The change we are in about how languages are taught is not going to go away because it doesn’t align with the bland, predictable and uninformed district expectations of what language teaching should look like, expectations that have not changed in decades while the profession itself is on fire with change. Are we really going to align our instruction with what a bunch of well-intentioned idiots tell us to do, people who have no idea what the research says and so think that they can tell us how to teach and especially how to assess amidst all this change? The fact is that there is only one way people learn languages, via comprehensible input functioning on a largely unconscious level as the learner focuses on the meaning and not the language. When are we going to stop trying to please our ignorant supervisors on that point? I’m just in a gnarly mood today about that. I am talking to far too many people who are always asking me, “But I have to align my instruction with the curriculum and the thematic units!” We need to stop whining about that. I’m tired of it. We need to teach so well with such great results and such happy customers that the school, not us, changes. My tolerance for those who want to keep the change nice and slow to please people is at a low ebb right now. We know what the research says. Why do we not therefore apply it in our classrooms fully, with hope and a happy belief in a new day?
