I find this statement (by Diane made in a comment field here today) about Bill VanPatten’s work to be important:
…If you read BVP’s stuff on teaching — I mean specific ideas for conducting class interaction, not general ideas — boy is it obvious it’s universities that he’s talking about….
Linda Li and Diana Noonan have both told me that Dr. Krashen frequently states to them his need to “get into more classrooms”. Moreover, he is a long time – 20 years – friend of Denver Public Schools, which explains why (along with Diana) the district is now 90% CI, the only major metro district anywhere near those numbers.
VanPatten seems to be caught up in the university babble bubble while expressing no great desire to reach out to the suffering masses. He’s a theorist and a lot of his work has always been too complex, too technical, for me personally to actually grasp. (This has changed over the past fifteen years, in my opinion, under the influence (whatever the word is) of Dr. Krashen*).
Moreover, VP says things that Krashen has already said and yet won’t come out and say it’s Krashen. He wouldn’t be the first one. I could be very wrong on this and would let any final comment on the topic be made by the Hermanator.
The only other academics that I know are doing what Krashen is doing in reaching out to secondary schools are Mark Knowles at CU Boulder and also Nicolai Penner at McMaster University in Canada. I think there might be someone in that power bed of CI teachers that has formed around Michele Whaley in Alaska, at the U of Anchorage. I’m sure there are others. Aren’t there? Or are we that alone?
*Those pure researchers are amazing. Krashen told a group of us in MN last summer that he is most happy when he is alone in a room with a bunch of numbers to crunch. It makes Eric’s work even more amazing – a scholar who walks the walk and not just talks, AND who makes it understandable for the rest of us.