It won’t change until the training/coaching model changes. We’re trying. But we can’t make CI based instruction work until we trust each other more in schools. It’s going in the opposite direction. We trust less and less in each other and less in what Krashen and Blaine have served up. It’s a big table of wonderful food and instead of diving in we test it and measure it and plan how to eat it.
This doesn’t just happen on an individual level. I’ve seen it in departments. People get together and meet vertically (means get together to talk about the food on the table, which meanwhile is getting cold). Then they make up a Scope and Sequence charts (means draw a time line of the order in which they are going to eat the food).
They then make up other plans. They never just dive into the food (means get in a room together to teach each other their languages and learn in the messy way), all the while spouting out that change in education, real reform, is messy, because it’s a cool catch phrase. The people don’t trust that we can actually learn TPRS/CI that way.
And there is always some administrator keeping the people from going to the table and chowing down with both hands anyway. Why? Because without helping the teachers plan how and when they are going to eat the food on the table, they, they would not be needed. They would be out of a job. They aren’t even the real chefs – Krashen and Blaine are. They are the restaurant managers. They are not the surgeons – we are. They are the hospital administrators.
It won’t change until the training/coaching model changes.
