Here are some things that we have to deal with in our classrooms:
– being observed by unqualified people
– differentiating instruction when doing so is not a practical option in a CI classroom, especially at the lower levels
– kids cheating
– heads down
– writing on desks
– depressed kids
– hyperactive kids
– classrooms that simply have too many people in them
– kids who aren’t in the classroom because they want to be
– kids who think we don’t know that they’re high
– “Can we play a game today?”
– “Can we watch a video today?”
– twelve minute bathroom strolls
– early sports releases
– grade inflation (unless we want to work an extra 15 hours a week contacting parents who don’t want to be contacted)
– kids astonishlingly lacking in social skills
– 50% of the class not being able to read at grade level in English
– gum
– texting
– English in the classroom
– visual learners who can’t make the switch over to auditory instruction
– cussing
– lack of discipline support from admins
– keeping up with unexcused absences
– keeping a gradebook that looks like it means something
– finding time to go to the bathroom
– door keys
Of course, some of the things in the list above can’t be helped. It’s just part of the teaching profession in this critically stressed time in the history of our country. However, we have to know which of the things in the list above we can control. This blog entry suggests that the key to classroom discipline lies in our doing uninterrupted CI for at least 95% of the time in our classes.
Classroom banter in English between the teacher and the students leads to a general lack of discipline across the board. We control the classroom problems listed above via a conscious and strict avoidance of English banter with the kids, as much fun as it can be. We resist the temptation to let the kids run our classrooms.
In reading, for example, if we engage in light banter with kids while translating a novel in the Susie Gross style of plowing throught the text for a few weeks, we then are not creating a movie in the students’ minds. All the interruptions that occur when we do that make the reading useless. The same thing occurs when we deliver auditory CI in the from of stories. We cannot stop the movie being created in the minds of the kids without losing control of ours classrooms.
In reading CI classes, at best, we piss off kids who get so absorbed in listening to the language in L1 that the last thing they want to hear is you showing off your knowledge of French by mentioning some grammar rule or something you did five years ago during the uninterrupted reading. As mentioned in the last post, just let the deeper mind do it’s thing and stay in on the translation work only as you read the text to them.
As long as we go slowly enough for the barometer student, uninterrupted auditory and reading CI will keep the minds of the kids engaged in class and will vastly diminish the bathroom trips, side conversations and many of the other things listed above.
Uninterrupted CI is the key to classroom discipline. The kids are cagey, and if they are bored they can overpower any teacher. Uninterrupted CI that is interesting to the kids because it is personalized is not boring. Kids are extremely gifted at playing the game of being a student. Teachers who went into the profession because they themselves were four percenters can’t deal with cagey ninety-six percenters in their classrooms. It’s a mismatch.
Therefore, I insist on reading, of novels or in the form of FVR, that is without any distractions whatsoever. I don’t believe in all those reading strategies that we have come up with – all the group work, all the cute ideas that we never use anyway. We who use CI must remember to keep it all very very simple. Some of us have buried ourselves under a junk pile of so many activities that we render ourselves effectively useless.
Thomas Merton wasn’t directly talking to foreign language teachers trying to master CI in this quote, but he easily could have been:
“To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone with everything is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of the activist neutralizes his work for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of his own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.”
Thus, when I ask my class to read a novel, for example, I (or occasionally a superstar) just read it to them. I keep things simple. They listen and follow along. I insist that they do so as per the following guidelines:
1. I read in a variety of tones and volume levels.
2. They keep their finger on the words and I periodically check that they are doing so by asking them what the next word is (as per Susan Gross).
3. If I look up and a student is not focused, I correct that, even if I have to do it fifty times in a class.
4. I allow absolutely no noise during this time spent reading. The students quickly accept and appreciate that. They are not stupid. They know when they are learning.
5. I give frequent brain breaks, 2 or even 3 per class period.
6. I constantly check in with them to make sure that the speed is correct for them. They give incredibly accurate feedback.
Soon the reading movie is going and the classroom is focused and quiet. I wished I had figured out this way to read novels years ago. The idea of stopping during the reading of a novel to make some point about how I was in Hurricane Hugo in South Carolina, just like Ben Sullivan learns about the effect of Hurricane George in Haiti, is insane. When I did that, we ended up speaking English with no CI happening for three fourths of the period. We don’t have time for that. If the kids in levels one and two are not listening to or reading CI that is uninterrupted and in the form of a movie during 95% of the class period, then it is not a genuine CI program and the kids’ scores will reflect it and other teachers can then look at such scores and conclude that CI doesn’t work, when it is really our own inability to stay focused on the CI and not use English in our classrooms that is the problem.
Same thing during dictation. They don’t talk. Period.
And the consistency must be there. If, on one day, we read, or do a story, or give a dictation and it’s all fun and banter all around the room, with lots of English, and then another day comes and we actually succeed in being strict about the rules and no English happens and the silent listening and reading is there, then the kids get confused about what is expected and they learn to play the brutal game against teachers of getting us off track. That kills the discipline in our classes pretty much for the rest of the year and then we wonder why CI doesn’t work for us and we think we need another workshop.
I am going to be more strict – and especially more consistent – next year in that regard. The kids will adopt and know clearly the CI routines. My job is to teach French using CI, not to be popular with the kids and talk about cool stuff in English.
There are to be no culture discussions in English. Doing so disrupts the flow of the movie that should be unfolding in their minds. Similarly, in a story there is to be no English banter so that the story can really become a movie for the students with their minds completely settling fully into that auditory CI.
If we do the above, we will see test scores off the chart, and we will see good, very strong, classroom discipline. We can control how we speak and read to them and give dication, but it requires a lot of discipline on our part – that’s how cagey they are. But we can’t expect the discipline to come from them – they aren’t paying for the class and they aren’t being paid to be in charge.
Constancy of purpose will bring the discipline. Erratic enfocement of English during 95% of the time that are supposed to be doing CI will ruin the class. We create classroom discipline by disciplining ourselves to follow the 95% rule.