 Well, hello, Susan Gair, President of Katesel, California Teacher of English as a Second Language. Susan, how are you feeling? Sometimes overwhelmed, but okay right now. Oh, and where are you? I'm located in San Luis Obispo, near Pismo Beach, in a little town called Grover Beach. Ah, and is that the real sunset from your porch? No, this is actually in Half Moon Bay. Ah, and how is it, how can you pull some of the strategies from teaching students to teaching teachers? Oh, there's a lot of scaffolding that you have to do because I'm teaching teachers how to use technology in an innovative and creative way with second language learners. And so I have to scaffold the activity so that teachers can see the sequence and the learning objectives. And how is it different? They understand me without me having to repeat myself. ESL students don't necessarily. So I work for a variety of different projects. One of the things we do at Katesel of course is train teachers. Since I've been president of Katesel, I haven't had enough time to do the teaching side of Katesel. So I've been working on a variety of other projects. One is for the outreach technical assistance network in Sacramento. And I do classes for them and I do research for them and I do writing for them. And we have webinars for teachers in adult education or non-credit community colleges. So what's the most frustrating part of teaching online? The screen time. And I'm all for not using this kind of screen time. Like zoom, I think we're over zooming. I think we should be doing more where students are doing things and using the zoom time to have students show what they're doing, instead of direct teaching this way, teaching. I think we should motivate your students by giving them projects and ideas and things that are really meaningful to them. I give them choices for assignments. I have my learning objective and I'll decide, okay, how can they accomplish this objective in different ways. So somebody might want to write an essay somebody might want to make a video somebody might want to make a Google slide presentation. It doesn't matter to me as long as they meet the objective. How do you measure success? I give students rubrics in advance so that they can see what my my expectation is because they don't, you know, I'm just a person. What I think isn't necessarily the right way to think. So, once they can see what's going through my mind and that's what I think a rubric does it shows them what's in my mind. It's easier for them to meet the objective. What are some of your groups for your own learning communities? How might you divide them up? Okay, so I have the group of people who are, they're mostly K-12 or college teachers, but they're really technology enthusiasts. So I have that group. And then I have my katesel groups. All the boards, you know, all the different katesel boards. I think over the years, I think those are the, and then I have people who are really good at research. And if I have a research question, I can ask them. And so I guess that's it. Yeah, that's a good way to go about it. Okay, your choice. Low level or high level. Low level. And why is that? Because most people don't understand the power of a learner. And at the lowest level, they are open to being creative with new ideas. And they really can do anything as long as it's scaffolded correctly. So I often hear people tell me my students can't do that. They're, their language is too low. They can do it. They just need the language to do it. What's the biggest challenge educators face today, aside from COVID-19? Well, you know, COVID has turned our world upside down. And it's not going to go back to the way it was. And for me, that's an exciting challenge. But for many people, it's very scary. Because we're not going to go back. I don't believe we're ever going to go to what it was before. And technology is here to stay. Hopefully not so much screen time. But technology itself should be enhancing learning. And students should be using the tools of technology, just like they use a pen, which is a tool, and paper, which is a tool. They should be using those technology tools the right way. And what's your favorite website for teaching support? That's a hard question to answer. There are so many good sites, but a tool that I really like for a variety of reasons is Padlet. Because it allows teachers who are text-based to be text-paced. It allows people to be linear. It allows them to be not linear. It allows them to create flow charts and graphs and diagrams and timelines and maps. It's easy to use and it's pretty free if you only keep three boards. What's one of your favorite things that you'd like to show us? In my room, I guess my Google fish. So I'm a Google innovator, which is very hard. Now it's difficult to get in, but I got in at the very early stages when Google first started. And I had to apply. And mostly I applied with K-12 educators because I'm an adult ed teacher. I got accepted. I was really proud of that. I know that they're the envy of a lot of people. What's one thing you miss in life right now? Traveling. Favorite classroom ritual. Saying good morning to the students. And favorite at home ritual. Walking my dog. What's your favorite song, piece of music at home? I like relaxing types of music. I don't like loud music and I don't like noisy music. So I guess more of the classical soft jazz type. What well known person no longer living, would you like to sub for you? Mother Teresa. Why is that? I just profoundly respect her and her values. Is this the weirdest interview you've ever had? Pretty much. Well, thank you so much for having me in your home. Have a good evening. Thank you.