Long Post Warning Yesterday I received an email from a long-time reader extolling the virtues of the Star Sequence Curriculum: Ben, I have been on this PLC for a long time and have watched everything develop carefully. I am amazed at what has happened in my classroom with the Star. I’ve had a few sobering […]
Erikson’s Stage 5: Identity vs. Role Confusion “During adolescence, the transition from childhood to adulthood is most important. Children are becoming more independent, and begin to look at the future in terms of career, relationships, families, housing, etc. The individual wants to belong to a society and fit in. “The fifth stage is identity vs.
In the interest of time, in this analysis of Erikson’s thought we will focus only on Stage 4 (ages 5-12) and Stage 5 (age 12-18), the stages that most concern us as teachers. The reader is invited to research this more deeply here: https://www.simplypsychology.org/Erik-Erikson.html – which website is the source for the quoted text below
Erik Erikson was a German-American developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst known for his theory on the psychological development of human beings. We would do well to include him in any discussion about curriculum because his work on the concept of personality development heavily influenced the new curriculum offered in these pages. Erikson maintains that personality develops in
Ray Bauer shares, for those still doing TPRS: At the last Chicagoland TCI meeting I talked about a tweak to TPRS stories that has worked well for me. I may present on this at one of our Chicagoland meetings, but I wanted to send it your way as well in case it can be of
A repost from 2010: I sent this to my principal last week: Today Luis came to class for the third straight day, which may be a record. [The social worker] and I are working on how we can help Luis save his year, because as we speak he is facing truancy charges. Luis is lost in all of
This letter is from Nathaniel Hardt. It is a brilliant response to the letter he received from a parent (in italics): Good morning, Mr. Hardt, My son Gordon is in your Spanish I class. Yesterday, he came home and informed us that he had a pop quiz in class and didn’t think he did well.
Relative to previous discussion on contacting parents when students’ grades are being affected by their absolute inability to exhibit observable non-verbal behavior as per the ISR rubric, here is the first of two sample letters, this one by Grant Boulanger: Dear Mr. and Mrs. Jones: I’d like to check in regarding Troy’s performance in Spanish
This is a repost from May 5, 2015. Jennifer reports: Hey Ben – The impetus for me writing now is from a student questionnaire. I used Anne Matava’s questionnaires yesterday and got a wrenching response from a student. Just a bit of background…as you know context is everything. I’m doing a super short session with
The point about being happy – everyone in the classroom being happy – is at the crux of our discussion, or should be. 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 their own skills and wonderfulness to bring
So many of us involved in language education want to mold our classes based on how much is learned and grades. But we must protect our ourselves and our students from such thinking. Let’s not go down that worn out 20th century road. If we continue to teach our students without a feeling of love
I feel that in some ways there are teachers who have an effect on children that can only be described as evil. It is because when they design a curriculum that only favors the fast processors, they are making the slower processors feel less than they are. That is evil. We need to call out
