I would like to make a rather off base, probably ill-advised comment today about my purposes in creating this PLC. Whether anyone agrees with it, or whether it is politically correct, I don’t care. It’s my blog. After reading what some of my heroes, the readers of this blog, are going through in their buildings right now, I just have to say it.
Here is my statement:
We are now transitioning from a way of teaching languages in American schools that didn’t work to a way that does work. Sadly and to the detriment of lots of people, the people who are exploring this new way of doing things are being met with incredible opposition. This is not anything new for new ideas that come into decaying societies, but it still sucks.
However, I now say with some degree of venom and a bitchy edge that has never left me in 38 years in this profession, that people who continue to insist on teaching children in a way that is not helpful to them, a way that, indeed, makes them feel stupid, are now fully in the crosshairs of some magnificent agents of change.
I am talking about eople like Robert Harrell and Jody Noble and Laurie Clarcq and Eric Herman and Catharina Greenberg and Sean Lawler and Chris Stolz and Michael Coxson and Alisa Shapiro and John Piazza and Diane Neubauer, to name just a few. These people are doing important work on behalf of children in a society that seems to have lost its way in terms of doing what is best for children.
These people will not let up and they will not be stopped, for they are doing righteous work on behalf of what in my view is a divinely inspired kind of change right now. This could be the worst part we are in right now, and some really good people are getting badly beat up by some real idiots.
So I would like to formally state here that I will lay my life down, if necessary, on behalf of this change. I will work myself into a deep pit if I have to in order to find ways to learn how to teach kids languages in a way that builds them up and makes them want to master the language some day later in their lives.
I want my work to help make fluency in another language truly possible for kids in schools, because they were taught so well when they were young. That is a lofty goal because it is one that generally uplifts humanity, which is a good objective to have in one’s life.
I will not allow students to be hurt by bad teaching anymore. I will not attack these people who teach in the old way. Those misguided days are over and I now publicly and formally apologize to all whom I may have offended as a result of my simply following my passion to learn how to master comprehensible input.
I would like to learn how to use comprehensible input even half as well as those whose names I mentioned above and many more as well, like Julie Soldner and all the young rock stars in Denver Public Schools, who basically kick ass.
I celebrate the members of this community and all the others out there in the greater comprehensible input community worldwide. I celebrate the incredible work of Stephen Krashen and Blaine Ray. I am done with putting up with a really bad status quo.
If you are teaching in the old way, know that your days are numbered. You will not be attacked, but you will be out-taught. We mean it. Open your hearts to the change. It is here now. It is happening. Teach according to known reseach or get out of the profession.
There. I feel better. Now I can go about my day.