The culture of relying on books and computer programs to teach a foreign language, which is a crazy thing indeed if you truly get what CI really is, cannot possibly succeed. It involves such a shallow and wide instructional dynamic. Too few repetitions on too many words are involved in that kind of instruction. When we work with […]
I just wanted to share what I did one day last week. I put up an image of a city by a river (projected through the LCD from boston.com the big picture) and talked about it with my level 2 classes. It felt really good to reinforce words that I thought they knew from level
Dear Ben, My name is Hayne Painter and I’m a Spanish Teacher at Pinewood Preparatory School in Summerville, SC. I wanted to thank you for being a guide and mentor to me as I discover TPRS. My story is somewhat similar to others. I have been teaching for 13 years. I have always been looking
So I teach preschool through Spanish 3 at a small Christian charter school. This is my first year using TPRS and this is my 3rd year teaching. I have the elementary and middle school only once a week. My problem has been the Jr. high and mostly the 7th grade. I have certain students in
David (Talone) responded to Jeff: Jeff, Sorry to jump in late, but I wanted to express my support and understanding as well. Last week was a HUGE struggle for me and I was heavily chastised by my administration as well. It is really tough to stand tall and strong when you are getting slammed from
Jeff responded to John: John, Thanks for your kind words. I agree with what you are saying. I also know that I need to fly under the radar now, more than ever. However, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to pull back and lower my stress. I know that reading days
I responded to Jeff: I have the same conviction about CI instruction which is often accompanied by the resultant anger which for me turns into five minute pointless (to the kids) lectures about jGR and stuff and they don’t hear me. It is maddening when they do shit like that. What I am hearing from
James responded to Jeff: I find myself extending reading days more and more, which is something I think I remember Ben saying, too. Reading days are SUPER HELPFUL for that burnout feeling. Reading days or even movie days. Just take a 2 week vacation from oral/aural CI with your upper levels. No big deal. Just
John responded to Jeff: Jeff, I know I sound like a broken record these days, but I really want to emphasize that you need to be putting yourself first here: your job security, your mental health and emotional stability, and your family. No class or method is worth sacrificing these things for, especially a Latin
Dear all, Yesterday, I was doing an activity with my Latin III class where we read a Latin I story using family members and I was circling things like “who is the father’s son?” I turned my back and some kid threw something across the room. I turned around and out of extreme frustration, I
A possible idea, not fully tested yet, is to have a clipboard going during class with a transparency (from the old overhead projectors) over the class seating chart. Each time a kid does something good (following the Classroom Rules) or bad (usually blurting or cell phones) we make a plus or minus in their square
I wonder how we get to know more about the world. Hmmm. Maybe through all the language teachers who work so hard in very rough situations in schools but are now beginning to see real results? But those teachers often think that their work has no purpose, not really, because the kids aren’t interested. Hmmm.
