This post is to re-state what I think our position toward our work together here should be. Please comment below so that we can have a kind of town meeting on this important topic. It’s good to do that every once in a while. This is the time to voice concerns about the direction we are taking as we move forward as a group.
Look at these four factors in our work:
1. Politics (a.k.a. establishing power over others)
2. Research
3. Mental Health (ours and our kids)
4. Strategies that kick ass
I want the group to go in the direction of the latter two in that list and I want the first two pretty much left alone (will qualify that statement below).
Our recent festivities with the ACTFL Foreign Language Educators didn’t do much to change things. It created animosity. Robert addressed that here last week:
..it is easy to forget that we are all on a journey, and we are at different places on our journey…We need to support those who may not be just where we are, not alienate them….
On the point about discussing the research here, for me anyway, Krashen’s research and a lot of what VanPatten (see recent videos) is saying right now are plenty enough and I get the feeling that they are enough for many in the group. Besides, if anything new happens, we will get it straight from Eric, who finds the good stuff – he attracts it like a magnet, filters it and shares it with us so not only is he a research engine but a filter. We have Michele and Jody and other masters of the research so there is no need to worry ourselves about missing anything. If it’s important, they will bring it to us.
So we don’t want or need to get involved with politics or research, and so we can now fully turn our attention to how to improve our skills in the classroom by constantly discussing the strategies that kick ass. That is where the mojo lies, not in the politics or the research.
And let’s keep on talking about keeping our hearts and minds healthy in this work – let’s do whatever we have to do to not make our job drag us down. Effective new strategies have described this site ever since it started eight years ago. One after another, new ideas just kept on coming to us, we test them, many work, some get thrown out, and onwards we go.
So stay with the Big Ideas. Use them:
https://benslavic.com/blog/return-to-core-values/