CI Summit 2023 Report (LONG)

The CI Summit in Savannah, GA ended yesterday, and I am still basking in the afterglow from it all. This weeklong conference is dedicated to "offer[ing] World Language teachers in-depth training and support for acquisition-driven instruction and comprehensible input [with the intent that] more teachers can bring these effective and equitable techniques back to the classroom." Thanks to Voces Digital for a wonderful week!  

What I love most about conferences like CI Summit is seeing teachers suddenly experience the a-ha moments like I did at my first NTPRS conference in 2014, and although this is my eighth CI/ADI summer conference which I have attended since then, it never gets old for me. I always walk away with my cup refilled! Even though I was serving in the role as a coach/cohort team member at the CI Summit, I still was able to experience the conference as a participant and to attend many sessions and language labs. As I reflect on and decompress from the week, here is my report of the sessions and language labs which I attended:

• My Cohort - Level 2 - At the CI Summit, I served as a cohort team member/coach for level 2. This group was for participants who have had some exposure to CI/ADI through attending a workshop/conference and possess some experience implementing a few CI/ADI skills but need more exposure and refinement. Gary DiBianca served as our cohort leader, with team members Andrea Schweitzer, Eric Richards, and me. We only had roughly 12 hours of instructional time over 4 days with our cohort participants, and we definitely used every minute of it. The theme for our cohort was volcanos and how we need to nurture our inner volcanos to eventually erupt our CI lava flow (yes, on paper, that may sound corny but it makes so much sense!) In many ways, I am certain that our participants felt like they were drinking from a fire hose, because we threw a lot at them. However, they were able to experience SO much as students! Eric began each day with questioning/PQAs in German and scaffolded it in such a way that by the last day participants were able to do some simple writing on their own in the language which they had acquired in that time! In Latin, I demonstrated TPR, a 3-place story, and post-reading strategies all for the purpose of previewing vocabulary and structures for a Latin cultural reading on Mount Vesuvius at the end of the week. Meanwhile interspersed through all of this, Gary and Andrea demonstrated other strategies such as One-Word Image, a volcano-related Movie Talk/Clip Chat (The Floor is Lava game) in Spanish and how to put it all together as a unit lesson. Oh, and did I mention that we also broke up into groups to work on skill-based practice such as circling/asking processing questions, storytelling, storyasking, etc.? By the end of it all, our cohort participants had so many a-ha moments! The majority of them had never experienced learning Latin or German before, but by the end, they had subconsciously acquired the target vocabulary/structures through interaction and robust exposure with the languages. Many of them did not realize that Latin could be spoken as a living language, so I am glad that I was able to expose them to that. 

• My Fellow Cohort 2 Team Members -  However, as much as I loved the participants in my cohort and what they got from our time together, I absolutely LOVED my other team members even more: Gary, Andrea, and Eric. We worked so well together, and our individuals strengths naturally complemented each other in what we each contributed during our cohort time. Gary, Andrea, and Eric are master teachers, and I learned SO MUCH from each of them in their demo sections.

The dream team: Andrea, me, Eric, and Gary

• Language Labs (Elementary school-aged students Spanish - Annabelle Williamson & Middle school-aged students Spanish - Skip Crosby) - I cannot get enough of the language labs! I love being able to observe CI/ADI instruction in action with real students, especially a language class where I do not know the language (which is pretty much all of them) so that I can experience learning like one of my own students - that makes such a HUGE difference. The labs are where the magic happens! I will always observe Annabelle whenever I can, and this year, I also observed Skip Crosby since I was serving as his lab debrief facilitator. The labs can be tricky since the instructors only have roughly 90 minutes of instructional time/day with their students for 4 days (while being observed!), but neither Annabelle nor Skip disappointed! While I definitely was able to see them demonstrate CI/ADI skills in their Spanish classrooms, what I loved most was their intentional effort to establish relationships with their students. During the first debrief session on Day 1, a teacher asked Skip, "How long have you known these students? You have such a good relationship with them." His response: "Just today. My goal today was just to love on them." Another thing which I absolutely loved about observing Annabelle and Skip over multiple days was me actually getting attached to their students - I felt like I had such a vested interest in them (even though I never interacted with them). Each day Skip would note to us observers that the "flowers were starting open up more" as students began to trust him more and to become more involved with him and the Spanish. I loved that I was able to witness this!!
• Brain Breaks presentation - Annabelle Williamson - If you have read my blog, you know that I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE Annabelle. I love that we share such a tremendous, profound, deep respect for each other, and I will always walk away learning something from her. I first learned about brain breaks from Annabelle back at the 2016 IFLT in Chattanooga, and she is a master of them! Although I came halfway to her presentation this year, I still walked away with my mind absolutely full of new ideas. However, my main takeaways from her presentation were that brain breaks need to be a minute or less, i.e., they are quick; because if they are longer, then they are a game, and games and brain breaks are two completely different things! Wow - I need to remember this! We played so many of these brain breaks with her, and I am certain that in the upcoming months I will blog about some of these new brain breaks which I learned as I try them out with my students. Annabelle also touched on how we can "communicatify" our brain breaks to engage our students with purposeful communication - I love this!
• Writing Strategies for the ADI Classroom - Eric Richards - My mind was absolutely blown in this workshop presentation - I feel like I am still processing everything! This has utterly changed the way in which I view writing in an ADI classrom. Eric is a GREAT presenter, and he demonstrated/had us take part in many simple, level-appropriate writing activities which we can implement immediately in our level 1 classes. The best part is how simple and low affective filter-raising these strategies are! Like what I learned from Annabelle, I am certain that I will be blogging about many of these in the upcoming year as I implement them. Let me plug his book Grafted Writing, which has these activities and so many more!
• Whiteboards - Although this was not a presentation, I will say that whiteboards were the MVP of the CI Summit. Because CI Summit was in Savannah and I am in the metro-Atlanta area, I drove to the conference. Innocently, I told my cohort team that I was going to bring my classroom set of whiteboards, markers, and rags since I wanted to use them for a possible activity in my part of the week's lesson. Because I was driving, it would be no big deal for me to bring them. Let me tell you: everything can be made better with whiteboards (just like bacon)! Eric used them during his daily questioning/PQA time in our cohort time and and then asked to borrow them for his writing strategies workshop presentation, and I used them in my cohort presentations. The whiteboards just raised everything to a new level - now I know why students love it when we use them in class! Gary, Andrea, Eric, and I have already talked about who of us will bring whiteboards to next year's CI Summit! 

If you were at the CI Summit, what did you get out of it? Were there any presentations, observations, or cohort time where you experienced any a-ha moments? What presentations did you attend where you walked away with some good ideas?

Hope to see you all next year in Philadelphia for CI Summit 2024!