Last night Eric pointed out to me that in one month (November) on the ACTFL Language Educators list there were 171 comments on the five threads we started. The big one had 99 rancor-filled comments in posts about Thematic Units by Eric Herman and Alisa Shapiro-Rosenberg. The other four CI threads combined had 72 comments on posts started by Jim Tripp, Nathaniel Hardt, Lance Piantaggini (Kent State Univ.) and Eric Herman.
It’s been a month now since we walked away from those happy days of sharing ideas about best practices with our open-minded ACTFL colleagues. Since then, there have been less than 10 comments. 171 comments while we were there, 10 since. Since Nov. 1st, by comparison, there have been 1,326 comments here (the software allows me to count stuff on the PLC). But our group is a fraction of the size of the ACTFL group. I can only conclude that we have more interesting stuff to talk about.
It seems as if those Language Educators – an odd term that feels off somehow – are happy with themselves and their products. They do not goad and challenge and support and share new ideas with each other like we do every day. Instead, 10 comments are made in a month in a group with over 18,000 members. They are completely happy with themselves professionally, obviously. They feel as if they are doing a good job. But they are doing a number on tens of thousands of kids. Being content with what one is doing is not a good thing in any profession.
On their site, someone starts a thread like our esteemed colleague Luann Smith did four days ago on:
Christmas ideas and More!
and it gets one lone comment from a Jennifer Cornell:
Starting to plan for Christmas, Winter, and More in your classes? Check out the following link for some ideas!
http://www.connectwithlanguages.com/engagement-and-hands-on-activities
And so the idea of colleagues working together to challenge and improve their instruction is thus defined here in terms of a link to a site where there is a “Learning Pyramid” that you have to see to believe.
Now this past week I have been speaking with Alisa, of the Chicago Winnetka group of CI teachers, and we were wondering if it would be a good idea for us to show up at ACTFL/San Diego next year en masse and try to run as many sessions related to CI instruction as we can.
Now if we really study Jennifer Cornell’s site, we can see what we are up against. It’s about cute activities that kids do and it is most definitely not about CI. Jennifer’s tacky (it’s the only word I can think of to describe it) Learning Triangle gives us a picture of what most language teachers in the U.S. are all about: gimmicks that miss the point about how people actually acquire languages.
So the question on the board is should we go to ACTFL next year with as many of us presenting as can get accepted as presenters? Alisa and I are kind of in the middle of our conversation and we don’t know, so we are asking the group. I am inclined to believe that we would be met with the same kind of massive defense at ACTFL that we experienced in the Language Educators discussion, if one could call it that. Worse, there would be thousands of people like the two mentioned above walking around with about as much openness to CI as Dick Cheney is open to the idea that there are other ways to gather intelligence than by torturing his fellow human beings.
Now is as good a time as any to bring it to the group, I guess. What do you all think? Go to San Diego? Present as many varied sessions on CI as we can? Or bag it? What do we do? On one hand, Carol and a few others cannot be expected to carry it all on their shoulders. And, as Alisa told me, there is a hunger out there for what we do. On the other hand, who wants to present to people who can’t hear what we are saying to them because they don’t have large enough ears?