Our Profession is Broken – 2
The way I figure it is that when we don’t include and encourage every single student, regardless of race or background, we will end up hating our jobs while at the same time trashing a lot of kids' belief in
Our Profession is Broken – 1
I've given up hope. Our profession is broken and useless. It pretty much always has been. That is my conclusion after being in the field for 45 years. If you disagree with this statement, if you feel that your life as
Another Parent Letter
Much of what we focus on here in our group is our mental health - it is a major topic. A big aspect of protecting our mental health on a daily basis is dealing effectively with "concerned" parents. In one
Our Students Are Young
There are a lot of readers here who are just getting started with CI. That's great. But there are also many of us with strong CI experience to whom I would like to direct a comment: We work with kids.
Scope and Sequence
Our PLC member Frank James Johnson has said this about the Star Sequence: Scope: "Whole Language Instruction" Sequence: "Spiraling Expansive Recurrence of Comprehensible Input". Of course, these blanket terms would freak out any admin who is not familiar with the Star. But then,
Middle School vs. High School – 6
Here is the letter that Danielle and I crafted, which you are of course welcome to copy and paste and rewrite if you are finding yourself in this kind of situation in your own teaching: Good evening (name of parent), Happy New Year!
Middle School vs. High School – 5
One of our PLC members received this email from a parent the other day. I asked and received permission to share it with the group. Hello Senora (name of teacher) - Hopefully things are going well for you during these crazy times. My
Middle School vs. High School – 4
Far too often, we CI teachers get challenges from our peers - teachers with whom we are supposed to be working on toward common assessments, high frequency verb lists, thematic and semantic units, etc. We also get challenges from helicopter parents,
Middle School vs. High School – 3
So the reversal of instructional priorities is moving now in favor of middle school teachers who use CI in their teaching. The high school teachers are being "outed". It's got a lot to do with Covid but we won't get
Middle School vs. High School – 2
When I arrived in 2015 to use CI to teach middle school French at the American Embassy School in New Delhi, India, I was met with choruses of "Can we just do worksheets?" or "We learn better with worksheets!" Hmmm