In some classes, like the one Jeff is dealing with right now, you just have to give up the lofty goals of heavy input CI and punt the ball, just to make it to the end of the year with those tough classes. Anyone who is encountering serious pushback on stories, my advice is to […]

I want to keep the blog apolitical. Real life (the shootings) intruded, and we rightly needed to talk. I went numb, we all did, and something in me and in many of us will never be the same. However, I need to state clearly here that our purpose in this group is to keep our

Thomas Merton said what is below. It first appeared here in 2007. I think it’s a good time to republish it here in the light of some of us here having made the significant decision to this year work on our mental health in a conscious, specific way to our lessons and daily life in

Jeff is really a kind of lightning rod in our village. He has now been hit again. The image is one of a boxer taking another roundhouse to the head. No mistake about it – Jeff’s experiences these past few months are very emblematic of what many of us deal with, if perhaps to a

Erin asks the group: Ben, I have a question I’d like to ask the group.  I’ll be missing the last 5 weeks of school this spring (if not longer) to have my first baby.  What on earth can I leave for my Spanish students that will do the least harm?  My department head was out

Let’s take a break. I’m not interested in thinking about how to become a better teacher right now. I don’t think you are either. Let’s pick this ball up again in January – that would be the soonest for me. We have almost 4,000 posts and 17, 000 comments here dating back six years, so

Think of this post as a place to say or not say what we are thinking and feeling, if we have not gone numb, right now. We work in schools. Our lives are around children. We may choose to read here in the next few days each other’s thoughts on this event. We may choose

Today Diana Noonan came by and saw me using bWT. She didn’t like it. She said that the story we wrote together was more about production and critical thinking and so did not go along with what we in DPS know CI to be. I had to agree, but I am still going to use the

Today one of my classes ended with my group of kids having created the following text as per bWT. We were working from a prompt of three couples dancing at a party: There were three girls and four boys at a party. The guitar player, whose name was Zach, was Muslim. One couple was Johnny and Leslie. They

We should respect what goes on in the deeper mind as it does its work of creating language systems. We should listen to TPRS/CI experts like Judy Dubois when they speak like this: …it seems so obvious today that the world is round, that it’s hard to believe that the vast majority once thought otherwise

Jody La Maréchale des Forces de l’Ouest said in an email: I think we should name ourselves “The Round World Group”. I can no longer see my work through the “flat world lens” no matter how many people believe it’s flat. There is no going back for me. Hard to explain to people who think

How beautiful this is from Jody, our Maréchale of the Western Forces: I notice how easily we “change course” trying to manage our own personalities, histories, perceived weaknesses, anxiety/fears about our job security, etc., and end up fogging up our main mission–to deliver CI to our students in a humane and compassionate setting for them