Great bio from Clarice here:
I can’t believe this is my 27th year of teaching. I graduated with a degree in Spanish and a minor in cultural anthropology/sociology from Central College in Pella, Iowa and had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. The economy wasn’t very good, although not as bad as now, so I could get part time jobs in retail, and finally landed a job in a bilingual social service agency. Events happened that took me to Houston where I worked for the National Tourist Office of Spain for two years. It was there where I had the epiphany that in every job I had ever had I was most joyous was when I was teaching. So, I packed my bags and returned to northern California, earned my teaching credential at CSU Sacramento, interviewed at my alma mater, Oakmont High School, and have been teaching there and in the Roseville Joint Union High School District, in Roseville, California on Interstate 80 near Sacramento about halfway between San Francisco and Lake Tahoe for 26 and a half years now. I met my husband when he was substitute teaching at Oakmont 22 years ago. We have two beautiful sons, ages 20 and 17. Both sons attend(ed) Oakmont High School where I teach and both have had a tremendous effect on how I choose to teach now.
I taught like I was taught, as I think we all do when we start out unless there is a really good university methods course. I had an inspirational teacher who although did not use TPRS (because it didn’t exist yet), did use a lot of CI methods. She spoke slowly to us, established meaning, and gave us so much confidence in our abilities that we didn’t greatly fear speaking to anyone. She still had to use the textbook; we still conjugated verbs, worked on noun/adjective agreement and the like. I learned so much and was able to speak so well I thought that if I just taught like her everyone would learn. I didn’t really understand that I was a 4%, so of course I learned well and two trimesters in Yucatan and a year in Spain didn’t hurt at all.
I was what Susie Gross calls an eclectic teacher. I created games, interactive communicative activities, projects, you name it and I probably did it in my classroom. Once our schools started AP programs in the late 80’s and early 90’s, oh Lord, but that changed everything. The argument was we had to teach with the end in mind, which really meant the students would be subjected to even more grammar, listening and pronunciation tapes and vocabulary lists, and never mind that very few would even get to AP or want to get there by our teaching them that way. I remember telling one of my Spanish 1 students, that I knew he could learn Spanish because he had already learned his first language, but unfortunately he wasn’t able to learn his Spanish the way we had to teach it in the classroom. It broke my heart then and I am horrified to this day to know I was a dream killer. Our focus became to get students prepared for the exam. Our students rocked on the AP Spanish exam, we had 90-100% passing rates but at what cost? Fewer than 5% went on to AP and a then week after the exam; the students didn’t want to use the language at all and even believed they couldn’t.
Too many times Foreign Language teachers have been the dream killers. We have been the gate keepers to the universities and if a student couldn’t pass levels 1-2, or whatever level a university requires, they couldn’t/can’t go straight to a 4 year university. In the case of AP too many teachers discouraged any students they thought wouldn’t pass the exam from taking the course. They would tell students they weren’t AP material. We have taught our students they are not smart enough or hard working enough to learn another language. Shame on us!
I believed for years there had to be a better way. I quit doing projects, I hated them anyway. As a parent, I resented how much time the homework and projects, which started when my sons were in kindergarten, take away from family time. So, I quit giving homework and did more hands on activities in class. I used technology. I taught a special repeaters class which was 90% males who failed because they wouldn’t do the homework (stupid worksheets, flashcards and useless projects), needed to move, and were angry and afraid because they felt stupid for failing the first time around. I loved those classes, but I still wasn’t satisfied because so many could understand so little.
In the summer of 2009, a colleague and I attended a 2-day Blaine Ray Workshop in San Francisco. It changed my life. After 23 years of being considered a very successful and traditional Spanish teacher, I jumped into TPRS with both feet and have never looked back. Fortunately, at least for now, I am the department chair and I have been able to push TCI as the only way to go in Spanish for all new hires.
When I started this CI journey, it was Ben’s blog that helped me every day. Blaine inspired me to finally cast off my chains of tradition and seek freedom for myself as a professional and for my students. But, it was Ben’s blog, books and DVD’s that gave me the baby steps, the skipping, the jumping, the million other little things that I could use immediately, even if I failed, which some days I did/do abysmally. The lifeline you, Ben, and the others threw me last year in the “water wings” blog helped lift me up so I could keep lifting up the other two TCI teachers our department.
I have to say there have been plenty of days when I know I have done a very poor job, but when I look at my students’ quick writes, I hear them speaking Spanish or come home and find my son, who has been lucky enough to experience TCI in Spanish 1-2 and now in IB (4-5,) and his friends speaking Spanish when they are playing around, it brings me joy.
I know that teaching on an 90 minute 4×4 block schedule with 41-42 students makes it difficult to build the relationships necessary for our students to learn, but not impossible. But building relationships in a short amount of time is difficult for me. We are just now finishing the third quarter and it’s the second week of November. A couple of weeks ago I realized I had let some of my kids fall behind. I misread them and what they knew. I’m getting those kids back on track, but we are done with each other in another four weeks. There is this one girl who is so loud and obnoxious. She was suspended for five days because of fighting. But when I look in her eyes I can see the little girl who wants to be loved. In these past two weeks, she finally trusts me and is settling down and learning, but she’ll be gone in 4 weeks just as the real change is starting to happen.
My biggest struggle may really be a personal/spiritual problem. I am an impatient person. I have a terrible time staying in the moment. Slowing down enough to look a different student in the eyes with each word is agonizing. When I can do it, it is amazing. I think I must be suffering from dementia because I just can’t seem to stay there in the moment with an open heart. Maybe because some students are able to take advantage when I get that open, and then it all goes to hell in a hand basket. But, what is so wonderful about TCI is that because I have to be so open, I have made a large of “love” deposits (no matter what I said above). Those “love” deposits help me and my students start each day anew.
I jumped into TCI with both feet and can never go back. We have to succeed. Our former principal fully backed us on TCI and the changes we have made. She stood up for us when our students don’t do well on the District Common Assessment which is an end of the year exam made from a test generator from a textbook we no longer use. (All the money our district has paid to get us trained by the DuFours, Marzano, etcetera and the Vice-superintendent in charge of curriculum development has never had us write curriculum and then a common assessment. It is embarrassing to share how things get done. Now, we are to buy new textbooks so we will have a core vocabulary/core curriculum. Not my words, the Vice-superintendent’s words.) Our principal had to retire early last year due to an inoperable brain tumor. Our new principal seems to want to support us, but he says show him the data. That is what I need: Data.
I have to get better. I have to help our other teachers get better. We have to help each other get better and we have to get data. So, help me oh Ben’s blog, TCI and data are my only hope.