Just to clarify about the class competitions. The kids enjoy competing, but we know that creating competition between classes – in which a group of kids is made to feel that they lost at something – is far from what we want to create here.
For us, CC is a sneaky way to get increased high interest reps on the same story, a way of exposing the kids to a variety of speakers of the language, as a way of increasing buy in to our program by having the kids get to know some kids in another state (we can skype them too), etc.
So I was trying to think of a way to play down the competition piece of this idea. We can’t get rid of it altogether – it’s the carrot – but can we minimize it so that there are no class losers (because then the teacher would feel like a loser)? Is there a way that one class doesn’t end up feeling put down by another and all classes win?
Within the two months window (we’re in that right now with three French teachers), the sharing of video should be done with two qualifiers that I will list here, and if anyone thinks of others, please add them, because, after a lifetime of competition, I simply don’t want this site connected in any way to winners and losers and better and worse and expert and newbie and all that. Here are the two qualifiers:
1. I think someone already said this (Jody?), but the classes must be explained to viewers as to the details of background of the students, background of the teacher both in the language (some teachers don’t teach their best language) and in where they are with comprehension based instruction, and any other things we can think of so that the viewer can understand where this class has been with CI based instruction.
2. All classes should be told by their teachers that the results will be “deliberated” by a panel of teachers (those involved), the results discussed so that the teachers can get better at it for the benefit of the students, and the results will be announced at the end of the year. The kids will be told that they won’t know the results of the competition for “awhile”.
As time goes by, the kids will lose that direct competitive energy and when the results are announced, in this French case at the end of the year, the results will be announced and the kids will be lied to and told that their class won. Why?
Because they did. When one goes out and tries, one wins. That is my life belief. I don’t believe that we are judged. We may judge ourselves a ton, but we are not judged. For some of us, just getting out of bed in the morning and showing up for work is a great and remarkable victory, a heroic achievement. And when their head hits the pillow each nite, there is applause in Heaven.
Even if a class sees another class and knows that their winning story is not as “good”, they will be told that they won due to certain mitigating factors like the teachers’ experience with stories, their own experience, etc. They will be told that the panel chose THEIR class with a set of weighted criteria.
So each class will be told that they won the competition. I don’t insist on much here but I have to insist on that. After some softening time has gone by and, due to the lied about “weighting” of various categories of the judging process, the kids will know that they did something right in that video, which is what counts.
Just throwing this out to those interested in CI. I’m not doing the competition thing anymore. If you knew.