Ben Slavic

I confronted a parent bully today. It was sweet. I won. He is a diplomat, white, male, etc. and he is so used to people bending over and him getting his way. He is a brutal bully and I held my ground and didn’t even get rattled. It was about his son a native French […]

One of my seventh grade super stars, in his first year of TPRS but in his second overall of French, shared a personal email after our end of year (10 min.) final free write: Hello Mr. Slavic, I wrote an unbelievable amount of words for today’s free write – 370 words. So unbelievable, on my

Some years ago when this PLC was still a public blog space, we used to ask for bios from members. It was necessary. We’ve since stopped, mainly because we’ve been so busy, and the blog is secure, but it is so nice to receive a bio from a new member, Kristen. Anyone else is welcome

Tonight is the last time I will ever go to sleep having to get up and teach kids the next day. I only have one class tomorrow. My best one, the most rocking group of 6th graders in the world. Jack’s class. 34,000 classes. 21,000 traditional classes. 13,000 TPRS classes. One left.

Clarie wrote: … I want an end to ALL the abusive testing and “rigor” curriculum. NOT JUST ELLS, ALL STUDENTS deserve a student-focused curriculum. I think this is something we can and should be advocating for…. Me too. Just be warned about that before you keep your membership here. And don’t, do not, turn this

A grove of trees. Summer. Full moon, so lots of soft light. Middle of the night. No wind. The trees are my students. I’m the Big Tree. All the trees in my grove have names. Mine is Big Tree. They want me me to notice them. All youths do. I notice them in my language

Claire clarifies a key term in our discussion: The problem with curriculum mapping or vertical/horizontal alignment is that you lose focus on the kids. It’s good to collaborate with colleagues, especially last year’s teacher bringing you your kids from French I to your French II class or whatever. Mostly to find out more about the

I have requested and received permission from Carol on this for iFLT. This will be posted in the next few days on the iFLT 2016 website. Note the panel: Panel discussion: Assessing with Compassion in CI Classes Panelists: Ben and PLC members, Claire Ensor, Diana Noonan, and Tina Hargaden. Assessment has been of prime interest

Before publishing some of the information that I am now getting from Claire (see previous article), in order to keep things orderly on the PLC and more importantly to allow some who haven’t been able to keep up with the mid-May thread on Authentic Assessment, I would like to publish some of what Claire wrote

Claire recently said that we need a Scope and Sequence and not a curriculum. But I can’t find the comment. It was two days ago. If anybody can find it I would appreciate it. The reason I bring it up is because, when I asked Diana Noonan, WL Coordinator and Curriculum Specialist for the Denver

I am trying to keep up with Claire and can’t seem to be able to do it. But I have to because she is pointing rapidly and repeatedly, jabbing more like it, in the right direction for us, in my opinion. What direction? In her overarching concept of what the terms assessment and curriculum even

It used to be routine that traditional teachers, who held the keys to such awards back then, would vote each other in as state teachers of the year. But that is all changing. Our wonderful Sabrina Janczak has been chosen Colorado Teacher of the Year for 2016-17. On our site we have videos of Sabrina