We’re not just talking about a teaching method here, folks. We are talking about employment in a crumbling economy. Those of us who chose to go into the profession did so thinking that we could earn a living from it. But, if the method we use fails us, and our enrollments keep dwindling, and no one is excited about our classes, we become expendible, the administrators swoop down on us with threats or direct action to get rid of us, then what is our part in that – being a victim? It’s the fault of our administrators that we are being let go?
We used to get away with it. Some people go on like this for decades. In my case it was 24 years using a crappy way of teaching. I did it because I had a family to support, but I hated it. I had to have the job. I should have been fired, because only 4% of my kids really succeeded at French. I mean for real. Those are some pretty lousy numbers.
Enter comprehensible input and Krashen. Now, things change. We suddenly see that teaching a foreign language can be a real job with real results, with kids excited about coming back next year and learning more, and laughing more, and kicking more ass with French. It’s not a joke anymore. We like our jobs. People actually read our blogs and say cool things back that make us better teachers – that never happened before! – and we have real friend colleagues, not departmental colleagues with whom we not so peacefully co-exist in our shared common wallowing misery caused, n’est-ce pas, by screwed up, rude kids and shitty administrators.
That is why the aggressive stance taken by Susan Gross – she doesn’t mince words! – in sharing TPRS with others is of such major importance. Had Susie not presented at her school in Colorado Springs in May of 2001, my life would have been completely different. I would have continued the crappy teaching, speaking English almost all the time, wasting my time and the time of my students, on some deep level hating the frustration and lack of creativity of my job, but not being held accountable for much of anything because of the climate around me, the inbred culture of mediocrity around foreign languages in American schools.
911 changed all that. Like Sputnik, it was a flash point about the importance of language instruction in our schools. Now, we must change. What amazes me, truly, is how these traditional teachers used to get away with their egregious use of English in the classroom and their superiors didn’t hold them accountable for that wrong behavior.
That frustration of a quarter of a century of mediocrity (at best) accounts for my passion about CI and the unbelievably perceptive work of Stephen Krashen. He has crushed the ball out of the park on language teaching.
Now that people like Krashen and Susan Gross and Blaine Ray and Jason Fritze and Carol Gaab are out there, it’s all gonna change. We just can’t continue on with the old ways because of those people – they have build a new arena for the games. Want some happiness next year in your teaching? Get some training this summer – Chicago, LA, Columbia, go to www.susangrosstprs, go to Mexico with Carol Gaab. Do frickin something.