We love success stories. Here’s a cool one from Ray. Sorry, Ray, on the long time this gem was in the queue, but it sure is worth reading and congratulations:
Hi Ben,
I’ve asked a number of stories today, now I’m going to tell one.
I teach grades K-6 at an elementary school and this is my second year teaching. Last year I taught with the traditional method because I hadn’t discovered TPRS yet. And in a fourth grade class there was a boy who constantly disrupted class and who was marked as “problematic” by all the teachers that dealt with him. He was really tough for me too. Each day as I walked into class I would hope that he would stay on task. Sometimes he did, many times he didn’t.
This year is my first year using TPRS in the classroom and this kid (now a 5th grader) is a superstar. He participates every class and has an obvious talent for languages. I can easily see that he gets satisfaction out of answering the questions quickly, trying to beat the other kids in the class. I don’t want my kids to be overly competitive, but I’ll take it.
Today was the first day that I asked if a kid would like to stand in front of the class and retell the story that we had just done. This boy volunteered. He stood in front of the class and retold the whole story with minimal errors. It was raw output. The class and I applauded him when he finished. Seeing this today was the ultimate motivator. It made my day and weekend.
Ray