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12 thoughts on “Can Do Statements – 6”
Who in the hell are these people? Here is what I would like to say to the people who wrote the above article:
With stories, teaching a language successfully is very difficult, but it reaches most students. Without stories, success is virtually impossible, and reaches only a few bright kids. You have to pick one of these. If you pick the first, you align with 21st century standards. If you pick the second, you align with nothing. You do, however, convey the illusion to lots of kids that they can’t learn a language. Don’t do that anymore.
Now, having said that, anyone reading this is going to have to agree with the contents of the above article or they will have to agree with me in what I wrote above in bold.
In the former, we see a kind of idiocy, if you really look at the research. In their words is housed an offensive against the students’ reticence to learn in a crippling atmosphere. Better to change the atmosphere than do something like they describe above.
Is there something I am missing here? Are people who do what is described above in secondary education classes serious? Is there a reason that over 90% of teachers still use targeted/textbooks/high frequency verb lists, semantic sets, lists, lists, and more lists, etc. Is this a bad dream being crammed into the innocent minds of children every day to the tunes of millions of them being bored out of their minds, and for how long now?
When is this textbook nightmare going to end?
First of all, hello everyone! I’ve been mostly away from the PLC while on a six year hiatus from teaching to pursue some musical endeavors, though I’ve come back here periodically just to read a bit. but now I’m back as I interview to re-enter the classroom (I have truly, certainly lost my mind). I’ve missed the PLC but it’s great to be back here reading from some familiar names!
I was required to have learning objectives posted daily in each of my teaching jobs. I went absolutely crazy with them in my first teaching job before discovering CI and this blog (they were 99% of the time a reminder at the end of every class of what I had failed to accomplish anyway). After transitioning to CI I did away with them completely. I was required to have them, but I just kept the same one posted every day and just changed the date – something vague along the lines of “students will be able to understand spoken and written French and interact and respond in French.” But I know it’s not possible to get away with that kind of vagueness in some schools.
I came across a great article today which talks about the ridiculousness of starting classes with hyper-specific learning objectives and/or can-do statements and how they actually can HARM learning. A great section of the article says,
“It is this spirit of explorative learning that creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson fears is not promoted enough in schools: “Our children and teachers are encouraged to follow routine algorithms rather than excite that power of imagination and curiosity.” Learning goals are a habit of this algorithm and often serve to narrow the possibilities of a learning experience. These types of teacher-centred approaches harken back to behaviourist teaching where “compliance is valued over initiative and passive learners over active learners” (Freiberg, 1999). It is also tied to the idea that good teaching can be broken down into a recipe of technical, formulaic procedures.”
Here is a link to the article if anyone is interested:
https://lustreeducation.wordpress.com/2019/01/04/360/
p.s. each word I type on my end starts with a capital letter – apologies if it appears that way on everyone else’s end!
Yeah each word starts with a cap when you write in some of these comment fields, but then it publishes normally. I want to fix that and also make it so we can try to get back to the robust dialogues of the past, even after switching 100% away from the old site.
Welcome back Greg.
Thanks Ben! Looking forward to that. It seems like there is less activity in terms of comments compared to what I remember when I was last truly active here about six years ago – maybe due to people just being consumed with surviving through this crazy Covid school year? I’m glad all the posts/comments have been transferred to this new site though. So much good stuff for me to catch up on. Good thing for the search feature.
You are right Greg. It’s completely different. I don’t think it’s COVID. I think that it’s the new design of the PLC, which doesn’t invite comments. Working on it. But I agree – I miss those days.
Another factor: TPRS has taken a sharp corner and the car is kind of tipped over right now. Too many people have now embraced a kind of watered-down CI that mixes with the textbook and memorization.
But since those two don’t mix, the result is failure. So there are now many teachers who are convinced that the new kind of CI that is out there doesn’t work, and they are right. It’s a sad state of affairs, and one reason I left the TPRS community.
What a shame that teachers out there are schoolifying CI. I had to take level 1 and 2 German for my masters. I was excited to experience things from the student side of a language class to really feel what a student feels. The professor was definitely a grammar teacher and it was very frustrating to have my grade drop for incorrect conjugations and word order (in German, of all languages) even if I understood the message. Unsurprisingly, after two semesters I still was completely lost as to producing correct word order and conjugations. My main takeaway is how much I DID enjoy the beginning of class every day. My professor always began with a few minutes of simple, personal questions, going around to each person in the class with simple questions about how we felt, what we had for breakfast, what we did over the weekend, etc. There was always high engagement in the room during this time. It was a relaxed way to begin a *very* early class and it just felt like real, normal interaction. It was a clear lesson to me of how enjoyable and important even mundane interaction is in the TL, even if it is not a story or something humorous. The fact that it is personal and allows for real communication, not correctness, makes it so enjoyable.
I always felt a heaviness settle into the room once these beginning minutes were over, as my mind was involuntarily turned over to conscious grammar learning – and the textbook. The incessant schoolifying of everything is what makes me dread stepping back into a classroom, but the fun of not schoolifying things is what is compelling me to return.
But you said that the school you’re joining favors CI, right? You won’t be watched by traditionalists too much?
I actually turned them down. They did know about CI, and they didn’t use textbooks, but they were definitely hardcore into thematic units (So why not just keep the textbooks???). After my demo lesson, I asked the WL supervisor if there would be an expectation to follow a rigid plan of grammar coverage. She said yes, but that there was “some” room for flexibility in vocab. It had headache written all over it, especially with three other French teachers in the dept and several sections of AP.
Yesterday I interviewed for another high school and they want me to do a demo lesson next week. I decided to be 100% Transparent and bluntly told the supervisor I don’t believe in sequential teaching of grammar, or any teaching of grammar at all, that it’s contrary to research (I was revved up from reading some old articles and comments on here). He didn’t seem bothered. If they hire me they won’t be able to say I didn’t warn them!
Greg said:
… if they hire me they won’t be able to say I didn’t warn them!….
Finally. A new breed of language teachers who are not afraid to speak truth to power.
All thanks to what I’ve learned here on the blog! Also, for this particular interview I preferred to not be hired if higher ups would have an issue with CI-only teaching. They’re hiring me, so I’ll report back after I start in May as to how open-minded the school really is to CI…
People have been known to give false promises to land a teacher like you. But you have the right to double down on your questions before going into the classroom.
In my experience, admins lie (not intentionally) to get the talent but the teachers don’t know they lied and so – and this happens A LOT – the sparks don’t fly until it’s too late.
If you’re willing to move to Redding, CA – the CI road has been paved and is ready for a well-trained NTCI person. Corinne Bourne is retiring and has done a magnificent job over many many years teaching, get this: AP Russian, AP French, and Spanish.
Also Greg you can find more re: what you say above by searching in the PLC search bar two words – flow and simplicity. There are many many articles on those two topics.