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Do Politics Run the Show?
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CI and the Research (cont.)
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16 thoughts on “Do Politics Run the Show?”
When I was in undergrad, I got a B in French one semester at McGill cos I didn’t bother with the idiotic grammar sheet hwk. I contested the grade, since I was able to get almost perfect scores in speaking reading and writing. I eventually had a “discussion” with the head of 2nd languages– an ogre-like man from a Harry Potter novel– who refused to/couldn’t answer my simple question “why should I do homework if it’s useless and my grades are solid?” He threatened me with expulsion from my French class and I told him I would be appealing. My mark next semester went up to an A.
The power of tradition is astonishing. Don’t ever understimate it but also challenge it always, especially when you have results to back you up.
I just got some GREAT news!!!! Our school board has just passed a new homework policy. Grades K-8 = NO homework!!!
High school = a TOTAL of 10 hours a week from ALL classes combined!!! (we are on 4×4 block scheduling, so they only have 4 classes a semester) and it can ONLY be assigned Mon-Thurs., and NOT over holidays/vacations.
Now…..is this CI-friendly or what????? I am so thrilled, as I no longer have to justify why I do not give vocabulary list homework/grammar sheet homework!!!
I just found this out from a teacher in another department, and she is quite upset that her students will not be learning anything…..my answer to her: “you can have my minutes!” 🙂
So, I love the idea of letting them find their own “input” out in the community. We need to incorporate “community” anyway (ACTFL’s 5 Cs)
Great news, mb! How enlightened!
Pretty sure our Math department would claim all 10 hours. The board’s change sounds great!
How progressive is that!!!!!!! Good for you all up there in Maine.
That’s quite great news mb!
Wowie. I was just thinking earlier today how we are really doing this, in spite of all obstacles. We really are doing this thing, one day at a time, one administrative decision at a time, one teacher at a time. Removing the homework insanity is big time.
Related: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdzoeCuVs7w
I’d love to hear people’s ideas for getting input from the community. I was thinking that might be a way to encourage CI in my students in a CI unfriendly environment. Encouraging them to twext songs or talk with nice native speakers? Other ideas?
haha – speaking of Homework, this was just posted today on Central States Conference on Language Teaching’s FB page (I am not sure why I get their feed! but I’m glad I do!!!):
http://pernillesripp.com/2010/12/23/so-whats-my-problem-with-homework/
I will show this to the teacher I spoke to today so she can read it before going back to school and complaining about the new policy and making herself look silly. (she IS a nice lady, so if I can educate and help a colleague I will. Hopefully she won’t shoot me!)
Mary Beth,
Thank you for sharing that article. I really wish my sons’ teachers had got that way back when and especially those who are my colleagues in the past few years. We missed so much time with our kids because they were doing homework. I think I’ll stop ranting now. 🙂
I agree with you Clarice!!! I used to go in and tell teachers to get off their high horse — weekends and vacations were FAMILY time, and if they wanted to assign a project, then they better give me enough time to fit in a trip to Walmart in my WEEKLY schedule!!! — none of this crap of assigning it Monday and expecting it Friday — I worked all week, and the last thing I wanted to do when I got home from work was traipse out to WallyWorld to spend my hard earned moola on supplies for the project du jour!!!
That’s why when I send home my beginning of the year “supply list” I give parents about 2 weeks to get them (and I tell them that if they can’t, to let me know bc I have extras — I don’t want my class to put anyone into a hardship!) Do you know that I heard of a teacher who assigns the kids to make flashcards for their vocab — if they are NOT on 3×5 index cards, the kids get marked down!! This teacher will NOT accept pieces of paper cut up!!! Philosophy: you can buy a deck of 100 index cards at the Dollar store for only $1.00, it’s cheap enough!!! (and those cards cannot even be cut in half to have them go further!!!) WHOA!!!! some people can’t afford that $1.00. Again, some teachers need to step down off their high horse! and I need to step down off my soap box! 🙂
Good night!
^like
Our school, on a massive, teacher-driven A.F.L. kick, is slowly ditching hwk. My policy– like that of most of my colleagues– is that hwk is whatever you don’t get done cos you were screwing around in class. The only exception is novels in my English class: simply not enough in-class time to read ’em but since the kids choose their novels (no more “and now we will ALL read this Profound work of Literaturd that the English Defartment thinks Significant”) they all do. I get WAY more enthusiastic kids if they don’t have hwk loaded on.
Btw there was a French study done in the ’50s (name escapes me) that found that the ideal school day would be 1/3 academics, 1/3 physical activity (not nec sports) and 1/3 arts type stuff and a max of 6 hrs.
Chris
@Carla – a few years ago (before I was introduced to TPRS) one of my WL colleagues came up with the idea of “Passports.” She teaches French, and so her, and I, and the other Spanish teacher decided to have the kids make “passports.” Basically they were set up as a way for the students to come into contact with the TL on their own terms and in whatever way they chose to. It was based on them earning 100 points in a semester (or quarter – can’t remember! I think I tried it both ways and settled on a semester.)
The students designed their own passports (I’ll take pics of some of them – I kept exemplars for future classes) and created covers. The inside had a number of pages – and each page had a famous quote in the target language. Then they were able to earn points depending on what they did:
1 point = word of the day
1 point = packaging found in Spanish (some of the drinks in the cafeteria are bilingual!!!)
5 points = attending an International Club event/meeting
5 points = texting or FBing with a friend in the TL, proof required
10 points = cooking a TL culture recipe for family, showing a picture of family eating it, and sharing recipe with class.
10 points = watching a movie in TL (parent has to sign off that it was actually in the TL) and summarizing.
Reading a book in TL on their own, finding cultural facts to share with class – all kinds of things! I have the list somewhere. But the points earned depended on the difficulty and complexity of the task. If we did not have it on the list, and they came up with something, they could propose it to one of us, and the three of us would meet and discuss the point value.
Some kids LOVED it, others thought it was a pain in the ass. Honestly – the damn “word of the day” for 1 point turned into a PITA for me and served NO purpose –
I am considering doing this again = but with more CI-friendly activities;
SOOOOOO…..please send the ideas! I would rather have them do this than meaningless grammar worksheets.
(OK – after writing all this, I think I have posted this before! sorry for the repeat!)
I encourage you all to review – and I say that in the humblest and most respectful manner possible – just what this PLC means and what some of its intellectual forebears are, particularly, Susan Rosenholtz whose ground-breaking work at the University of Illinois in the 1990s helped establish the notion of the PLC in the first place. Here’s one place to start: http://www.allthingsplc.info/about/evolution.php.
A great FL dissertation that evolved out of Rosenholtz’ work is Robert Kleinsasser’s “Foreign Language Teaching: A Tale of Two Cultures” (https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/handle/2142/19317). Great read, and a great reminder that it is transparency, openness, experiment, and joy that leads to the big learning gains amongst us and our students.
Mark, I tried to get into Kleinsasser’s work you linked to, but was unable because I don’t have that particular library’s permission. All I was able to do was read the abstract which, unfortunately, didn’t give me a good grasp of the gist. Do you mind expanding just a bit?
Hi James!
You probably have just as much access to that as I do, and you are so very right that the abstract does not do this dissertation any justice. Since Kleinsasser was a friend and fellow grad student in the SLATE program at Illinois while I was there, my memory may allow me to elaborate on what you’ve gotten so far. Actually, the one part of abstract that is not accurate is the syntax of the sentence containing the phrase “teaching language forms” as Kleinsasser’s effective schools tended very much to emphasize experimental teaching whose aims were to cultivate communicative use of the language. For the purposes of this particular entry on politics and the teachers’ communicative system amongst themselves, Kleinsasser found that ineffective schools were places that did a poor job in encouraging collaborative work. Teachers tended to display little enthusiasm for the task at hand of providing rich communicative learning environments for their students, nor did the topic of their talk with each other focus on such work, but strayed very quickly to matters that did not have much to do with schooling at all.
Okay, now, you may be wondering about the scientific design behind the research. My memory is much weaker on this point, but, basically, even in the 80’s, I believe public records were available about school performance, including for foreign language performance. Or more precisely, Kleinsasser devised a way of obtaining that information through the creation of a battery of instruments. As I recall, controlling for socio-economic variables, he chose four schools, two with below average grades on foreign language effectiveness, and two with above average grades, and observed how they operated, up close and personal, as any good scientist would, following the highest codes of discretion and ethics.
Besides the finding that strong communication networks coupled with abundant opportunities for professional development was correlated with effective teaching, two other factors emerged as determinant. One was certainty, or the teacher belief that students would learn language in their classrooms (they had a strong sense of self-efficacy), and the other was a non-routinized approach to teaching activities that attended to learners’ needs (remember, both a focus on forms and a strong behaviorist, ALM residue was still at work back then). Those two additional variables set the effective schools apart from the less effective ones and helped formed what was called “teachers’ technical culture.”
In the example that I gave from one of my colleagues here at CU, I would have to associate the comment about suppressing information on the effectiveness or ineffectiveness about homework because of political expediency with the ineffective technical cultures and foreign language programs that Kleinsasser uncovered.