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New Training Model
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16 thoughts on “New Training Model”
will be interesting to see how this works. I imagine there will be problems…admin forcing ppl to do pro-d is never the best situation…but it’s good when you can say to the non-innovators: “you’ve had the same training I have.”
And it’s possibly a selfish move. Retirement has so far kept me out of touch with those people who can be so noxious, think of John Bracey’s colleagues. I don’t want to even be around them any more. And I don’t have to. Susan Gross felt that very few of those she presented to over the years even got CI going in their classrooms. It was too easy for them to do it the old way, in spite of the obvious. If she can’t convince a teacher to move into the 21st century, no one can. I have earned this rest, it is fantastic (it feels as if God is handing out happiness to me with both hands every day), there is ample time to reflect on my life, read what you guys talk about here, ride my bike, cook Paleo, do a little worrying about some of the new people who are getting beat up right now as they get their sea legs under them. Those are the people I want to work with; they and the veterans here who are my heroes. I just don’t want to see those people. The groups in East St. Louis and Raleigh clearly have a strong leader. They are in the thick of the fight now. Let them get their knuckles bruised. I’m out. I love that. It was a ten round heavy weight fight, and now I get to rest. I don’t think y’all know what you are going through. But somebody has to, or the kids get screwed.
What you describe from a departmental angle is what is happening at my school. It is really, really encouraging and fun.
Sounds like a good way to get buy in, build your reputation, and, might I even say, establish a mystique about yourself, Ben. Alternatively, you could accept any ol’ invitation to present a workshop and as a result, you’d end up trying to sell yourself more and appearing desperate.
You got some backbone, mon ami!
Sean when you get into your sixties you will see that there is no one to fear, nothing to be afraid of, that most of the schools are being run by people who might as well be running a plumbing company for all they know about language teaching, and that the worst thing to do for your career is to buy into the idea that conflict even exists. It really doesn’t.
There is not conflict, there is simply a way of doing things that people once did that worked to keep children quiet and obedient in their desks, separated from each other in a competitive model, and now the time for doing things in that way is over. The flat world folks (see link below) can’t really be in conflict with us because their arguments are no longer tenable, never were actually, and are riddled with speciousness and misinformation about what is best for children.
So we end up learning when we get older that there was never a fight. The blood on my sword and shield miraculously disappeared the moment I retired. Now my plan is to just orchestrate my time around what I know to be right, and that is what this new workshop plan is for me.
I intend to go where the conflict is not, just as I have done with this private blog/PLC/training site. If the avoidance of conflict idea means setting up my future workshops in this way, then that is how I will do it, because my mental health is more important than going around trying to teach a bunch of teachers that the world is in fact no longer flat.
I am not making an argument that others in the profession do this, I am only speaking for myself – it is what I need to do for me at this point in my life. Others who like to fight should present everywhere they can, imitating Susie’s incomparable fearless example – there never was anyone like her in our community and there will never be anyone like her again. She has helped countless people get better at this. She took no prisoners.
For me, the question has become, “Why even talk to those people anymore?” It’s too stressful. They will change when they see ships going around the world and not disappearing, if the laughter and positive energy at the end of our classes doesn’t convert them before that happens.
I have changed my belief to where I think that the change we all talk about so often here will occur at the department level in the future, as teachers like John Bracey force change in their buildings without even intentionally trying. First John in his department and then one other goes to a workshop and jumps in and like that. The others observe what is happening and rethink their positions, bless their hearts, and either quit of change, in order to keep their jobs.
I know that this is actively happening right now in departments around the country; there is more such local fomenting (which carries the meaning in my mind of inciting growth, not necessarily conflict) than there was, say, a year ago.
It is so nice to dismantle the word conflict from my mind, even. Laurie has done that too, a long time ago, but she was way ahead of us all along, n’est-ce pas?
Related: https://benslavic.com/blog/the-round-world-group/
I love the shift of perspective / attention out of the conflict / pain body. When I first truly connected with my inner CI warrior back in 2011, I came out charging. I was Mel Gibson in Bravehart! Now I’m kind of like “meh…it’s not my job to convince anyone of anything. I really want to just do my work and that will ripple organically outward and speak for itself.” Not saying that either of these extremes is “the way.” I don’t know “the way” other than to make an effort every day to connect, and to give myself a break from all the “should-ing.”
Now I find myself in an interesting situation. I am preparing to present at NHAWLT at the end of October. On a gut level, I decided to do this because I want to meet other teachers in NH since I have been isolated in a very small school for a whole lifetime and I have no idea what anyone near me is doing. I am interested in meeting teachers and departments who are curious and reflective and want to explore. I believe they are out there. Somewhere.
I have no illusions that I am any kind of expert. I am where I am on the continuum of learning. I am not slick and polished. I don’t wear suits. I will try hard to make myself wear shoes that day 😉 I think there is value in seeing a presentation by a “regular teacher who is not a slick presenter.” As much inspiration and energy I get from seeing the rockstars, I also believe it’s energizing to see an ordinary person, because it is easier to make the leap. You can watch someone like me and think “Oh. This really is no big deal. I think I could actually do this myself!”
Last March I had my first experience presenting in Maine with Skip. I had lots of “oops” moments, which I like to think is good, since we all have “oops” moments in class. Whether a tech glitch or “oops just kidding I meant to have you gesture!” it definitely makes for an authentic insider view of my classroom practice.
So, that was an extremely long preamble to my request. I’m in the planning process, making an outline and realized I would love some help in keeping my presentation simple and uncluttered. Below is my 50-word proposal. I intend to do a brief intro / bio and then jump into the demo because I don’t want to talk about the process. I want people to feel the power of it. Then after the demo we can talk about what we noticed, ask questions, etc. I am doing the demo in Haitian Creole (not a native speaker and feeling quite rusty but oh well) because it is the only language I could comfortably demo in besides Spanish and French.
I’d love advice on how to break up the 2 hour time slot. I’d like to do the student jobs, have a quiz, do a short reading lesson and maybe even a dictee. I don’t know if that is too much to do? Should the demo itself be broken up like I do in class with brain breaks? Like 15 mins in TL then some movement or something? Total of 45 mins in TL or should I try for 60? This is not a lot of time so cards and PQA? story script? micro-mini stories like y’all have been posting recently? These are potentially things that I will get bogged down trying to decide. I am good at the non-scripted-ness part, but not so good at choosing which activity to showcase this.
How much time do I leave at the end for debrief, Q&A, etc? When I go to conferences I like to have a student experience and also have some time to observe / reflect from my teacher perspective.
Thanks in advance for any thoughts and suggestions 🙂
Jen, did you notice at least 2 presentation topics at the “Comprehensible Input” NHAWLT conference are on the subjunctive?! Certainly seems contradictory: CI and the subjunctive.
This sounds like some stuff that Bryce did, only about five years ago. Just sayin’… What Bryce was doing was trying to show how we can target certain grammar points with CI. I think what these folks are probably doing is dropping the buzz word CI to show how CI can support their grammar curricula. That’s some sad shit right there.
People do not get it when Krashen says: “There is no grammatical syllabus.” !!!!!
And really, it’s one of the biggest, if not the biggest finding in SLA research, that there is an inalterable natural order for some morphology and developmental sequences for syntax. Researchers (Pienemann and Ellis) have both tried and failed to alter the order and sequences with traditional instruction. Jeeeesh. That’s what led Pienemann to the “Teachability Hypothesis” based on 2 ideas.
1) If it’s not at i+1 then it won’t be acquired.
2) If it’s i+1, then form-focused instruction can work.
As I’ve seen Krashen and Truscott point out: There’s a lot of evidence for #1, but not #2.
This is such a HUGE finding that every FL teacher should be aware of it. How does anyone make sense of teaching grammar and acknowledge all the research on natural orders and developmental sequences?! Especially those traditional teachers who think they can control when grammar is mastered (AR verbs by October, irregulars by November, etc.). I know Ellis is for the weak interface position, saying that knowledge of grammar can aid acquisition, e.g. by making things more comprehensible. But that implies a minimal role for grammar and requires there still be a lot of CI.
…it’s one of the biggest, if not the biggest finding in SLA research, that there is an inalterable natural order for some morphology and developmental sequences for syntax….
Inalterable because the process is simply out of the reach of the conscious mind. When the conscious mind tries to get in where it doesn’t belong, it perverts the natural process that so many teachers don’t think exists. All we have to do is do CI. What is a well behaved class? It is a class in which the unconscious minds of the students are arranging grammar rules out of reach of conscious analysis. That sets up speech output, which is also not under the control of the conscious mind. The students focus on the message using the conscious mind, and their unconscious minds arrange all the grammar as the Main Bad Ass Grammar Dude of Language Acquisition. I agree with you Eric. It is a fact that is conveniently ignored by most teachers in our field, bless their hearts.
Ben, I’d love to have this posted and asked to the group: How do those teachers who know about the inalterable natural orders and developmental sequences defend a grammatical syllabus? Do they deny the existence of these orders/sequences? I really want to know. What is the justification? We’d have to also ask: Why? Why do these syllabi and textbooks try to alter the natural order? The only thing in their defense: I know we don’t have much of the morphology and syntax order mapped and most of the research has been on English orders. But the heterogeneity and different acquisition rates of a class would imply that you can’t standardize grammar sequences! You’re so right, Ben, that this is strong evidence of it being an unconscious process!
Yes, I want to know this too. We are the ones who are always put on the spot to show where the evidence is, yet where is the evidence that the grammar syllabus / texbook “scope and sequence” works?
My opinion Eric and jen is that it has to do with the nature of the mind and the ego. Teachers who fail to grasp the way language acquisition really occurs are not to be blamed; they just want to be useful and so when Krashen says that the entire process doesn’t occur anywhere near their point of power (conscious analysis), they kind of glaze over that part and continue as they were taught, because it makes them feel that they are in control. Humans want so much to be in control of everything! They read Krashen, and his work requires that they loosen control and just speak in a loving way to their students and it will all be done naturally out of sight, but that is too much for them and so they “forget” that part of Krashen’s work, if they ever read it in the first place. Those who choose to embrace CI have a kind of strength of spirit to accept that which they cannot control and they just decide to go ahead and learn to just speak the language to their students and give it all up to what is really a great and majestic process that can only work, however, if it is left alone. That’s what I think it is, their inability (no blame) to grasp that man should not mess around with completely natural processes. That’s what I think it is but I will formally post the question to see what the group thinks. The main thing for us is to let that go, or we exhibit hypocrisy in the sense that we are asking them to trust something outside of their control (the role of the unconscious in learning a language), while ourselves not trusting that whether they change or not is something outside of our control. The very hard lesson for me over all these years doing this work has been to let go of my very strong desire to bash them up side the head for their ignorance and disrespect of the way children really do learn languages, and to accept and trust that I cannot change them. I always have to keep in mind that I can only keep working on changing myself to become a better and more disciplined (to stay in the language and not go out of bounds) and loving teacher, so that they leave my class hopeful about life and not tired and hopeless, which is what the old way of learning a language did to kids.
Eek! Yes! I finally looked through all the sessions. Snore. Jk. Well, not really. It looks like for legit CI-ers it is you, me, Allison Litten from VT, and Tom Harkin…YAY! I can’t wait to meet Allison and Tom. I am pretty sure Allison is on here, bc I think I got books from her a couple years ago when we did that free reading book swap 🙂
I noticed one of the workshops is called “From Comprehensible Input to Pushed Output.” Huh???
Jen I would like to use the term Micro-Mini Stories that you coined above, as opposed to Really Short Stories. I will credit you on that when I use the term and also credit the person who brought the idea to us in the first place, James Hosler. I will have an answer to your question above by Wednesday.
No credit needed. I’m sure I did not coin that. It just surfaced from the recesses. CI right? I must have heard that a million times and then it spilled out of my mouth unconsciously. Maybe in a fashion context? Micro-mini skirt?