Got this from a group member. It speaks to me in that it represents where a lot of us are right now in our teaching, if we were to to as honest as this group member (my responses added here). It is a long read but a gripping one due to its level of honesty and candor:
Dear Ben,
I’m a member of your forum and we have spoken there before. I’ve posted about my doubts in my abilities as a teacher and my difficulty applying TPRS to my classroom. I haven’t been around a lot lately because I’ve really been going through Hell.
I will be the first one to admit that I am my own worst enemy; lack of confidence + poor foundation in classroom management + no TPRS training = a 3rd year teacher that goes to therapy every Wednesday and has to pop anxiety pills before the daily commute to work. I wish I could say that was just a joke.
[My response: It’s certainly not a joke. But go back and think about what you are doing overall. You are trying to make real and actual changes in a completely sterile dehumanized building culture, one in which all students and teachers yearn for change except the jaded ones. All those who think they are ok with their shitty instruction are a big negative draw on your energies, much more of a draw, a pulldown, on you than you think. I am with you. I am like you. In a certain way, because I don’t like teaching ghosts, I am afraid down to the level of my boots every class. I talk a big game, but it is nonetheless true. I lack confidence, which may in part explain my passion for something real like this. So my point here is simple. You are NORMAL. This stuff these days about TPRS and all that is so big, such a standoff between 20th c. teachers and real humans trying to bring light into dark zones.]
Honestly, when my colleagues learned that I was going to try out TPRS, after hearing a brief explanation of what it’s all about, all of them were supportive. None of them commented that they might try it…but at least they were encouraging. My supervisor was even supportive. I attended 2 online workshops with Piedad Gutierrez of tprsofnj.com. I bought TPRS in a Year! and PQA/Classroom Management from you. It all fell apart because I am falling apart.
[My response:: Yes. I have fallen apart in my career eight times or thereabouts. Fully fallen apart that many times. Not to diminish the seriousness of what you say. But I can be truly honest with you when I say that yes, I do know the crushing feeling. In the oddest of ways, it has even become my friend.]
It all fell apart because I’m the only teacher out of my team of 4 others in the department that is attempting this and I feel nervous to send my students into their classrooms next year in which they will be confronted by the expectation that they should know all of the preterite tense endings of -ar, -er,-ir verbs and that we CALL them preterite tense endings.
[My response. Yes, that is sick. The number of colleagues nationwide in your situation is huge. What are they supposed to do? I don’t know how they do it. It’s horrible to be in departments like that. Horrible isn’t even the word. Even if they do “support” you.]
I’m new to TPRS and I will surely make mistakes and forget some tricks to fitting the whole curriculum and I don’t want MY failings to be used as a scapegoat for why “they” might be right that TPRS is not the BEST. I think it is and I want to do it justice. It all fell apart because I need real training in my area. I was unable to attend the most recent Susie Gross workshop that was about an hour and a half away.
[My response: So what do we do? I say we first use the group as a sounding board, no names! We can put it to the group like “ok no bullshit what do we do in this situation?” Say yes to that. The other thing is to troubleshoot what you are doing with a fine tooth comb. I am thinking of making a bunch of “troubleshooting” videos but it will be some time on those.]
Two days ago, I had my 3rd and final post-observation meeting during which I broke into tears even as the administrator spoke highly of the lesson. Well, the lesson he saw was not a TPRS lesson because I dropped that ball months ago. He watched some crap lesson in which I attempted to PQA off the top of my head some stupid and useless vocab from our text book. The class, one of my few well-behaved, were helping me along and laughed here and there. Ever since I learned about TPRS this past August, I realize that I am teaching in a way that is fake, cold and simply causes too much student-teacher/teacher-student stress. I told this administrator that if I don’t get some classroom management help I may not come back next year. He said he most definitely will speak with my supervisor about seeing if they can get me into some summer courses.
[My response: Then get to either the CO or NEV workshops. You can’t get generic training on classroom management. You need CI training and there are a lot of posts on that topic in these PLC pages. Once you get the method down, the management issues disappear. Kids can be true shits.]
I’m writing to you because besides basic classroom management skills….I know that I need to learn how to do TPRS more effectively – the two go together! and how to handle being the only one who does it at my schoo – that is the part that concerns me. that is the hardest part. I am not only a colleague of the other language teachers but a true friend. I know they are supportive of me but it bothers me to think that I am busting my ass to try this new thing and they keep chugging along with the traditional methods.
[My response: Look, you have to take care of yourself and nurture yourself first. You are overly critical of yourself from what I can tell reading what you wrote here. If that means a few more years of bullshit, do it. I did it for 24 years and i think that accounts for the long fangs hanging out of the front of my mouth. But you must take care of yourself. We need to get you more training in the beauty of how the method CREATES huge involvement and class buy-in and thereby lowers all discipline issues, but with you alone in that department it might just go a lot slower. Are you willing to accept that? If you can get to either conference i can coach you and we can get as much done in the time we have. If not, we have to figure something out.]
Our “lead teacher” is happy for me but I also know that she doesn’t want to admit that she could teach just as well if she through the text book out the window. She believes, and I’m going to paraphrase her words here, Sometimes you have to try a variety of things. The textbook has its place in the classroom. They (the students) need to know it’s important to go home and do their homework. ….and blah blah blah. That all sounds like life skills with nothing to do with learning real language. I don’t know if I’m being the naive novice or if this also sounds yucky to you.
[My response: It is honest and describes my experience very much. No yuck here. I stand ready to serve you. ..but how can a 3rd year teacher look a 12th year teacher in the face and tell her she’s wrong? Don’t talk to her. I’m at the end of my 11th year with TPRS and 35th in the classroom and the one thing I have learned and still can’t do is just shut my trap and work on my skills. My pattern before my current school, where I had people like you have all around me, was to use TPRS/CCI until March, then shut it down completley and start getting the kids ready for the experience they would have the next year, just to keep the teachers’ yaps shut. Of course it didn’t really work, because when a teacher knows that TPRS trained kids are coming their way the next year, they ride a little taller in the grammar the next year just to make sure that they can establish how superior their eclecticism is. If I may be allowed a personal observation, you are too human, too passionate about being a good teacher, too fine a person, to be experiencing this. You must not give up bc then the plastic teachers win. I can tell in between your words how fine you are at teaching. I just know it. Don’t worry yourself out of the career you are supposed to be in bc of a bunch of fake teachers, even if they support you, bc they are fake at the end of the day in terms of what kids need. This brings echoes of a fairly painful professional past to me, and my heart feels this fairly deeply. I am so sorry for this pain you have now.]
Anyway, I guess what I’m saying is: Can you help me? What can I do? I cannot—-ABSOLUTELY—cannot go back next year and have it be like these last 3. I will sooner eat my shoe.