Kierkegaard

There is this quote from Soren Kierkegaard: “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” I connect this to what is happening in the CI world these days. I won’t say how. Just some food for thought.

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They Just Want to Play

This is a repost from 2009: I was running this evening and passed a little league baseball practice. The kids, beautifully attired in new uniforms, were being spoken at by their equally decked out coaches about what to do in case a runner was on second, or some such schlock. The kids were way too

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Reading Material

In the next year it would be nice to collect some readings here and put them all in one place. I remain convinced that we don’t need the novels. They are pretty boring. We can generate our own reading materials from our classes to share far and wide. An example of what we might be

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Challenge Them!

I was just reading a thread in an online group. It said, “Challenge them by introducing more vocabulary.” I don’t agree with this. “Challenging” kids is code for “make them think harder,” or “make them aware that the class is something they have to gird their minds up for”, or “I’m going to control what

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Which One Do You Want?

This is a repost for Dana from April of 2016 when I was in India. It’s also for anyone else following the Helena Curtain thread, which has been going on since 2012: We have about twelve World Language teachers here at the American Embassy School. There are also what seem like countless ESL teachers all

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Ten Thousand Stars

Kids teach us. Let’s embrace that idea. So when they refuse our academic overtures, those are teaching moments. For us. Students are not mean spirited or lazy, as the Teacher’s Lounge Crew would often have it. They are just bored. That’s what the textbook does – it bores people. Now that we have a way

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Out of Town

I’m going to do a workshop in Chicago tomorrow, returning Thursday. Ironically I won’t be able to see Alisa even though the training I’m doing is close to her, because she will also be on the road doing a training. She’s lighting up the Hebrew scene in NYC. We are all very very proud of

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