My response comment to Ben Lev about jGR and quiet kids is something I want to post here as an article. Just about anything about jGR these days is important to put into the jGR category, since this bad boy keeps changing every day.
By the way, my boss Diana Noonan who is the Coordinator of World Languages for Denver Public Schools came by my school yesterday and took one look at the huge jGR poster in the room, with examples, as per:
https://benslavic.com/blog/2012/10/07/jgr-2/
and she had the same immediate reaction that Annick Chen did to it. That these two exemplary teachers immediately recognized the brilliance of jGR without me having to say a thing about it first is very telling – it confirms that we have a truly fine document here. Diana immediately asked me to address all our new teachers to DPS (20) about this on Thursday and again on Monday.
Anyway, I am adding this lengthy response to Ben Lev’s question here, which was:
…what about the really quiet, reserved, terrified students for whom it’s a big stretch to make their voice heard? The rubric is great for pushing kids who are naturally louder, more boisterous, etc. But we all have the quiet ones, and I just don’t want to give them the message that it’s sink-or-swim, participate actively or fail….
I feel very strongly that jGR does not compromise these quiet kids in any way. In my mind, it is not even a participation rubric at all, as Robert pointed out, but a rubric that measures observable behavior. There is a subtle difference between a kid, on the one hand, participating in a non-specific way (not aligned with a standard) and behaving in a way that shows or does not show that they are negotiating meaning (aligned with a standard).
Here is my way to lengthy exploration into the sublteties involved:
There are two answers I would offer Ben. The first one addresses the rare, really quiet ones with high intelligence: Yes absolutely we stay out of their face with jGR. Ted Kimbrough, now a medical doctor, I believe, years ago was that kid.
And I have a few now. What to do with those kids? O.K. now let’s make this simple, and this is my answer only on what to do with these rare quiet kids – there may be other answers. You look in the kid’s face and see the eyes, right? And the fear is there, right? But you see the intelligent responses to your teaching and you also see the quiz grades right? You know lots is happening, you just can’t see it.
So those eyes reveal the answer. They are negotiating meaning at a high level. In the eyes are the beginning hope movement responses of the whole body of the child. They are the beginning of the wave of these kids starting finally to become involved in life and coming out of their fear, which they carry everywhere.
These kids are some of us a few decades ago. They are the children standing next to the bikes in the growing up wars of life and all they can do is put their hands on the handlebars and they are scared beyond fear. They are wanting to but not able to show up outwardly in life. They are trapped miners.
But, I submit to you one crucial question: are they involved? Are they not just restricted by some kind of plastic wrap that is inhibiting their self expression, down there in their minds/mines? Is the flower that they will become one day just not able to grow right now in that outward way?
And so the question becomes do we rip off the plastic wrap or do we keep teaching to the eyes until that plastic wrap loosens up and comes off on its own? That is my answer and what I do with those kids. I let them hide.
Now here is the crucial point: I also take them aside and tell them (I’ve done this with about two kids now so far this year) that they will get an A in the class no matter what and to just relax about the grade. I’ve mentioned this before. I tell them that I get what is going on and that they can get involved more when they want, but they don’t have to now.
Some teachers would be horrified at this. Some – not us – would even try to get them to speak in the TL. But jGR involves no forced output of any kind and is for the good of the class – it enables us to honor the position statement of ACTFL about 90% use. So that’s my first answer.
We teach this kind of kid first and we differentiate with them as well as those at the other end of the spectrum, those who can’t process fast but try. We differentiate. It is as if they are flawed in a weird way, like God is taking away their ability to express themselves or something. Actually it was middle school teachers who did that.
And we are being used in that way, do you see, to help draw the kid out into life where, in spite of the fear inflicted by others/parents/teachers/life itself, we are there to be patient, smile, and wait years if we have to for our flowers to take root in the firm and rich soil of our classrooms, and grow into trust of life.
To do otherwise, to grade these few kids using the rubric and forcing output would be horrible for all involved. So yes there is no exception to forced output, if we want our flowers to grow at their own rate, the natural rate, the rate that brings them safety. So we do it that way.
Ben the second answer describes the kids of average intelligence and not the rare highly intelligent ones, which I addressed above.
So I am trying to state that there are two kinds of non-responsive kids – those whose cardboard cutout demeanor is made of fear (addressed above) and those who can do more but choose not to out of a kind of teenage arrogance and pride and a certain kid of teenage defiance, which, I agree, has its base in fear but somehow is different from the rare kid I describe above.
What about those kids? Do we hold them accountable? Yes. My own reaction to that more commonly occurring kid is to give them the 2 and make them work the plastic wrap off by themselves a little. I know the difference between the rare kid above and the more common kid who is the second type of non-participant, and I make kids of this second type show up more because I know they can.
We have to be able to tell the difference, of course, between the type 1 kids and the type 2 kids. I’ll leave this idea at that and wait for your response. But do you agree that there are two types of non-participants in our classes and that some need to be exempted – the type 1 kids above, and then this second type, who need to have jGR applied fully to get them to grow because that is what they need?
Specifically, the type 2 kids normally would earn a 2 at this early point in the year and then they would be set up to work in class for the 3 because, unlike the type 1 kid, they CAN get on the bike and they CAN unwrap the plastic wrap and they are NOT stuck in a mine.
I think I have expressed this clearly and I hope so. We do need to see this difference and be able to apply it when we use jGR. What do you think?