It occurred to me that if I write less articles, I can publish more of yours and release more of the articles stuck now in the queue.
My fear is that I will talk a big ball game about offering training to new people here and then not do it because our conversations about the finer points of teaching using comprehensible input are often intoxicatingly interesting.
I’m not the only one – because you have told me – who is waking up at night thinking about teaching. Think about that. That ain’t healthy in my book. Les nuits sont faites pour dormir/nights are for sleeping. It’s only a job.
So how to make the shift? Y’all write more articles and I write less. I love reading Bob Patrick’s articles, stuff from chill and MB, Robert Harrell of course, Piazza, Hoser, Maust – that whole Latin posse – and Diane and Tamula – who are both amazing – those Chinese teachers – when they send stuff in, etc. There is so much intelligence here. Jody? skip? Brigitte? Sabrina? We need to make this space into a wider conversation representing more points of view than just mine.
And, double benefit, I would be able to focus on shifting my energy from the blog articles to putting up some video for new people. The reason I say that is that Laura Censi, author of the points we made about her whiteboard board in the Friends Forever post of a few days ago, wrote this to me:
…I could just use guidance on how to do the first month or get to story asking. I guess I’m so literal, I need it spelled out….
Laura also said:
…I’ve watched the video with your son CWB several times and it’s so much easier to imitate than interpret for a beginner. It’s like cooking – first I have to follow the recipe a couple times to internalize it, then I can compare other people’s recipes and see what I want to add and subtract. I just need that recipe for the first day, first week, first month to get started, and then to get this first year behind me….
I’m going to at least try to do some video every day. It won’t be too fancy but who gives a rip. We need to share information and video is better and faster and clearer than writing endless articles on the method. Just video reportage, exactly like John Piazza did last week – way cool and thank you again John. It showed me what is possible.
We’ll see what happens. We’re all barely flying by the seat of our pants here, but at least we’re flying. We’re not buried in the last century. We have, in this internet space, a kind of esprit like in 1776. If you get a feel for that esprit go read some articles by MB and Chris in Ohio and Chris in Vancouver and people like that who aren’t going to be stopped in this work. Like Laura said in her email:
…I know I’m still learning!…
There is also a new person named Jenny in Germany and she is in the same boat as Laura. We need to think about the new people. Remember when you were new to this? I wouldn’t want to go through that again. But at least we’re not doing teaching that stinks and wastes people’s time, right?