The most prevalent thing I have noticed in schools over all these years is a feeling of fear in the building. It kind of weaves itself in and around everything in the building. In some places/classrooms it is greater than in others. Kids feel it. Teachers try to ignore it, some with greater success than others.
Where is this fear coming from? Could it be from the feeling put on students by teachers that they may not be “good enough” in their classes? Multiply that, in the case of some kids, by five classes and you have fear. The fear of not being good enough, of being a burden to others, of lacking what others have, of not being part of the group, of sucking at it. When that fear is there, no one, absolutely no one, can learn anything.
That feeling of fear (we see it in some kids’ faces all day) has become accepted and normal in our schools. It has been a part of American secondary education for over a century now. No one even notices it anymore. The strong survive and the weak don’t – that’s just the way it is.
Some teachers actually blame the failure to learn that results from this fear on the kid. But that doesn’t mean that it comes from the kid. The teacher must break this fear and turn it into a feeling of success in the student.
Bringing success to the student, guaranteeing it when they walk into the classroom, not some new fangled teaching method, can, alone, bring the success that we all want for our kids. No method can erase and banish the fear from school buildings, but a change in how we do things in terms of process, not method, can.
The teacher who allows herself to focus only on the ”academic needs” of the child forgets that those needs are inextricably linked to the child’s social needs for acceptance. A child who feels no success because they are not good enough and because they are shunned is a victim of biased, almost inhuman, instruction. The process going on in the classroom is wrong.
When the class doesn’t have a positive affective element, which by definition, because we are humans, is a participatory and reciprocal need, it is a dead class, and then that fear creeps in and stays there all year, getting really bad, really thick, as the year wears on. It often takes an entire summer for that fear to dissipate, only to rear its ugly head again at some point in the fall, because the process is wrong.
Unless the process of what we do in American foreign language classrooms changes, the same pattern of darkness, of exclusion of over half (up to 90% in some classrooms) of the students taking the class will be caked onto the walls of the classroom by spring, and the teacher will wonder what the hell they are doing in the profession and need a vacation and complain about the kids, all the time missing the point, that what they are doing in the classroom is the reason that they and their students are unhappy.
Some kids don’t even want to come to school because of that feeling of fear that is largely the product of proud and unaware teachers who don’t get the participatory and social nature of language acquisition. The teachers who are most responsible for the fear are the least aware of it. They are the ones who attack Krashen. God bless them, for their hold on what we do is getting much weaker now.
We all know, intuitively at least, that Krashen and Blaine have put a major hammer down on this feeling of fear, and that what they are offering the world of language learning is real. It is hard to refuse the fact that we cannot learn languages by speaking English in the classroom. Those guys have figured out a way to make language learning successful for all students. What they have brought to the game of teaching languages is interest and fun.
With interesting and meaningful comprehensible input in the classroom via stories and personalized discussion, the students’ brain locks onto the language in a way that it can never hope to do in traditional language classes, where everything is limited to functioning in the left hemisphere of the brain, which is not where the fun lies. Krashen and Blaine have made language learning a whole brain experience.
The research just piles up. Jen sent a link to yet another article that proves that the table has been upended and the stress and fear involved in learning languages are, as we speak, being ushered out of school buildings all over the country. No longer will language learning be for the privileged few – it will be for everybody as this change kicks in now into a higher gear, one that is becoming more and more palpable every day.
When we all realize, finally, that anybody can learn a language and that language classes can be the place in school buildings where there are the lowest, instead of the highest, levels of fear, we all will have come closer to being a part of the change in our society away from fear based thinking to teaching based on love. That’s what this is really about.
Here is the link that Jen sent:
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
Carla 07.24.10 at 10:11 AM
I’ve always heard that we should make sure everyone does the gestures and answers the questions in class. It helps the teacher know who’s understanding and it keeps students involved. But it can also sometimes involve force and stress when kids don’t want to.
This week, I did a 13 hour Spanish class for some interested people. Free for them, practice for me. I invited someone whom I knew to be explosive by nature, and to add to that, she had already failed Spanish using Rosetta Stone in home school, so she wasn’t exactly feeling smart. Well, a beautiful thing happened. She smiled every day (big breakthrough- I’m not sure I’ve ever seen her smile in three years) and was creative smart and funny every day. No explosions. Awesome!!! TPRS wins again!
Well, she didn’t answer the questions aloud, ever, I think. Knowing her temperament, and since I didn’t have to grade her, I just let her be and checked with her privately afterward to see how she was doing.
This worked great in a small class of motivated people. In the classroom, I feel more responsible for insisting on participation, probably because of grades, because of (ironically) trying to keep a positive atmosphere in the classroom, and because of those unmotivated people with other agendas, such as taking over the classroom… I had an explosive girl in one class this year, which I found out by pressing the wrong button (stepping on a hidden land-mine?).
So how do you insist on participation in class, while avoiding force and stress? Or do you? And if you don’t, how do you decide when not to?
Ben Slavic 07.24.10 at 3:58 PM
Carla see ya next week – we can talk about this some more. My experience on this is that forcing kids to do gestures shifts all of the power over to them. They can choose not to do them at any moment, drawing eyes to them, pulling attention away from the lesson, and generally screwing things up and making us look weaker. Most teachers, when confronted by such passive aggressive resistance, think (wrongly) that it is directed at them, and they go into defense mode. They become Brer Rabbit with the Tar Baby. But the reason for those kids’ resistance and negativity may well be (likely is) something that happened in another class to them that day but it is safer for that kid to act out on you than on the other teacher, because they see your heart. It could be due to a break up with a boyfriend, or a fight with a family member. But so many of us think it is a direct challenge to our authority. It rarely is. I don’t want any of that. Those kids bring that stuff into the room, and they ask us to pick it up. I ain’t gonna fight that. I’m gonna leave their stuff just sit there, and confront them if needed privately and/or via the parents. I want the power. So I just invite. Usually, when the “cool” kids see everyone having fun, they give up the power struggle, you win, and the year and the class belong to you. But that is just how it works for me – I’m sure we all have different ways of making sure that we have the power in our classrooms. But the best answer to all of this stuff about power, who has it and all of that, is just to teach a good, fun, interesting class, one chock full of interesting and personalized comprehensible input and humor and devoid of English. Really, it is the English that causes the discipline problems. Big time. I would add to those two suggestions a diminished importance of grading – it is one of the great illusions of modern education, . Can you imagine Plato giving grades to his students? I can’t. So I minimize it, big time. Guess what? Nobody cares about grades, as long as they look real. The less bullshit about grades, the more we can teach. We know that, but we don’t do it. But it is very easy to lighten up on grades and testing and still give the administration and the parents and the kid a very accurate picture of how they are doing in your class. Really, it is a MORE accurate picture by far when tests and all of that shit are minimized. But that is the subject of another set of blogs. To sum those last ten lines up:
1. don’t force the kids to perfom via gestures or anything else if that is what they want
2. deep six the English
3. give the grading gods a big whack on the knees
Ben Slavic 07.24.10 at 6:42 PM
Having said all that, I can see that one may think that I don’t insist on certain behaviors. I do. Refer to my rules. The same child who has permission to opt out of the gesturing must still maintain eye contact with me as per my rules (the “Do your 50%” rule in particular). The kids don’t get off scott free, certainly. They don’t have to participate (participation can’t be forced) but they do have to show up (proper decorum can be enforced through the eyes), is perhaps the way to say it. Just to mudify it a bit there.
Carla 07.24.10 at 9:01 PM
what about choral responses to questions?
Ben Slavic 07.24.10 at 9:54 PM
So I’m 15 and I just had a big fight with my boyfriend. I take French but I don’t really even care where France is at this most vulnerable point in my life (I think that it has something to do with Lance Armstrong and he’s cute but beyond that I really just take this class as another one of many – tell me what to learn and what will be on the test and I’m good). I do care if my boyfriend noticed the zit on my chin during our fight at lunch and if that had anything to do with him going out with that other girl now, even though he doesn’t own a car. In that moment, after a zittily bad lunch that was preceded by no breakfast and years of bad food and stress at home, not to mention a lack of star quality in the classroom because of those other kids from that other middle school with all the money, I am supposed to all of a sudden get right into choral responses just to please my French teacher? Talk about a power trip, when the teacher says, “Jenny, I want you to pay attention in class and, when I ask a question requiring a class response, I expect to see you respond along with the other students! Or your participation grade will be a zero. I’m sorry about saying all this in front of the class but you must learn to pay attention!” So what just happened? It’s all explained in Jen’s link from yesterday here – this child CAN’T pay attention if you really read what Jen sent, because now, on top of everything else messing up her day, you are calling her out for what, again? For not responding chorally? Please. She’ll respond chorally when it is interesting and fun for her to do so. You are the teacher. Take the responsibility for delivering an interesting product. Leave this girl alone for now. Get out of her face. She will join when she wants to, which won’t be long in happening because you have 90% of the kids into the class now and it is only October but you spent the first three months in the target language talking about them in funny and interesting ways so how could most of them NOT get into the fun in class? She will, but not if she is forced to do so. Forget it. Here’s that link again, and Jen, thanks so much for this article. One of the best we’ve seen on this site ever. It kind of blows away a lot of received ideas that we’ve been laboring under for years and years. Keep sending great stuff like this -
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/radical-teaching/201005/want-children-pay-attention-make-their-brains-curious
Carla 07.25.10 at 10:55 PM
This makes sense… and it helps to hear it. So many things to keep in mind at one time… and managing large groups does not come naturally to me. In my summer reading, the left brain/right brain difference seemed to come up a lot (whether or not the traits are actually located in these halves of the brain), and it simplifies thinking about things a bit, as in “get into right brained mode (and help the kids get there) and flow.”
Michele 07.26.10 at 6:48 AM
I’m baaaack, but now you’re all gone to California, right?
And you’re hearing Jason. . . go ask him this question, Carla, and then post the answer!
I had the most amazing time in Ixtapa with Carol Gaab. Everyone who even thinks they would want to go should start saving for next year’s Carol in Club Med excursion right now. Yeah, it’s expensive, ‘specially for us Alaskan types who have a long way to fly. And it’s even more expensive when you add on a guest, because it’s not like the room rate is suddenly cut in half.
(But let me tell you, those of you with beloved others should take them…it’s a great second honeymoon, or first, in the case of one couple who was there!)
If you you go alone, the deal is spectacular, because the food and the place and the relaxation by themselves are worth it. Add to that the amazing classes by people like Jason and Susie and Carol and Kristy and Scott and Leslie, and the access to any one of these superstars for about 12 hours the rest of the day. Michelle Baker made an appointment with Jason at dinner one night, so there she sat under the sea breezes on a patio overlooking the beach at a linen-covered table with free flowing wine, food, desserts, for probably three hours. I know…I kept walking past their table and trying to listen because Michelle had a very organized approach to asking and recording his answers. (And yes, I did sit down a couple of times, driven to hear just a bit more, but mostly I behaved myself.)
I got to talk with Diana Noonan for some hours, and ask Carol questions and swim in the waves with Ruth and discuss our progress in this whole CI thing. I learned a lot about being able to relax and actually process information. I loved NTPRS last summer, but I was “on” for about 20 hours a day. At Carol’s conference, I had only about five hours of specific workshop time, and then the rest of the day to let things filter into my brain while I watched my guy on the trapeze or went ocean kayaking with Scott or just floated in the waves. Absolutely the best week I’ve ever spent to include learning and pleasure and actually sharing it with my husband.
Michele 07.26.10 at 6:56 AM
Darn! Forgot two of the many things I meant to say.
First, having the advanced workshop with Jason was more than I’d ever expected. He took what I’ve been learning and ratcheted it up big time. Read Michelle Baker’s blog (the link is in the right-side column above) to get all her notes on our class. I’m so glad she did that, because it means I don’t have to.
Second, having my guy along meant that by the last day, I was able to witness a question he asked Kristy at dinner one night (she was his Intermediate Spanish instructor): “Do you really just talk to your students all day at high school the same way you talked with us?” He mentioned that he knew that’s what I did, but hadn’t really believed it worked.
Later, I got to hear him talking with another spouse who’d been in the beginning Spanish class with Carol. Both were commenting on how they learned more in one week than from years of language class. My guy said that he’d never really got the verbs down, but now he felt he had them. The other father said that, next year, he was going to bring his fourteen-year-old along with him, because he knew that the kid would shoot ahead of his Spanish class if he had a week of CI with Carol.
My husband loves me, and he supports me in whatever crazy schemes I entertain, but he had never really “got” the whole TPRS/CI game. Now he’s a believer, after just five morning classes with Kristy. That alone would have been worth the price of entry, but as I’ve mentioned, I got ever so much more.
Janine 07.27.10 at 2:16 PM
As a student, I have to say that this portrayal of fear at school is entirely accurate. For students, like myself who have our language studies at the end of school, wearing that fear all day is mind consuming leaving a and numb brain by that last class. But with the love given by a great teacher with absolutely no expectaions of failure in you as a person, that stress relieves itself and puts a bounce in your step afterwards. aslo, reffering to the hand sighning in accompanyment to words, when i was having a go at a french quiz i found myself using those sighs without thinking on sight of the words that i knew. they also came to me when I saw a part of a word that helped me define it. My first ever french class taught me more than I had ever expected to know so soon. Thanks!
Michele 07.27.10 at 5:44 PM
Janine, this post needs to be on every language teacher’s bulletin board, just to remind us that it is possible to ruin or make a student’s day, just by how we teach.
Michel Baker 07.27.10 at 5:52 PM
I was always drawn to Michele Whaley while in Ixtapa, initially because we might have been roommies, but mainly because I can see that she shares the unending hunger to talk about how to master and implement the Method. To demonstrate what Michele was saying about the beauty of the locale and the access to the finest minds in our profession, here is a photo of my interview with Jason Fritze before Michele would come to join us later on and off after sunset:
http://www.lex5.k12.sc.us/webpages/popup_info.cfm?staffdir=mmbaker&staffpic=2Jaston%20Fritze%20Interview%2Ejpg&info=14133
I really wish we could have all stayed there one more week in order to just sit and think together by the sea. I guess we will have to all go back again!!