Unlock with PatreonThe Problem with CI
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Please Send in Your Bio
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27 thoughts on “Please Send in Your Bio”
I agree 110%. We don’t know how many people are here an other than our frequent commenters we don’t know who some of the other “lurkers” are on here.
I think that it’s been said so often that we need the bios and why, that there should be a definite cut off date. I imagine the logistics are more complicated than they seem, but anyone who takes more than 2 months to get in a bio should be dropped.
YES!!!! I am not a paranoid person by nature but I, too, would prefer to know who I am baring my soul to (to whom I’m baring my soul????).
I could not understand your sentence until you corrected with “to whom.” Thank you for FINALLY minding your grammar. 😛 (j/k, btw, of course)
Hahaha, you just gave me a good chuckle!!! I guess that makes me a 4%er, too 😉
I’m sure we all agree with the need for BIOs and I agree with the idea of a cutoff date. Also, I’d like to know how possible it would be for someone to create a false name….maybe not so obvious as Seymore Butts but can someone join and give a false name? I imagine that would require Ben to constantly check the BIO against the credit card info though he probably does it. I’d just like to know because honestly there are some people I don’t trust as far as I can throw them….and that’s not very far.
I never check anything against anybody because I don’t have that kind of brain. And yet I just had a brilliant idea. I just go into PayPal and make a list of all the members. We don’t need the bios, I mean we need them but the list of PayPal paid members would give us the list of people on the blog, right? I could have done this years ago! OK it’s a real pain but I’ll get on it unless somebody can think of some reason that wouldn’t work. Or if there would be some objection. I can’t think of any.
Whoa! Revelations are awesome. Sorry it would require more work on your part but it seems better than begging people. I’d still chop people away if they don’t want to introduce themselves.
Hi Ben,
No objections – but will the Paypal list show people like me, who did a prepaid year membership through my school? I can use my budget for things like professional associations, so I did. I think the school sent a check after that.
No but there aren’t many like that. I can track those down. Workin’ on it as we speak. No Netflix French comedy for moi tonite.
I agree. Safety and trust for the known members should be the absolute priority, over the potential of hurt feelings over miscommunications. Better to dump anyone who hasn’t introduced themselves by now, and then re-add them when they send you a bio that seems legit.
Would it be possible to reorganize the bios section so it is alphabetical with contact info? That would make it much more helpful.
BTW, I know that even simple changes to a blog like this can be very time consuming. These are just my suggestions.
I think I can make the list from PayPal WITH email addresses. Then I could alpabetize. Would that work John? I feel like a real dufus asking for bios when I had the PayPal list the entire time. It’s not easy functioning in just one hemisphere of the brain, although it’s more fun, I think, not to have that nagging left brain logical robot dude bugging me all the time. Good and bad. There are a few in our group whom I think would agree. like jen?
ahaaaa! yes me!
Hello all!
I’m new to the PLC (as of a month or so ago), so I’m one of those “lurkers” who has not sent in a bio yet. I’d love to update my profile as well, username/password and all (my PayPal e-mail is very outdated — just changed it on PayPal), but I’m afraid I’m not quite sure where to do that on this site (just send in an e-mail?)
Welcome Crystal. We welcome people from the country of Texas in here as well. Just send me an email – benslavic@yahoo.com – when I get the final list done, and this goes for everybody and we’ll update it as we go along. That should keep the process simple.
I’m actually making progress on an alphabetical list of group members with emails, which is what John requested and is a good idea. Then once that is done we can turn our attention to those who haven’t sent in bios at that point and maybe I can send an email blast to those who haven’t sent in bios.
Haha, sounds great!
That sounds like it would be easier. Just keep in mind that the user name/email may not match up with the member in some cases (at least that’s the case with my paypal account).
Yeah got that.
I agree with all this.
If you are able, Ben, to get a list of e-mail addresses, you could send out an e-mail blast to all the members simply reminding them to submit a bio.
I would love to update my profile… these posts are what give me hope every day! Can someone please direct me to the area of the site where I may do so? I am a drowning first-year teacher who believes strongly in CI and TPRS but don’t seem to have either “down” well at all. I am really struggling with my Spanish 4 and feel like it is ME that is the problem–I know they are seniors and it is spring, but I continually fail at commanding attention and respect so we can acquire well. There are so many side conversations! 🙁 Thanks for listening to my rant and for the supportive community here that makes me feel not alone and isolated!
Beth,
As you have probably guessed from reading everyone’s posts, your difficulties are not unique to first year teachers–though you are certainly at the steeper end of the learning curve. My advice to you would be: don’t innovate right now. Spring is the time to do lots of text-based activities, especially if you have inherited students who are used to that. Calming, settling, quiet work, dictation, etc. Have them work together if they can do it quietly. Worksheets, culture stuff, easy novels, review reading from earlier this year, or last year… now is the time to pull all that out if it will help you and your students to stay sane. Focus on your first year students, and on how you plan to begin next school year, especially with your incoming first year and current first year, as you will have the most influence over them.
Ahh, those side conversations. There is a way to wither them, but it requires the teacher to be consistent and vigilant. Basically, they chat because you let them do it. I’ve observed teachers who raise their voices so they can be heard over the chit-chat. Which means that you are allowing them to talk, and they’ll probably just talk louder. What worked for me, and I think this is from Fred Jones, was to simply stop talking and look at the talkers and wait for them to fall silent. Generally, if they are so involved in their conversation that they don’t realize that I’m waiting on them, the rest of the class does and the silence eventually tells them that something is going on. And they stop and look sheepish. The secret is to do it without any anger or irritation. Like you’re waiting for some poor kids who are a bit slow to catch up with the rest of the class. What Jones calls the Queen Victoria look. And to do it consistently, so they know that you are not going to pretend like they’re listening to you, that you will carry on with the lesson when they are silent and attentive. It’s effective only if you are consistent, but if you require silence, then you should only speak when there is silence.
Students talking? Not when I’m in the room teaching. I just do what Judy said. I stop, look at them, wait, and start again when they have stopped. Doesn’t take long. And then when they get a 2 of 10 on jGR for that today, it doesn’t take long to change that behavior. Or they can fail the class if they want for that grading term.
Beth trust me. Those level 4s are lost. Cut ’em loose. They don’t want to help you. That’s the short version. Oh boy. Yeah.
Next, I was thinking today that, each year I have started in a new school (3 with CI and 6 in my career), even with all the CI background I have, those first years were just hard. In other words, there is an adjustment to a school that is not connected to how many years you’ve been teaching or how many years with CI. You are learning things in this year that, though hard, will stand you in good stead as the years go on. So accept that it can only get easier and it will. First year in a new building, first year with CI, that’s tall stuff to handle. You can do it. I can hear it in your written voice. Don’t be a stranger. Let us know what’s shaking. We will commiserate. We like to commiserate. Commiserating is good. This stuff is tough! Thanks for your comment!
I would also suggest using that new L & D format (posted on it here today) with your younger kids. Pictures really work!
Thanks, Ben. I have been using L & D especially as we’ve recently been talking about eating/drinking various foods… it works so super well! The grammar phrases te gusta(n)/me gusta(n), más, and a Google image search with LOTS of pictures of food kept us acquiring language for a few weeks! The students LOVE talking about what kinds of foods they like or don’t like and how often they eat or don’t eat them!
Thank you everyone, I truly appreciate your feedback and commiserating! I know my Spanish 4s are good people at heart–love getting to know them outside of class, when I allow myself to talk freely in English with them–but they just feel so lost and don’t see the value in anything I try to do! I love PQA and my Spanish 1 when they are quiet enough really acquire quickly with TPRS and CI. Some of my freshmen have commented thanking me for teaching in stories (context) because it is so much easier for them to learn than memorizing vocab lists! I appreciate my beginners a lot because this is the first exposure many of them have to the language and we can shape that and play with it together without having developed a high language monitor/filter! They are eager to speak and answer all of the Sí/no and circling questions… and I love hearing them speak in Spanish outside of my classroom to each other/introduce people to me in the hallway in Spanish. I know the first year(s) should be focused on listening to good input, yet when they have that good input, sometimes advanced output happens beautifully just because they have heard it so much and know it! 🙂 Thank you all for what you do to make this world a better place.
This is spot on about non-forced output:
…the first year(s) should be focused on listening to good input, yet when they have that good input, sometimes advanced output happens beautifully just because they have heard it so much and know it!….
It seems as if the less we stress out about getting them to output speech on a daily basis through all four years, the more they want to speak. Great point Beth.