FLANC

Well, yesterday and today I experienced my first ever FLANC conference. What is FLANC, you ask? Why, it's the Foreign Language Association of North Carolina, of course. Sounds fascinating doesn't it? Yeah, those were my thoughts exactly. I'm not going to lie, I was pretty much dreading it. I had to be there from 9am-5pm on Friday, and from 8am-2pm on Saturday, sounds like a whole weekend full of boredom to me. Even though my CT told me that it would be exciting, and my teacher told us it would be fun, did I believe them? No. They have to say those things, my CT served on the board for years, and my teacher is currently on the board, of course they want to recruit more people to the conference. I was, however, pleasantly surprised.

The conference is set up in such a way that you go to various "sessions" throughout the day on a variety of different topics, and in between you have time to go around to various vendors and get text books, talk about traveling and smart boards, and everything in between. This is what killed me, I spent way more money than I intended, and bought some things that I have no idea if I will ever use in my classroom.

For instance, I bought "Huevos verdes con jamón" .... When will I ever have use for Green Eggs and Ham in my classroom, I do not know. But I do know that my daughter would enjoy it, so this serves some purpose, right?


As for the classes, I learned a lot of interesting stuff. I learned how to use a flip camera in the classroom, both for the teacher and the student. Will I ever use a flip camera in my class? I have no idea, but if I ever decide that I want to, I now know a plethora of activities that can be implemented if I do choose to use it. I also learned a variety of songs, not only popular songs in Spanish by rock and/or pop groups, but also "made up" songs to teach key elements to your students.

This is one of my new favorite songs.

Eres Tú


I heard it at least twice this weekend, and I think it's beautiful. Once again, not sure if I will ever use this in my class, but it could potentially be useful.

So basically, it turned out to be more of a success than I thought. Of all of the sessions I went to, I only considered one to really be a "waste of time", and that was only because there was really nothing that was said that I could connect to the elementary level.

Will I return next year? Possibly. I do know this though, if I do return, I'll  have to make sure to set a sending limit, otherwise I might end up going broke.