Here is another poem by Hafiz, this one also from 2009, translated by Dan Ladinsky: DIVIDING GOD The moon starts singing when everyone is asleep and the planets throw a bright robe around their shoulders and whirl up close to her side. Once I asked the moon, why do you and your sweet friends not […]
Here is a cool testimonial from Cynthia Tann: Hi Ben! – I have followed your work for the last 5 years or more. The strategies of CI work! I am looking forward to refreshing the details as I feel like I need it. Using ONLY CI for the last four years, I have a story
Here is another poem written by the Persian master Hafiz. The translation from the Persian is by Dan Ladinsky: DROPPING KEYS The small man builds cages for everyone he knows, while the sage, who has to duck his head when the moon is low, keeps dropping keys all night long for the beautiful rowdy prisoners.
We must push our profession forward right now. At stake is not just the self-esteem of millions of children (which the traditional ways of language instruction did not honor, preferring to focus instead on intellectual achievement), but also at stake is the fabric of the countries of the world and the ways in which they
Here is another Hafiz poem, this one published here in 2009, that I tried to connect to our work: SPICED MANNA Someone will steal you if you don’t stay near, and sell you as a slave in the market. I sing to the nightingales’ hearts, hoping they will learn my verse, so that no one
A repost from a few years ago: We just can’t afford to be bored in our life’s work. It’s terrible to go to a job every day that we don’t enjoy. We must find a way to make it fun. We just must. We don’t have a choice. For me, twenty years ago, it was
In this follow-up article to the important doc (previous article) by our group members Jesse and Ele, I make the case for ANYONE using the StarChart™ to use it (their document) in their communication with ANYONE who wants to know more about CI, and not get led down the garden path of the current misdirected
A repost: I got this copy of an article from a colleague, not a group member, who was lamenting the current state of well intentioned ignorance/denial some WL departments in the U.S. are still in about the current changes in best practices in WL instruction: Being Clear About What Foreign-Language Achievement Looks Like In this
There is a certain sadness in thinking about what’s going to happen in the fall, not just in language education but in all subjects. Teachers will again walk down to the faculty lounge and complain about their students, just as they do every year. But this time their complaints will all be centered around what
Some of the Reasons Why I Prefer Non-targeted Comprehensible Input NTCI) …it is very hard to create compelling messages when the hidden agenda is the relative clause…. – Dr. Stephen Krashen Nobody at ACTFL has ever said anything about you having to communicate with your students while using certain words. Try doing that in
The George Floyd killing will reverberate through every facet of American life, and from there, to the world. An entire system of oppression is being exposed. It will reach everywhere and the change will be unlike any seen in the history of the world. This is my belief. That is why Trump had to get
We take the data-collection piece of our work as a true and valid thing. It is not. We are serving a monster – the data collection business that makes millions of dollars off of us and our kids each year. It is sucking our souls, vampire-like, and we are letting it. COVID is here as
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