There were like 12 people over today to see Annick do a learning lab in Mandarin. Some floated over to my classroom toward the end of the day. Reuben Vyn, our second year teacher in DPS who teaches at George Washington High School, was in that group. Reubyn is the only teacher I know in our district who never uses L1 in his classes, ever, from the first day of the year*. Now, call it coincidence, but today was the day I was going to try for 100% TL in my classes. And wow did I learn a lot but I won’t address all that here. The only thing I want to express here is that I no longer can go with the 90% TL thing. It’s gonna have to be all or none. Of course, I wasn’t able to do it, but, while I was trying, a number of deep flash insights happened that convinced me. So I’ll follow up on this, of course, later as we go along. It was kind of a mind bender, as can be imagined. I had always allowed myself those little bits of L1 in class. I just can’t do that anymore, and that’s the end of it. Obviously, it will be klutzy because of the failure to norm this last fall, but at least I can practice some for next year.
*I asked Reuben today how he has been able to do that, and he told me that, since he came to us as a new teacher, he never had a chance to do it any other way, and he didn’t. This is also true of Matava, by the way. It just never occurred to her to speak English in her German classes.
