I am concerned that the discussion here, once so focused, is getting overly diffuse. This is not a good thing. It’s what happened to the moretprs listserve and I don’t want it to happen here.
In my opinion, groups like this one lose their focus because they lose touch with their core values and beliefs. I am starting to see more discussion here on things that don’t really matter and don’t really help people be better teachers. It’s becoming a game of small ball, I fear.
I would appreciate feedback on this point from those who have been reading and using ideas from this site over the years. Am I just imagining this or is it true? If it is true, then what do we do about it?
Here’s the deal. We either use comprehensible input in our classrooms or we don’t. We don’t water it down with new strategies that look good but don’t help us do what we know is best for our students. We speak to our students in ways that they can understand, and we have them read things in the same way, or we don’t.
250+ articles that await in the queue. I would like to put a freeze on them. I would like to suggest that we knock off the mud and try again as a group to defend, illustrate, redefine and restate those exact breakthrough ideas that we have created here together over the years, ideas and strategies that have revolutionized our teaching, but which have lately become lost in the discussion here.
Maybe it’s the forum. Is that helping or is it causing us to lose our focus? Do we need to add or remove any sections to the forum, or get rid of it altogether? Add one for Chinese? Latin? Elementary? Help me out here. I don’t want to run another listserve here. If this site loses its focus and becomes another listserve, I’m done with it.
I will start a thread in which we experienced teachers RESTATE what has been so exciting over the years. We will make a list. I would really like to see some discussion on this. I think it’s time to return to what got us to a point in our careers that I would say is nothing short of miraculous. I want the miracles to continue.
Am I making this up? What do we do? Is my sense that we have somehow gotten off track in our discussion accurate? Am I wrong? What’s going on? Help me out here.