I responded to Jeff:
I have the same conviction about CI instruction which is often accompanied by the resultant anger which for me turns into five minute pointless (to the kids) lectures about jGR and stuff and they don’t hear me. It is maddening when they do shit like that. What I am hearing from the AP is that he doesn’t care much about methods, he just wants happy parents and kids who get to screw around all they want in class doing whatever as long as you are nice to them. It’s all about giving up our knowledge, our experience, and our desire to really instruct in favor of being nice and keeping the parents and the kids in the driver’s seat with the administration. I feel that teachers will be quitting this field in droves as time goes by and it becomes more a business, where we, as clerks in a department store, bow to the customers who are always right.
John said:
…when your current Latin 1’s are in year 3, this will not be an issue…
that’s the whole ball of wax right there.
And by the way, this is exactly the time of year for that, so we need to all be on our toes for this kind of shit happening in our classrooms. Now is not the time to relax our guards.
Do those other things James said. Esp anything to do with writing. He is right. Just get them busy doing stuff that doesn’t involve you and where they feel like they are learning.
I will add one thing. We may need to have the discussion, it’s been gorilla in the room in my own mind for years, as to whether this way of teaching can be effective in schools. In situations where the person actually wants to learn the language like in a language school which is a business or in the military, I can see wonderful success. Notice how Katya now works at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey. Great work, satifying, wonderful. But can it even work in schools. If we are all going through pretty much the same things you are going through, Jeff, but are just afraid to admit it publicly like you are, is there really much hope for this method in school settings? It’s a serious quesion. I don’t raise it here lightly. Isn’t it time to ask if jGR is enough for the kids to behave in such a way that they can learn?
Whatever we each decide, and I am very much wanting to know if maybe I have been foolish all these 12 years giving so much to the idea of this kind of work, whatever the outcome for each of us, I remind myself of what Tolstoy said once:
…it’s far easier to write ten huge volumes of philosophy than to put just one principle into practice….
And yes, that IS directed at university professors and four percenter teachers.