I just had an insight into the reason these things are on the ACTFL pages. I once worked, an eternity ago, with Vicki Galloway, who was the South Carolina Foreign Language Consultant and later a big shot in the ACTFL hierarchy.
Every time I talked to Vicki I could not understand her words. She was using words to kind of establish her intellectual superiority to me as a boss and not a regular classroom teacher. It bothered me but not too much because I have always been able to smell bullshit a mile away.
(Yes, I am calling much of what is in the ACTFL pages bullshit in terms of its applicability to real classrooms and real children and real application of the research.)
Anyway, the wording of the core practices that Alisa has drawn our attention to is just like how Vicki talked. So my insight is this:
Those people who are “better” teachers because they are more highly educated and are whizzes with upper level whiz kids (who wouldn’t be?) have taken over ACTFL. It’s the principle where the “best ones” get knocked out of the classroom and upstairs.
There, in their ACTFL offices, these people come into their meetings with their business suits and scarves and briefcases and proceed to write lofty sounding stuff like those principles. After all, they are there at ACTFL to “help” all of us. But they don’t help anyone!
Then the little girl by the side of the road as they parade by in their fine raiments, Alisa, says, “Hey! These don’t make any sense! How do they connect to the research? They sound good, but when applied to a real classroom, they are simply not at all true!”
So that’s my insight. More on this as a developing story. I just can’t let this go. It’s too egregious. It smells so bad! Qu’est-ce que ça pue!