Liam recently shared this sentence with us about talking with Helena Curtain at FLENJ:
[Helena] gave a presentation at FLENJ as well, right before mine, in fact. Her presentation (her hallmark thematic unit – which I saw her give several years ago at ACTFL) included several disparaging references to “the TPRS crowd” and she ended, saying, “If you remember nothing else, no matter what please don’t do direct English translation.”
It concerns me that this was the same presentation that she had done, as Liam indicated, “several years ago”. Our profession is busting with change right now, and repeating presentations should simply not be done given the rate of change we are now in – it is unacceptable.
Moreover, when Mimi Met came to Jefferson County Schools here in Denver a number of years ago, her handouts were labeled from two years before and at the top of the first page it said that the workshop was for “Cincinnati Public Schools”. Hmmm.
I and many of us disagree with these people on early forced output and on the quantity and style of direct English translation and probably on how technology should be used (my view is that if it doesn’t bring CI, it’s shitty technology, and so there is a lot of shitty technology out there).
The battleground is in those areas, and if we indeed could get Met and Curtain on a panel with Krashen, I think it would be a big win for the Krashen side. I wish I could stop thinking about these people, but when the mental health of millions of kids is involved, I get a bit crazy.