A repost:
Each year, when I plant my flower garden, I first prepare the soil. I turn it over and pour into it the tons of the training I have received from my teacher, Susan. The soil thus tilled just keeps getting more and more rich and fertile.
Each year, I look forward to planting the soil. I do that with my students. I know that they will enjoy the flowers that we will grow together that year. I also know that students who have never gardened before will learn to garden and to learn to appreciate the fruits of our combined labor.
Each year, after the harvest of the preceding year, I rest for a few months, and then I am very happy to till the soil for a new garden. Sometimes I think I can do it forever. In my garden, I don’t get tired, because my students and I work together.
Each year, I gain greater confidence as a gardener. Now that I have seen what can grow in the properly prepared soil of a TPRS/CI garden, my doubt, all the insecurities of the first years, have gone. I am now certain that in each garden my hard work will always yield wonderful flowers. I have seen the flowers now, from past seasons. How beautiful are the gardens I have grown!
Each year, I only plant two kinds of seeds. First, I plant listening seeds. I get them from the Krashen Garden Supply Company in California. They have the best seeds. Then, when school starts, I plant those seeds.
Each year, I make sure those listening seeds get plenty of water in the form of the twin strengths of love and courage to work in the harsh environment of my school. I know that, with enough water circle-ating throughout the soil, the seeds will certainly flourish, (some of them at least, following the ways of nature) and become lovely speaking flowers.
Each year, a few months later into the planting season, I plant the second kind of seeds, the reading seeds. These are fine seeds indeed! I mix them right in with the listening seeds, using the Read and Discuss technique I got from Krashen Garden Supply. Over time, maybe not the first season but in successive years, with plenty of water, those reading seeds become wonderful writing flowers.
I plant the right kinds of seeds at the right time. I don’t try to plant speaking and writing seeds at all – they don’t exist! At least, you can’t get them from Krashen Garden Supply. The master gardener who founded the seed company, Stephen Krashen, knows that the textbook companies try to sell seeds that won’t grow, fake seeds. Stephen chooses not to sell fake seeds. Imagine! Planting in the soil seeds of speaking and writing! Those are flowers that are the result of hard work, silly!
No wonder the kids, the vast majority of them, over 90% at least, hardly ever grow beautiful language gardens. The teacher gave them the wrong seeds.
The greatest hypocrisy of the teachers who do that every year is that they are the first ones who run and complain, after about one month of school, to the others in their department, “These kids are really stupid this year! They sent me the wrong kids!”
But that is not true! The teacher didn’t get the wrong kids, they planted the wrong seeds. Imagine, planting seeds that bear no fruit, year after year, supported by a state combine based on the idea of babysitting first, and acquisition second.
All things in their time. Teachers are learning, each day, that when they plant the listening seeds first, and mix in the reading seeds a month or two later, the magnificent two-tone show-stopping scene of the spring will make all of their hard work worthwhile. Then their confusions over storytelling as a way to teach will disappear in the certainty of honesty and hard-earned beauty.