The right mindset, the correct spirit, of the video work we are doing, that has been spearheaded in the past week by Angela and Drew, is letting go of the need to be perfect. We just go in and film and then maybe do some very minor editing (I don’t think Drew and Angela did any editing) and we throw that up to YouTube or wherever and we share it. That’s it. It doesn’t take a lot of time or effort if our mind is right.
I really believe that this video thing that we are doing is only going to work if we adapt a kind of brand new carefree attitude about being looked at, judged, as in, we don’t care. Remember, this blog site is safe from any eyes but our own and – to say it again – we must deep six the concept that the images of our teaching that we put up must somehow be fancy or especially wonderful. If we don’t adopt this new attitude, we will have to wait a long time to get video that we would consider good enough for others to see – that doesn’t happen in our daily working lives – we are not going to get our best work on film.
In that spirit, while I am still waiting for the edited DPS video from last spring that I keep threatening to share with everyone, inspired by Drew and Angela, I just decided to go in today and video a class and throw it up here. So below are links to what I did today.
Tha background on this video is that it is a French 1 class in its fourth week. Notice that since we are doing a story we speak in the past tense. PQA is mostly in the present unless you are asking a class what they did over the weekend, and readings are in the present. I should put up some video of the reading class we get out of this. The kids are predominantly Latino and so pick up the French very quickly. You will see that I do a lot of teaching to the eyes, and I am certain that the level of comprehension that they display is authentic, even though the pace may seem way too fast. I couldn’t find my laser pointer, so that cramped my style a bit. It’s just me hanging out with the kids. About a week ago I got burned out on Circling with Balls (with only 20% of the kids discussed, so I will revisit single cards off and on over the next months between now and Christmas) and so last week I just decided to do stories. I chose Anne Matava’s Afraid of the Package. Today, when the film was taken, it was the second day of a story. Yesterday we started it, but only got to three lines of the first location. I had spent one day doing PQA on each of the three structures last week to set this up. That may explain why we appear so fast in the video today, because I had well over 100 repetitions on each of these structures before we started the story yesterday. I don’t like to short change the PQA. Below is the story and below it are the two links to the stuff that I got today. I am feeling very free and happy with this idea that we just throw up stuff when we get it. There is no perfect way to do this. It shouldn’t make us nervous. I have a long way to go even though I am very likely more experienced than most of us on the blog. So give me feedback – let me know what you see – it will help me. And get some video together yourselves and just throw it up here and let’s get over ourselves. If we can do that, we can move mountains in our teaching. If we have to wait until we get perfect video, we won’t learn a thing.
Afraid of the Package*
receives a package
wants (doesn’t want to) open it
is afraid of
Tyler receives a package from Chuck Norris. He doesn’t want to open it. He is afraid of the package. He goes to his mother and asks, “Can you open my package?” His mother does not want to open it. She is also afraid of the package.
Tyler goes to Jennifer Lopez. He asks, “Can you open my package?” Jennifer does not want to open it. She is not afraid of the package, but she is afraid of Chuck Norris.
Tyler goes to the Hippy Policewoman. He asks, “Can you open my package?” The Hippy Policewoman is afraid of the package and of Chuck Norris. But she must open the package. It is her job. She opens the package.
*Note very importantly that the way Anne designs her scripts is that she underlines variables – these are the words that we want to replace with cute answers supplied by our own students during the questioning process (circling). The parts of the script that are not underlined are non-negotiable. We say those words and thus align our story with the script. Thus, we see that the target structures are not underlined. That’s how stories work and how they differ from the total free form that we are allowed in PQA.
Here are the links to today’s class:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UNOg0GuNCQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OsVxkvjDc4