According to the US Department of State, an academic program is rigorous when there is: depth and integrity of inquiry: Many teachers have expressed concern that there is too much curricular material to “cover” and not enough time to teach it in. Academic rigor implies that sufficient time be devoted to a topic or unit
If I’m teaching kids who are new to comprehensible input, I typically make four posters out of the facts below to help them understand how they should feel in a CI class. They deserve as much. My concept of rigor does not include more worksheets, more onerous, mind-numbing work, more memorization, etc. My concept of
Yesterday I got some specific questions from a colleague and want to share my responses to him with the group. Sorry for the long rant. I do that sometimes, more for my own mental health than anything else. My colleague writes: I am currently teaching at two elementary schools in South Korea. I have been
The way I figure it is that when we don’t include and encourage every single student, regardless of race or background, we will end up hating our jobs while at the same time trashing a lot of kids’ belief in their ability to learn a language, and that in exchange for a small monthly paycheck,
I’ve given up hope. Our profession is broken and useless. It pretty much always has been. That is my conclusion after being in the field for 45 years. If you disagree with this statement, if you feel that your life as a teacher has been a meaningful series of positive contacts with dedicated colleagues and
Much of what we focus on here in our group is our mental health – it is a major topic. A big aspect of protecting our mental health on a daily basis is dealing effectively with “concerned” parents. In one situation happening this week with one of our PLC members, a CI teacher whose kids
There are a lot of readers here who are just getting started with CI. That’s great. But there are also many of us with strong CI experience to whom I would like to direct a comment: We work with kids. Our “oath” to them, if you will, should be to honor their developing lives in
Our PLC member Frank James Johnson has said this about the Star Sequence: Scope: “Whole Language Instruction” Sequence: “Spiraling Expansive Recurrence of Comprehensible Input”. Of course, these blanket terms would freak out any admin who is not familiar with the Star. But then, you could just give them more information by showing them the Star
Here is the letter that Danielle and I crafted, which you are of course welcome to copy and paste and rewrite if you are finding yourself in this kind of situation in your own teaching: Good evening (name of parent), Happy New Year! I appreciate that you communicated your concerns with me. I understand why you would
One of our PLC members received this email from a parent the other day. I asked and received permission to share it with the group. Hello Senora (name of teacher) – Hopefully things are going well for you during these crazy times. My son, (name of student), is a 7th grade student of yours. Thankfully
Far too often, we CI teachers get challenges from our peers – teachers with whom we are supposed to be working on toward common assessments, high frequency verb lists, thematic and semantic units, etc. We also get challenges from helicopter parents, whose success in high school and college at conjugating verbs has led them to
So the reversal of instructional priorities is moving now in favor of middle school teachers who use CI in their teaching. The high school teachers are being “outed”. It’s got a lot to do with Covid but we won’t get into that here. Middle school CI language teachers are beginning to see that they were
