In the hospital, before Eugene succumbed to death in 1993 at age 37, we had a lot of talks before he went up to heaven. He was quarantined, of course, but they let me in anyway since I was his only family. Our topic was always fairly obvious – we talked about running track. I […]
Eugene was a champion athlete, but he was also a champion person. He lived in the aptly named Race Path Community of Myrtle Beach. He lived on Neighbor Lane. Neighbor Lane actually wasn’t very neighborly. When we dropped the athletes off late at night after away track meets, Neighbor Lane being a “shoot zone”, they
This series of articles is about an old friend – Eugene Williams. Here he is: Eugene was one of my assistant track coaches at Myrtle Beach (SC) High School. He mainly coached the sprinters, having run the 200 and 400 meters himself at Myrtle Beach High about twenty years earlier. The term for runners like
Q. Do you observe what the students can do in terms of the Can Do statements of ACTFL? How do they fit into your schema? A. Can Do statements do not fit into what I do. Most teachers teach them using skill building, which involves memorization and conscious monitoring of output. That is a far
About a week ago I posted an article about Danielle, a member of the current Zoom group studying the Ultimate CI Book 1. Danielle was facing a difficult middle-of-the-year observation process, made no less difficult by Covid as well as an entrenched way of teaching grammar in her building. Her pre-observation meeting didn’t go well,
The shift from the “old blog” to this new one is still in process, and I am still trying to make the PLC more interactive. I’m asking for your patience on this. Those who were on the old blog know that it is in the daily interaction with each other that we do a lot
I got this question: Ben: So I was sharing your Zoom course (ed. note: The Ultimate CI Books/Star Sequence approach) with someone who works with the curriculum in our district. I mentioned that it is not planned, no prep, just using student input to “teach” the language. They were a bit shocked and asked how
This article is about an old friend – Eugene Williams. He is pictured at the bottom of this article. Eugene was one of my assistant track coaches at Myrtle Beach (SC) High School. He mainly coached the sprinters, having run the 200 and 400 meters himself at Myrtle Beach High about twenty years earlier. The
A new Ultimate CI Book 1 class begins on March 20. There are currently 15 spots available in this class. When you sign up, here’s what you get: Twelve hours of Ultimate CI training over six weekends. Free digital copy of the book. Free one-year membership to our Professional Learning Community. Free drop-in coaching on
Some of us have been following the process of being observed that Danielle has been going through lately. Here’s an update: Last week, she had the pre-observation with her principal. It was probably not unlike many of us have experienced where the template the principal wants to follow is generic and applies to all subjects
It is my opinion that the word “planning” is just embarrassingly overused in our profession. Why, if we all gained fluency in our first language without a shred of planning, have we bought into the Big Lie of our profession? Why does everybody think that we need to plan so much? There is something f—ed
Here’s a possible start in finding some common turf between ELA and CI instruction. Way overdue: There are many terms used to describe ESL/ELL and EFL instruction. For now let’s just use the acronym ELA English Language Acquisition to make it simple. In my experience, certainly in Denver Public Schools, the chasm between ELA training
