Only 5 days until we kick off our summer with Texas Bootcamp! We’re so excited, we can barely contain ourselves. As we get ready, we wanted to share some experiences from fellow OWL’ers. It is messages like these from teachers that make us inspired, motivated, and excited for our three bootcamps this summer (West Coast at the end of June and East Coast at the beginning of August)!
OWL Bootcamp is every language teacher’s dream. I attended the first bootcamp in Oregon in 2013. It set me up withe the tools and strategies I needed to take the OWL leap the upcoming year and I started off the year with so much energy and a great network of OWLers around the globe. I then went back for more the following summer, attending West Coast 2014. I loved it so much and still somehow had energy to join my east coasters and popped in for the East Coast 2014 camp.
-Heidi H., MA |
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OWL Bootcamp solidified numerous practices and concepts for me. Learning in circles led by consultants, watching model classes, and discussing language acquisition theory were beneficial experiences which improved my teaching, my OWL understanding, and my teaching strategies. The camaraderie that we felt was immediate, supportive, and inspiring. It didn’t matter what level of experience the teachers had with OWL, we were all together, learning and teaching as one.
-Nancy B., ID |
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I attended West Coast Boot Camp 2014 in Portland, OR just before beginning to teach in an all OWL school. It helped to set me up for a very successful year even though it was my first year teaching on my own. At OWL Boot Camp, all the techniques are modeled so that participants can experience them first-hand. We learn by doing, and that is the reason I was able to learn so much in one week. Teachers can use as much or as little OWL in their classrooms as they see fit, but for me, Boot Camp helped me to dive right in to teaching completely with OWL and showed me how to stay 100% in the target language with my students!
-Annamarie N., OR |
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What most impressed me about the bootcamp was that I was immediately part of a larger teacher community, all striving for authentic language and immersion in their classrooms. Every activity we did as a group was applicable to my own classroom. Through participating in these activities, I got to feel what it is like for my students and walked away with a better idea of how to implement the method as well as how to structure my curriculum and lesson plans.
-Erin M., CO |
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I attended East Coast ’14 and feel so grateful to have taken that leap. I OWL as much as I can and all of my classes are at least 90% immersed in the TL every single day. I feel re-energized and my students are taking so many risks in my classroom because we have created this incredible community of learners where we knowingly have to fail to move up that ladder of proficiency. Thank you, OWLers for keeping me motivated and inspired to teach world languages!
-Patricia B, MA |
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Don’t forget to check out this awesome video put together by OWL’ers too! We can’t wait to see you this summer!
