I was told by someone that this group is probably the most radical of those who practice TPRS because they are willing to pay for the training. I tend to agree with that assessment. The idea of a radical group is attractive to me. We should get “TPRS Commando” hats and wear them around. To master this stuff, you kind of have to be all in, because half way in means bad teaching. It’s just that way with comprehensible input.
The biggest harm to Krashen’s and Blaine’s reputations hasn’t been done by researchers whose hearts are closed and minds are too open, it has been done by people who misrepresent the method, sometimes comically, in their classrooms, while claiming all along to be doing the method as it was intended.
What are people to think when they walk into an out of control classroom with two kids pretending to be lions under a tree rolling and laughing around on the floor while nobody is focused on the teacher’s use of the target language? (This actually happened). The radical committment to follow the rules, make the phone calles, and make the method really work has to be there.
Now, re: the bios, it occurred to me that when you don’t send one in, your are not following rule #6, Do Your 50%. If this site is a classroom, there will naturally be quiet students, and that is fine, but I feel that to get the true spirit of what I want going here, most of us need to do show up for the discussion and take a risk and show up more. I am not talking about new people who just want to learn by reading and studying video footage.
Ultimately, the success of our learning here will come from more active participation by more people and the willingness to appear vulnerable and just be honest. That is why I feel great that the group size today is more than 60% smaller than it was yesterday. We just need to be more willing to put our butts on the line with video and active comments. So I invite you to do your half on this blog site.
That means get your bios in. The need for bios is becoming more and more apparent to me as we did have a mole, if you will, on this site since the middle of August. I won’t go into that but he’s gone.
Please include your current strengths and challenges in your bios, as Matava did last week and then Skip and a few others have since then – that really helps us to understand where you are with the method right now. If you have already submitted a bio, you can go to the Group Members category and update it with that new information and send it to me via email and I will update your bio.
It is only in doing this self-reflection work and openly communicating with each other via the powerful tool of writing that we can get to know each other properly for the work I envisage here, not to mention the safety of knowing that we are not joined by anybody we wouldn’t want to be in the same club with – those bios are very important in that respect as well.
There will come a point in the next few months where people without bios will be kicked out of the group. Let’s say December 1st. That is just to keep that safety thing going.
I was called “overly cautious” by one person, but I let it go because that person doesn’t know what I have experienced personally and what I hear about from colleagues – it would shock you, unless you yourself have been embroiled in one of these TPRS controversies, which actually may be likely. The old paradigm form is not going down without a nasty fight and we must protect our ability to communicate with each other in free and open terms without fear of reprisals in this radical new web forum.