily neglected or lost. Language acquisition is acquired language for the long term, whereas, language learning satisfies what needs to be remembered for the test, or for the immediate future. Think of riding a bike. I did not ride a bike in years, and started riding again, and I remembered everything. Bike riding was something I acquired. Maybe a bad analogy, but think about it.

From Webster’s New Universal Abridged Dictionary:

Acquire: “1. to get or gain by one’s own efforts or actions.
2. to gain, by any means, as a thing which in a degree is permanent, or which becomes vested or inherent in the possessor; as, to acquire a title, estate, learning, habits, skill, dominion, etc…”

Learn: “1. to gain knowledge of (a subject); to acquire information concerning, as by instruction, study, obervation, experience, etc. ; to acquire skill in (anything); as to learn the news, or a lesson…” “2. to come to know how; as, we are learning to swim.”

We see the word “acquire” in the definition of “learn.” Acquiring something is a higher degree of learning it. The fact or sense of permanently having knowledge of something and having that knowledge become inherent or vested, does not appear in the definition of “learn.”

In my Spanish language lessons that I provide as a Spanish Tutor, (and that I provided as a classroom Spanish teacher), I teach for language acquisition, not language learning, and to achieve acquisition, I use total physical response, role playing, and storytelling strategies. Students like this because they can see the effects of language being acquired. It is a pleasant language experience for them, and a pleasant teaching environment for me. Acquiring language is internalizing it, not memorizing it.

When we memorize something, we can easily forget it next year, but if we work to internalize it, it stays with us, and is inherent in us. This is how we naturally learn our own language as little children.

Please let me know if you have any useful thoughts that I can add to this topic of language learning/acquisition.

Language learning classrooms often bore and turn off students. language acquisition classrooms provide engaging, yet challenging action for the students and the issue of boredom, and distaste for the language often is not there.

This Tallahassee man called Kenneth Fach

Now, I am going to describe who Kenneth Fach in Tallahassee, Florida is. Kenneth came to Tallahassee in 1994, to work on his master’s degree in, Spanish Language and Linguistics, at Florida State University. He spent much of his time in the Dodd building and in the teaching assistants office, planning his classes, grading student papers, and working on his own Spanish class assignments. Kenneth taught Spanish to undergraduates during his graduate program, and was a popular teacher for the several years he was teaching Spanish. After graduating, he went back to teaching Spanish in a high school. Kenneth, his wife, and son, have not left Tallahassee since 1994, as they both like the community, the many parks, and the green, forested, surroundings.

Some know Kenneth Fach as a real estate agent, who started working in real estate sales in Pensacola, Florida, his hometown community, and later, continuing real estate in Tallahassee. Others know Kenneth Fach  as a Spanish teacher, a Spanish tutor, a youth volunteer, a vegetable garden enthusiast, a friend of nature, a hiker, camper, a Christian Scientist, a devout student of biblical studies, a loyal husband, good dad, and an avid  coffee drinker.   He has been active with the scouts, encouraging his son in his scout achievements.  Others, know Kenneth Fach  as a Florida state employee, since he worked for Florida’s Department of Children and Families for about six years using his writing, editing, computer, Spanish language and customer service skills. Others know Kenneth as a blogger who also frequents and leaves posts on Twitter.

Kenneth llikes to blog on a variety of topics: micro-blogging, technology, land, the Spanish language, Spanish teaching techniques and his teaching experiences, experiences he has had in other countries, such as Mexico and Paraguay, northwest Florida lifestyles, Tallahassee, camping experiences, home decorating, and improving ideas, as well as  growing up in ranch style homes.   Kenneth desires to spend much more time blogging, as he is passionate about the written word, both in Spanish and English. Kenneth Fach is a lot of different things, but one thing is certain, Kenneth puts the spiritual, before the material in all aspects of his living. He daily spends quiet contemplation with his Creator, and gives gratitude for the goodness of creation.

Kenneth likes Tallahassee because of the many natural green spaces all over. He loves trees, parks, and the color green, his favorite color. Kenneth  painted the interior walls of his prior home, sage green, as the dominating color, but had also painted the interior walls of other homes because of his inspirational and attractive use of the color green. He has surprised himself at what he can do with the color green to decorate a home.

Kenneth likes the closeness of Tallahassee to many of Florida’s state parks, national forests, beaches, lakes, rivers, cultural attractions, a yearly grape festival, Christmas festival, Spring Celebration, and so much more. He finds everything he wants in Tallahassee, except for mountains, and canyons. He likes taking his family to fine musical concerts at Florida State University, and FAMU.

Prior to coming to Tallahassee, and after graduate school, Kenneth taught school, used innovative teaching strategies to get the students involved in foreign language learning, and had classes filled with movement and activity, literally. Kenneth always believes that everyone should participate in his classes, and he had a way of making this happen. Schools are often centers of teacher and administrator political plays, and old school ways of doing things, which have proven to be ineffective in many subject areas. Kenneth is not against old fashion ideas, but he knows that in the times we live today, we need to cheerfully usher in innovation, newness, freshness, in the classroom, and discard the old, worn out clothing of older days. Kenneth embraces the total physical response teaching strategies developed by James Asher in the 1960’s. Too much is new today, and Kenneth welcomes that. He also welcomes a team approach to educating children, even getting parents involved, and interested.

Kenneth loved the classroom, but wanted to try other areas of work. He went to work for the State of Florida using his writing, computer, editing, foreign language, and customer service skills. Kenneth brough new ideas into his team at his workplace, and brought a lot of dedication to his job. He even inspired colleagues to take up a foreign language.

For much of his life, Kenneth Fach had been exposed to the workings of entrepreneurs. His uncle owned over 12 travel agencies in Chicago, his grandpa was a real estate developer in New Mexico, and created and owned the most successful camera shop and photography business in Albuquerque in the early part of the 20th century. Kenneth’s other uncle was an Inn keeper in Illinois, and also invested in real estate. Kenneth’s dad was an artist, painter, owned his own picture frame and art gallery, sold all areas of  insurance, was an  investment planner, calligrapher, teacher of calligraphy, commercial artist, aviation engineer, and hollywood cameraman. Kenneth Fach comes from a family of so many diverse interests, and backgrounds, and this gives Kenneth much to be proud of.

Kenneth’s first love of his life, is his love for the Holy Bible. He gets this love from his dad who daily studied the bible and Christian metaphysics.

Kenneth Fach welcomes all into his circle of friendship, and brotherhood. Kenneth is all for following the precepts of his Master, Christ Jesus, and sharing his biblical love with others.

Kenneth talks with people about ranch style homes since he finds that some have never lived in this long lasting symbol of American architecture. Others like to share their experiences living in ranch style homes as well, with the many stories coming within these homes. Kenneth is proud of his ranch home background, and hopes that the ranch home always stays as an architectural icon for America.

Kenneth would be happy if you want to speak Spanish with him! Kenneth is passionate about the Spanish language and loves to share that passion with others in Tallahassee, and elsewhere. You can find Kenneth on Twitter at http://Twitter.com/KenFach.