Unlock with PatreonThe Problem with CI
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We Can Get It If We Really Want
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16 thoughts on “We Can Get It If We Really Want”
I just talked to our curriculum director about writing curriculum maps. I wasn’t sure how to write the new maps, since everyone else goes by theme, but with the invisibles, there is no theme. It was a great conversation in which I was told “I don’t care how you name them, name them blue, red, yellow. You got your objectives – SWBAT comprehend spoken German in class, etc – and that’s what matters”
Then, without my prompting, she went into how she is not a fan of summative assessments and I replied with “Well, that’s great to hear, because I plan on not doing any this year, which is what I wrote in my goals.” We talked about the rubric and free writes and I basically got the blessing for everything. Great success for being the only person in a department of 10? who is doing CI. (Doesn’t hurt that I was invited to ETPRS to teach/ coach. My school is very on board…. even if a lot of my colleagues are not.)
Awesome report Kathrin ( I added you on FB btw)! The tide is turning and we only need to ride the waves of joy in CI! One in 10! Once you start gaining the light there is no turning back. Other people in your department maybe afraid to let go. Egos and the pain body (as Tolle mentions) dictate what teachers feel they should do in school. You include everyone in your instruction.
Yes, last year I heard a lot of “Frau Shechtman only does fun and games.”
This year 4 language (German/ESL) teachers have asked if they can come observe my classes and I have been asked by a lot of my non-German colleagues if I can teach them German. Other teachers get it, because they don’t look at it from the language teacher perspective, but from the language learner perspective.
I just added you, Steve! 🙂
This is great to hear from you, Kathrin.
Wow I wish I were going to ETPRS! Congratulations Kathrin! What are you teaching/coaching?
I’ll be doing the German language lab in the morning with students and in the evening I will be coaching a session for people interested. I only hope I will do it all justice! Super excited and also a little nervous. The students are not beginners, so I’m hoping to maybe find a way to bring the invisibles into it even in such a short time frame (3 days with students, 3 hours each) Any ideas, let me know! Seems like in CA and Portland you got to present on the invisibles, in Agen we never got to it…
What is ETPRS?
It’s the first European TPRS conference in the Netherlands this October.
Congratulations, Kathrin. Is that the brain child of Alike Last of Alike in TPRS Wonderland?
Thank you, it is. I’m psyched!
I asked Kirsten and received this reply:
Hi Ben,
We’re not the ones who are organizing ETPRS, but we will be there as trainers/coaches for the beginners’ workshops.
The organizers are the non-profit foundation TPRS Platform. They are Alike Last and Carmen Meester. Carmen was also at the Agen workshop, maybe you’ve met her.
Anyway, we’ll have the Dutch version of TPRS in a Year available by then, so at least one of your books will be present….
Kirsten
Damn. We are going world wide with this. Even old world Europe is turning.
Comprehension-based instruction is too much fun to stay a secret. It is like a plant under the sidewalk, quietly growing a strong network that will soon rupture the concrete. What is stronger? The plant or the concrete? The human need to communicate, natural like a plant, or the schooliness and residual monasticism of conscious grammar study? Given enough time, which will destroy the other? Living plants through the magic of plant succession, which serve only the natural desire of life to express itself, or concrete, put there by us humans in our hubris and desire to control the natural world?
Communicating is too much a human need to be kept under the sidewalk concrete. Like the grassroots, it will pop out in unexpected places. In traditional book-and-paper classes that I have been in, it pops out small and frequently, in kids’ off-task conversations and texts they furtively send from under the desk, communicating away in L1. In comprehension-based classrooms, human communication breaks through the concrete and takes center stage. But the human need to connect is so strong – in solitary confinement the lack of communication drives people literally insane – that it will out, either in small furtive ways or in big glorious center-stage ways.
Communication will either burst out in ways that serve students’ development as people and serve their language acquisition, or it will creep out in ways that drive us teachers up the wall, trying to keep our students’ young green tendrils under the concrete of conscious dissection of languages.
And thank goodness, too! I am so happy to see this develop here. That is NOT what language education was like when I was in school. I hated my French classes and I would hate to be pushed to teach any other way.
Germany’s school system has stayed pretty much the same for so long, but I see some changes happen, but changes happen slowly. I think it’s amazing that the Netherlands are such a strong hub for TPRS/CI.
One of my colleagues, who is getting a doctorate in inclusion and differentiation within the language classroom has been very interested in what I do in my class and she has been very supportive. She said this to me:
“I believe that teachers who are uncertain of themselves are the ones , who most strongly rely on what they learned in their training. They rely on books, they stick with what they know, because they are scared to venture into anything new. Teachers, who are confident that they know what is best for their students, are the ones that rely on their gut. They find new ways, react to the class and engage in discussion with others. They don’t need to hold on to the book, because they trust in themselves”
Best compliment ever, to be considered a part of the later.
To clarify, my principal was saying that summative assessments are done way too much in ALL subject areas.
Yeah. Your principal gets it.