View Content #20564

Happy 2016! When I was a Spanish teacher in a small Montana town, I found it hard to stay inspired in January and February. I walked to school in the dark and walked home in the dark, only seeing the sunshine through my classroom window while I taught and feeling it on the cold walk between my building and the cafeteria for lunch. My students dragged themselves to school each day after long nights tending to pregnant and birthing cows and their new calves and we all struggled to connect the Spanish-speaking world with our day-to-day lives. Fortunately, thanks to the connections that the Internet provides for us in 2016, and especially thanks to the generosity of some fantastic teachers, we have some inspiration for you, to kick off the new year and carry you through the next month. Several ACTFL Teachers of the Year have volunteered to write Topic of the Week articles about an area of their passion and to share activities that you can adapt to your classrooms. I am inspired both by the content that these teachers have shared and my interactions with them as we've been preparing for this month's series. I hope that you start 2016 inspired -- and for even more inspiration, check out these TOY Talks from several of these teachers.

Lindsay Marean, InterCom Editor