This is a repost – with ensuing discussion – from 2012 on the topic of whether or not instruction using comprehensible input can even work in our schools:
Especially in my school, students move around the building with impunity, with tardies being out of control, absences being off the chart, and statements to teachers very often being resisted as untrue and somehow the fault of the teacher.
Behind this obvious impunity is a second level of impunity in the form of a culture of disengagement that defies description even in gifted students. That fact causes many of us to think incorrectly that we can’t keep a handle on classroom discipline, when in reality the problem has much less to do with our classroom management than with the broken culture described above.
Comprehension based language instruction depends almost entirely on human values and skills connected to the art of conversation*, which is something that is often missing even in gifted students. And so again, the failure of comprehensible input in schools may not be due to the inability of teachers to make it work, as if there was some flaw in the teacher, but rather to the giant culture of ghostness in which we all live in our school buildings.
We are like rats trapped in a cage with other really big and mean rats in the form of a wide spectrum of people who don’t see the culture for what it is – destructive to anything that brings real human values into the classroom. That IS what we do – try to point towards authentic human interaction. So, in the end, what we have attempted here is much much much much more difficult than we had any idea going in.
We don’t have some two dimensional approach to teaching. We require our students to show up as human beings for the instruction we give them. That is not a real widespread thing in the ghost culture. Then, when we can’t control the ghosts, when we have classroom management issues, we dutifully blame ourselves and agree with everyone who says we have those kinds of issues. But it’s not fully us at all.
Jeanne Gibbes, the author of many books about engaging kids in school learning communities which focus on self-esteem and the importance of group process, recently expressed her astonishment that the ideas in her books are still even around these days, in this culture of rudeness and standardized testing**, etc.
Parents fall into two categories – those who come down too hard on their kids for mistakes, which action destroys the qualities necessary in their children for success in our classrooms by snuffing out self-confidence, and those who immediately turn around any mistake made by their child back on the teacher as being somehow being the result of the teacher being unable to maintain classroom discipline. See category on this site on “bullying of teachers” for more on that topic.
I personally don’t know how to deal with out of control disrespect across the board for us and our work, in all areas and from all sides – from administrators who are pushed from above to move against us with data, from counselors (they simply can’t keep up with the chaos and thereby by their being buried in a mass of work that is too big for them become part of our problem when we need real help), from students and parents as discussed above, from not so unseen political forces, etc.
Look at the most successful (I won’t say best) teachers. They are the ones who are somehow perceived as having the most control of their classrooms. To be a successful teacher you must be in control, is the message. But isn’t it an odd statement to say that the most successful teachers in school buildings are the ones who can most effectively muzzle kids into submission?
If the most successful teachers in school buildings are not the best teachers, but the best prison guards, those who can best keep records on who did what when and who got what grade on what test, etc., then we who with so much of our hearts involved in our work, we who are trying to make schools less like a prison, are in deep shit.
I write this with the deepest respect to every teacher who has shed tears this year in reaction to the absolute emotional pressure of their jobs. I bow down to that pain.
This thread of classroom discipline came up here for about a week in the beginning of April but got engulfed in a series of other threads, but I am going to try to resurrect it again. Of all the many important threads over the year here on this site, none is more important than the issue of classroom discipline.
I fear it all may be too much for us. We are in trouble, y’all. It may not be because we can’t do stories right, but because of the cultures in our buildings. Not being able to do stories is a symptom of a larger problem rather than any single flaw in us. It is merely the tip of an iceberg. We can’t do stories right largely because our students don’t have the social skills needed to make stories work. I am saddened to realize that. It implies many things about where we go from here.
*https://benslavic.com/blog/2011/10/14/lart-de-la-conversation-and-tprs/
**”The greater the preoccupation with standardized tests, the more adult-centered it becomes. It is no surprise that many youngsters’ natural excitement and curiosity about the world are more thwarted than nurtured by the school experience”. (Roland Barthes – http://www.teachers.ab.ca/Publications/ATA%20Magazine/Volume%2083/Number%204/Pages/Book%20Review.aspx)
Related: http://www.learningforward.org/news/jsd/barth231.cfm