I am going to suggest to Tina that we possibly start a new FB site devoted ONLY to classroom management. There is no doubt in my own mind that the CI community has missed, at the summer conferences and all over the place, the area that most requires our attention. How can we use CI, an unwieldy beast in the first place (only when we start – it’s like learning to ride a bicycle), when our class is unruly? It doesn’t make sense. There is no blame here. Schools have become nightmares of white privilege. Teachers are discouraged and don’t know why. They think, upon the reaction of their students in October to their CI instruction, that THEY are doing something wrong when in reality it is the SYSTEM of white privilege (the part of our society that we can’t see yet) that is the real problem. Other horribly destructive factors thrown into the mix are:
(1) the generally dilapidated and out-of-touch curricula that are still in effect as a result of the influence of the corporate book cartels (see article on Mimi Met),
(2) the grinding poverty that now defines so many of our public schools,
(3) the move toward charter schools that further tears down the fabric of our democratic society,
(4) the cell phone culture,
(5) overcrowded classrooms,
(6) completely inept administrators who are completely out of touch with the research about how people acquire languages and therefore cannot help but, just the opposite, become yokes around our necks as we try against all odds to do our jobs with dignity,
(7) colleagues in our buildings who are wormtongues,
(8) stress-induced insomnia
There are just so many fine teachers out there just walking away from the profession these days, sometimes in the middle of the school year and no blame on that, even after so much time and money spent on summer trainings when the real training they need is to address and internalize the Classroom Rules, etc. – anything that WORKS – and worry about learning how to teach using CI after putting that piece into their instruction. I doubt if Tina will say yes to this idea, because we’ve got so much going on now a two year cornucopia of new ideas that are keeping, I am sure, not just Sarah Ann up at night but many others. There is one thing that works for me that I may mention here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79cwmnTVTjc&t=27s