Mark is in his second session now and has referenced the vomit Spanish class again. I have to say something, a new insight into what we are really in fact up against:
Traditional teachers who are good at it can really lay a very impressive layer of “this is good teaching” down. I cannot believe how impressive that Spanish class would be to the layman and what a great job getting the kids thinking about Spanish was apparently being done. The teacher would be a GREAT teacher of TPRS. But she is using a shitty method. But she is so convincing!* I have never yet really understood the magnitude of what we are up against here. Whoa! I’m glad Eric Herman and Robert Harrell and Claire Ensor and so many others here in our group are on the planet. I’d give up hope! Really, without my TPRS colleagues, I would give up hope and finally admit that I am too much of a whack job to be a teacher.
*Although I bet that if we got into an honest conversation with her she would say that she hates her job, because it is all show and no substance and she knows it. This describes many of the 18,000 ACTFL Foreign Language Educators online group, by the way, who truly believe that they are getting some great work done in their classes, in spite of the fact that most of their students drop out of their programs at such an astronomical rate.