A repost. I think this is an important read, though lengthy, to get teachers clear about what they are going to do this year in terms of classroom management. Or not do. It is a kind of pep talk on classroom management. If we don’t internalize and apply in the first two weeks of the […]
First. Two. Weeks. Dealing. With. Bullies. Act. Now. Read More »
Have you ever noticed in teaching that there seems to be some kind of unwritten rule that we’re not allowed to really know what our kids are thinking? I mean, it would be so easy to just ask them, if the world were an honest place and direct honest discourse between teacher and students could
The point about being happy – everyone in the classroom being happy – is at the crux of our work. For many in the CI world, it isn’t. The work has been too much focused on student gains and how the teacher can focus on how their own skills and wonderfulness can bring them about.
I’m posting below something that Sean sent to me via private email this morning about this whole racism thing, and then this can be the final post on it here so we can get our focus on where it belongs – on good CI teaching. What Sean expresses below pretty much sums up my position
e. e. cummings has said: …I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing than to teach ten thousand stars how not to dance… This makes me reflect on the notion that we can learn from the pure birds/students in our classes how to respond to them with respect in our teaching. Such kids are
I moved the text below from the comment fields to be a post: Jack you are right the main problem we face is how do we take action to mitigate the facts that though we say everyone has equal protection we as a larger society do not act in a way that those who have
There is a a system of popular psychology called Transactional Analysis (TA). It is based on the idea that one’s behavior and social relationships reflect an interchange between parental (critical and nurturing), adult (rational), and childlike (intuitive and dependent) aspects of one’s personality. All people, even children, have these three aspects of personality within them.
I’m having something of a renaissance with Vygotsky. I personally have mined all I can from Krashen and see Vygotsky as perhaps the one researcher who can help us more with the new challenges brought by COVID. Frank James Johnson has said, “A Zoom CI WL classroom has much the same potential for language acquisition as its
Someone once asked this truly important question a few years ago, so this is a repost: I need help! I have a VERY challenging group of Spanish 1 at the worst time of day. They are energetic but compulsively talk chatter and joke with each other. They came with a reputation. Anyways their card talk
Rule 2 of the Classroom Rules has been getting a lot of attention, but Rule 1 is of equal importance: Listen with the Intent to Understand. Such an obvious behavior is rarely done by students in schools. They listen with the intent to get a grade. If your students think that school is a game
This is an individually created image (ICI). The post is directed to Maya and Sean. ICIs to me are better than OWIs and student cards to move to increasing in our language classroom social awareness and lead to discussions about inclusion: Name: Daisy the Flower Job: To wake the family in the house next to
I remember how I had to fill out forms that detailed what I was going to teach in class that day. I should have just written that I was going to use the language to try to build community, so that I could address the standard of Communication. But I couldn’t just teach Communication –
