Our man in Scotland, who teaches Gaelic, reports in with a situation:
Hi Ben –
I can feel a storm brewing over here since I implemented jGR and could really use some of the PLCs insights and suggestions.
Long story short, a number of the middle school age kids that I teach did not get the As or Bs that they expected. My boss came in to talk to me about it Friday afternoon. She said a fair bit that shocked me, the main points of which are below:
1. According to my boss, the ‘good kids’ are expected to be given As and Bs while the really disruptive ones are given Cs. Parents take anything lower than a B to mean that their kid is “rioting in class” as one parent actually told me on Friday. I have several kids who have been labeled as shy, smart, or loud by teachers, still “good kids” according to my boss, yet I gave them Cs because they were not watching the action, not participating in the class conversation, and some were chatting with their neighbour. I can feel the flak coming my way on the horizon and I don’t think my boss will support me. If she tries to, I feel that she will misrepresent me and my classes for the reason below:
2. My boss doesn’t understand TPRS/CI despite my explanations and has flat out told me that she would hate my class if she were taking it as a pupil- she said that she needs to copy out notes and work in a notebook. Also, she insists that my first year kids (12 years old) need to lead the lessons more, by asking each other questions in the TL instead of me asking them.
3. I get the impression from my boss that she wants me to use more English in class. In Scotland, we don’t have the 90%+ TL requirement and the expectation is that all learners courses will be taught through English. My boss keeps bringing up that it’s not a native speakers course and therefore they don’t need to be hearing/speaking the TL constantly. I feel she truly believes hearing less Gaelic will bring about more language gains. That’s my impression of it at least.
On the whole, I’m not running for the hills because I’m more or less left alone to do my thing. Despite what my boss may say, she doesn’t care enough to come observe a lesson to try to really understand what I do. I feel that I can weather what the parents are sending my way as well because I have a lot of positivity and progress with my upper classes (approximately 9th-11th grade) to balance it all out.
Thanks for your and the PLC’s time with this. Needless to say, if I ever meet any of you folks in person, the first round’s on me!
All the Best,
Jason