A reprint from 2013:
Why would anyone anywhere anytime, let alone we who are innocently trying in the midst of an almost impossible situation (education in our schools at this time), doubt or find fault with anyone else? There is no room for that.
We must have one goal and that is to be in harmony with those around us and in particular those who have courageously stepped up to go into schools on a daily basis in this impossible time and try to make something real happen against impossible odds, when society has become so robotic and so unkind.
We must support each other. We cannot afford to do anything but support each other right now. The situation in education is critical. It is more than critical. It is nearing implosion. Those with all the money who want to make it work along the lines of a corporation don’t get that it is now failing so badly that no amount of money pumped into the system could save it.
For many teachers in our PLC teaching using CI has become a last hope. Many of us are now only looking for a way out of the classroom, because of all the darkness, the absurd daily top-down insults and judgment and backbiting that is now cascading down on us from the very people who are supposed to be helping us help the kids. It has become chaos.
Basing one’s language instruction on comprehension based instruction used to be a kind of cool thing that many of us looked at as a kind of interesting, slightly bizarre, thing. But as the last twenty years have gone by, instruction based on comprehensible input has increased in energy from a little bit of wind here and there to a big whirlwind – a windstorm – and now people are at each others’ throats about the best way to teach our kids. Many teachers can’t take it.
It is because the old guard clings to the old ways. They know about the 90% Use Position Statement of ACTFL. They know how the National Standards are now based not on the four skills but on the Three Modes of Communication, especially the Interpersonal Skill.
They also know that, of the five C’s, the only one that really counts, the only one that should be focused on in a language classroom, is Communication. That is because of the vast number of hours needed to get to fluency as per what Krashen has shown us.
The old guard knows on some level that Culture can be taught in other classes, and they know that, without the standard of Communication, the target culture cannot begin to be grasped anyway. They know that the three other C’s don’t count for shit. But they refuse to change their teaching despite those facts.
Cherry Creek School District, Douglas County Schools, Jefferson County Schools, all in Colorado in the Denver area teach languages in the old way and many of their teachers don’t even know what is happening in the field. They are about forty years behind what we now know about how people acquire languages.
A few of the teachers in those districts, and this is really happening nationwide, are really suffering as they sift through what they see being done and what they know is best for kids. Some of these teachers are constantly in real mental difficulty about this. This makes them hurt emotionally almost every day. So they want to leave. Who can blame them? It is more than they can bear on a daily basis. But they never bring that up, not even here on the PLC, where we have worked so hard for so long to build trust in each other.
For some, comprehension based instruction is the ONLY THING separating them from the door. They are finding it simply too difficult to stay in their buildings. It is such a challenge mentally and emotionally to be opposed so strongly by such ignorance from so many sides, by administrators, other teachers, and even students. And people are quitting the field right and left. Which affects income. Which affects family stability. Which affects children. It’s always the children who get the worst end of it.
So we cannot afford, within the world of comprehension based instruction, to develop enmity between each other. We cannot afford to find fault with each other. We cannot criticize each other. We must support each other and not argue. If we don’t like someone’s politics, we put that judgment aside to work together for the betterment of kids. We even pray:
Dear Lord:
When I go in to work with my students tomorrow, please remind me, as many times as is necessary, that I am there with them first to praise them, who are Your creations and nothing less. Remind me that my brothers and sisters in teaching this way, this praiseful way of teaching, are out there, experiencing the same difficulties that I am, and that we are all trying to focus on our students first and only on the language that we are teaching them second.
We have decided to teach this way and so now we ask for Your help in this our endeavor, because we feel it is the best thing to do for us and for the kids.
Please help us to praise our students, and thus praise You who made them, by putting and keeping the focus of our attention entirely on them. Please give us the strength to do that, which seems so odd at times.
Please help us to laud their greatness, real or imagined, as we talk about them in class, without speaking disingenuously so that our praise doesn’t seem sincere. We know well that they will see if we are merely acting, in their incredible perceptive genius that You have given them. Help us to activate that genius, oh Lord! I believe that You gave us this method for that reason!
And thank you for giving us a way to teach that is not disingenuous! Just please remind us to speak genuinely to our students. This is so important for us if we are to succeed in bringing this wonderful new idea about teaching, this idea that is Your gift to us, and so help us speak much more about our students than we think is necessary. Help us break through the fear on that one.
Only you can do this, dear Lord. Only You can help us change from a way of doing our work that didn’t reach them to a way that does. Give us those precious little insights during class that are Your way, Your trademark, of letting us know that You are there in the classroom with us, those little messages (are they whispered or how do You do that – are those angels?) from You like:
“…now go over to so-and-so and compare the one you are talking with now to her…!” “…now bring in a new event…!” “…now ask where this happened…!” “…it’s o.k. to laugh now because that really is funny…t’s o.k. to laugh even though you think you are a teacher…!” “…now ask what color his car is!…!”
Those little communications from you show us who the real teacher is. It’s like Your singer Gnarls Barkley sings:
“Come on now, who do you, who do you, who do you think you are? Hah hah hah, bless your soul…..You really think you’re in control?”
There are so many ways that show us vividly how You are there with us during each moment of class, and that remind us how much You Yourself like to play the comprehension game that we play in teaching languages!
Please teach us how to just let it go and just let the language flow by itself, with us being more of a vessel through which the language flows than a teacher. Please help us come to that awareness, a little bit more each day, because nothing happens fast if it’s any good, oh Lord (or so has been my own experience with You).
Please help us to teach slowly enough so that we think we are going too slowly. Only then will we be going slowly enough. And please help us get the focus of our instruction onto the meaning of what we say and not on the words themselves, like we used to do before, because that didn’t work.
Please help us by sending in those angels who have rescued me from the brink in more than a few classes, or however it is that You do that stuff, whenever we are faced with darkness in one of our students. Let us say what you would say to them in that situation. And please help us also in those other fearful moments in class, when we are so exposed and don’t know what to do. Show us what to do in those moments, Lord. Only You can do that.
Thank you, Lord, for providing me with a means to care for my family in a way that is not shaming to me and that gives me peace, finally. Thank you for putting me in Abraham Lincoln High School this year. And please help and protect the parents of my students who are not all in a position to feel creative in their work like I am so fortunate to be, those parents who work three jobs, who are victims of racism every day, and who go to work every day to experience things that people should not experience.
Amen
Related: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bd2B6SjMh_w