I got this question from a colleague who is not in the PLC and so I offered to run it by the group. It’s a big deal with a major yuck – as in unpleasant – factor. Here is the sequence of private email exchanges we have had over the past few days, with permission to reprint here by Andrew. Your comments and ideas are welcome:
Mr. Slavic,
I just finished your book and wanted to thank you. It was a really great companion to Blaine Ray’s book. I definitely feel like I have more of a sense of direction as I get closer to starting the school year. One thing I’d like to ask is if you had some thoughts you could share with me about my individual situation. I teach in a school that is deeply invested in following a set curriculum (Holt’s Expresate series). Our department of 5 Spanish teachers are required to give the same tests and we have a midterm and final exam to test what they have determined to be the most important skills to have “acquired.” My question is, if I try to focus all of my PQA and stories on specific vocabulary and grammar structures of each chapter, am I going to have an extremely hard road ahead of me? Or, since I am a new 2nd year teacher, will it help to have that foundation of what I need to teach? I have a very strong feeling of nervous excitement about this year but also feel worried about the constraints the district curriculum has set for me. To me, teaching TPRS just makes sense and I want nothing more than to find a way to make our kids love Spanish class because they are learning. I would greatly appreciate anything you would be willing to share with me.
I answered:
This is huge and I am requesting the input of those in our PLC who have experienced or are experiencing this situation. I have experienced this myself and it is bad. Just have to be honest. Those who are book Worm Tongues will see you using comprehension based methods and their standardized chapter by chapter assessments will take you down to where they will lord it over you. It is not unlike Worm Tongue controlling a king in LOTR. It is a disaster in that the the Worm Tongue’s kids will have memorized for short term and your kids will actually be making real inroads to actual acquisition, although very limited ones because it requires many thousands of hours as we know but the fools who are your colleagues DO NOT know. This is a major problem. You cannot mix CI instruction with books. We know that now. It is folly. So if you have nobody in your building who is actually up to date on current research and all the changes, then you need to tell your CI horse “Whoa!” maybe. I don’t really know what to say is my point. So do I have your permission to ask the group and with or without your name?
Andrew answered:
Thanks for the response. I would definitely be ok with you bringing this question to your PLC group. I’d like to know if there is some way that I can be successful with TPRS in a textbook driven department. In yours and Blaine’s book, there are parts that talk briefly about using TPRS with textbooks, but are you now saying you no longer feel that is possible? I taught my first year last year using traditional methods and I really don’t want to go back to that. You can use my first name with your group if you wish.
I responded:
On one level I feel that it “should” be possible to mix what we do with the text. But it has proven in reality, since Blaine and I wrote those books, to be impossible. When you actually go to do it, to blend the two approaches, it is in fact a mess. It makes sense – the book is miserably flawed in terms of real acquisition. It is a sham, a game of falseness built around memorization, which is most certainly not the way the brain learns languages. Therefore, if you work in the book model at say 50% and then 50% using comprehensible input, that would arguably be like putting the accelerator and the brakes on the car at the same time. It’ll just burn up the engine. I do know that when I left the old method in the dust I never regretted it. At some point we have to state our truth to the world and come what may. Do we really believe that other teachers who are still caught up in methods used in the last century and who themselves are hanging by a very thin thread onto their own careers can be the bosses of us, our judges? Even if you have a bunch of tight assed traditional page turners looking over your shoulder, you must stand up for your truth. Otherwise, you pander to people who are soon to be removed from the playing field by the tsumani of change we are about to experience. That is my own response. I will ask the group as well, and get back to you.
Any responses from the group? Write them as comments below. I wish Harrell was back from Europe – this is his specialty. He rides his horse crushingly over questions like this and leaves no doubt what the correct response is. Still, this is a tough area and more than a few of us, bless our hearts, are in this situation right now, and we need some hope! I am in a safe district now, but I have not always been. So I hope we can get a discussion going on this not just for Andrew but for those in the group who are in similar situations.