Panel 20:
Maintain open communication about the program and student progress among teachers, administrators, and the general public.
Over my 32 years in the classroom, I have never met a more secretive, closed door policy group of educators than foreign language teachers, as a general comment.
Furthermore, I have been observed countless times by administrators who had limited awareness of what they were seeing. I could have spoken English 80% of the time, as I used to, and the administrator would have walked out of my classroom with little follow up or interest and thought I was doing a good job.
If administrators really care about what is best for kids, they will heed Michael Fullan’s advice. Michael Fullan believes that we have the moral imperative to confront each other in school buildings. I like that. It is part of Fullans’s larger vision that:
- shared leadership is essential
- “brutal facts” are ok if they lead to change
- we need the ability to thrive on chaos rather than cope
- school culture can change
Admininstrators who fail to pick up the ball on this are seriously culpable. One principal in South Carolina fell asleep while observing me because I was speaking in French to my students. I saw him over there, and I felt like I knew what he was dreaming about – the football game that night.
As far as open communication …with the general public, it is another nice sounding phrase, with which this document from Georgia has been filled, but with little basis in the real world of everyday teaching, in my opinion.
Much of what this document suggests is just plain impossible in the real world. It sounds great, but it is misleading. It makes assumptions about what is possible that are false. Therefore, it is a dangerous document, a source of burnout for teachers, and a source of confusion and bad results for kids. It seems to have been written by a bunch of people-pleasers who just want to look good. They need to change it and make it more real, perhaps by connecting it more to the ACTFL standards.
We go to 5 and 16. Not real good. Either (a) this stuff is all right and TPRS is all wrong, or (b) the opposite if true. I’ll take my test scores and happy kids and parents who love learning French and vote for (b), knowing that when I do TPRS I am aligning perfectly with the ACTFL standards.
Next, I want to look at TPRS in terms of Ted Sizer’s “Ten Common Principals” of the Coalition of Essential Schools, one each day. I have a feeling that I will fare better than I did with Georgia.