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Panning for Gold 1
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10 thoughts on “Panning for Gold 1”
This is a rich post, Ben. I hope you won’t mind if I call it “compost”. I’m a gardener, and compost is really, really important stuff. It heats up and feeds and brings forth good stuff. So, yeah, this is good compost.
This is what it’s bringing up in me. Questions.
1. The one thing that makes me anxious, at this point, in the whole CI approach is the issue of “compelling”. I can be myself in a classroom. I can teach to the eyes. I can stay in the target language (Latin, for me–and that took a number of years of re-tooling for me). I am pretty good at circling words and structures. A small group of us are currently working on that core of vocab that we think is needed for absolute beginners based on a CI approach. But, always, always nagging me is: is what I am doing today compelling enough, interesting enough to keep this engaging, to keep them interested. If I expect them to keep their eyes open, bright, shoulders square, etc, don’t I have to show up with compelling material? That’s my burden. To some degree, they have to provide me with cute little answers that feed the “compelling” aspect of this, but that’s my anxiety going into any class, almost every day.
2. Still pondering, and thanks to this post, renewed, in deciding what poster(s) I am putting on the wall and what they will say.
3. I want to create for myself anew this year a new way of thinking about assessments. I’ll be keeping the work I’ve been doing with portfolios of timed writes. That’s been huge. But, I want to find a way to connect what’s on the posters with how I assess daily WITHOUT getting myself into the quagmire of giving grades based solely on “behavior”. Just raising that possibility is already a quagmire. I gave up a LONG time ago any sort of grade input that was based on student behavior, and yet, I know that there are certain behaviors that are essential to acquiring a language. And, so, I’ll be working and sweating over what I can live and work with in that arena this next year.
Bob,
I share many of the anxieties you mention in your comment. I think Ben’s posting above somewhat answers your question: we need to get over the need to entertain, to be making them laugh all the time. Our job is to engage them in the TL, and teach (that is, model and reinforce) the important life skill of listening. And during the first year, that’s exactly what it is, a listening class. It’s ok if they are a bit bored. They are teenagers–boredom is inevitable, and that has nothing to do with us. What we can give them is a daily dose of authentic human interaction, which many of them have rarely experienced. It is stimulating in a different and much more subtle yet important way. It will take some time for them to get used to it, but I have noticed that the kids miss it when you don’t do it for a few days, even if they were not the most enthusiastic participants.
I think this post and the comments from John and Bob deal with where the rubber meets the road. In the world of theory, compelling input far surpasses anything else in terms of acquisition. We are so focused on the content that we acquire the language unconsciously. In the world of practice, we cannot be compelling all the time – or probably even most of the time – and beating ourselves up because we cannot do the impossible accomplishes nothing. (Of course, it doesn’t mean we stop striving, either.) Think of the cumulative hours and days of non-compelling input that we endure in our first language – we still acquire the language. This takes us back to the need for . . . wait for it . . . .
. . . large amounts of comprehensible input
And, by the way, I have a lot of the same anxieties. Perhaps this is the teacher’s burden.
Definitely every teacher’s burden. But there is something that helps and it’s the personalization. Have you ever been bored when someone looked you straight in the eye and asked with honest sincerity, “How are you?” That’s the most compelling question there is in the whole world. If students believe that we sincerely care about them, our classes become compelling.
Robert, Judy, John:
All very helpful comments. I agree: this is the teacher’s burden, and I’ll take it up again in a few weeks. Robert, very helpful to hear (because it’s true for me) that we cannot always offer compelling material even though, daily, we keep trying. Judy: you tap what is core for me: students need to believe (Latin means trust) me. Trust is core, however I can get there with them.
I think Judy hit the nail on the head. I know I sound like a VERY broken record, but for me the circling with props activity leads to compelling input. When we talk about Skye’s horse Aragón (can you imagine – the horse’s name is actually Aragón – not only compelling but a map lesson as well 🙂 the students will be riveted. She sent me a photo – one of her riding too…
Then, in addition to Aragon we will get to talk about her cat – sin cola! (the cat has no tail ! (I can’t make this stuff up!)
I have not been able to find much else (the story scripts come close-especially the ones like the hunting one) that leads to such compelling CI.
I recently did a feedback form in which I asked the student’s their opinions on a lot of classroom topics. More than a half a dozen commented on how much they enjoyed talking about the cards….
Anyway – my two cents
Skip
Ben, thanks for reminding us about this post. Today I really zoomed in on this passage:
“When students perceive that the teacher is willing to not be listened to, they will not listen.”
In the moment, it is so much easier just to “move on,” but we’re actually teaching a powerful lesson every time we don’t respond to a student who tests us, and it is the opposite of, and destructive to, the lessons we’re trying to teach.
In many respects our work borders on the impossible and we need to quit dragging ourselves over the coals trying to get it right, day after day. We do what we can do. That’s enough.
Since I published this the first time I need to remove Point and Pause there at the end of the post and put in Stay in Bounds.