This is a repost from last year:
Jen said:
…I really feel lost….
Now this comment from Jen was about a few kids but I mistakenly read it as across the board in her classes and this prompted an outpouring of concern in me and others and I made about four responses to her original comment. Here is a fifth that I wrote before I knew the problem was not so big. I am putting it here just for moral support of anybody might currently be experiencing the October Collapse:
Jen, as I read and reread your comment, I am made to think that there are two viewpoints possible on what you are going through. On the one hand, maybe all of what we are doing is an unrealizable dream to teach this way, to teach in loving harmony with our students in co-creation of language in fun and wonderful ways. On the other hand, maybe it is totally impossible.
We know that we have seen and experienced those great CI classes that just rock and spark in us an intense desire to make comprehension based instruction a reality in our classrooms. But we have also painfully experienced what you describe better than anyone else – those rude kids who seem bent on – and this is not an exaggeration in any way – destroying us.
Such a reaction is an unbelievable thing in a child, but it is nonetheless true. And the other pincer move on that comes from our colleauges, many of whom would get a kind of weird kick to see us fail. And then there are those other colleagues who smile to our faces about what we are doing, even expressing an interest, but whose face is just a disingenuous mask. You and others have described those people so well in comments here over the past years.
I have suggested that we accept those around us, trying to understand that this is the world they see as teachers. As with all attacks, isn’t it best to just accept them, as long as they don’t do us any physical harm, and try to just go with the flow and do our own thing in our classrooms?
However, and this is unique in your situation where you have no support (a huge issue), you express your current situation in a way that borders on heartwrenching. I have heard other stories of being challenged by both the method and colleagues and know what I have lived through this myself to where much sleep was lost and many inner tears cried, but your comment just sits with me ever since you wrote it yesterday.
There are two things happening at once right now in foreign language education in the United States. On the one hand, small successes of the kind we occasionally have in our classrooms are the harbingers of a big change that is on its way and there is no stopping it. But on the other hand there is a stagnation in the field that is just staggering.
Think of an army of new language teachers coming out of college ready to hit the battle field on horseback. That’s who we were. And as we rode across the battle field we took the normal incoming materiel that goes with teaching a language (projectiles in the form of too many lesson plans, too many meetings, too little pay, etc.) and many of us fell off to ride toward different professions. A lot of us did that and what might have been our brothers and sisters are just gone.
And we would have left too, but in the charge we happened to get behind people like Harrell and Susan Gross and Judy Dubois (all real equestrians) and we bought into the idea that teaching in the way they did would be a really good thing and fun to boot, and when those lead horses suddenly spied another objective – one that really looked good – they veered sharply right out of the traditional formation and we went with them.
That’s what happened. Well, the generals and the other members of the traditional charge were none to happy with us, riding suddenly over there to the right toward Krashen mountain, which to us was a much more worthy and inspiring objective, but we didn’t care and we rode hard away from the crowd in spite of it being a much more challenging ride.
And now we are tired. That’s it. We are tired and wondering if we can make it. It’s just a big mountain. This is not easy. I can promise that those in this group who are honest about our own teaching hells would fully identify with a feeling of being lost as well, Jen, if silently.
The main army continues to move as a seemingly unstoppable force – mindlessly straight ahead across the battlefield towards the same flat objectives they have always ridden towards and with the same lack of success as always. They are pathetic.
But we, having veered off from the group toward Krashen Mountain, are really encountering difficulty. The main army has sent out scouts to trail us and find out what we are doing. They have taken a position, one based in ignorance, that Krashen Mountain is not a good objective, and that the status quo of attacking the flat ground is the best objective for language teachers in the U.S.
What do we do? Return to join the main army as so many of our colleagues clearly think we should? Most of us can’t do that. It’s just too flat, too uninteresting. So do we keep on charging up the mountain of comprehensible input or are we just too beat up and tired to do that? I don’t know. I don’t have an answer.