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5 thoughts on “Better to Teach Out of A Textbook”
Absolutely! Kids need to feel like they can succeed at languages which means our assessments need to reflect that. However, I’m feeling the pressure here to “do it the same way”. We have to document our curriculum and it feels like we are being strong armed to do it a certain way – super specific Can-Do Statements, reaching a certain proficiency level at the end of each grade, using common rubrics to grade students. Plus now we’re talking about bring in the APPL or STAMP tests to collect data on student proficiency levels. One of my colleagues and I are really struggling with all of this.
Dana is the middle school administration at AES starting to push down on your ability to teach as you think is best? Do you have one more year after this one on your contract?
It’s the Office or Learning and they’re making a lot of unilateral decisions. I don’t know where my admin stands on this. The problem is that the admin that wanted TPRS teachers are no longer here. If we still had Linda here, it would be all of us pushing back. And we don’t have common meeting time with the ES or HS so we haven’t met to even discuss anything. It’s diacouraging. They brought in Helena Curtain as our expert without input in who we’d like to work with and she’s forcing her thematic unit approach on us as the only way to document curriculum.
OMG I’ve been in my district for 26 years and Helena was our consultant my first year. I have a long history w/her. My question is did Helena observe any T/CI classes on her visit to India? Cuz she tried to shame me for abandoning thematic units. So I invited her to come see what we were doing, and how happy the kids were, but she flat out refused…Milwaukee is 9o min away…
Her message is from the 80s.
Her most recent (4th?) edition of her book is over $100 in paperback.
I’d love to see that research she referenced on output for novices.
She was pro-Krashen and used his name in her presentations until the T/CI movement started to irk her. And make no mistake, we irk her. (I know I do:})
Uh oh, Dana. Sounds like they’re pulling out the big guns on you and your colleague. I don’t know. If I were you I’d probably calmly defend the way I teach and just keep the ball rolling with NTCI. If you can explain why you do what you do and students are happy and engaged, I don’t see how anyone would criticize you. Sounds like your admin may be open to your CI approach, still.
Maybe, just maybe after Helena leaves the dust will settle and your admin may pay no attention to your curriculum docs and leave you be.