Sometimes comments get denied by some weird PLC software security rule so when that happens I just publish the comment here as article. This is from Michele Whaley as she comments on the thread about using the textbook along with CI, or not:
I know these anti-learning kids well, and I feel lucky not to have had too many of them. Usually nowadays they just drop out of my class early on, since I have a fair amount of support from the rest of the class. I agree that having jobs helps, even though I’ve never considered giving them extra credit for doing jobs. It’s just what they like to do.
What I think has made the biggest difference for me is the attitude that I am always learning with them. My kids watched me struggle mightily to get through a unit I had to do demonstrating authentic resource use last semester. They were amazingly kind and supportive because I would tell them what didn’t seem to be working in my eyes. Kids actually wrote me notes telling me I was improving, even though it wasn’t as effective as our “regular stories.”
But the very best was when I used to put my weekly goal, direct from Ben’s TPRS in a Year!, up on the board and the kids would grade me at the end of class. How many words was I saying in English, or how well did I go slowly, or did I manage PQA well to introduce the new structures. Usually at the beginning of the week I would get C’s (below expectations), work my way to B’s by Thursday, and sometimes, in one or two classes, get an A (exceeding expectations) by Friday. Those kids were so dialed in to both the lesson and to how well I was doing that it felt like real teamwork. I’m going to get back to the “teacher grades” again this year, because they need to know what I’m doing. I think that it helps with the Mindset piece that Bryce talks about. I know I can improve! I know that by modeling my false or unsteady steps in the beginning of a piece, I can show kids that we may have to fail before we can succeed.
This is all a perfect storm of wisdom in my head because yesterday my husband and I ran into a former, middle-of-the-road student working at Costco. She graduated four years ago, which means that she was with me for my first years of leaning heavily (hours a day) on Ben and this blog and his books. She was delighted to see me, and she said she was thinking about how much fun Russian was just the other day. She said it was the only class she ever wanted to attend during her four years. I was taken aback. Pleased of course that Russian was fun, but sad to hear that the other classes weren’t.
We have to remember these kids are out there in our rooms and somehow ignore all the negative pressure from the others. Show them the love. Give them jobs, push on them ’till they cave in. They are not worth our health. Focus the love on the quiet ones too, because even if they’re not saying it, they’re basking in the happy rays that come from the TPRS/CI philosophy.