Many of us have to go to work this month, most of us. To get ready, I wish to address here in the PLC the following things:
Posters, wall arrangements – though this may seem minor, it is a a crucial thing in directing our kids’ attention to what we want done in our classes, starting with and working from the Rules Poster, to addressing more nuanced things like the metacognition work some of us plan on adding in to the end of our classes so that the kids can actually begin to think about what they are doing in our classes.
How to survive in a non-CBI (Comprehension Based Instruction) school where 1950’s style teachers design and force us to give common assessments based on memorization, which is really dangerous for careers of teachers (some of whom are young and in this PLC) who believe that we don’t learn languages by memorizing them and are thus opting for CBI/CI/TCI/TPRS whatever. This can be very dramatic – not to mention crushing – and I wish to add this to the list as a high priority.
Assessment. Robert Harrell started this discussion a year ago and we absolutely need to keep our focus on the Three Modes of Communication this year as we did with great results last year. We all have different ways of doing this but I do believe we need to focus on formative assessment options and assessing primarily (entirely in level 1 classes) on input skills if we are going to be honest with our kids and align with Krashen.
We have to continue to keep our privacy and freedom of speech guaranteed here. That means bios from those who haven’t sent them in. About 15 people have joined the PLC in the past two weeks and our number is now about 115. We need to know who each other is. A short bio is appreciated. PLC members need not comment, but they do need to identify themselves for the serious reasons we have already talked about here, all of them centered around professional safety.
What else? What other things do we want to highlight this month? There is so much and we have to choose lest we drown in a waterfall of information. I do have a lot of video and a few people have commented on how it is not nearly as enlightening as our real work together, so do I spend time on editing that or do I take my dog to the doggie park? That is an important question because I have to say that these last dog days of summer are important to all of our mental health, given that we work in states of semi-madness in our school buildings.
That is another topic I wish to really focus on this year – our mental health. Just because many of our colleagues think that they can be better teachers by doing more in a more frenetic, in some cases frenzied, way, which is complete bullshit, doesn’t mean that we can’t have relaxing and productive years with high octane teaching when we are with the kids and big relaxation when we are not.
I want the Latin thing to fly higher. It has taken off in recent years against all odds under the leadership of Bob Patrick, John Piazza and David Maust and others and it is exciting that we get to in this PLC be a part of that change. Same thing with the EFL/ESOL change and that discussion being led right now in this group by Katherine Burke and David Young. Latin and EFL/ESOL are problematic in terms of CI and we need to keep talking with the intent of making those problems lessen – we can do it and we will.
So let me know what else group members want to work on. Let’s plan and execute August well. Don’t forget that professional development, all the models from Rick Dufour all around the block for the last decade, have been to focus on teachers helping teachers without so called experts stepping in to stink up the place. What works is teachers sitting together and trying stuff and not getting steamrolled by trainings on how to use the latest technology or the latest revelations from on high by the experts many of whom don’t even live in classrooms. (I love to keep quoting Krashen about how robots can’t communicate – even Laurie said yesterday here that she wants to step away from her SmartBoard and get closer to her kids this year.)
I keep saying that there are no experts and I mean it. There is just us. Semi-frightened people – us – in impossible buildings trying to do impossible new things in what are often lonely settings with crotchety old colleagues staring at us like we’re crazy. Walt Disney said something once that it is kind of fun to try to do things that are impossible. That’s us. Let’s do it.
I have been talking with Bryce and Sabrina. We have some ideas about trainings. We want to work in the Wednesday night model Angela referred to – smaller groups at regional levels using short demos followed by long intensive voluntary coaching sessions for just a few days and then back home to family. The three of us are going to meet in Denver next week and talk about this idea and will keep you posted. Unfortunately, the groups are going to have to be small in such a training model – but that might be a good thing.
In the meantime, let’s organize August – send in what you want to do not just in the next few months but for the entire year. Time to strap up our boots and get ready to do some soldiering. Don’t think about how tight the boots are, just think about what beauty we offer – the grace of real language and therefore the experience of real culture – to our kids. That’s worth a few butterflies in the stomach, a few blisters on our feet, in the next few weeks.