Ben Fisher-Rodriguez

@mrfishersays.bsky.social

771 Followers 367 Following

HS German and Spanish Teacher / Blog at MrFisherSays.com / Co-host of SLAyyy at https://slayyypod.com / NEA Foundation Teacher of Excellence 2024 / PNCFL Teacher of the Year 2023 / WAFLT Teacher of the Year 2022 / he/him

Sailor Moon undergoing her Magical Girl Transformation
Graphic showing that Ben is presenting at the PNCFL Conference in Portland, Oregon on Friday, April 10th 2026 at 10:45am in Galleria 2. The title of the session is "Planning Against a Textbook."
A student drawing of an imagined “missing” poster, reading “have you seen the bald man? If seen, contact non-bald Brent”
Paragraph reading: “The problem is this: few students - less than 5% - are able to endure the stressful nature of formal school training in languages. The task is to invent or discover instructional strategies that reduce the intense stress that students experience.”
Pink and red clouds at sunset over trees and power lines
Excerpt from an email from a student reading: “I'm going to be majoring in Linguistics in college and right now I'm writing a research paper on Second Language Acquistion. Do you have any good resources for me to look at? What is your opinion on SLA? Is this something you researched before? I'm in progress of writing my paper (billingually in English and Japanese). I have been reading on Stephen D Krashen a lot.”
Ben smiles in a selfie while wearing a shirt with small rainbow flags on it
Cartoon illustration of pro-LGBTQ+ protestors with information about the presentation mentioned in the post
Ben and Miya pose with props in front of a light blue background
A whiteboard drawing of ostensibly Ben on a moped wearing sunglasses with the word “German” tattooed on his knuckles
Ben’s 10K race time of 54 minutes 56 seconds, noted as his personal fastest 10K time
Elegant desk goose sporting a tie, hat, tote bag, and book
A small goose figurine wearing a red tie stands on a teacher’s desk.
Screenshot of a Zoom call with Ben and the staffs of Klett World Languages and NNELL over a slide presentation titled "Maintaining Momentum in World Language Classes"
Graphic announcing webinar from post, including a picture of Ben and the note that the webinar is free to attend
Presentational Writing rubric for Novice Low to Intermediate Low proficiency, including domains of Task Completion, Text Type, and Language Use
Aloha! Transformative Translations, an internship program for multilingual youth in Hawai’i is looking to add a multilingual podcasting internship for this school year. We are looking for adults who have experience in creating podcasts to be adult mentors to our youth. Mentors can live anywhere and do not have to be multilingual themselves. Mentors would meet virtually with interns 5-6 times a semester for 1 hour sessions to help students grow their podcasting skills and would be paid a stipend. If you or someone you know might be interested in being a mentor please reach out to the program Director, Natalie Lalagos at Natalie.lalagos@k12.hi.us
A copy of the book “Smart Teaching Stronger Learning,” edited by Dr. Pooja K. Agarwal
A startling drawing of Ben by a student, followed by a letter beginning “Dear Mr. Fish Rod, I am truly sorry for my horrific drawing of you. Anyways, I wanted to thank you for being such an awesome teacher.”
Ben holding two air sickness bags from Lufthansa with German and English text on them
Cartoon illustration of what is described in the post. The incinerated child has been turned into a skeleton.
In each group, 4 members: a reader, who reads the text aloud in the L2; an explainer, who explains the text in a mix of the L1 and the L2; a dictionary expert, who looks up new vocabulary in the glossary; a question-asker, who writes quiz questions. After every page, students change roles.
A lion photoshopped to have a bald head
Screenshot of a student assignment submission reading: Which location from the video do you think Brandon Brown will visit in the book? What will he do there? (Reminder that Brandon Brown is a small demon child) Student's answer: I think Brandon Brown will try to climb up the ski jump and then declare humself king of Bavaria. This is meant to reflect the authoritarian government of Fisherlandia. He will then claim Werdenfels museum as his royal palace and eat as much bavarian cuisine as possible.
Illustrations on a whiteboard from three chapters of a language learner novel
Picture of magazine article where Kei describes her episode of our podcast
A whiteboard with five statements in German about the novel “Brandon Brown Discovers Bavaria”, as well as the German word for “predictions”
A comment box from Schoology, where FishRod has commented "Minus points for the crinkling of the Crunchwrap bag"
Infographic created by Ben Fisher-Rodriguez to show the various levels of Intercultural Communicative Competence. The first level is identifying products and practices, the second comparing products and practices, the third explaining some diversity in products and practices, the fourth suspending judgment while critically examining products and practices, and the fifth "objectively" evaluating and mediating cultural differences. This is all in the service of understanding underlying cultural perspectives, and engaging respectfully with pluricultural identities.
View of the stage of the Paramount Theater in Seattle from the audience’s perspective, with the Bothell High School jazz band on stage taking a bow
Student work samples of the activity described, in various illustration styles
Slideshow of instructions for a German 2 class, which include “Let Ms. Helito take roll” and then “Leave her alone and be nice to her”
Post It note lying on the concrete of a high school walkway, reading “I am stinky”
Ben and Kei smile at the camera in a selfie in a restaurant booth
A student has written on the back of a quiz, “My friend and I lost my Kylie Jenner Barbie in a forest, so we had to hire kids to find it.” Ben has responded in writing, “This sentence was a wild ride for me, not gonna lie.”
A selfie of Natalie Lalagos, Ben Fisher-Rodriguez, Claudia Decker, Alicia Dallman-Shoemaker, and Ke Peng smiling on the stage of the ACTFL 2023 convention, where they were Teacher of the Year candidates