Map Mates

I created a fun and engaging music activity perfect for Valentine's Day in any beginner-intermediate to intermediate-advanced ESL/EFL classroom! Includes a CLOZE worksheet of the lyrics to Katy Perry's "Teenage Dream" and KEY + lesson flow description!

Teenage Dream by Katy Perry - Perfect ESL CLOZE activity for Valentine's Day A fun and engaging music activity perfect for Valentine's Day in any beginner-intermediate to intermediate-advanced ESL/EFL classroom! Includes a CLOZE worksheet and KEY + lesson flow description!

First English story time event at the Koryo public library in Nara, Japan! 🇯🇵 📚 ❤️

New Blog Post on my experience FaceTiming with my 1st period class from Japan!

Señora Searls in Japan: FaceTime – Map Mates Last week I had the awesome opportunity to take a quick week-long trip to Japan to meet a dear friend’s new baby and attend the wedding of…

International education programs like Fulbright-Hays that allow for teacher exchange and learning on the ground directly contribute to the global competence of our K-12 students! Sadly the Fulbright Hays program may be cut tomorrow by our government. Please read more and if you are able / willing click through to send a 2-minute message to your rep (which will be found automatically when you type in in your address with zip) to tell him or her you support these programs and don't want them cut:

Take Action for International Education! I just took action to protect Title VI & Fulbright-Hays! Write your Member of Congress here

Touring Colonial Quito, Ecuador and our transfer to Otavalo, site of our Kichwa language learning lessons - new blog post:

Sitting on the Equator in the highest capital of the world: Quito, Ecuador Hello from Quito, Ecuador, the center of the world! Saturday, we woke up and had our first full day of activities in Quito. Here are a few…

Really enjoying my day at Arabia Peruskolu with 4th grade teacher Missu--so far: geography presentations, robotics and programming of lego mindstorms for math, recess, and now a group test in English! ❤️

I'm having severe jealously of the Finnish teacher's existence over here, friends! And you can too (sorry!) by reading my new MapMates post on how a focus on space, time, and free play in Finnish schools enhance everything from the day to day experience of students and teachers to the educational outcomes at the early childhood (K-2) level:
https://medium.com//early-childhood-education-in-finland-21dd0cb728fb

Early Childhood Education in Finland – Becky Searls – Medium In Finland’s early primary years, space, time, & free play come first!

First day in Finland - a tiny little school on a little island called Nargu, wehre Swedish was the language of instruction! Average class size: 6-7 :) https://mapmates.org/first-day-in-finland-47a3e34aedfc

Throwback to my inspiring visit to ACS Egham International School near Surrey England a couple of weeks ago. Thank you Susan Merrick for hosting me! As always I was blown away by the resources at an international school 😍

Visiting a "Collége" (middle school) in Limoux, France was a great experience! Here are some pictures. Thank you SO much to my fantastic host and English teacher, Julie, and her work mates for having me! One very cool thing that stood out was the role of the CPE: this person (or sometimes people, as there are often 2 in larger schools) is in charge of following up on frequent absences and following up with the school social worker as necessary, communication between administration and teachers, mediation of minor conflicts between students, or parents/students/teachers, etc to attempt to avoid escalation, and cultural initiatives such as organizing field trips, bringing in artists and musicians, etc. She also heads up a group of employees who are essentially a positive version of discipline officers at the school - they do things like hall monitoring, lunch duty, bus duty, and even staying overnight with the kids in the dorm once a week as chaperone. Teachers in France are valued for their academic and pedagogic expertise and these sorts of tasks are relegated to a different employee who is trained for it specifically, thus freeing up teachers to focus on student progress and achievement, intervention and remediation.