Hi Ben and all,
My wife and I just returned from a wonderful week in Ireland and came back immediately to 4 days of PLU for our local Latin teachers. Along with a colleague here, we created a 20 hour PLU totally devoted to CI. Had 9 Latin teachers there who ate this stuff up. We are already planning to do it again next year and set up some co-coaching work for this coming year. The phrase “tipping point” keeps running through my mind these days. I feel like we are at such a tipping point in the Latin teaching community with CI. The conditions are right and people are showing up, interested. There are those of us who can share. Things are changing!
I also received word that UGA (University of Georgia) has approved me teaching a course in the World Lang and Lit Dept. this fall. It will be “CI and Second Language Acquisition”. I am working on syllabus, course expectations, readings, etc. The thought occurred to me that this PLC would be the perfect place to have students in that course do some reading “from the field”. What a field of experts in the making we are! As you know at this point, I ran the idea past you and you have welcomed those students to the PLC. I am so grateful to you for that. On the one hand, I think that no one should be on your blog who doesn’t want to do the work we are doing. On the other hand, I want students in this course reading the discussions and hearing people who are in the field, doing the work, first hand. I will establish what I want them doing on the PLC during the course. Hopefully, some of them will want to stay when the course is over! What I have in mind as an example of expected behavior is that they are required to read the blog, but that their comments, questions and concerns be brought to my classroom and not be inserted into the PLC. The PLC is for true practitioners and is no place for a student to work out what he/she thinks about second language acquisition.
I am so excited about this development. Ben, your work has truly become geometric in influence, and that was true before this happened, but this opportunity with UGA has just made me more aware of it. Much gratitude to you and to all the members off the PLC for what everyone is doing, and sharing, every day.