What a weird way to end the school year! I  know I am not alone in feeling bummed out about how it ended. I  had all these big plans of what I was going to gift my Seniors on our last day of Spanish class.  

I got SO very lucky this year with my Spanish IV students. They welcomed me with open arms and were so willing to try anything with their new, crazy teacher. I still have so much to learn and there were mess ups and mistakes along the way and they rolled with all the punches. Oh and there were also ONLY 5 of them. I should preface by saying its a VERY small school and from what I learned this year a mass exodus from the Spanish program, because "the new Spanish teacher is hard"-- that's what my lovely students from student teaching told my new students. Ironically my Spanish I and II classes are larger than they have been in a decade next year... so.

Either way all these things helped me in my brainstorming. My students love music. The Mania Musical brackets from Mis Clases Locas as well as her Para Empezar (which includes Música Miércoles {Check out her free week here}) were big parts of our classroom culture. So I decided to throw it back a little to the age of MixTapes and make my students there very own modern, Spanish version.

I created a playlist of their favorite songs from this year. It's a little comical to me, because it's so random, but it's basically the winners from our brackets during Hispanic Heritage Month  and Mania Musical de Marzo as well as songs I played often in the classroom or ones the requested after hearing them during Música Miércoles. My students also really don't understand the lyrics and are all  18 , so  use it at your own discretion. If I taught heritage speakers or middle school it might look different.

Here's the playlist I gave to my students:   THS clase de español de 2020

As well as some other playlists I use often and you could easily pull songs from:

Latin X Indie (Chill and great for background music in classroom)
Spanish Coffee Shop Playlist ( I use this when we do my Starbucks Mode, also chill)
Disney en español  ( everyone knows these songs :) )
Latin Hits  (I listen to this playlist to stay up-to-date on the Hits and get ideas for new songs in class)

However, I  am of the mindset that this gift is only as good as the time and thoughtfulness you put into it. Pick songs YOUR students will know and like. 

Now as far as how I went about make this paper, digital,  not an actual "MixTape" playlist.

I created a  cute template that you can either mail or email to your students. Save yourself some time and use one of the 5 templates I've already created. Comes with all the instructions as well! You can grab it  here.

I  took the playlist I created on Spotify and put it into a QR Code generator.   All this detailed instructions on formating and creating this are in my resource on TPT.

And then I wrote individual messages to each of my students. Mailed them with the  smaller print option of my template  of the playlist and I was done. ( The stationary I use is the American Greetings brand from Amazon. You can grab them at this link.) However, if you have more than 5 students and don't want to hand write and cut out for each student I included a larger version in my resource that can easily be edited and downloaded in PDF or PNG form and emailed to your students!
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I didn't take me very long and I know that at the very least it will make my students smile.

​-Sierra

II rebranded and here's the long story of why...

I have several reasons for going from Srta Depping on all platforms to Profe Sierra, but the biggest reason is due to a little bit of my own stupidity/forgetfulness.

I started my blog srtadepping.com a  little over a year ago using Blogger.  When I started that blog I was still student teaching with Allison (Mis Clases Locas). I had started a student teacher Instagram so that  I could follow these great creators I was learning about and I am so glad I did. There is so much to be learned every day and I am so grateful for the brilliant minds that put ideas and resources out there, because they saved my butt during my first year of teaching. I also didn't want my personal Instagram tagged and followed by lots of strangers. (Also, pretty sure my high school friends and family do not need to read all about the cool things I made for my classroom or how I am differentiating every day.) However, that means I picked the easiest name I could-- Srta Depping. That's what my students called me. It was my name more-or-less and as a soon-to-be new teacher I had been working hard for several years now to earn that title. Well then I went and got engaged this Fall to my boyfriend of three years and will be getting married this August 2020 (as long  as COVID-19 doesn't wreck it). So Depping, while it is my last name and a part of me, will no longer be my last name in just a couple months.

I had really considered keeping everything Srta Depping for ease. No one really needs to know my "real" last name for the sake of things social media. Having my Instagram Srta Depping only made it easy for 4 stalkery high schoolers to find my account this year, but that also wasn't that big of a deal for me. I blocked them and told them they could follow my social media after they graduated and in all honesty in a few years my students would have completely forgotten that they used to call me  Depping, so that would have no longer been an issue as well.

No, the real reason I had to change everything is because when  I set up my  original blog I used my university email. Dun dun dun...  and eventuall y because I was no longer a student there they deleted said email and I completely forgot that I had linked it to  a soon-to-be invalid email address. The several weeks of work  I did moving things from that email and Google Drive to my permanent  email  had not jogged my memory and when I realized... well it was too late.

I plan on using this summer to re-upload some of my older blogs that people often referenced and I promise that this blog is no longer linked to a potentially expiring email address. Thanks for you patience and I look forward to growing this new blog under a new name.

Oh yeah! The new name. I had a lot of people asking and honestly quite confused why I chose Sierra. I think a lot of people think I am referencing  mountains or trying to be clever, but it's really not that deep.

1) It's not my going to be my married last name. I am aware that Sierra is a common-ish last name especially in Spain, because when I lived there it was very confusing to my host family and I was consistently asked why my parents chose it. I even once had a stranger in Spain equate it to the then popular baby name "Nube" or "Cloud" in English.

2) I didn't think it was THAT uncommon of a name and didn't even think about how some people would think it's weird.

Sierra is just my first name and I am in fact named after the Sierra Madres in Mexico.  Believe me I think a few people were a little embarrassed when they DMed me on my Instagram that they thought using Sierra sounded weird or  was an odd choice for my account.

Either way Profe Sierra is here and   is definitely here to stay!

​-Sierra
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