An Inside Battle

3 thoughts on “An Inside Battle”

1. Thomas Young

   February 9, 2010 at 12:31 pm

   This is such a great question! People in the past have mentioned the book How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie as a good way to learn how to relate to the students. I know that this has worked for me in tremendous ways. But I think that the book can also be used to work with our colleagues, especially when they may be less than excited to hear about tprs. We don’t have to be a lone wolf and if we ever expect people to change, we definitely can’t afford to be a lone wolf. Here are a few things to keep in mind:
   1. Remember that it is impossible to defeat an ignorant person by an argument, so it is simply just best to avoid an argument.
   2. Show respect for the other person’s opinions and never tell them that they are wrong.
   3. If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically.
   4. Begin in a friendly way.
   5. Get the other person saying, “Yes.” immediately.
   6. Let the other person do a great deal of the talking and simply ask them questions.
   7. Let the other person feel that the idea is theirs.
   8. Try to honestly see things from the other person’s point of view.
   9. Be sympathetic with the other person’s ideas and desires.
   10. Appeal to the nobler motives.
   11. Dramatize your ideas.
   12. Throw down a challenge to people who have spirit and desire to excel.
   Some of this may seem kind of corny, but we are not going to win people over by constantly criticizing and picking at the flaws of them or the system they use. It doesn’t matter how right we are, we are not preparing them and making them want to search for other alternatives. If they feel that you respect them and are in working with them for increased acquisition, they will probably be a whole lot more likely to consider CI based teaching.
   Some of the items from the list above will help with the smaller battles of tprs and others will be good things to keep in mind with the larger issues of tprs [ex. CI based teaching].
   We need to become people that are respected in our schools for the amount of language that our excited/motivated students acquire, rather than teachers that just use weird stories to teach a language. This will help us to establish more credibility and once the ball starts rolling, we may be surprised what happens in our districts.

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2. Carol

   February 9, 2010 at 1:28 pm

   Thomas is very right and these are really true.
   I can understand what you’re going through and I feel the bottom line is how you feel about yourself at the end of the day. Even if things don’t go as well as planned, where were your priorities? Your students or winning ‘the world’ over?
   The only battle I focus on is the one in my classroom, doing my best for them. Sometimes the best thing to do is to keep your mouth shut. I’ve already been through biting my tongue until it bleeds, in my head scenarios where I can sound off at my colleagues and stressing out to being resigned to the fact that I can only control what I do myself for my students. When my colleagues are frustrated and ask me about my teaching, I choose what to share based on where they are in their teaching journey. I prefer leaving crumbs on the yellow brick road to the ‘wizard’ that they can follow if they wish. A ‘silent’ revolution takes time but converts people instead of creating a war.
   (Don’t forget that the wicked witch gets hers in the end. So do all loud-mouthed, power hungry mongers that in fact are so insecure they try everything to make you feel bad about what you do, in order for them to feel important. Didn’t someone say on the blog for the loud mouthed anonymous ” don’t feed the wolves” or something ike that?)

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3. Erik Olsen

   February 9, 2010 at 4:57 pm

   I totally agree that the best way is to lead by example and to create the desire to change in a passive way. You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, or whatever. I’m just personally not feeling successful enough right at the moment with my own TPRS prowess and results to really achieve that. But I’m working on it.
   However, one of my assistant principals just shared a link with me that, like all of Ben’s and the rest of this community’s encouragement, is keeping me at the task of improving my practice. It’s called:
   Examining Teachers’ Beliefs And Instructional Practices In secondary Foreign Language Classes On Honors And Non Honors Tracks: The Role Of Teaching For Communication
   http://www.tcrecord.org/Content.asp?ContentID=14674
   It’s a study that shows that honors language class students in a Midwestern high school were observed to be significantly more likely to participate in communicative activities versus the traditional “STUDY the language structures” traditional activities than their schoolmates in the non-honors classes. Essentially, the honors kids get mostly CI/acquisition lessons and the “regular” kids get mostly drill and kill. The teachers give reasons for the admitted disparity in the instructional practices.
   I find this study interesting for two reasons. The obvious one is that it supports the idea that if a teacher thinks a kid has a knack for learning a language, they will gravitate towards TPRS-type teaching. Score one for the home team!
   The second is that the achievement gap arguments that Ben makes constantly in this blog are doubly true. We already know that honors classes are more likely to be white and privileged. At this school (and likely many more schools), therefore, the underrepresented minorities are more likely to be in a regular class and therefore more likely to get “drill and kill” teaching, which SUITS THEM EVEN LESS than their 4%-er classmates in the honors classes. The teachers admit to giving the honors kids what everyone needs and to giving the non-honors kids exactly the OPPOSITE of what they need: typical traditional fill-in-the-pronoun-on-the-worksheet, repeat-after-me, memorize-the-grammar-rule b.s. that makes them hate the class, hate school and check out.

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