Unlock with PatreonThe Problem with CI
cURL error 28: Resolving timed out after 5000 millisecondsTo view this content, you must be a member of Ben’s Patreon at $10 or more Unlock
Krashen in Schools 5
Share:
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
LinkedIn
Ben Slavic
Get The Latest Updates
Subscribe to Our Mailing List
No spam, notifications only about new products, updates.
Related Posts
CI and the Research (cont.)
cURL error 28: Resolving timed out after 5000 millisecondsTo view this content, you must be a member of Ben’s Patreon at $10 or more Unlock
Research Question
cURL error 28: Resolving timed out after 5000 millisecondsTo view this content, you must be a member of Ben’s Patreon at $10 or more Unlock
We Have the Research
cURL error 28: Resolving timed out after 5000 millisecondsTo view this content, you must be a member of Ben’s Patreon at $10 or more Unlock
32 thoughts on “Krashen in Schools 5”
Ben wrote: People say that even bad CI is better than no CI. Is it?
Yes. Because CI – even bad CI – means that students are hearing the language in a way they can understand. If that isn’t happening, then it isn’t CI. Bad CI is boring, impersonal and several other things, but it is by definition comprehensible to students. Therefore it is better than anything else – better than Incomprehensible Input in the target language and better than English (or whatever the students’ mother tongue is).
The problem is that we – me included – let non-targeted English into the classroom and still call it CI. It isn’t.
For me the test has been the infamous fifth-period class. (Remember “grape soda boy”?) This is a collection of students who failed Spanish (almost all of them) and chose German because they believed it was easier, who cannot maintain focus for any length of time unless the class is highly structured, who have no impulse control, and who still don’t understand either the nature of interpersonal communication or the importance of active participation in the class conversation. (Just before quarter grades, one of the students asked what she could do to raise her grade in the class. *Note the concern for grade, not acquisition* She was quite put out when I explained that there is no such thing as “Extra Credit” in language acquisition, and the key to raising her grade is to show me she is participating in interpersonal communication in German.) This is my last class of the day and comes right after lunch, and students arrive to class with lunch in hand. (Half the class are seniors and go off campus for lunch, but don’t have time to eat before they have to be back. Sure, I could say no food, but then they would be sitting there hungry with bags of food smelling up the room.) Students regularly leave part way through the class for sports and other activities. I “waste” significant time every day working on discipline, and except for a couple of students the resultant low jGR grades make no difference. The danger of having the class dissolve into English (and chaos) is always imminent. Many days I am happy if I can maintain my part of the conversation in German – forget about the students.
Nonetheless, these students still occasionally amaze me with what they have acquired over the one-and-three-quarters years we have been together.
So yes, even bad CI is better than no CI.
…the problem is that we – me included – let non-targeted English into the classroom and still call it CI. It isn’t….
Bingo!
And Robert I can’t disagree with the common wisdom that bad CI is better than no CI. I think where I was going with that, though, was to the idea that when we do undisciplined CI we put ourselves on thin ice professionally. We risk blurting that could move into management issues, when we could be in perfect control of a classroom with a set of worksheets, in the sense that when a child is in a boredom induced coma they are also a well managed class, as our four percent colleagues who use the book and shitty computer programs well know.
Ben,
I follow you completely on the too much English thing. I do that probably as much or more than anyone. Especially now at the end of the year, sometimes it feels like we’re in English class. I need to fix this, of course.
But where you lose me is when you start saying stuff like: “Can the CI approach to teaching work in settings where there are large amounts of non-motivated students populating up to 70% or even 80% of our classes?”
That’s not so much an argument against CI as an argument against schools in general. At least it seems that way to me. All classes, every subject, every teacher in this country deals with this same issue. Non-motivated students are killing advances in typical public/private/go-to-school-today education all over the place. We in foreign language are no different.
So I don’t really know where to go from here.
Thank you for pointing out that we represent an advancement, a major one, James. I lose sight of that. Your point that it is a systemic problem in schools, of course, is spot on as well.
I do want to say that the point being made in this discussion about how we accept the expectation that a child can gain near fluency in four years, as the AP corporation and IB people claim (or they wouldn’t give the tests) is one that deeply saddens me.
Teachers are “can do” people and they naturally take things on that many other personality types, those who could never be a teacher bc of all the various things that teaching involves, would never or could never take on.
We are killing ourselves in this way. We accept that a child can get to near fluency, spurred on daily to heroic efforts by the very promise of comprehensible input (which thus becomes a two edged sword), five times a day, and we fail to remember that Krashen’s work was not done in consideration of the time available vs. the time needed to get kids to honest fluency, which is SO MUCH MORE time than we have.
I wish to echo some of what Jody said here yesterday, therefore. We need to remember what we are up against – she said it is a war with a real enemy. I have said it is a war here as well. That is a strong charge.
It’s a war with two fronts, really – the one against those who don’t want the process of language acquisition to be unconscious (the Controllers of the Left Hemisphere), and the one against the admins and data dudes who are driving some teachers out of the field (the Intimidators) in a way that can only be described as reckless.
We must keep the fact that we don’t have enough time to do what they want us to do, forget the unmotivated kids for a moment – we don’t have enough time – and we need to accept that and relax a bit. How many in this group are experiencing some form of burnout today, this Monday morning?
This is right where I am today. Very discouraged with CI. For some reason I have this impression that with French, there is the expectation that students will have at least had exposure to all of the irregular verbs, plus eventually the subjunctive and the various past tenses, in some kind of structured way. There is no way I could do all that with CI, not even in 4 years. After almost 1 year, my students regularly get “veut” and “va” mixed up. “Voulons” and “allons” aren’t even on the radar. This is really hard work in French, much harder than it was in German. It is also harder in a school where many students are more concerned with their grades than they are with what they are learning. I am thinking about using the textbook next year as a springboard, holding them responsible for the grammar and vocab in it, and doing a story or two per unit, or something. In all of my years of doing CI I have never felt like such a miserable failure.
Anne,
We need to talk!
Call me, you have my number but just in case (630 849 9423).
CANNOT GO BACK TO THE BOOK , NOT YOU!!!! YOU ARE NOT A FAILURE!
Anne
I forgot to say I have some practical advice on how you can deal with that specific problem you have.
…after almost 1 year, my students regularly get “veut” and “va” mixed up. “Voulons” and “allons” aren’t even on the radar….
This describes my level two kids. Mainly bc most don’t care, with parts of their family in Mexico or on the verge of being split up, with most living in poverty.
So I certainly don’t blame them for not showing up bright and happy in French class. And the rich kids, same thing, but with a different set of equally lethal threats to their mental and physical well being ramming up the side of their innocent young heads every day.
So your point, Anne, in support of the thread here – the need for much more time to get the kids the real gains, gains that cannot possibly happen in the real time we have – is appreciated.
This topic is new, really. I doubt if it is being discussed elsewhere in educational circles.
Look, y’all, this is serious. We can’t do what we are trying to do in the time we have. This is insane.
Anne,
Give yourself a break. I understand your frustration and I think it stems from teaching French for the 1st year, and perhaps from not being able to really gauge what’s easily acquired versus what takes longer in this language. Some sounds and structures just take a bit longer to recognize auditorily, such as those you mentioned . You are able to do that in German because you taught it for so long and German is closer to English than French is.
This is the first time you teach French and the roadblocks you are experiencing are TOTALLY normal. I can recall those days filled with doubts as to whether I could really do this kind of work and I remember feeling the same way you feel now. I still have those feelings sometimes.
The fact that your kids are mixing up va and veut is totally normal and PREDICTABLE. These are new sounds for them and those sounds are almost indistinguishable to an american ear at least.
Remember you are training their ear to pick up totally new sounds. It takes time. Probably more time than it took than when you were teaching German. They just need to hear it more, that ‘s all . Remember how many hours native speakers get and look at how many hours we have with our kids.
I too have kids in French 2, just like Ben who still can’t tell the sounds of va versus veut apart, and there are some who are able to .
Rate of acquisition varies form student to student, plus motivation as we’ve mentioned a lot is soooo important. To me that is the main factor impeding on their learning and honestly I don’t know how to tackle that one.
As for allons and voulons, I can tell you that that is either late acquired and takes much more input. Perhaps b/c we don’t use nous as often in classrooms and also in real settings.
Let’s be realistic here, we CANNOT get them even close to fluency in 4 years. It is not a herculean task, it’s just an impossible one in 400 hours of instruction . We just have to adjust our expectations and give them a love for the language hoping they ‘ll continue with it.
Adjust what your learning outcomes for your kids are based on that reality and then you can reclaim your mental health.
I m not sure how to tackle the issue of dealing with kids that will take the AP or IB exam . Ben talked about it, and I think too that it is the biggest hypocrisy and lie to think we can get them to take that exam and do well on it, expect for a few 4%. And since I don’t know how to play that AP/IB game I can’t comment on that.
But that will be my main challenge next year as I will too have those classes.
But seriously, don’t be discouraged. I do want to offer practical tips I have found that may work for you in those two situations. Let’s talk.
Great advice, Sabrina. It’s like, with me right now, I am finally appreciating that I can’t get my kids to where I (used to, until now) expect them to be. It’s a big change.
It’s like when I ran track and cross country in college, as if I were training to one day run a 2 minute mile. It is physically impossible by about 1:45 for a person to do that. There is a limit to what can be accomplished.
I knew that to be true in track, and it kept my goals realistic, but the bright promise of CI has skewed our vision of what can be done IN SCHOOLS. We are impossibly trying to reach unrealistic goals that make corporations money and make feed administrative egos. I’m finally getting that! That’s some major MAJOR new knowledge there!
We DON’T have realisitic goals, and I see that poisonous thought embedded in what you said, Anne. Be careful. Do not question yourself and your work. I know from seeing you teach your Hogs and from using your materials, the best of the best, what kind of teacher you are – simply the best. Deal.
Sabrina, your comments are really good:
“Let’s be realistic here, we CANNOT get them even close to fluency in 4 years. It is not a herculean task, it’s just an impossible one in 400 hours of instruction . We just have to adjust our expectations and give them a love for the language hoping they ‘ll continue with it.
Adjust what your learning outcomes for your kids are based on that reality and then you can reclaim your mental health.”
Anne! Oh no! I totally relate to what you are feeling. I can’t offer with any intellectual certainty any advice or specific strategy. I am also suffering from that crappy feeling that I have failed a certain group because they seem not to “hear” anything except for the grade. It is sickening for sure. And I can see how “easy” it would be to go back to the book, in terms of all that external stuff. But you would still suffer internally, knowing that you are not being authentic.
I like to read Ben’s frequent posts on mental health and this has to be a priority. I’ll echo Ben in saying don’t question yourself. Do not question yourself. Talk to Sabrina for sure. She will have great advice and strategies.
Know that we are all behind you.
Anne,
I am so sorry to hear about this. What a yucky year!!!
If anyone can do it, you can…
With you in spirit,
Leigh Anne
I’m glad you addressed this again, Ben. It’s a problem for me. Like Robert, the classes in which I’m most likely to use untargeted English (I like that term for it!) are the groups (or days) in which the kids are squirrely, off-task, chatty, not listening well, etc. I generally use English to bring them back to the point. Should I stop doing that and correct them in the target language? I use the classroom rules that are posted sometimes already. I could stop using English & just point. I think sometimes I use English because I see the lack of understanding on their eyes if I speak in Chinese when they aren’t really listening (and I don’t think it’s about comprehension, it’s about listening). Using English at those times sometimes seems more effective at breaking through their haze of chatty inattention. But I resent it. What happens if I drop English at all those times?
On the other hand, I’m also increasing the structure and plan for brain breaks as summer approaches. I’m writing them in my lesson plans. They need the break more and they also need more structure or things deteriorate. Today it’ll be “head, shoulders, knees, & toes”.
Diane
you wrote: “I think sometimes I use English because I see the lack of understanding on their eyes if I speak in Chinese when they aren’t really listening (and I don’t think it’s about comprehension, it’s about listening).”
You are right! it’s NOT about comprehension, but b/c they are not listening.
Or they are not listening with the intent to understand. Either they tune out,
or they are in overload mode, or they lack the motivation to listen with the intent to understand. Reminds me not to forget frequent brain breaks.
The kids are not in a fight or flight response mode like they would be if they were immersed in a foreign country and HAD to learn to communicate or else sink. Our kids know they can fake it for 50 or 90 minutes and then they’ll be in safe territory again with English/Spanish . So unless they are really motivated to listen with the intent to understand, or really interested in what we are saying (but how many home run stories can we possibly get?), then there is not much we can do but keep on trying for next time when they are not tuned out or overloaded or unmotivated.
“Acceptance doesn’t mean resignation; it means understanding that something is what it is and that there’s got to be a way through it.”
Sorry, I pushed the submit button too fast Diane, the quote in the last line was from Michael J. Fox.
Thanks, Sabrina. I need this kind of gracious reminder!
I am not one to give advice on that. It is an individual decision for each of us as to how to react when they can’t focus. My inclination is to go to R & D and get the train going down those sure tracks.
More boring? Yes. Much less effort for me? Yes.
Fighting them trying to get them going with a story, no I won’t do that. R & D looms bigger and bigger in my idea of how to deal with those strangely sad squirrely days that we experience all too often esp. now at this time of year.
Is it possible to even begin to discuss what realistic goals should look like in our classrooms? I, like Anne, continually beat myself up over what I’m leaving out and what’s not even on the radar. Maybe this summer some of us French teachers could collaborate…
Andrea at the risk of sounding way “out there” – which I admit to being – I see this question as another manifestation of that “teacher feeling” that, since we work in schools, we have to “plan”, “do something”, “target something”, “make a curriculum”.
Even when we have moved deeply into understanding the pulse of CI instruction, it is something that sneaks into our thinking. Most people would say that that is a good thing. After all, we are teachers – we must have targets and goals!
However, and I can only represent my own opinion here, it is fully impossible for me to dicuss what realistic goals might look like. It would cause me brain cramps when in class if I had to do that. I would become instantly boring with some target in my head, and, worse, I would bore myself in my own class.
It makes me think of Krashen. He might actually agree with my stance on this, possibly, in the sense that he has shown that our brains don’t create language goals, in favor of letting the brain decide what it takes in and what it rejects and absorbs during sleep as per his Natural Order of Acquisition hypothesis.
Because he is a gentleman, he would defer to us on this point, knowing that we work in schools and so we have school experience in real classrooms. But I would defer back to him and his research on this point.
Either Krashen’s research applies fully to what we do or it doesn’t. I can’t do Krashsen half way in my own philosophy of language teaching. Either we acquire in a natural, unknown to the conscious planning mind, or we don’t. If we do, we don’t plan. I can see the possibility of some strongly worded responses to that point, but what the hey, right?
I have always been odd man out on this point. I can’t target anything. Right brained me. EXCEPT I target the three structures in a story. That’s the extent of my planning and my targeting in my own use of CI.
Thanks for diverting me back to Krashen. Reading this instantly gave me peace. I’m always trying to remind myself about the natural order – it’s good to “hear” it from you. Thus, my goals are as follows: To stay in the TL, to stay in-bounds, to provide as much personalized CI as possible, and to let the stories drive structure. (And also to be a little more forgiving toward myself.) 🙂
This summer, at the upcoming conference in San Diego (July 9 – 12, right?), I want to learn how to do R & D. It sounds straightforward, but I don’t feel like I am ‘there’ yet.
About the burnout topic…my expectations are low, so I have no problems! Hahaha! Just kidding. But seriously, everything is relative. You all have been doing stories for years! Before jGR and jobs, I could never do stories, so I am just thrilled with my Level I students’ progress. We did 20 Anne Matava stories this year, we all learned and the kids were great (not perfect).
For Level I — In April, I did one story and then three weeks about Paris, in English, and I am fine with that. In May, I plan on doing two more stories, then watching movies for the rest of the year. I don’t like it, but I don’t know what else to do without possibly messing up the French I good vibes that I have treasured this year. Their next year’s teacher (film and food) has no expectations for them, and they know it, so I am in a position to indulge myself.
The AP kids — Now, *they* are burnt out on French, and angry that I tricked them into thinking that they could pass the test. I tried to have a pow-wow with them today, and the pow-wow sucked. I am feeling down about it. They don’t care that most of the kids last year passed. My AP kids feel emotionally vulnerable; they are telling me that they want:
more culture
more grammar
more writing,
more listening
more culture
more speaking
Did I say they are asking for “more culture”
I’m sorry — how does one teach ‘culture,’ anyway?
So, am I burned out? Yes and no!
The core of R & D is simple – translate into L1, discuss in L2, go paragraph by paragraph. That’s all I mostly do with it. If we do anything more fancy, it takes us a year to read one book, so R & D is for me a very simple and clipped, focused process. I look forward to that discussion with you in SD.
On the point about those AP kids’ attitudes and expections, it is like the doctor who listens to his patients in prescribing treatment. What doctor does that? That’s the glib answer.
The real answer is that those kids can shred our professional defense mechanism like sharks in an instant because that is what they have been taught to do in schools. Challenge and bully until they get their way. Doctors have been awarded respect in our culture, but not teachers. Go figure.
This has come up before here. I don’t think we had an answer to that kind of teen disdain then, and probably won’t now. It’s teen disdain, therefore not based in reality, or, even worse, based in what their parents feel language education should be – getting As in high school and college by becoming experts at doing shitty writing and creating shoddy culture projects.
I guess we have to do what we think is best and, like Napolean Dynamite, just go with our hearts, feel their scorn, and get up the next day and do it again.
We will have to do that until we have made our points in language education, which, as Robert said here yesterday, will not happen anytime soon but WILL happen. Hey, we’re the foot soldiers up front taking the initial shelling. What can we do?
I’ve been trying to have conversations with my 4/AP students that prepare them for language and life after high school. Today we talked in German about which college they are planning to attend and why, what major they will have, and what they plan to do after college. A large number of them plan to continue with German as part of their program – even minoring or having a second major. I hope university doesn’t destroy their love for the language.
Last week I talked about how to continue learning a language without ever sitting in a language classroom again. In addition, I reiterated that my three main goals for the class are 1) for them to have a foundation for continuing to acquire and also be able to have a basic conversation with a native speaker, 2) know how to continue acquiring the language, and 3) still like German enough to want to continue acquiring the language. We also talked about grades, and I admitted that I do not care about grades. One of my students laughed and said, “This is the only class I have in which that is a positive statement.” Apparently most other teachers say that as they gleefully hand out D’s and F’s. If I had my “druthers” I would give every student in the class an A to satisfy the system and then spend my time with the ones who want to acquire.
Today I discussed the California State Testing that’s coming up as well as the AP tests – in German. This week is “Motivation Week”, and each day has a different theme that is supposed to keep students aware of the need to be and do their best: today was “rest up” and wear pajamas; Wednesday is “grab a study buddy and get ready” so dress like a twin – you get the idea. In 4/AP the discussion went very quickly, as I expected it would (since they only have AP). My level 1 classes and my level 3 class went into more depth but covered everything easily with plenty of time to look at the German Soccer League. My infamous level 2 fifth period class didn’t go into nearly as much depth, nor did they discuss all of the things my other classes had, plus we had much less time for soccer at the end of the period. Now I have a choice: I can be frustrated over this class’s inability to focus, maintain rigor and process German; or I can accept that this is where they are and what they can do and be happy that we did as much as we did. I choose #2.
BTW, I really stayed on top of enforcing jGR today. Using the Interpersonal Communication Rubric, my mantra was (in German), “How many conversations do we have in German class?” I simply asked that question until I got the answer: “eine” (one). Then I said, “gut” or “Ja, es gibt nur eine Konversation in der Deutschklasse.” Some students wanted to tell me they hadn’t been talking (not true, of course), but I simply repeated the question until they answered it. Then we went on. I’m exhausted – of course having been at German language immersion camp all weekend doesn’t help – but I feel a lot better about enforcing the discipline at this time of year than I often do. I also noticed that I managed to make it their problem rather than mine. (This is in reference to a class I had in which the professor had a unit on “whose problem is it?” The students became more bothered by my insistent question that I was for having to ask it, and that’s a good thing. They even started bugging each other.)
This is all probably Off Topic, but I wanted to share what was happening.
…I hope university doesn’t destroy their love for the language….
Ask Matava about that one. Not a good report.
Robert, this is very helpful to me in relation to my own (disappointing behavior & attitude & progress) 7th grade class:
“Now I have a choice: I can be frustrated over this class’s inability to focus, maintain rigor and process German; or I can accept that this is where they are and what they can do and be happy that we did as much as we did. I choose #2.”
See, I need to choose #2 also. They are making progress, especially the ones willing to engage with positive attitude in class.
Take it from a non-French teacher…the aural difference between va and veut is about the same as the difference between still and stale…minimal!!!!! It is obviously a late-acquired piece…for whatever reason. Don’t ever give up….just keep going. In this results-driven society it is so difficult, BUT, what we believe in is the infinite value of the here and now on the now and later. Go Slow. Dig Deep. Savor. Resist the urge to speed up. Breathe. Because we don’t truly understand how the brain works, and because each human brain is on it’s own particular schedule, teaching for acquisition means we never really know how close we are to the finish line. We could be only millimeters away.
with love,
Laurie
And TPR those verbs when they happen even if you have to do each one 5000 times. That is my main goal for next year. To gesture each verb when it happens.
Thank you for bringing this up. This has been my favorite TPRS conversation this Spring…
Ben, I get confused when you write about how CI is impossible in schools with such finality. What do you mean when you say that, when you are going in and speaking French with students every day, and when it seems like for so many years you have had students succeed in so many ways? Do you mean that they aren’t fluent speakers by the end of high school? Or that teachers are burning out from frustration?
Ben will certainly weigh in with his own answer, but something that everyone should know about his posts is that Ben uses this blog as a sort of “stream-of-consciousness” writing to help clarify his thoughts. He will write mutually contradictory statements at different times, depending on what is going through his mind, what he has just experienced, and whether he is feeling optimistic or pessimistic at the moment.
With that said, I think the conflict and concern that Ben is expressing deals with Krashen’s hypotheses and statements in their purest form. Given the insatiable desire of the overseers of educational services for data, use of their favorite prescribed “best practices”, and performance data, it becomes (nearly) impossible to engage in pure Comprehensible Input that takes the interests of the student(s) and constructs the social and linguistic interaction in the moment around them. That is diametrically opposed to the demands by administrators that daily objectives, agendas, lesson plans, and standards being met be posted in advance of the lesson (and prepared days or weeks in advance – or even determined by the book that was printed years ago), that teachers assess student “performance” (read, output in the form of speaking and writing) from the earliest days of the course beginning in the beginning year of instruction, and that students be prepared to take and pass (preferably with a 5) the AP exam within a four-year “course of instruction”. [Have fun with that compound-complex sentence :-p] Every teacher I know, including those of us who have “successful CI programs”, makes compromises to be able to survive in the school setting.
Just my take on it, anyway.
Thank you Robert it is an important point to make. OK my comments turned into a ramble. Shit. Oh well. I’m a ramblin’ man. Don’t read it – it’s too long.
Indeed, CI doesn’t work for exactly the reasons he mentioned, Angie. He had to go into detail to convince his readers in that second paragraph. Only when you consider clearly all those things (read them again) can you appreciate the dark and oppressive negative mental mass that we face every day in trying to do this work.
So it can’t work. We walked into what we thought was supposed to be a party with friends to celebrate life and it turned out we walked into the annual conference of Anger Data Systems, a subsidiary of the Judgement Company.
I have figured out many other ways to make CI work for me beyond stories because stories required too much biting and wrestling and my ass was getting chewed up by the Three Steps. I hated the fact that only Blaine knew this stuff and we all had to go and pay him a lot of money every summer to learn from him.
This stuff should be free for all to benefit from and one day this site will be, when it is safer, open to all discussion from everywhere. And I love it that many in this group are now starting to share it with others. And David got that award in Whittier today and Bob is going to have to hire a secretary to handle all his bookings and Grant is doing the CI Shuffle in MN and Sabrina is becoming an authentic force with deeply accurate insights and skip is keeping the fires burning in NE and the list goes on and on.
My own ideas in response to the sealed box that was TPRS were cool, very cool, and very simple, and it turned out they worked for others, so I made the hard decision to try to share them via the internet, and got blasted for that. Then we became private and I am close to full deletion of people without bios, and so even with some people thinking I am self promoting, I talk the talk here and even walk the walk sometimes, and I know what my motivation is in this work.
But I walk the walk no more or less than any others among us in this remarkably honest group of teachers whom I have grown to love and respect and, like you and Jeff, Angie, deeply admire for what you two endured this year.
I keep this site going even though I know that CI can’t work in classrooms because children are suffering. They are going into grammar classes where witches and warlords are making them feel stupid. They are being given one more reason each day to think that life sucks and can anyone say Adam Lanza?
Il y a des millions d’années que les fleurs fabriquent des épines. Il y a des millions d’années que les moutons mangent quand même les fleurs. Et ce n’est pas sérieux de chercher à comprendre pourquoi elles se donnent tant de mal pour se fabriquer des épines qui ne servent jamais à rien ? Ce n’est pas important la guerre des moutons et des fleurs? (Le Petit Prince, Ch. 7)
Kids are suffering at the hands of adults, and I frankly don’t give a rat’s ass how well-intentioned those adults are. That is the core operative driving force for me and why I try to make CI work in my classroom even though it can’t, for the reasons Robert provided.
OK I went off and didn’t answer the question, but I did. The fact is CI can’t work in classrooms as per Robert’s explanation but we are going to make it work anyway. It’s like the WWI fighters in the trenches knowing that they had a small chance of making it out of them alive, and fought anyway, because it was the right thing to do. An overly dramatic image? You should know Angie. Or we could do it the old way and make kids feel stupid, I guess.
I personally am of the opinion that Adam Lanza probably didn’t like his language classes in high school and nobody challenged him to show up for class as an actual human being. Perhaps if a language teacher had called mom about his F his sophomore year and tried to explain jGR to her, maybe some kind of dim light bulb would have gone off in his mind. When are we teachers going to take responsibility for our actions?
And maybe that one dim ass little light bulb would have put out just enough light, however, to prevent the loss of those in that classroom some of whose arms were completely separated from their bodies by Adam. It’s just a guess, but do we know what might have happened if Adam had just one teacher he could trust and say he liked because he had been treated with respect by just that one teacher? Too much, Ben? Too out there? Perhaps.
And yet as I write this I am sitting about one city block from where Eric and Dylan took out those kids in Columbine so long ago, a school my son goes to now, so I live in that cloud. So it must have affected me. And yes the foreign language department is right next to the cafeteria, thank you for asking. And I have presented on CI in that wing to all ten of them and I know what they still don’t do. All ten of them? Yes. All ten of them. Still today. Fourteen years and 31 mass shootings later.
Too out there, Ben? I think you are getting too far out there, Ben! Aren’t you getting a little carried away linking school shootings to bad instruction in languages? I guess. If you say so. Maybe you are right. And maybe your work doesn’t really count much either.