Anne Matava

Anne  sends us this bio:
This is my 27th year of teaching language, 20th year of teaching high school, mostly German.  I teach in a small rural high school in Maine and have 6 sections of German, it’s pretty sweet.  This will be my 6th year of using TPRS/CI.  So far every year has looked a little different from the one before it, some have been better than others.  In general:
What I like and what seems to be working:
Teaching first year classes!  Being in the target language so much of the time.  PQA with the kids when we are really cranking it out.  (One day last week we spent an entire 40 minutes on the verb “texts”.  In the course of that discussion I actually had a young man admit that he texts in my class–the only one out of a group of 17.  His ass was front and center the very next day, believe me!)  The fun and enthusiasm in the class.  I am especially proud of my students with special needs.  I love it that they do better in my class than in English.  I love them so much.
What my current challenges are:
How inaccurate much of the output is, once we get to the upper levels and I kind of expect some output.  Trying to figure out how to incorporate more output, how to facilitate improvement in output, how to assess it.  (I’d be happy with just first year classes, although it’s a fun time with the seniors, to be sure.)  Specifically, how to give the kids enough reps in persons other than 3rd person for them to really acquire it.  How to enable them to have equal facility in both past and present tense.  How to make the learning less passive for the students, without letting them loose to “work in groups” (which is code for “speak in English.”)  What to say to the administrator who observed a rockin’ PQA session with my 3rd year students and wanted to see my tool for assessing said session.  Working with a department who pay lip service to CI but are pushing for us to put together a common oral assessment to be used in week #3 of level 1.  Facilitating the transition to college where my kids are placing into upper-level courses because of their fluency, but suffering because everyone else knows the grammar and they don’t.
This is a year of experimentation for me.  I am trying a lot of different things and it is dizzying.  I’m not in much of a position to contribute to conversations on this blog, but eagerly reading every word of every post.  This is a strange bio, I know, but it is where my mind is right now.  Thank you to everyone who participates in this.  Thank you to Ben for making it possible.
Anne
My comment: Of course, most of know Anne for her unmatchable scripts for stories. They have gotten me through hundreds of classes and are definitely the source for my belief in the power of stories. I love the format Anne chose for her bio – describing what is and what isn’t working for her in TPRS right now. I would like to see more of those. On the output question that you raise, Anne, I have to say that we need to remember how much time real output requires. I am firmly of the position that, regarding output, most seniors with four years of CI are still no more than two year olds, more like under one year old, in terms of their ability to speak. I think your experience with a group (les Hogs) that could be called twice exceptional, if one can get away with a label like that for a group of kids, may have colored your expectations. Thank you, Anne.