Acquiring a language in a healing environment nurtures human beings who can communicate and foster communication—few things are more urgent in our world right now.  

Constanza Ontaneda coaches and consults educators, departments and school administrators at all educational levels. 

She can help develop and institute research-based, proficiency-oriented and input-focused practices and curricula. Her passion lies at the intersection of language acquisition and social emotional learning best practices.  

From crafting a mission, to understanding the Six Principles of Language Acquisition down to the nitty gritty of task-based classroom practices, routines, time-management, and more, Constanza is dedicated to helping make the language classroom both a healing and learning environment. 

 

“The effective language teacher is someone who can provide input and help make it comprehensible in a low anxiety situation.” Stephen Krashen

 

“My hypothesis is that for language acquisition to really succeed, anxiety should be zero.” Stephen Krashen

 

There is a double crisis going on in language classes at all levels of education. More often than not, the learning environment is not research-based and contains a high affective filter. 

That is, learners leave with little to no communicative ability after years of study, and the learning environment causes learners high levels of stress and anxiety, usually from pressure to memorize, produce language and take tests. 

Constanza has been in both shoes—a disappointed language learner of more than eight languages at some of the world's most prestigious institutions, and a disappointing educator who was hired simply because she spoke the target language and was then given the mandate: "do whatever you want." 

She did "whatever she wanted" until she worked with an educational mentor who pointed her to the methodology that actually leads to language acquisition: TPRS (Teaching Proficiency Through Reading and Storytelling), and encountered The Theory of Comprehensible Input by Stephen Krashen. Since then she turned her pedagogy and curriculum around to be both research-based and developmentally, culturally, and emotionally responsive.

Before dedicating herself to Input Wand full time, she chaired the World Language Department at a middle school in Times Square and successfully transformed that program from grammar drills, memorization and tests to research-based, developmentally, culturally and emotionally responsive practices. 

The fact is that the two crises are actually two great opportunities. At all levels of education, language classes have the potential to become the healing nuclei that can help a whole institution become a more inclusive and joyful environment, and leave learners with a high level of communicative ability in their target language of choice, giving them a precious tool with which they can then extend that inclusion and joy into the greater world. 

If you are an educator or an administrator, and your goal is to create a research-based and healing environment for learners, Constanza can help.  

Constanza is also a long-time practitioner of Zen meditation and Qi Gong. She has worked in close contact with outdoor learning, organic farming, gardening, Waldorf education, and has belonged to choirs and singing groups. She brings all of this with her into her pedagogical practices, explicitly or implicitly.  

For inquiries, please write her at 

magic@inputwand.com

 

CERTIFICATIONS, CONFERENCES & TRAININGS 

COMPREHENSIBLE ONLINE & COMPREHENDED!  

Online Conference dedicated to Comprehension-based Language Instruction 

DATA-DRIVEN INSTRUCTION 

With Moises Santos, EDUCATE  

STRUCTURING CLASSROOMS TO ENCOURAGE POSITIVE BEHAVIOR 

With Rachel Lissy, PhD 

WHO’S IN MY CLASSROOM? BUILDING DEVELOPMENTALLY AND CULTURALLY RESPONSIVE CLASSROOMS 

With Gess LeBlanc, PhD 

TRAUMA-INFORMED PEDAGOGY 

With Gess LeBlanc, PhD 

FOSTERING CULTURE THROUGH MULTIPLE MODALITIES 

With Gess LeBlanc, PhD 

ILLUSTRATION BASICS & ARCHITECTING THE STORY 

School of Visual Arts

UNDOING RACISM WORKSHOP 

The People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond 

NATIONAL TPRS CONFERENCE

TPRS methodology—Advanced Track 

TPRS WORKSHOP   

Teaching Proficiency Through Reading and Storytelling (TPRS) Methodology  

WALDORF PEDAGOGY BEST PRACTICES 

With Kim John Payne, M. Ed 

WALDORF WORLD LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION INTENSIVE

Sunbridge Institute

ADVANCED PLACEMENT SUMMER INSTITUTE

AP Spanish Curriculum & Methodologies, Bates College