Waiting in the queue for a few weeks now has been a series of four articles on dealing with professional conflict that seems to segue well from the last few posts but that is just by accident. This next text on the theme of conflict and of keeping the professional peace is from Robert, describing some stuff that happened recently:
What sort of resistance to TCI/TPRS can we expect? It varies from district to district, school to school and teacher to teacher. Some places and people are open to new things; others are closed as tight as a drum. On the one hand, we have TCI teachers being elected to the position of department chair. On the other hand we have concerned parents being met with an immovable, entrenched position of grammar-based instruction.
One of the members of the PLC, along with several other parents, felt compelled to address the quality of language instruction his child is receiving at a high school that is committed to grammar-based instruction in which teachers speak the target language 25% of the time or less.
The PLC member wrote a strong letter to the principal in which he described how this sort of instruction fails to address the California State Standards, the ACTFL Standards or the ACTFL Position Statement – even though the teacher in question maintains that she teaches to the ACTFL Guidelines.
The principal of the school replied with the letter below:
Dear —,
I waited to respond until I had a chance to meet with the department today to discuss some of these topics. As I mentioned in my last e-mail, I believe we will agree to disagree on this topic. Our department philosophy differs from your expectations in that we are designed to teach the whole language of reading comprehension, writing conventions, and oral delivery of language acquisition. In fact, it was revealed in the meeting that whole language development is supported in this model by English Language Learners as well as the UC/CSU system in recent research. We have discussed having a Native Spanish Speaker section in future years because students who have learned the language in the model you are suggesting having significant gaps in their writing and reading abilities.
I have observed all of our world language classes and am confident in their delivery of instruction. I don’t see the need to meet with our department members at this point as they have weighed your concerns and agreed that their methodology is effective. I would agree and support them at this point.