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Alisa Shapiro-Rosenberg on Data Collection – 2
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13 thoughts on “Alisa Shapiro-Rosenberg on Data Collection – 2”
What we are asked to do must have an analogy somewhere. It is as if, perhaps, a professional dancer is being asked by a theatre manager to not dance according to her own vision, her own research, her passion, her vision for what dance can be. Then she has to explain to him why. Uhhh… because she has spent her life learning how to dance?
I feel like I am standing on beach, being asked to stand still, when all I want to do is make footprints in the sand…
Nice image. Not so nice if you are of the footprint-making persuasion. That’s what curriculum/alignment with pacing guides, etc. does to the comprehensible input process. What is shocking to me is that the TPRS people just kept trying to make TPRS fit into schools. Krashen didn’t say it wouldn’t work, he said we were the closest thing to align with his theories, so I guess everybody thought it would work. And it worked for a lot of people. But it DIDN’T work for a lot of people also. Nobody at all raised any red flags when trying to introduce that great beauty into the jailhouse of unruly prisoners. We all tried so hard to make it work. I tried for fifteen teeth-gnashing years and yes, some of us succeeded. But only 20% of people at national conferences return the next year, I was told by someone who knows. I wish someone important had raised some red flags. Beniko did but I just found out about that lately. BVP? No comment. On the beach red flags mean danger.
But couldn’t that data be skewed? I mean you get a lot of info at IFLT or NTPRS- a lot to chew on and a lot of resources. People might not return the next year simply because they don’t want to pay the money for the travel to another conference.
For example, I am reading the Big CI book and TPRS in a year now. Actually I could get as much if not MORE from those books if I sat down and read them this summer and put the stuff into practice than traveling to a conference.
For me the big part of the conferences is the support you get and the new people you meet who you can correspond with during the year, but if you really want the info there is a ton out there that you can read.
…But couldn’t that data be skewed?….
Yes Greg I shouldn’t say that. I don’t know.
We are left wondering how to carry the work forward and disseminate it further without compromising our core principles. As we know, there are T/CI teachers out there who, to save their livelihoods, package themselves with documents to corroborate, however their admins need them to.
Perhaps trainers need to have admin/evaluator-specific sessions? First or last day of teacher conf dedicated to alignment between practice and teacher eval/admin – for dept chairs, too?
Maybe in your copious free time between projects, Ben, you can create materials for admin/evaluator/parent night – or pull together some of the best on the PLC and sell it!
I know Blaine allows admins to attend his traveling workshops for free, but they don’t directly tell the decision makers what to do/not to do.
I get why some T’s follow traditional plans using trad’l materials even if they want to be liberated by T/CI….
T/CI, TPRS even SL cannot liberate anyone. It has to be the change in mindsets, trust and building those relationships that go ahead and allow admin to say “Yes! This is what we need now. You are the professionals.” I understand that they may ask for things that are expected in school BUT if they violate the foundations of SLA then it should be a no go. Alisa you are spot on for having admin and trainers to tease out the alignment between practice and evals. I think that we may have some people power nation-wide for action. However, at the risk of sounding pessimistic, we are so divided by the very thing that we are fighting against–defining malpractice in the profession.
Alisa – today I will begin a “Bite Size Book on Communicating with Administrators about CI”.
Awesome. It’s like that set of World Book Encyclopedias from A-Z in our basement growing up…I liked poring over the transparencies – overlays of the different body systems, and all the colorful glossy maps…please put some bite-size pictures in!
How would you all suggest navigating a situation where your admin wants CI to grow in the department, but we can’t find TPRS people when we have a job posting? Also the people that we do have that are somewhat interested in it are wishy washy on the issue and unlikely to put in the work it takes to learn a new style of teaching?
I was thinking…what about just BUYING said teachers the Martina Bex curriculum and having them teach with that for now- all the while encouraging them to dive in deeper. At least it’s better than the verb charts and the worksheets because there is comprehensible input there.
Lots of teachers simply aren’t going to participate in online PLCs or go to conferences that are not during contractual hours or be watching videos on One Word Images after hours. Yet, the reality is we have to teach with these people and the kids in our classes are either coming from their classes or going to their classes next year.
¡Que viva! I recently had a presentation for parents at my school where I shared the CI principle that drives the Spanish program and showed how the stories and student´s interest are the curriculum. I emphasized contact time and frequency as very important factors for language acquisition and parents were very receptive. I received good feedback from that but the best was the one from a parent who told me that he told the CEO (Yes, we have CEO super open-minded and progressive) that Spanish class should happen every day. I am already being told that I will have an additional day, 3x a week instead of the current 2x week. That is something. I owe to this PLC the bulk of the arguments and ideas. I have learned already from the little collaboration that we did some weeks back, Alisa. You are awesome and I enyoyed your thorough presentation at the CI Mitten Conference.
Felicidades, Carmen. It must be awesome to have a supportive environment. I’m a lone wolf here but I plan on organizing locally in my district. There are a lot of new teachers who are eclectic but they are hungry for something different.
I can’t wait to see you and Carmen and some of the other young bucks on this site in ten years. “Look out, world!”