Helena Curtain is dangerous to our profession, if one accepts Krashen. Why is this? In my opinion, Curtain has cobbled together a lot of ideas from TPRS, and misrepresented many of Blaine Ray’s ideas, and even implied that some of them are her own. Blaine Ray’s ideas work and hers don’t. Why is this? Because […]

James watched that Helena Curtain video he mentioned here a few days ago. He makes an amazing point below, one that rattled me and substantiated a lot of things that I have thought over the years. Thank you James for sharing this with us: Ben – I was watching the Helena Curtain video and found a

Ben, A student I had last year came to the middle school today to visit and I ALMOST got teary eyed at what he told me.  He is currently in Spanish 2 at the high school and he said that I was an awesome teacher, they learned so much and they learned more last year

We had a DPS Learning Lab hosted by Annick Chen today. Two takeaways that I got were: 1. We were talking about gesturing and Paul Kirschling said, “It’s dead if I don’t gesture and make them gesture.” This struck me because I am so lame with gesturing. I even forget to do it in PQA. I think

Hi Ben, I have some exciting news and I am in need of some advice. First, I went to my first workshop last week with Carol Gaab in New Jersey. My school was very supportive and paid for it (which is nearly unheard of). I was ecstatic to be among likeminded people. I feel like

Greg said: …it certainly seems like an impossible task sometimes to bring my kids out of the boredom mode school has doped them into….   I share this dilemna. Those kids, our kids in America, have become cyborg like. The more they interact with a screen, the more like the screen they become. We become

Of course, most teachers were once successful editors of the mechanics of the language in school, and when they found out that they had a talent like their teacher as editors of language, they decided to become teachers themselves. Not having the capacity or inclination to understand Krashen, and probably never having heard of his

We had been talking about this a few days ago – the eval chart Annemarie uses with her students. The whole chart didn’t show up but what she does is clear. She explains: After we finish a story, they evaluate themselves on the 8 rules, and then I ask them to show me with their fingers how

Here is Chris’ presentation for Central States next week. He wants some feedback from y’all before he goes in. Here is the new and updated link: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1x-F33kAutfyG6xHvzkb2qjXg9rRGNJQz2edUo-mMxFw/edit?usp=sharing

John sends this: Ben, This year, our school began using a voice amplification system in all classrooms. All teachers must wear a wireless microphone, and our voices come out through two speakers which are placed on each side of the room near the ceiling. The goal is not to make us louder, but to make

I had asked Annemarie for a copy of her write up of a required reaction paper to the iFLT conference last summer in Breckenridge. It’s taken a while, but here it is. It’s a long text, but good reading for anyone who couldn’t attend that conference and wants a very thorough review. Annemarie explains: Ben

I like long bios because you can get to know the person better. If you haven’t sent one in, please do so. It’s not just a nice thing to do, it’s something we all must do. Besides, who among us doesn’t have an interesting story? This one from Eric is just really good. Use it