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Quote from Fred Rogers
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6 thoughts on “Quote from Fred Rogers”
Epicurean delight for me today in a Krashen quote:
“The path of pleasure is the only path. The path of pain does not work for language acquisition”
I think we need a greatest quote section to be included in Mental Health.
A propos:
My computer has been down but I wanted to add here, connected to that great point Sabrina, until my home computer is back in action, a few things I learned in a class I just had:
1. Gesturing verbs is where it’s at.
2. Getting reps can be very much fun if we PSA the reps with the Annoying Orange technique. PSA by itself is a bit exposed, but when you pick the right kid to do the Annoying Orange thing with it can really work.
Of course, with the humor thus generated come smiles, and with the smiles comes a feeling of levity. It is as if the heavy feeling of school that is put on kids and teachers, just the feeling in the building, in the ether, in the walls, that WE CAN BE WRONG, goes away when we laugh.
I think that the gains our kids get from our CI may be directly related to the amount of smiles that happen during that class. I say this in a very strong way.
When half of our students are sitting there smiling in response to the input, I KNOW that those kids are acquiring. But when they are doing the “I-am-a-cyborg-leave-me-alone” thing I pretty much know that they in fact are probably NOT acquiring, at least at the advanced level as happens when levity is there.
Now, can we have instant levity in these dark dungeons that we call schools? No, not instant. It usually takes me about a half hour just to get something funny going. But I am always on the lookout for that funny thing and it usually involves working up some bizarre fact I make up in the Annoying Orange routine.
That’s a good reminder to remember to pretend with them, and not just rely on “real” answers. My students respond a lot in PQA, but they aren’t as interesting as a few details made up about them. The kid who is answering finds it plenty interesting (it’s about him or her) but fewer classmates do. So weird or goofy is better.
However, a success I did have today with PQA kind of in the same vein… I had the class make up stuff using the target structures about classmates who came up front. Many smiles and laughs.
Ben,
1 .”Gesturing verbs is where it’s at”.
Yes indeed, and its called TPR.
2. “Getting reps can be very much fun if we PSA the reps with the Annoying Orange technique.”
Now until I can get a live demonstration of you doing annoying orange, I need this on video, OK?
My version of annoying orange to my kids is to do a real heavy French accent but I realized they like it so much that they will do anything to have me speak with that accent!
On a different topic now: one of the things Joe Neilson said about you in that October workshop in Maine was that he was always impressed and intimidated with some of the words you use in your everyday speech. He gave an example and I can’t remember it now but it made us who know you laugh hysterically. Anyone remembers that? Now what in the world is Levity? OK I need to go look it up now.
One more thing,
Can you elaborate on this part of your sentence: “PSA by itself is a bit exposed”. What do you mean by that ? Why and how is it exposed?
What I mean by that is that (in both PQA and PSA) there is a certain need for the kids to play, to just let down and play and without that, if for some reason they don’t want to play and follow all my CI leads, for the CI but also just for the fun of it, I can feel exposed, in a kind of weird psychic danger.
Sometimes, when they don’t want to play – this usually happens when there is a bully who has not been neutralized in the first few months of the year – we can be left hangin out in the wind as the power struggle happens, and sometimes the power goes over to them.
We cannot allow that power shift to go to them. We just can’t let that happen, because we cannot be perceived by our students as needy, or they will see it and use it. Do you know what I mean?
It doesn’t happen to me anymore, at least it’s not happening at all now in April bc I won – I have trained any darkness out of them by now (lightness over darkness) but I remember that feeling, like I needed their help. I’m not expressing it well.
But that’s what I mean by exposed. Now I have learned. I just start in and happily hammer the CI and wherever it goes, I go with it, and so the kids have to go with it too. There is no feeling of being exposed when I do that. No neediness on my part. Just the power of CI washing over the room, cleaning and scrubbing. Using jGR like a hammer. Laughing at my own jokes. Being Annoying Orange. Showing no fear. Schooling them in CI, with no possibility of that feeling of being vulnerable, or exposed.
Make sense Sabrina? Sorry it’s not more clear.