I’m not sure this kind of thing has happened in any state in the way it is happening in Arizona. At the middle of it is Michael Coxon:
Happy Sunday friends,
I wanted to let you all know about the standards revision committee that I was a part of on Friday. I had to sign a disclosure so I will share an abbreviated response for the PLC.
Number one, I want to thank each of you for all that you share in our profession and advocacy for CI. I believe there is little piece of each of you in these standards, which is why I wanted to personally share with you this message.
One of the reasons I was invited to participate in this committee by the “big wigs” at the Arizona Department of Ed was that I picked apart the draft that they presented to the public. I sent a bunch of messages that were read by committee members and considered in this process. My messages were very edgy…like how Eric and Ben can write sometimes. Some messages were concise and philosophical in nature like Robert often writes. In fact, some of Robert’s ideas/language on Scope and Sequence has made it in to the Introduction and Mission statement parts of the draft. During my time spent with the people on the committee I felt I was patient and loving in the way I have observed Laurie to be for many years now. All of your experiences were on my side.
The setting
I was surprised and delighted that this event took place in a very nice tower/skyscraper type building in Phoenix. I was expecting something much less fancy. The committee was made up of 16 various types of teachers from around the state. A German teacher from U of A, a French native teacher, two Navajo teachers, and Arabic teacher, Chinese and Japanese teachers, and various Spanish teachers from around the state.
The committee was broken down into 4 teams of 4. Three of the teams went through standards. They were divided by Interpersonal, Interpretive, and Presentational. I was very fortunate to be selected to be on the team that was to work on the Intro/mission/organization of standards. I was so HAPPY for this because standards are standards…to me they are boring. Like many of you, I am interested in the vision of the language learning.
One my “team” there were three other woman and myself. A Spanish teacher that was very nice but timid in the group, a woman that works at the ADE with Native American Education sector, and an ACTFL lobbyist, as I will call here. Her name is Jocelyn Dale Raught. I am curious if any of you know her? She was an over –talker and a know-it-all and loved to name drop. She, I believe serves on boards for SWCOLT, AZLA (Arizona Language Association), serves with ACTFL somehow, and probably a few other things. She spewed out over the day boasting as a way to justify for talking over everyone. Laurie-you were definitely with me when working with her. I showed her a lot of love and patience…Eric and Ben you guys were with me when I had to let her have it a few times! Hahaha
Interesting about her though is that she is really close with Paul Sandrock. She and I had lunch together and I was prompting her for retells on ACTFL people and the like. Apparently, he is a very nice and thoughtful man. He is very observant and thoughtful and reflective in his approach. Also he lives in Wisconsin (Milwaukee I imagine), which is a very easy drive to iFLT this summer 🙂
On the draft writing
I have a ton of details that I will be reflecting on for a while but I will give some basic feedback.
All 4 groups were set up in a conference room with a laptop, parts of their assigned standards document, anonymous public feedback, and a projector so that the directors and all could see what we were working. About that anonymous feedback…much of it was essays I wrote based on our work on the PLC and in the field of SLA. Some of it, again, was directly from Robert. I hope you guys know that if this draft goes through…you changed the lives of over a 125,000 students.
In our group Jocelyn (the ACFTL lobbyist) started by trying to edit the draft that was presented, I soon saw that with that approach we were going to be all day. I was pretty formal with these new people but I finally said, “I think we should give up on trying to polish a turd and start new!” Luckily everyone agreed and I took over on the computer.
Hopefully, we will see later evidence of the spirit of inspirational teaching and learning on the revision. I avoided using terms like “academic success or achievement” I used “global environment” in place of “global economy.” I avoided anything that placed language to make students into competitive monsters trying to get rich. Some language was concise but other language at times we simply added, “when appropriate” so that teachers have the freedom to decide in their own local classroom environments what is best.
The Navajo educator was great in the group because it fostered our CI PLC goals of making these documents about INCLUSION. When Jocelyn went off on her little Ms. Know-it-all tangents, the Navajo lady would get frustrated and she had to tone it down a bit. I was able to play monitor instead of going back and forth with Jocelyn directly. This helped with keeping the ACTFL agenda in check. Don’t get me wrong ACTFL will be very present in this document but hopefully the good parts. The dynamic of having a third party stand-up helped me supporting other languages like ASL, Chinese, Latin, and of course anything related to Comprehensible Input. We specifically used the word PRESERVATION whicj I love. The information in this document had to be simple and understandable. Inclusion came into play perfectly as (IMO) the Navajo woman was put in this group simply to make sure these standards included Native American language and culture which is a big part of the Arizona (that sometimes gets left out).
You all might be happy to know that large quantities of discussions about the role of CULTURE did not make it into this draft and instead focusing on COMMUNICATION.
I can’t find it in my notes or essays now but something significant was added to this document. It came from something I read from Robert that discusses language learning not being LINEAR. The sentence might be word for word in the document. It went on to add a point that I was passionate about. It was that these standards should be used appropriately and reasonably for all students and when addressing the “2-year get ready for college credit student.”
I probably can go on and on. When I work on this committee again in a few weeks, I will share more. I just wanted to give a little detail about how GREAT this work was. I would not have been successful at dealing with the scope of this work if it weren’t for the PLC. I would have been ill prepared dealing with confrontations if it weren’t for all that you have shared year after year. Your experience and passion for teaching and learning was reflected yesterday in the state of Arizona.
This is my special thank you to each of you. If this draft revision is adopted we have a lot to be proud of!
With admiration and appreciation,
Mike