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Panning for Gold 2
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23 thoughts on “Panning for Gold 2”
I am going to try and understand this phrase for the rest of the year: “Just hang out with the kids in the language.”
I naturally try to interject too much of myself into what we do. I try to be too funny. I try to take the spotlight. For me it’s mainly about keeping the class focused and keeping up discipline. But I get the point here, Ben: The class will only really care if the students are actually allowed to be funny and interesting themselves.
And even then maybe they won’t care, I guess. We do the best we can.
…And even then maybe they won’t care, I guess….
This is a very subtle point. I think that our students will care when we go slowly enough. I feel deeply that if we go slowly enough and allow enough space in our comprehensible input, then funny things will arise just like flowers appear when they are properly nourished. It just happens and there is no explaining it. Slow nourishes.
I feel that the recent thread on how going excessively slowly leads to the kids feeling permission to be their funny and interesting selves is hugely important. It is like a secret in this work, and something never discussed on this blog before until year.
Yesterday I had the BEST time circling “Juan dances” for the period, following Robert’s lead with doing “plays” for an entire class period and then “plays soccer” the next period. That is radical talk in CI circles. It is new, in my opinion. We’ve never bridged this topic before.
I’ll say it again. The kids show up as the playful and funny and original kids that they really are (and are with their closer friends) when we cut down on the amount of new information we allow into class.
Staying in bounds to an extreme degree is something I never even considered until this year. Going narrow and deep so that narrow and deep make a mineshaft look like the Grand Canyon gives rise to true, honest and artful conversation in L2 in our classes. It can only be termed, as Annemarie says, just plain badass.
On that note, going slowly and all: I’ve found the last two days how important it is to wait for them to give you GOOD cute answers. I used to just accept the first or second suggestion to keep things moving. Not anymore. Now I’ll wait forever, until some kid suggests something that makes at least a few laugh. And I like refusing the first five or so suggestions just to get on their nerves. Then I find they are ready to play for real.
In the interim I can just keep circling all the bad suggestions, about how no, he isn’t there or there or there. WHERE IS HE!?
I actually have had a few classes starting to reject answers that aren’t good enough. I love that I can put “is he in McDonalds?” up for a vote and get a big “NO!” from the class like that’s the lamest thing they have ever heard. Talk about engagement and ownership.
I think you might be right, Ben, that all we have to do is go super slowly.
…now I’ll wait forever, until some kid suggests something that makes at least a few laugh….
We should make a list of all these things for new people. They are the details that make the mojo happen. But they are hard to convey. Yes, wait them out. Feel the burn, as I say.
Another detail is the value of asking “with whom” and “where” to follow the structure which is most often a verb. The combination of some verb with these two questions in particular give sentences like:
…Juan dances in a whale with Nicole (who plays soccer in the whale)….
The chances of staying in bounds with this kind of sentence are very high, and look at the content. It’s not Marie and Pierre in Paris having breakfast in a $157 book. It’s your own Juan and Nicole dancing in a whale. Next is to get Juan up (I’ll try next week but the trust may have to be higher since Juan’s first day with me was yesterday) and TPR that. The word from the class is that in real life Juan is known on Denver’s west side as being a big deal dancer.
But yeah James good point there. Wait. Let the class gain ownership of the answers like with the McDonald’s thing.
Really, this only seems complex.
I think that if we keep it simple and keep the circle small, the long term learning will be greater. I really agree with Ben that keeping the classroom “clutter” both physical and linguistic, will make things much more effective for the students.
And we are honored that Teri Wiechart is in our PLC now. Listen to what she says with both ears if you are new. She is a leader and one reason why NTPRS coaching is such a strong part of that conference each year.
I second that!
It is I, who is honored to be a part of the PLC. I have heard such remarkable things about it. I still have so much to learn and I heard that this is the place for new and unfettered views.
I’ve been cruising through older posts. Thanks to everyone for sharing.
Teri, I joined this PLC in August 2012, just as I was preparing to make my instruction entirely based on CI. I cannot say enough about how wonderful the people and the help I’ve received in this PLC has been for me. I cannot imagine how hard last year would have been! I learned a ton here. And found other CI teachers in Chicago-ish area who’ve met in person twice now.
This notion that no TPRS teachers are actually doing TPRS is, in my opinion, really destructive to teachers who are trying to develop their CI skills in their classrooms. What am I supposed to do with that information? Probably, just give up and go back to beating my kids over the head with the textbook, because at least my classes will be orderly, and my colleagues will respect me for being “rigorous,” and I’ll keep my job (for now), and 96% of students can go take a hike, and I won’t care. Same goes for a fact I heard, that a mixed approach is worse than a traditional grammar-translation approach. Whether or not this information is accurate, think of the effect it has on listeners, earnest, vulnerable teachers who want to do right by their students but lack confidence, authority, and perhaps job security. “Well, forget about it, since I can’t just drop everything I know and go full-bore TPRS.” This is the same thing that is said in some Latin circles: If you are not a fluent Latin speaker with perfect pronunciation of every vowel quantity/accent using words which exemplify classical usage (which may take 10-20 years according to some), you have no place speaking Latin to your students. I was at that session in Vegas, and what I saw was very familiar to me as a Latinist: intimidation and shutting down of others.
So let’s rather turn our energy to what it takes to create a classroom environment in which students and teacher can be their authentic selves, and begin to trust each other, without tolerating any ill-will.
John I think I gave the wrong impression about what Susan said. I failed to include the context of the discussion. In no way did I feel Susan was talking about all the sincere teachers trying to master CI. She was speaking of those who thought of TPRS as something that they could bend into their own view of teaching.
There were a lot of teachers doing that years ago when she made that comment. There are fewer now. Then, in about 2005/2006 and before, the traditional teachers/book users were in the majority and we were thought of as fringe teachers who were cultish and radical. It was hard to be a TPRS teacher then. Very hard.
It started changing for me very slowly in 2007, I feel, when I started making contact with some of the people who are still in this community (then it was just a blog) like Robert Harrell and Jody Noble and Carol Hill and people like that, who are my real heroes.
If not for them, I would have quit the profession, convinced that my foray into comprehensible input was crazy. Truly, I don’t know how Stephen Krashen has put up with the fools to the left and jokers to the right of him for thirty years now.
Most – at least 99% – of teachers before 2005.2006 just didn’t seem to get that TPRS requires a complete transformation on all levels and therefore showed no respect for the method and instead just said that they were “doing TPRS” because it was trendy but in reality did nothing resembling TPRS, hence Susan’s observation to me.
The bending of TPRS/CI into instruction that is far from Krashen, Ray, Gross and Fritze is lessening. I apologize for the confusion.
Related: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8StG4fFWHqg
If I may draw a parallel . . .
In Christianity there is a tension between God’s demands (“Be perfect, just as I am perfect”) and our ability to meet them. This tension is often resolved in some bizarre ways by various groups. Some groups develop hypocrisy to a high degree, pretending to be perfect so that their failure to meet the demands is hidden (but it isn’t really). Some groups soften or warp the demands: “He didn’t really mean it that way.” Some live in constant fear because of the inability to meet all of the demands perfectly right now. My reading of the New Testament is that there is a baseline for what it means to be a Christian. If you don’t meet that baseline, you aren’t a Christian. Beyond that, the emphasis is on direction of life. Where are you headed? Are you becoming more like you ought to be?
I think on a different plane, TPRS practice is a lot like that. There is a certain baseline, and if you don’t meet that baseline, whatever you are doing is not TPRS. But TPRS is really weird, and many people warp it beyond recognition or pretend to do something they do not. However, once you have met the baseline requirement, it’s all about progressing. I’m better at TPRS today than I was five, three or one year ago, but I’m not as good as I will be in three or five years (I hope). Susan Gross’s (and Ben’s) comments were directed at those who don’t meet the baseline requirement yet call themselves TPRS practitioners (just as there are many who call themselves “Christians” but don’t meet the baseline requirement – cf Luke 13 and Matthew 25), not at the ones who are taking their first steps along the road of doing TPRS.
I know from personal experience how that works. Unlike Ben and many others, I did not arrive at TPRS out of desperation nor undergo a complete “conversion experience” all at once and jump into TPRS with both feet. For me, it was a progression. My master teacher when I was getting my credential did a lot of CI and TPRS-like things. So, when I was exposed to TPRS for what it is (My first exposure was genuinely disastrous), I moved that direction. I didn’t immediately drop everything else but gradually shed the non-productive elements. Guess what? I’m still discovering and shedding non-productive elements in what I do. Like language acquisition, acquiring the mindset and skills set for CI is a process that is messy, not easily squeezed into a checklist, and does not develop uniformly along a prescribed timeline. Again like language acquisition, the most important thing is the willingness to engage actively with the process.
Just my tuppence.
^ like ^
Everybody who tries TPRS is gonna screw it up to some extent. I mean even Ben with his zillion years of experience etc probably still makes mistakes.
One thing I know…even bad TPRS– i.e. “what I did last year”– is WAY BETTER than no TPRS. No, I didn’t do enough 1st and 2nd person verb forms, quizzes bla bla bla, but I still saw much greater gains than I ever would have with “comunicative” teaching or whatever.
So when we see a new TPRSer or whatever trying, encouragement can be the only response.
Chris
And I like that response Chris and appreciate the points you make John and Robert.
Honestly, I have never felt that I teach using the method in a way that truly honors its potential. I am no expert and try to say that here and in workshops. This work cannot be learned from experts, although observing Linda Li and the others like Katya and Jason can help tremendously. We must learn this work from ourselves by doing it, really. Coaching is the way to do this. Observing, then being coached. We can read and all that, but how we interpret what we learn is mitigated by who we are as teachers, the “teacher stuff” that we are made of, which is something different for each of us. If that last point is not an advertisement for the method I don’t know what is, especially in these days of mass produced instructional services and data gathering. I wrote books and started this community to learn more, to put into writing the boiling cauldron/soup of what I have been experiencing all these years. Without being able to express my own experience and thoughts somewhere I would have lost it and had to go do some other career because the old way for me was really a kind of torture. Plus, nobody else was writing anything. So let’s clear that up here. We all walk our own path with this work, but, as per the point I made to John and that Robert supported, there is a version of TPRS/CI that is not acceptable and one that does align properly with the research. There is a point where we can go too wide with this stuff. My efforts all these years have been to stand by the side of the road and point the runners in the right direction, the Krashen direction, while trying to keep running myself. As I try to point the runners in the right direction, I know who the ones who go down the road in the Krashen direction are. They are the ones with the passion to reach kids for real in the TL on their faces. The grit and determination to run hard and win. The others, those who take the road more traveled, reveal in their faces a look that I would never want to see in the face of anyone who taught my own children.
Ok, that makes sense. It is important to distinguish those who want to “incorporate” TPRS/CI as a tool in their toolbox, and those who are sincerely trying to put it into practice. And here we see the wisdom of the phrase “your worst day doing TPRS will be better than your best day using G/T.” I fully agree, and my own experience bears this out.
I do think we are still struggling against a mindset and a culture that resists what we do, even in education, and certainly among parents and students who have learned how to play the system, and don’t want the rules changed on them, even if that change is for more acquisition and more fluency. Just today, while my students were doing relatively rote work compiling their own word walls from last year’s vocabulary as a review, one student told me : “This is the best Latin class ever.” But he really struggles with the engagement I ask of them during our Latin conversations and stories.
John,
I totally agree with you. I struggle daily with feelings of inadequacy. There is pressure from students who think they are too good to do this stuff, parents who challenge you as if you don’t have tons of research and evidence behind you, and colleagues who think you are just plain old crazy.
I don’t feel like I can provide CI very well or speak Latin as well as I would like. Then I also worry about not doing it correctly and having someone catch me. It is a mind $%&#!
This process is like learning to teach all over from scratch. It is relearning a new discipline method, a new deliver method ( one in which I was never trained), and all the while under tremendous scrutiny. In my school, I am the only crazy doing this method. In my state, there is not another Latin teacher doing CI. It is hard and I even fear that my questions and expressions of fear are taken as whining and weakness.
Even when I was failing the 96 percent, for some strange reason I felt confident and even successful on occasions. Strange!
I know that I will continue to work very hard and make improvements and I know that I will not betray what I know the research says, but it’s damn difficult for me to learn this process. However I’ll get it eventually b/c I’m just too stubborn to give up on what’s right. In the meantime, I hope to learn to let myself be happy with the good that I am doing.
Now you can see why this man Jeffery Brickler is a former PLC Teacher of the Month.
The affective filter applies to us teachers too. If we feel free to experiment and make mistakes, then we will grow and find ways to make CI teaching work. If we are constantly scrutinized and told we are not doing it “right” then we will throw in the towel and go back to grammar worksheets. This group is so supportive of each other, that it gives the support that newcomers as well as experienced teachers need to grow and improve.
I am currently reading a book, recommended to me by Bryce Hedstrom, called The Talent Code, by Daniel Coyle. It talks about experts in many fields and how they got to be experts. Each one had a teacher or coach that guided them through failures, so that when they tried again, it was better. There were no recriminations, just suggestions for how to do it better. Not the big things, but the little by little things that added up to greatness. We can apply this to our students and to helping each other.
Jeffery, you are probably a lot better than you give yourself credit for being. Let yourself be happy.
John said, to sum up this thread, in one neat sentence:
…it is important to distinguish those who want to “incorporate” TPRS/CI as a tool in their toolbox, and those who are sincerely trying to put it into practice….
I want to remember this distinction. By keeping this point in mind, I can make better decisions about whom and whom not to talk to in my building and at conferences.
I think I have learned the difference between the former type of teacher and the latter. When I talk to the former, I feel drained afterwards. When I work with people who actually get Krashen, truly, and are hell bent for leather to get his ideas working in their classrooms, then there is an opposite feeling.
For this new type of language teacher, comprehension based instruction is not merely a curiosity, it is a requirement for them as they move deeper into grasping more and more the simple fact that languages are acquired unconsciously, which if grasped properly that fact becomes a game changer and a career changer and, as Carol told Deena a few days ago, even a life changer.
The feeling generated when working in a coaching setting with a small group of sincere people who get that languages are acquired unconsciously is off the chart. We don’t do anything resembling the kind of instruction most of us did in the last century. We work on techniques that help us communicate better with kids in our classroom.
Working together with people who get Krashen in coaching sessions reflects what Stendhal describes in his beautiful definition of happiness:
Un bavardage sans détour, et la présence de ceux qu’on aime….
An endless conversation, and the presence of those one loves….
We can work together in this way in regional coaching groups to grow deeper into the method. We can have conversations with colleagues in coaching groups that reflect Stendhal’s definition. This would represent something new.
Maybe we could learn to train each other (notice those last three words) in workshop settings like the ones being created regionally right now (NW Ohio, Chicago, Maine, Western Canada, etc.) in this happy way.
Maybe we can find and work with colleagues who merely want to add more tools to their toolboxes. Krashen is not a tool. I no longer want to identify with colleagues who see their work as teachers as laborious, requiring “tools”. I recognize that the new language teaching of the 21st century will be different and I want to hang out with people who know that too.
People thought that Blaine is just good at making jokes and being funny. But there’s more going on. Blaine’s genius is that he gives permission for people in class to be who they are in ways not seen before in language education. Blaine brings human, invisible world stuff into the classroom and he is the first to have recognized the need and found a way, via stories, to bring a feeling of being happy into the classroom. It’s not as if this change was not needed. For decades before that, foreign language classrooms resembled tombs*.
I heard nothing but good things about the coaching at NTPRS in Dallas and Teri can maybe address that model here because then Teri the things you are doing in your Ohio group can maybe be shared with the other groups being formed right now. Is that possible?
Back to the tools. Miriam Met once told me years ago here in Colorado that TPRS is “just another tool in the toolbox” and I still remember how my heart sunk because she influences so many people in how they think about teaching. But tools are used to fix things and the kids, many of whom are indeed broken, can’t be fixed in that way – they can’t be fixed with tools, but only with a softer hand, and via instruction wrapped in love.
Our PLC member Angie Dodd is aware of that and has a report from the field coming up which, for those who followed that thread from Angie last year, is a remarkable report that touches on this point about kids and what they do and don’t need in a classroom. I hope to publish that update from Angie soon.
It’s not very scientific, but happiness is a factor that we can isolate as descriptive of this new work we are all doing. We find happiness in this new way of teaching. It is the opposite of shaming kids into learning. We don’t need tools in tool boxes. We only need an open heart and a willingness to laugh and share with our students instead of judging them in terms of how much they do or do not measure up.
*see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_E29b9N5UI0
Ben,
I started to write a reflection about coaching in Agen, which sums up the coaching model that I have developed for myself. When I get it edited and ready, I will share it.
But overall, what the team did in Dallas and to a much smaller degree in San Diego was based on these three things:
1) We start with building a relationship with the individual being coached–learn her story. Learn what she is bringing to the table. Learn where she is and has been on her journey to CI teaching. Listen to her need then work together to get as many of her needs met as time allows.
2) We have known since Karen Rowan started coaching more than a decade ago that “Being Coached Must Feel Safe”. Easy to say and not always easy to accomplish. We know about the Affective Filter for our students, and we need to apply that knowledge to our colleagues who have come for help. The biggest advice I can give for this one is that the coachee must only hear ONE VOICE at a time, and that to start it will be the coach’s voice. It’s not that a coach knows it all or has all the answers (FAR FROM IT), but that when someone is up practicing, there are too many factors going on at once–speaking a language that may not be native, figuring out how to keep all the skills straight, trying something new, and not looking like an idiot in front of peers. Now if you add lots of voices, it’s too overwhelming.
3) Each coach must develop his/her own style. We have tried for too long to make it one-sized-fits-all, both for coachees and coaches. There is no magic formula for this, it’s just having the heart and soul of someone who wants to put her own ego aside for a while to find a way to help someone else. (thanks Laurie C.–you will see her stamp all over this!) So we each developed our own style. We asked participants to experience different coaches and find the one/ones who best fit their own learning style.
The reviews from NTPRS and from the few who got coached at iFLT have been very positive. We felt like we were able to get more participants involved in coaching, which gave them some new techniques that they felt confident could work for them.
It’s one thing to watch Linda Li or Katya or Blaine or Carol G. , and quite another to get home 3 weeks or more later and try to make it work in a classroom with 30 very real students, many of whom really don’t care about your affective filter. Coaching in a safe environment is one way to cement those new skills. It’s why the regional coaching groups can be so successful. Teachers helping teachers. No special skills needed, just the heart and soul of wanting to help each other.
Four of the most experienced teachers at our monthly First Friday session today (first First Friday of the school year) in Anchorage said that they feel like they’re hacking away at doing CI right at this point. (I hope that the intern in attendance didn’t lose faith at his first meeting!) One of those has to teach with her three-month-old and 14-month-old in the room with her, so I don’t really believe that she can do anything but walk on water, but the rest of us were totally believable. Still, we were all equally sure that this is the only way to go, and we’re going to keep trying to do it better and better. We’re heartened by such changes as the recent cover of the ACTFL Educator, which has the question, “How can we personalize in language classrooms?” I had to read that about three times when I first got the magazine. It’s the one with the article about Carol Gaab, and I’ve left it on the top layer of my desk ever since. There are actually ideas and articles that I marked up to follow up on, for the first time since getting it.
I’m agreeing with Robert strongly here, even as my own suspicion that I’ve been inducted into a cult gets stronger with time. Luckily, it’s a cult of fabulous people and a philosophy that is not only defensible, but is clearly the only one for those of us who want students to thrive.
Glad to be reading again. I’m still on and off for another month, but had to drop in for a visit.
I wanted to see if I could get the article that Michele mentions, and looks like only ACTFL members can get it online. Here’s a list of sample articles: http://www.actfl.org/publications/all/the-language-educator/sample-articles Looks like the whole theme of Aug. 2013 was personalization to the learner.
But that same issue had an article about Carol Gaab and the SF Giants English class that she leads, and that one is available free online: http://www.actfl.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/TLE_pdf/TLE_Aug13_Article.pdf
Michele we missed you but somehow I know that whether you’re reading here or not, you’re somewhere taking care of business. You rock.
Yeah we’re all cult members. Funny – I don’t feel like a cult member. However, if being in a cult means sharing ideas about what is best for kids in teaching with people like you Michele, then I’m in a cult. So be it. But honestly, I think that the people who say that we are in a cult are the ones in the cult.