Carol sends these end of year thoughts, which kind of fit right in with Robert’s comment citing the Patrick Lencioni book:
Ben:
I have been processing a ton of information from all of you. Thank you. This space and its community of professionals continue to be a source of great comfort and inspiration. This is the end of my second full year using TPRS. Since I work in a vacuum surrounded by skeptics, I seem to spend too much time second guessing myself and feeling the sting of subtle comments that let me know that my friends and colleagues think that I am somewhere “out there”. Like you said the other day, Ben, and it is so spot on – your comment about sitting under an umbrella with rigor stamped all over it.
A friend of mine from college days is the department chair of languages at a local community college. We have a dual credit relationship with them. She suggested that we meet in September so she can verify what I am doing in the classroom so they can continue to offer credit to my level 3 and 4 students! What a joke, she should have been here yesterday when my fellow teachers were trying to figure out how to curve the Spanish final having students who managed 24’s and 36’s on their “rigorous” Spanish exams!
Anyway, I have intentionally not asked my level one and two classes for any output – especially in written form. So it was with a certain amount of trepidation that I included a writing sample on my final. I gave them 30 structures to define in English, attached Susie’s writing rubric* to the test and let them go.
Of course the writing was not timed and they had whatever time they needed. Wow, was I blown away. My French ones were routinely churning out way over 100 words. Naturally, accents were all over the place and the spelling was not always perfect, but, with that said, I was encouraged.
My level twos have for the most part mastered the use of the past tense vs the imperfect. In the past, I have had upper level students who never got it simply because their brains were rule- bound – they could never break free of the rules. I have a student whose native language is Korean. She tells me that she processes from Korean to English to French – she output 159 words!
Thanks to Nathan, I was reminded to use their writing to gather ideas for structures that they want to use. These writing samples will inform my instruction for next year.
I know that we are all at different places in our TPRS walk. I had a tough end of the year. We came back from Easter vacation the same day that AP testing began which was a challenging way to end. Some of my classes were really suffering from story fatigue, but I am now in the lovely place of eagerly anticipating September. To anyone else out there who suffers from time to time with nagging doubts, I say just trust the system, trust the kids and trust your instincts to know the importance of keep on keeping on!
Carol
*Here is the link to Susie’s writing rubric:
http://www.susangrosstprs.com/articles/WrittenAssessmentRubric.pdf