"Improve Your TPRS Teaching Skills, Get
Affordable TPRS Coaching From Ben, And Be A Part Of A Private
Group Of Like Minded Teachers Who Help And Support Each Other!"
Ben's Professional Learning Community (PLC) Is The Place
Where Teachers Serious About Learning TPRS and CI Hang
Out And Learn Together...
If you would like to receive coaching from TPRS
expert Ben Slavic to improve your TPRS teaching skills, and if you
would like to be a part of a private, active, and supportive
community of other "like minded" TPRS teachers that care about one
another and help each other to be successful, then a membership to
Ben's "Professional Learning Community" is for you!
Ben's Professional Learning Community is the
place where Ben conducts coaching and shares information on TPRS and
CI with an interactive community of teachers from all over the
world. This private membership allows Ben and the teachers who
are members to share information on TPRS and CI without the risk of
attack, which did happen when Ben had a public blog.
This is the only private
TPRS community of it's kind in the world!
When You Become A PLC Member, You Will
Enjoy These Benefits...
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Access to all of Ben's current articles and
PLC member comments. New articles are added each week!
Each time Ben adds a new training article, a discussion starts
among the community making the training very interactive.
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Access to all of Ben's past articles and PLC
member comments. These date back to 2007! There is a
wealth of information and training here.
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Access to training videos. Yes, Ben is
in the process of creating video training that is exclusive only
for PLC members. This is the only place in the world where
you will find TPRS and CI video training like Ben's going to do
it!
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Access to Ben's "Troubleshooting Tips."
Are you struggling with something in the classroom? Check
the troubleshooting tips to get quick answers to your problems
and how to fix them!
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Access to Ben's "TPRS for Beginners"
training. Are you brand new to TPRS and CI? Ben's
got you covered. This training will be great for new
teachers and also a great review for those that are TPRS/CI
veterans!
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Access to videos from Ben's classes.
See Ben in action and get suggestions about PQA, how to move
from PQA into a story, how to ask stories, how to teach reading
classes, how to best plan the academic week, how to park, and
how to personalize your class at the beginning of the year with
activities like circling, one word images, and word chunk team
competition.
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Training Reviews. PLC members are
invited and encouraged to send in video of their classes.
Ben will review the videos and offer coaching suggestions.
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Participate and be a part of a thriving
community of TPRS and CI teachers. This is the place to go
if you want to learn and share with teachers just like you, in a
private setting where you don't have to worry about
administrators or negative teachers bashing you and your ideas.
You will be able to contribute your own ideas and experiences
and interact with the PLC community. It's like getting
together with Ben and other teachers every time you log in to
the membership site! (Bring your own coffee :-)
This Sounds Great! But How Much Does
It Cost????
You might think that training like this would
cost hundreds of dollars. After all, going to a National TPRS
Conference DOES cost you hundreds of dollars for admission, travel,
lodging, and food.
Some might think that a membership like this
where you get access to the training and community 24 hours a day, 7
days a week, would at least be worth the cost of a hard back book,
or dinner and a movie.
The good news for you is when you become a member
of Ben's PLC, you won't pay hundreds of dollars, and you won't pay
$40 a month, or $20 a month, or even $10 a month.
When you join the PLC, it's only $4.95 a month
for 100% access.
Now you can get training just like you'd
get at a national conference for a fraction of the price, and in the
comfort of your own home! And instead of only attending 1
conference a year, you can now get ONGOING training throughout the
year!
Ben priced the PLC membership at $4.95/month so
that EVERY teacher can afford to be a member. If you are
serious about becoming a better TPRS teacher, then you are going to
LOVE Ben's Professional Learning Community.
Common Questions and Answers
Q. Why should I pay for training?
A. Because coaching and training from an
expert is not free. National conferences aren't free.
We've also found that when it's free, teachers place no value on the
training. At $4.95/month, the PLC membership is as close to
free as possible. The PLC membership offers training in TPRS and CI
that is not found anywhere else on the internet. A teacher
serious about TPRS and CI will find this membership to be an
incredible value and a fraction of what it would cost to attend a
national conference.
Q. What will I learn?
A. Ben is building a
TPRS protocol here that does not limit the teacher to doing things
in a certain way. Rather, it is one that offers tremendous variety
in how to teach using TPRS. PLC members who connect into the group
everyday get a much different kind of TPRS training than is offered
anywhere else on the internet.
Q. Why isn’t this training offered anywhere else
on the internet?
A. It doesn’t exist.
Ben has added a lot to what TPRS used to be. Moreover, he has a
unique way of illustrating and defining the smallest details of TPRS
so that they can be easily understood. Ben’s ideas frame and define
the method to make it really work for teachers. Ben dissolves the
mystery of TPRS and shows teachers how to make it work in their
classrooms.
Q. Any examples?
A. Ben’s explanations of classroom
discipline alone are worth the monthly subscription cost. His
classroom rules (three sets, two for the students and one for the
teacher) provide classroom discipline that is clear and concise. His
Classroom Rules poster is currently used in thousands of classroom
around the world. Why? Because it works to help kids understand what
is expected of them and to behave accordingly in a TPRS classroom.
Q. Anything else?
A. There's too much to mention: videos,
posters, story scripts and readings, suggestions about assessment
and grading procedures including TPRS grading rubrics that align
with the ACTFL proficiency guidelines, an ongoing discussion of the
new standards, and how to begin the year with PQA.
There are over 3000 blog posts and 10,000
comments from some of the most experienced TPRS professionals in the
world, suggested daily and weekly schedules, troubleshooting
suggestions, and powerful new ideas about reading.
There are many new and original ideas
added to TPRS by Ben like dictation, classroom jobs for kids and
personalization, how to educate administrators and parents about
what we are doing, discussions about the new AP exam format, an
“instant library” program wherein group members mail each other FVR
books on a large scale, suggestions about what to do when being
observed, lesson plan banks, etc.
Q. What is the most important thing that group
members feel that they get from this membership?
A. Beyond the training, it’s the sense of
community that they get whenever they log on. The site has become a
place to go for emotional support for a lot of teachers. It is no
secret that bringing something really fresh and new into education
is not always greeted by open arms. It is in this community where
the trust and support necessary to grow safely into the method can
be found.
Q. Why is it private?
A. When Ben had a public blog, anyone
could read it. The open internet situation led to confusion,
arguments, and actual spying by members of school departments and
even principals on certain teachers. Open internet access created an
unsafe professional situation for many teachers who were trying to
break away from the old, failed methods of the past.
Q. So the sense of community is the big thing
offered here?
A. Look at it this way. Switching to a way
of teaching that is highly controversial and emotional is not easy
and you cannot do it alone. Trainings in the form of conferences
cost hundreds if not thousands of dollars for a mere four days of
training once a year. One PLC member put it this way:
…there is more here than I could find in
hundreds of conferences….
In Ben’s PLC, one can log in on a daily basis and check in with
friends who are going through the same things that they are in their
classrooms and they can talk about it. This is especially important
for teachers who are new to the method.
Q. What kind of teachers join this community?
A. Ben wants to keep the community limited
to people who are determined to make TPRS/CI work for them. The site
is not for people who need convincing. Ben wants to work hard on a
daily basis with people who have already made the decision to teach
this way and who refuse to go back to the old ways of teaching,
people who are willing to dive deep into the ocean that is
comprehensible input, and not just dip their toes in. Moreover, when
teachers could read Ben's blog for free, they invariably did not
read it in a way that brought full understanding of key ideas, which
brought down the overall quality of the discussion, much like
currently occurs on the moretprs listserve.
Q. Any guarantees?
A. Go to the membership sign up page of
this website and try it for a month. If you don’t see the value,
just cancel with PayPal and send Ben an email for a refund of your
first month’s subscription.
How To Join
To become a PLC member, just go to the top of
this page and click the "Add to Cart" button in the right hand
column, or click the button below. We look forward to meeting you and getting to know you
in the PLC!
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PLC Membership

$4.95 per month

"Other Online Communities
Don't Come Close To The Quality Of This PLC "
"I really appreciate both the QUALITY and the
QUANTITY of the content in the PLC.
The stream-of-consciousness nature of the posts is only
uninteresting to those who don’t realize what is going on in this
little community.
I not only make time to read as much of this as I can, but because
of my new mindset and approach effected by this online community, I
now HAVE THE TIME to read it.
This is my work, much more important than all the obscure grading
and prep work I used to do between classes. What better way to
reinvigorate myself before a particularly difficult class than
reading over some relevant posts, or watching a classroom video
clip?
The other public online communities out there (including my Latin
Best Practices site) don't come close to the quality and quantity of
what we have going on here. It’s a safe place to be honest about the
process, to have a real conversation without any academic or
professional posturing, which results from fear, sometimes
legitimate fear for our jobs.
For me, this is way more helpful than reading about how a bunch of
“page turners” are up in arms about a student posting an English
translation of textbook readings online. They see that as a serious
threat to what they do.
So thanks again Ben and everybody."
John Piazza

"You Are Taking Me To
Another Level..."
"This Professional Learning Community is making me into the teacher
my students need me to become."
Skip Crosby

"I Learn So Much From
This!"
"I learn so much from Ben and this community that I sometimes forget
that other teachers don’t have support for what they’re doing and
even for their mistakes.
I never used to want to admit my mistakes, because I felt like doing
so made me even worse. Now I can put them out there and this
community can tell me where I went wrong without thinking less of
me. What a relief!"
Michel Whaley

"The BEST!"
"This is the best training and community since, I dunno, maybe
Nutella!"
Johnna Little

"Thank You!"
Hi Ben,
"I just want to thank you and everyone in this community. I learn
and reflect SO MUCH from you all. Yesterday, several kids were
talking how they unconsciously mixed up speaking Chinese to their
peers in other classes.
I learn more from you guys compared to the school of education,
even. There are no professors who would understand what's going on
in the classroom until they set foot and start teaching in the
classrooms.... I know what I know mostly from teacher to teacher, so
thank you again for creating this learning community!"
Piyanut Sripanawongsa

"Everything Else Pales In
Comparison..."
"Everything else pales in comparison to this group."
Jen S.

"No Replacement!"
"I decided to try to live without this
community and use other CI and non-teaching productivity related
blogs to replace yours.
But there is no replacement."
Dori Vittetoe

"Stimulates My Thinking"
"The honest, shared conversations by the
members of this PLC community stimulate and coalesce my thinking on
a regular basis.
This is just about the only place I learn anything - except, of
course, from my actual practice - the living, breathing research."
Jody Noble

"Helps Me Avoid
Distractions"
"I use Ben's PLC as a way to clear away all
the other distractions. It keeps pointing me back to Comprehensible
Input + Personalization."
David Sceggel

"I Find It Amazing What
This Has Become..."
"I find it amazing that what was once your
personal blog has become, in just a short year, a powerful internet
gathering place for cutting edge discussion on the future of foreign
language education in the United States.
Thanks, Ben!"
Lori Fiechter

"I've Never Felt So
Connected"
"With your professional learning community
membership I've never felt so connected to other educators in the
world languages realm before.
Thank you for working so hard at this!"
Annemarie Orth
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