Yesterday we graded our writing assessments. In DPS that means getting together all the district language teachers in one big room and, using a super cool assessment rubric that has taken us five years to create and refine, assess their work from Novice Low (NL) to Intermediate Mid (IM) according to the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines.
Yes, and thank you for asking, we did have level 3 kids writing at the IM proficiency level.
Each year, and yesterday in particular, Diana and I had to agree that the writing is better and better and better. It has been most clear this year. What we saw throughout the day yesterday, lots of NH and IL ratings, was not what we had last year at these levels.
This change is certainly due to the fact that four years ago we only had five people on board with CI out of our 100 WL teachers in Denver Public Schools, and now we have about 80 teachers doing stories.
There is one teacher who still grouses, however. It is very unattractive and most annoying grousing. Honestly, it looks stupid now, where before it had power against us who were aligned with Krashen so many years ago.
This guy still attacks Diana after all these years of being shot down by her irrefutable logic. It’s like a bad movie where the same annoying person keeps popping up.
Anyway, I was walking with a plate of food to find a place to sit outside, talking with a new first year kick ass storytelling French teacher, and we sat down with our lunches next to this guy, who is French.
He started in on me before I even sat down. He said, with that lame ass French accent on his English “Hey Ben, you know that it is mainly the teacher’s attitude and the energy they bring to their teaching.”
I looked at my plate, then got up and left and sat under a tree. I wanted to throw up and I hadn’t eaten anything. At least I did the right thing. Before I left, I almost blurted out, “HOSLER!” at him because I haven’t memorized what James invented this last week and shared with us here (link below).
He wouldn’t have understood, but it was all I could think of saying. I was so wanting to lay out those four points made by James but it was too complicated – I couldn’t think of one of them bc of the negative cloud that had enveloped me upon sitting down. So after thinking of yelling “HOSLER”, I just retreated, a good move, don’t you think?
Then, since I had to work with this guy the rest of the afternoon, I went back five minutes later and apologized to both of those guys. For leaving. Not for what I believe is best for kids in their language classes. Dude. This isn’t getting any easier, is it?
Oh well, besides jGA, I also have this treasure from Angie:
…yes, we understand how analytically-oriented high schoolers can be, but does that mean we play to that tendency in language class? Or is this where we encourage the aspect of ourselves that learns through a unique kind of paying attention…not taking apart and analyzing, but rather opening to something huge and beautiful and just becoming a part of it? Becoming a part instead of taking apart?…