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For some faculty members, a sabbatical offers a slower pace to focus on specific projects. For Mark Warford, associate professor of modern and classical languages, his sabbatical quickened his pace.

Warford carefully planned his first-ever sabbatical to work on three book-length manuscripts about language teacher development. During his break from teaching, he not only completed the manuscripts but also prepared more than 100 abstracts about new directions in language-teaching theory and practice.

“Looking back, working solely on any one of the three manuscripts would have been sufficient,” Warford said. “But I’m happy I accomplished all three and more. I felt intrinsically motivated to stay busy. The sabbatical helped me lose myself in my discipline.”

Warford regularly teaches undergraduate and graduate courses to help aspiring language teachers become skilled at teaching a foreign language. One of his manuscripts, L2 from Day 1: Teaching in the Target Language, focuses on his classroom teaching experience and quantitative research in the field. He recently had excerpts from his work published in several refereed journals.

Warford also develops qualitative studies about the progress of foreign-language teachers. The manuscript,High Hopes, High Needs, is a case study of one Buffalo State graduate’s first years of teaching Spanish in Buffalo Public Schools. He hopes the work will provide a rich portrait of how teachers develop in high-need urban settings—a process, he said, that has received very little attention in educational research. Warford developedHigh Hopes, High Needs into a proposal stage draft and plans to submit it to publishers this semester.

Warford said his third manuscript, Language Teaching: Foundations, Standards, and Innovations, is similar to the other two in that it addresses a timely need. He said the most widely adopted textbooks on the subject, though periodically re-edited, are decades old.

While he awaits word from the publishers about his submissions, Warford said, he is already recognizing the benefits of his sabbatical.

“My students seemed to catch the spark I felt from the time off; they told me they appreciated the fresh ideas I brought to the classroom,” he said. “The discoveries gave me greater clarity and helped me find my ‘center’ as a teacher.”

Warford is happy he is on the path to being published and has many ideas for future works. Although his pace of writing was rapid, he came to realize that the process of publishing takes longer than he expected. Nevertheless, he is grateful to have had the time to write more than he imagined was possible.

“I feel humbled to have been granted the experience,” he said. “A sabbatical is a service that answers to the public trust. In an ideal world, I think everyone in every line of work should have the opportunity to take one.”

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