Now that my kids (preliminary testing of Two Strikes and You’re Out! has been far more promising than I had any idea it would be) and I aren’t playing the blurting game anymore (we’re just not), I am finding that I able to speak much better French in the classroom, and it’s a bit faster but I’m working on that.
It is the best French of which I am capable, that is for sure. I used to only find that French at the bottom of a beer glass in downtown Denver with my DPS rock star team of wonderful people. This French did not occur before in my classroom, when I was mixing languages in the same way that John Steinbeck’s Doc mixed beer and a milkshake in La Jolla in what I think is his chef d’oeuvre, Cannery Row.
How did this happen? Well, how does anything that is unfettered, artistic and pure happen? It’s not weighed down by self-indulgence, by having at the base of my instruction the sea snake hiding among the algae of sad need to show off how smart I am in French to little kids who could care less, and who, in spite of all the data gathering shoved into their face by well-meaning adults, still only want to know what happens in the story.