Here is a bio from another Canadian. She mentions the Pure Land. That made me very hippy, I mean happy:
Hi Ben,
I think I sent you a quick email about a year ago promising a bio when the chaos was over and then summer happened and I played hard and had fun and drank lots of chardonnay (sigh) and forgot about writing a bio. Now the chaos has begun again! But here is a short bio as I don’t want to be kicked out of the blog. I NEED the blog!
I taught Spanish for ten years with a textbook and am now just beginning my third year teaching with CI at a school in Vancouver, B.C. Here is how it happened – A few years ago my colleague (Michelle) and I were looking at ways to support and engage the boys in our classes as so many of them had switched out of French since it was hard for them to sit still and conjugate verbs and not end up being able to speak the language. As we wanted some strategies to get them to speak and to be able to move around in class, we looked at the AIM method but it’s rigidity didn’t appeal to us at all. Finally we went to a Blaine Ray workshop down in Seattle and Eureka! We were hooked from then on! It has been so liberating and yes, scary to get rid of that textbook. There are some days when I think I am getting an idea of what the “Pure Land” could be like when the kids give me great answers and I can see by their nods and their eyes that they understand. I love it when I walk down the hall and hear the kids speaking Spanish with their friends! I love the silly stories and the laughter! And of course there are those other days when I get no response and blank stares (I can really relate to the posts about lame students!) and I am so frustrated that I start to speak faster when I know that I should be speaking slowwwwwly. On those days with those classes I want to pull out the old DIME textbook and throw it at the kids. I haven’t though, I just think about it sometimes. In short, I am still very much a beginner, a CI teacher in progress, which is why I enjoy learning from your blog so much. We don’t have any CI experts in Canada. In fact, I believe there are very few of us here that are using this method. Thank you so much for creating this exceptional professional learning environment!
Bess from Canada
Related:
https://benslavic.com/blog/2012/07/08/the-pure-land/
https://benslavic.com/blog/2010/09/16/the-intuitive-classroom/