This is just an update on our very loose and ongoing thinking about forming a new group for comprehension based teaching the real way and not the ACTFL way. Those who remember the thread know that this was Alisa’s suggestion and it was made on the ACTFL list and not here.
The reason I use CLEAR as a title for this article (Leigh Anne’s suggestion even though we probably can’t use it) is because it’s easy to remember and because I want to make a category for this new group so it is easy to find if anyone has any ideas.
Laurie is the one who injected a measure of reality into that discussion, and it was needed, last week:
…and there are logistical issues as well. Who will be responsible for everything? Who will collect membership $? Who will open the bank account? Who will maintain membership info/website/communication? How will these people be chosen? What will be the goals/directives? How will checks and balances occur? Who will decide upon “official” statements ? This is a seriously complex issue and it will take clear and careful planning. AND it will evolve….
…Wasn’t all of this the original goal of the “committee” which formed IFLT and created the IJFLT?…
…hat is the state of IFLT? Carol has become the funder and organizer of the conference, but is there still a “committee”? If so, who is on it? How did they get to be on it? Do they consider themselves still an active organization? How would you ensure that we are a cohesive group?….
…all of that aside, the regional groups are a terrific place to begin and I applaud Jim for pointing that out….
We are too far apart and not funded by anyone so probably cannot at this point take all that on unless we can get Diana to quit DPS and we can’t ask one person to take this all on, and the rest of us are busy teaching. Note that as I read it the entire problem with iFLT was that Diana did it by herself with Carol’s help. Each year they say they’ll not do it again. But those two are the only two who can make any definitive statements about the current state of iFLT.
Here’s my thinking right now on this topic: My fundamental premise is that I think that teachers should not have to travel to conferences any more because grant money is no longer so easy to get in our schools. I wonder why but that is another topic. Alisa’s idea is fantastic but might therefore be a few more miles down the road than we think.
The big thing is training and a reason a lot of us started blogging in the first place, because we were – and remain – so few. Training is everything and what else would we do if CLEAR (we’ll change the name) was up and running as early as next summer? We would do training if I had my druthers. We wouldn’t sell anything and there would be no exhibitors.
Nothing we see at the current conferences would be there. The sessions would not be set up so that if a session sucked the time wouldn’t be wasted.
Wasted evenings is my personal pet peeve. We get so little time and then we go out and socialize. Jim called me on that and I am sure I am in the minority on that one but that’s how I feel about it because of the time and money involved.
Time and money are such big factors in this discussion that I see forming up the regional trainings as much as we can, consciously making the sacrifice to get together as much as possible even during the school year, which is really hard because NOBODY has any idea how hard teachers work.
New York and Chicago meet, and COACH meets regularly in Los Angeles. I see rabid War Room settings twelve hours a day for one or two days regionally. If we ever did anything nationally, it wouldn’t be to discuss anything like Laurie mentioned above (what a laundry list and thank you for making it real, Laurie!) but to work twelve to fourteen hours a day with food brought in coaching each other for like that for three or four days and then go home.
So for me where I would want Alisa’s idea would be a big War Room scene, with me not in charge because I won’t be in this for all that longer. Or a few War Rooms to keep the group from growing too big like it did last year in both Denver and Chicago. So like Alisa, and this is just an example and not a request, would find us a school and we would all fly to Chicago on our own dime, get a hotel and feed ourselves on our own dime, with no conference registration fee and no one in charge and no one makes any money.
Its’ just the opposite of what ACTFL does, because if you have ever been to an ACTFL national convention you know that in terms of improving their classroom teaching they accomplish almost nothing, while spending very large amounts of money on lanyards and computer programs, and if they talk to each other it is usually to impose their views on others, and their views are so disparate that they end up going home just having talked, not worked on their teaching. When everybody agrees on a common goal, reaching kids in the TL using comprehensible input, and agrees to work in that common direction with no other agenda, it is a better use of time.
So those are my thoughts. Let’s remember the term CLEAR and if any of us has a thought, we can go to the CLEAR category and write it down and share it so we will have a running log and control over this discussion. If nothing comes of it, we can at least say we tried. As long as we try, in my personal opinion, God will help us like He always does.