Unlock with PatreonThe Problem with CI
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I Even Got Paid
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4 thoughts on “I Even Got Paid”
Laughing together is the best thing we can do with our students. there can never be any trust where there is no laughter. Not laughing at, but laughing with.
After reading this article, I realize that a simple game that my first years did a few times in the first month may have built far more community than I had originally thought.
I’m curious how others build that all-important community while still sending the message that the TL is top priority. Any gold star activities/routines besides CWB? Cheers!
Jason I don’t think – and this is just my opinion as always – that any particular activities bring the bonding (get it? Jason “Bond”) that we need so much for our comprehension based instruction to work in our classrooms. Instead, it is the daily interaction in the hallway, as the kids come in, during class, in all of those naturally human moments when we show them that we care about THEM more than we even care about CI that we get the job done.
This may seem a contradictory statement, since we are all the time talking about not losing a single moment to CI in our class, staying in the TL over 95% of the time. But, after much reflection over many years on this issue, I have concluded that stopping class in the middle of CI to speak English to a kid over a short period of time (no more than thirty seconds to one minute) trumps ignoring the chance to bring the kid into the social fabric of the group in those moments when it is natural to do so.
Nothing is more important than including a kid in the group, because the most important thing to a child is to not to learn the language but to feel liked by the other people in the room. (That is where humor and the name game come in as major players in team building.) Of course, we can build community while staying in the TL as well, but I have stopped sacrificing inclusion and team building for the TL so much. It’s just that those little moments of shining kindness and respect on a kid in class really shouldn’t last more than one minute, or really even thirty seconds, like I said before. It’s like pop up grammar has to be limited to less than four seconds; that kind of “Pop Up Approval” needs to be limited in time before the class gets off in one of those horrid b.s. sessions that I am famous for although I don’t want anyone to know about.
But how else are we going to build that trust and chemistry that are so crucial to bringing the good CI into our classrooms? I have “been there done that” on the idea of making CI the total goal of my classes and having this kind of weird frown on my face because I don’t want to lose a single minute to CI. Life is too short and I don’t get paid enough to try so hard to be a really good TPRS teacher. I just want to enjoy my kids, and when I do that, oddly, their gains go up, so it’s all good.
Those little breaks are necessary to build a team on which all feel liked. But to return to your question Jason I don’t believe that team building “exercises” are as good as building the team each minute of every day, in and out of the classroom. I know that is how Robert Harrell rolls as well, and not just Robert but many others of us in this group who went into teaching to enjoy our work and not crush kids’ spirits with verb drills.
I definately see what you mean. Since making the switch to TPRS and really reaching down to the heart level, I’ve noticed that I have quite positive relationships with lots of my kids. They’ll greet me in the hall in Gaelic, often asking for high-fives, and my room has become a hangout of sorts for the entire first year. Heck, when my first years found out it was my birthday earlier in the month, one of my classes sang Happy Birthday and left me a message on my whiteboard at the end of the day. One of the kids from that brutal second year class last term even stopped in to add his name to the board!
Like you said, enjoying being with our kids. That’s the true foundation that everything else is balanced on, isn’t it? When that give and take is there, I feel like I have wings and the fact I get paid for it is just too cool. Right, ramble over. Thanks for the wee reminder!