Hi Ben,
You could call this one “stop teaching the rules, and start teaching language,” because this is the attitude I am getting from my 4%ers who are getting bored, disrupting class, and then getting very low grades because of it. I am seeing what you have already said about how toxic the 4%ers with attitude can be to a TPRS classroom, and the teacher who is trying to implement it. They try to make the slow (to them) pace an excuse for their behavior, which is unacceptable.
My response to these students has been (more or less): when the whole class, including you, shows me that you can follow the rules, the language learning will get going, but I will stop class and remind you of the rules every time I see students not following them. If you don’t want to be bored, please make more effort to be a part of the class.
My issue here is that it’s not really about the pacing or the rules, rather I suspect that it’s about the method. These students see the method as a waste of time. Traditional teachers use conversation as fluff, and students assume they won’t be held responsible for the fluff, so they just space out until the vocab list appears, and they memorize it. Meanwhile, most students enjoy the fluff, and then get frustrated when their test does not reflect those activities.
So I just handed out my first round of participation rubrics, with some of the brightest students getting some dreadful grades, grades that they and their parents have probably never seen before. They also require a parent signature, so I think I’ll be contacted by some confused and/or angry parents very soon. My administrator is generally sympathetic, but may also ask me to back down on this if the parents get really mad.
Another issue is that some parents will probably request that their son be allowed to “work ahead,” that is, do grammar drills in a traditional textbook during class. This is something I would have allowed last year (though it didn’t happen), but this year I think it would only undermine the classroom culture further, for students to know that “Billy” gets to “study” by himself, and Billy gets to think he is better than everyone else because he is doing real work instead of silly games.
Any advice for how to deal with a parent who thinks this isn’t fair? What do I do with the kids who do get it the first time and don’t need the reps, and know it, and then try to stay out of trouble but can’t help themselves?
John