I got a question from a group member today. The answer is very simple, but the emotional component is clouding the issue for this person. So comment freely, providing lots of love, to this:
Ben,
I am going to check out Bryce Hedstrom’s alternate learning plan this weekend as I have three students from the same class that need to stop poisoning the atmosphere. I was so fed up with this class that today I took that class back to the textbook and grammar. It was a stressful experiment. The students who like the CI way were visibly, very upset. But the experiment flushed out the rats – I wasn’t exactly sure who they were.
The reason I’m writing is that one student said smilingly that this conjugating day was not punishing her at all because she finally feels like she’s learning something. She said that I have not taught her anything all year and that the only Spanish she knows is what she learned last year in her grammar class.
My question is: is this possible? Is it possible that some students really can learn better via grammar-based instruction? Is she just trying to be nasty, or is this really possible? I asked her if she could understand spoken Spanish and she said that she could – then. Anyone else have students that really do learn better the “old way?”
My response, since I don’t have to deal with the emotional piece here, is that students simply cannot learn from grammar based instruction. They think they can because their parents, who are dumb as fence posts on this topic, say so. It is not unlike parents telling the doctor that their child can be cured by a lobotomy and convincing the child to the extent that they believe it as well.
Another point we have talked about extensively over the years here is how students can be so bold as to challenge the teacher on these points. It is beyond belief that a child would say this to a teacher. This child has no right to say this to this teacher. The child is wrong, the parents are wrong, and the deep and painful lesson for the teacher in this situation is to dig deep and learn to completely disregard what the child says because the child is wrong and too young to understand how outrageous her comment really was.
The child is both rude and wrong and parroting what she heard from her parents. Her parents are rude and wrong and, as adults, they can also be labeled as very stupid. The challenge for this teacher is to float above this situation. The mistake the teacher made was to ask the child what she thought. The solution might be to go with Bryce’s alternative learning plan, and it may not be.
One thing that must be done at this point, regardless, is to explain to the parents that the way you have chosen to present Spanish to your class conflicts with their child’s learning style and that you would like to offer her the kind of training she wants either by moving her to another class, if possible, and, failing that, offer her Bryce’s plan and then following it to the letter.
What will happen if this is done? The kids who like the stories will get to continue to enjoy them. You get to enjoy doing what you know is right. And, I promise, after about two to three weeks, this child will understand that in the book she is learning nothing and she will want back in the class, which since it is February, you will not allow without some kind of major groveling.
If she is in the room, do lots of dictations, just to make your point clear. Dictees are the biggest single way of making a kid think that they are learning. While you do a nice big follow up dictee to a story and a reading, your whiner will be doing worksheets over in the corner wishing she was doing a dictee. Don’t let her.
Hopefully we will see a lot more of this kind of discussion, this kind of despair, here as we move through winter, the season of the winer. It happens all the time. We don’t worry, we don’t lose sleep over this. We stick to our guns. The answer is no – kids can’t learn a thing from a grammar based approach.
We give the kid what she wants. Hopefully she does class in another room where a grammar based teacher checks in from time to time, while you tell your bosses that you are differentiating due to the child’s learning style, and the class environment, minus the little jerks, improves remarkably.
You do the same thing with those rats. You separate them from the group and from each other. Let the parents know why this is necessary. If need be, do all that can be done with them so that they cannot possibly communicate with each other in the back of the room. And, remember, no lost sleep on this. Why should you? You’re not wrong. They should be the ones losing the sleep.
And get a laser and enforce the rules at every turn. And drop the thought once and for all that there is any merit at all to grammar based instruction. That is a lie spoken by many wormtongues, all of whom are slated for elimination in what is now about to happen in language education. It’s over for the liars.