I’m never sure whether CI can even work in schools. I know that as a general rule it can’t work with kids previously trained in the grammar method and we let them go if we know what’s good for our mental health.
But sometimes I think that it is also a hard sell in first year classes. Yes, the stories captivate their attention, and the readings from the stories have genuine power. But when working with first year students doing stories and readings I sometimes notice how much they, not through any flaw in them but due to past training, want to analyze and so circumvent everything we are trying to do by getting them into their unconscious minds and focused on the meaning and not analyzing the language.
Try it. Do a story, follow it with a reading, and then plug a portion of the reading into a Textivate activity. If your expereince is like mine, you will see that the kids are perfectly in tune with the logical/ conscious/visual aspect of the textivate activity even more than they are with the story and the reading.
Textivate requires full conscious focus. Yes, they are reading, but not as if it is “a movie in their minds” (Susie Gross).
Logic/conscious thinking rules in schools. That’s how kids are trained to think. Then we show up and want to teach to a completely different part of their brains. That is why it wouldn’t be a bad idea to put this up on our walls:
https://benslavic.com/Posters/rigor-poster-french.pdf*
*if you want you can find a poster that is language specific to the language you teach on the “TPRS Resources” page (click on posters) at benslavic.com