In 2010 I was working with a videographer whom I had contacted about making a serious film about TPRS, a documentary. We sneaked her into East High School where she was going to get as much footage as she could from within our ten member WL department.
I’ll never forget that first session, walking down the hallway to my classroom with this filmaker trying to hide this huge camera under her arm, hoping that something might come of this plan to bring what really happens in foreign language classes in America into public awareness.
The only guarantee we had was that we could film in my classroom because I had releases. And, as expected, nobody else in the department wanted to play. So we filmed in my classroom on a daily basis for about a week, all the while trying to figure out how to get some film from more traditional teachers or teachers obsessed with computer gadgets to teach languages, for the contrast.
The class we focused on among my students was one of those made for TV type of classes with every color kid, every style of clothing, the entire urban splash class that one finds best at Denver East High.
This was the perfect venue to see how TPRS/CI involves kids and how grammar classes do not, on video. But, again, we couldn’t get into any other classrooms.
I really wanted that footage. I was going to then take this person who is actually a professional documentary film maker to NTPRS to interview Blaine and others, and then edit it everything we got into a full length documentary.
Of course it didn’t work – there were all sorts of obstacles – and the closed door policy of ALL the teachers was the biggest factor. We couldn’t just collect a lot of interviews with TPRS and traditional teachers – we needed real footage from their classes to show how traditional classes typically resemble tombs and how storytelling classes don’t.
It was odd how so many teachers claimed publicly to teach using comprehensible input, but as soon as there was a camera was around, their doors got shut tight.
As an aside, unrelated to the point of this article, I would like to add here that, while I was working and planning with this film maker in that first week on this project, she revealed to me something astounding. Apparently in the district there was at that time an administrative unit that studies stress in teachers.
It was like an office that nobody knew about and that was supposed to be kept secret and the only reason she knew about it was because she was hired to film the sessions.
My friend said that she filmed sessions with burnt out teachers, teachers who had been labeled as cracking or cracked under the pressure of their jobs, some no longer teaching. It was a formal study of the teachers with psychologists, counselors, administrators, and my friend there to capture the sessions, which apparently got pretty nuts, on film.
All my friend told me was that it was intense. The whole thing sounds like it could have been made up, because what she said she recorded was unbelievable, with teachers having emotional breakdowns and getting really weird when talking about their work. I think the whole thing, if it is true, is testimony to what we go through in our careers.
We hide our stress, for the most part, but we have a lot harder time than most people know. At least I have in my career.
Anyway, the film project fell apart rather fast – there is no way any decent film could be gathered in school buildings, which are places where the public is not really welcome, even though their tax dollars support the buildings.
Even parents don’t feel welcome in school buildings anymore. So a big documentary camera in a school building would draw almost as much attention as a weapon.
Maybe some day somebody will make that film. But I doubt it. Not unless some things change. A lot. Maybe a traditional grammar book based teacher will do a documentary on how crazy we are as we try to change something that has worked really well (in their eyes) for so long. I would watch it!