Certainly, 2020 needed to go. The big world was a disaster, and our small world of language teaching took a major hit as well, with most of the damage being done by the new online Zoom settings, for which we were not prepared and for which we are still not prepared, with not a lot of good things happening in the CI movement these days to give any real hope.
Now is the time for all of us to re-evaluate much of what we do and why and how we do it.
It’s really a very big and generous blessing in disguise. Change – deep and fundamental change – has been needed for decades in our profession. Why?
It’s because we never learned how to teach all the kids in our classrooms. We only favor the few, those 5 or 6 kids who would do well in any language classroom setting. Can’t we do better? What about the equity piece? What about the mental health piece? I’ll be addressing those pieces in a big way here on the PLC in the 2021-2022 academic year. Fixing the equity and mental health disparities in our field right now is the priority. It’s like with the nurses. How many of us can be left standing this summer and into next year to even provide a loving and capable presence to our children, who have largely given up, if the truth be told.
Can we just admit that no amount of purchasing those truly ineffective “CI activity worksheets” from sites like teachable.com just doesn’t work? Can’t we see that the kids see through them? Can’t we just admit that what we used to get away with in the physical classroom doesn’t work in the new online setting? The truth is – and any teacher who actually knows the research would add their blessing to this otherwise rather strong statement – that the stuff we were doing before the pandemic was not working.
Why?
There are two reasons:
(1) Some of us are still using the textbook! Guess what? I’m just not going to comment on that. This internet space has currently fifteen years of articles and comments (over 70,000 of them!) devoted to showing the ignorance of using 20th century pedagogies in language instruction now in the new century, which is already over 20% gone!
(2) Some of us are now trying to mix CI instruction with other, more old-fashioned curriculums that target lists like high frequency verb lists, thematic units, isolating vocabulary from chapters in those sad little novels, semantic sets, etc. That’s even worse! Trying to mix CI with traditional teaching is worse than just using the textbook! It’s really silly and has no basis in the research.
I got this email from a career professional today:
“We’re in real trouble. Anything you can do for us on your online Ultimate CI book trainings?”
My response:
I’m watching the signups for the next Book 1 Zoom training. I’ll keep you informed. I have no problem with partial or full scholarships for any teacher, unless the school can pay. At this time, no language teacher should ever have to pay for PD. I do have to pay the teachers who have mastered Book 1 who will be doing some of the trainings with me. We’ll work it out. I’m with you. It’s an emergency!
Have a good year, everyone. That sounds like an odd thing to say, but from where I sit with what I know, it’s very possible. I’ll say that again. I do believe that the Star Sequence on which the two new Ultimate CI books are based can save a lot of careers. Somewhere on this site are some testimonials by teachers who have adopted the Star Sequence into their teaching which will give you hope.
Here is something that a teacher in Israel whose entire department just completed the Ultimate CI trainings said:
