"The website, I hope, shows some of the opportunities and challenges that we have here at the International High School. Students in my classroom come from many different countries, with various amounts of time in the United States, and varying levels of native language proficiency, literacy and English language literacy and proficiency. Other factors include all the other factors that regular teachers face: the variety of how extraverted or introverted students are, their degree with technology, and things like that. So when you’re viewing the videos, I hope you realize that I’m juggling all these things at the same time, and making decisions about what is my priority to focus on.

In light of what I said before, during the course of the project, and certainly during the course of their presentations, I’m thinking about all of the different levels happening at the same time. I’m concerned about the students’ response to this experience. I want this to be a positive experience for them, so that they feel validated and respected. The student as a whole person is something I’m thinking about. I’m thinking about the quality of the listening of the other students, the accuracy of the information being presented. Very often I’ll stop the students and repeat main points, so I’m thinking about which main points I want to repeat, and which smaller details I just want to let go by. I’m thinking about technical issues—are the students presenting their work in a good fashion? I’m thinking about whether this presentation is providing something for the different levels in the class, meaning, does it provide some basic information for students newer to English? Does it provide some details for students with more English, who are ready to receive more in-depth information? All those things happen in an instant."