Unlock with PatreonThe Problem with CI
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A Question
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CI and the Research (cont.)
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5 thoughts on “A Question”
Bless your heart! How frustrating for you Caitlin! Don’t know if it will help, but I have a student teacher this year and the university sent a list of what their expectations for Instruction and Assessment are from their Teacher Candidates and guess what–CI is what they are looking for!!
It mentions vocabulary and grammar taught in context and TPRS. For Assessment it mentions non-traditional assessments and activities such as role-playing. Things that fit CI very well.
I had been hesitant about having a student teacher this year because I was not sure about how the university would feel about observing what goes on in a CI classroom, but it fits the current pedagogy and methods classes at the university. The student teacher has been observed once so far, and the university observer was gushing and very complimentary.
Don’t know if it will help your administration to know this, but maybe seeing that what you do in your classroom Caitlin is what universities expect to see from their Teacher Candidates based on language acquisition theory and current research may help.
If you want to see the copy of the ISU form they send out, I will be glad to forward it to you. Good Luck!
ardythe.woerly@ gmail.com
It’s such a big topic. Explaining the method to others when they don’t get it, the standards, what we do with jGR, any of it. There is so much here, Caitlin, but really you just need a few sentences. Click on the Administrator/Teacher/Parent Re-education category to the right here and just read some of those articles. But nothing will convince these folks. They don’t know.
What you said here:
…I had expressed to her my goals for the students are constant comprehensible input and …. to be able to effectively read….
That is a statement that is strong and perfectly aligned with standards and the best research out there, and so it means you really are dealing with some seriously uninformed people.
My first advice is to not take anything personally. They don’t know.
My second advice is to do a CWB* thing on the side, every once in awhile. It will be so clearly focused on your students, it will bring out so much, with you in the TL, about them that you will easily be able to claim to your administrator that you indeed have strong teacher knowledge of your students. You might also consider doing a questionnaire.
*refer to the “TPRS Resources” link on this site – click on Workshop Handouts and find the text on Circling with Balls.
Keep at it. Nobody gets to do CI, it seems, without some badge walking in and making what I am starting to see more and more as some just stupid claims about us. It’s part of the deal. Stick to what you believe is right. I can tell from the tone of your question that you have a strong core sense of all this, so just roll with that.
Others please comment on this. Pretty big deal…Caitlin could use more than just two responses.
Caitlin,
I agree with Ben, don’t take anything personally as they truly don’t know. Plus you are working in a charter school. Doesn’t that mean that they run those like they run corporations (synonym for work the teachers to death and don’t pay them for it either, replace them as needed , high turnover, etc…) ?
You said they ranked you fairly low in content knowledge. I m not sure what that means? Does it mean they were saying you were not mastering the language you are teaching or were they referring to pedagogy?
Depending on the answer to this question, there would be different approaches to responding to these .
Do you have any more specific details from them as to what exactly they want you to change?
They need education for sure but in a gentle way, not shoved down their throat.
Mary Beth did this ( educating) at the beginning of the year with her principal.
She bombarded him with litterature ( Krashen, ACTFL, as well as many posts on this blog as Ben mentionned also) and it worked ! She educated him!
And he respected her assertiveness, proactive approach as well as passion for what she believes in .
You can ask her more specific details if you want. I’ll ask her to comment tomorrow.
Be patient and persistent, remain passionate b/c they ‘ll never be able to
put you down for that.
Good luck, you need it. Get the needed support you deserve from us on the blog.
Caitlin,
From your post I gather they didn’t check-in the boxes next to 1) content knowledge, 2) knowledge of students, and 3) clear learning goals.
I also gather you teach at a charter school, which might mean they are taking teacher evaluations seriously in the particular way that likes to find (make up?) problems. Definitely try to use this as an opportunity to show them, from their perspective, how receptive to feedback you are. Follow up with them in a few weeks with a list of things you’ve done to address each area they perceived as weak.
As far as showing improvement in the three areas above, I don’t know if you really need to do anything different. It might be enough just to list things you’ve already been doing and how they link to those areas of concern. If you wanted I guess you could claim you started doing them after the oh-so-smart administrator enlightened you with such great feedback from his/her observation.
More specifically:
area 2) knowledge of students – definitely do a questionnaire as Ben has suggested and start some Circling with Balls style activities. After a good amount of time doing aural input, create some L2 readings that highlight different students doing different things they listed on their questionnaire and which you have discussed via CWB. From those readings you can have them do freewrites and Essential Sentences (see the categories of the side). These will give you artifacts of work to show your administrators to address concern 2.
area 3) clear learning goals – Maybe start listing on the board or (better yet) on a website the goals for class each day: What activities will be done and what standards (reading, listening, interpersonal, etc.) those activities link to. I say online is better because you can send the admins a link to show how you are trying to improve in this area 3 concern.
area 1) content knowledge is strange – Does the admin mean to say that you don’t know Spanish well enough?
Dude I taught Spanish (admittedly for only trimester at a time) and if I can do it anyone can. I just front loaded everything and worked totally off the Word Wall doing word associations and building one word images.
Also James you said:
…follow up with them in a few weeks with a list of things you’ve done to address each area they perceived as weak….
Bingo! Once they get that follow up, you will see them go hassle someone else. That follow up to criticism, whether it is justified or not, is the key to getting them to go smell around at the base of other trees.