If you have lost your mojo here in May, just remember one thing. You hold in your instruction the keys to a world that is inaccessible to kids if you don’t persevere. Kids are hurting, like so many these days, and we can give them something to believe in.
Why did we ourselves get so interested in languages when we were young? Reflect on that. But we didn’t have the benefit of CI instruction so we kind of had to do it on our own, many of us on the Junior Year Abroad programs we did in college and in those ways, and certainly not in the classrooms we conjugated verbs in.
Three things happened to us. We gained command over a foreign language, we found out about CI, and we needed jobs. Now I say that we have a moral obligation to share those things with hurting kids, to give them hope. But we can’t require it. We can invite, and that’s all.
What kind of hope? Just go to the internet and listen to a song in your language and you will know.
Like:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caowYn3f-ZU&index=7&list=PLRFU2up2vTEsQ3RBDCqsQQfFGK2YKKsdl
Music, novels, poetry, the culture, the history. We don’t have to be rock stars in the classroom. The culture is there, supporting what we do, inviting our students to travel among the stars.
Let’s not forget. If we reach even one kid in all of our classes it is worth it. We open doors. It’s not a cliché.
Whether they show it or not, they are thrilled at the idea that they could some day have the command that we have over our languages. They would never say it to us. So let’s help them grow up with extra hope in life. Traditionalists can’t do it, because they suck at it, but we can.