Hi Ben,
This is La from Madison, Wisconsin. Sorry for the procrastination on this and not sending you my bio sooner…
Here’s a bit about myself… I am not a “4%,” in fact I was a brat, one of those students that teachers don’t want to see in their classes. Well, long story short, I was sent to a village in China to learn a lesson, and I did learn a lesson. When I got there, I didn’t speak a word of Mandarin Chinese or the dialect of the region. I was in a “silent mode” no less than three months before I started to say anything more than just saying yes and no. I lived in the village for about 7 months and was learned to communicate fairly well before I decided to leave the village to learn Mandarin Chinese in a city. (People only use dialect so I didn’t really learn any Mandarin then) I had a very positive experience living and learning Mandarin in China. I truly believe that learning/knowing a different language is no less powerful than knowing how to send a robot to Mars or doing brain surgery. It changed my life and made me what I am now. I hope to be more useful by teaching a language…
Currently I have been quite overwhelmed with the work requirements for second/first year teachers like myself.
Last year I taught a 5-6 grade exploratory program, 11th and 12th IB program–two extremely different programs. It was my survival year of beginning a teaching career; I just tried to keep my head above the water. Around February of last year, I heard about TPRS workshop by Katya in Milwaukee, so I attended the one and a half day workshop. Everything just clicked. I decided to use it right away, even though it probably wasn’t the “right way”. The kids loved it though. I don’t think I did what I was supposed to. I noticed they seemed bored sometime, but for the most part the students liked it. Too bad I only had 3 months to explore with the method before the end of the school year. But when I asked them to write a letter to the in-coming students, they mentioned how fun it was when we did the story. This is NOT a success story of me using TPRS, as I’m struggling everyday trying to use the method. However, it confirmed my gut feelings that it worked…somehow. I attended the TPRS conference in St. Louis this summer and still think I NEED to learn more.
Fast forward to this year… I got a different teaching position teaching at 2 different districts both still in Wisconsin near Madison. I teach Mandarin high school, level one, for both districts. It is the first year that they are offering Mandarin. One of the schools, Middleton High School, is fairly large with about 2000 students, and I think the other school, Waunakee Community High School, has about 1200 students. At Middleton I have one class of 24 students. At Waunakee I have 2 classes. In one class I have 4 students, and in the other class I have 5 students, plus one distance learning student. I have been using TPRS/CI methods. This works really well with my smaller classes. I’m still struggling a bit with my larger class.
So I have a fresh start, but a lot of work as I have to fulfill first year teacher requirements, the PDP, the class observations from both districts, mentor meetings, taking classes, as well as developing the curriculum for levels one and two . I’m not sure if I’m still sane… I don’t use textbook. I am writing my own stories for the students. I’m still learning the “how to” for TPRS/CI. I’m also still learning how to assess students. I have no idea how to write a curriculum with TPRS/CI base, though I’m hopeful that I’ll get it someday…
Sorry for the long-winded email. Feel free to edit where you think it’s appropriate.
Cheers!
La