We must repair our voices. What does that mean? It means that we must speak from a place of joy in our classes. How, when there is such negativity everywhere?
The method has joy within it. Words are connected to something much deeper than just the communication of ideas. This is supported by Krashen’s statement that robots can’t converse. What is it that words are connected to?
I don’t know much about this, but I sense that teaching this way can be something great and beautiful, because our pedagogy includes, does not exclude, the human spirit. Robert said something here about attitude about a week ago and he meant that everything really is up to us – how our classes go, whether there is joy or not, whether we choose to be happy in our work, etc.
So repairing our voices simply means choosing to be happy and trusting the method to work. That’s it. It’s real simple. It’s like trusting life. Either we listen to what the kids say, showing up as adults to keep the English out no matter how bad we are at that (I’m the worst about English creeping in), and doing all the skills as all learn to ride our new and sparkly TPRS bikes, or we don’t. Most people choose not to. Their loss. You can’t ride a book.
We can’t repair our voices (bring in joy, ride our bikes) when we teach using the old way, because the old way is a way of teaching that is housed purely in the intellect, which is too dry for joy. But we can repair our voices in the new way that we have now discovered, because the new way is not housed in the mind, but in the heart, where there is joy, and lots of it, plenty for everybody.
Let us repair our voices and stop trying to ride around our classrooms on books. The kids aren’t stupid. They get it. It’s time for riding bikes. We can learn to laugh again, like when we were small children. But we must take a chance. We’re going to fall down. But then we have to get up.
And we can’t bring fake joy. That doesn’t work. We can’t make up our minds to bring joy in because our minds aren’t where joy hangs out, our minds know nothing of joy. Bring happiness into your conversations with the kids, thus repairing your voice. We couldn’t do it before. But now we can.