Well, the book is done. Again. It is in its fourth or fifth state of being finished. Carly and Alisa have been instrumental in making suggestions and I cannot thank them enough. Both are amazing readers.
Carly suggested breaking the book into two pieces. It was the perfect suggestion. There are now two books of 200 pages each. One describes how to do the Invisibles as I met them in India in 2015. The other provides massive support materials intended for new people to make the first book work. People with training in CI/SLA theory won’t need it – much of it is in previous books.
Yes, NTCI is the main ingredient.
I have figured out that I am not capable of writing a short book. There is too much to say! I’m like Jeremy in the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine movie, whose famous line has never left me from so long ago:
“Ad hoc ad loc and quid pro quo, so little time, so much to know!” as in:
So if you have one of the “completed” versions of The Invisibles book from a few months ago, please trash it. It’s way not like what I have now.
Here is the afterword to the book:
Afterword
There is a poem by the Persian poet Hafiz (14th c.) that made me think about how strongly the work we do impacts our happiness. The translation is by Danny Ladinksy in his collection of Hafiz translations called The Gift (Penguin Compass, 1999).
Here is the poem:
Last
Night
God
Posted
On the Tavern wall
A hard decree for all of love’s inmates
Which read:
If your heart cannot find a joyful work
The jaws of this world
Will probably
Grab hold of your
Sweet
Ass
We just can’t afford to be bored in our life’s work. It’s terrible to go to a job every day that we don’t enjoy. We must find a way to make it fun. We just must. We don’t have a choice. For me, twenty years ago, it was like, “Either this comprehensible input stuff is going to work for me, or I’m out.”
Teaching should be for us a place where we can go to grow as human beings through hard work and daily effort, using our profession to become happier and more well-balanced human beings. Our jobs should serve us in positive ways.
The way I see it, the only way we can become truly happy in this most challenging work is to open wide the pathways of communication with our students to slowly chip away at their often rock-like responses to our attempts to reach them, and to let fun and laughter in.
Indeed, are our students not beautiful statues trapped in rock? That is my position. In order to uncover that beauty, I have found in over more than 40 years of searching that the only thing that will release my students from the rock is comprehensible input. That is my own personal conclusion.
But what kind of comprehensible input? I can only speak for myself, but the star curriculum outlined in this book, which I can say without hyperbole is my life’s work, is the only curriculum that has ever worked for me in the real way – in the way that brings happiness to me and my students. Somehow, it brings out, in a way that other curriculums haven’t, the inherent communicative beauty and sense of humor that is ever present in all human beings, but hidden in these dark times.
It is my hope that language teachers may now use the star to apply what is in this book to begin to explore and bring out their own best and highest teaching self, their own individual teaching artist within, so that they don’t have to feel the pressure of being “less than” with comprehensible input instruction.
May we one day be able to experience in our teaching something that reflects this statement by Meher Baba:
…to penetrate into the essence of all being and significance and to release the fragrance of that inner attainment for the guidance and benefit of others, by expressing, in the world of forms, truth, love, purity and beauty – this is the sole game which has intrinsic and absolute worth. All other happenings, incidents and attainments in themselves can have no lasting importance….