Can Do Statements – 11

3 thoughts on “Can Do Statements – 11”

1. Alisa Shapiro-Rosenberg

   May 18, 2018 at 12:46 pm

   I know it sounds dumb and obvious (my specialty) but who are these ‘Can Do’ statements even for? There’s something so infantile about them!! I can use my big girl underpants! I can buckle my own seatbelt!!
   I think that it (Can Do Statements) has snuck into the practice via ACTFL and other scholastic ‘authorities’ and hasn’t been vetted.
   Here on this fabulous site, it seems to me, we’ve seen that the only way to ‘successfully’ utilize Can-Do statements is to rock the CI classroom, and then after the fact, make up some appropriate sounding and uber-obvious Can-Do wannabe statements, such as, “I can recognize/distinguish a story character by his physical characteristics,” Or, “I can understand a sequence of events…” Double duh.
   I find the whole thing snoringly boring. Sorry to sound impatient, but it’s wasting my precious and waning end of year energy and good will!
   All of the Can-Do stuff is for the conscious side – notice, notice, notice, while all of the acquisition (for up to Intermed/low) is pretty much on the unconscious side…. message, message, message. Is it me or do we have a major disconnect here? So back to the question. Who is it for? We all know that we do stuff so that our paperwork (Scope & Sequence, report cards, Go to School Night, Newsletters, admin evaluations & artifact sharing, school board presentations…and the like) are airtight.
   The other non-student stakeholders (parents; adminz) need to be re-schooled. Traditional Can-Do statements are about consciously observing and reflecting on learning and appreciating [linear] growth over time; Newsflash! Acquiring a language is not.

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   1. Ben Slavic

      May 18, 2018 at 1:48 pm

      I so agree Alisa. The deeper I go into the heart of the onion, the more I see how EGO has shaped and formed the lives of millions of kids in a not-so-wonderful way. A propos: my 16 year old son and I have spent the past two years deconstructing his experience in two years at Columbine HS. I’ve pulled him out to go to a school in the mountains for kids from gangs in LA, Oakland and NYC, a school sponsored by the Honda Corporation that employs as faculty actual people, not ACTFL robots, in the interest of developing the whole child. When academics develop curricular models, they are made for future academics. You point this out above beautifully. My son is smart but in a few hours from now he will be leaving CHS for the last time and we will drive to Estes Park tomorrow for him to start out his new life with a 30 day/4 day solo wilderness experience. The ACTFL robots and their clones in other subjects are no longer going to be in charge of my boy’s life. The more we drive instruction into the direction of the whole child, the sooner we will undo the incalculable damage they have wrought on kids.

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   2. Ben Slavic

      May 19, 2018 at 9:48 am

      And if you think about it, Can Do statements are all about memorization, which is the exact opposite of how the research says that languages are acquired. The whole thing about Can Do statements and IPAs is kind of nuts. And in favor of the students, usually white and privileged, who have learned to use such measuring sticks in their favor in the dominance game. Can Do statements and IPAs have the unintended effect of dividing communities down racial and economic lines.

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