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9 thoughts on “Report from the Field – John Piazza”
Thank you for the encouragement John and for sharing your great news…it made my day!
Blown away. This is my 2nd year. I had 1 student drop and an another dropping. I have two french 2 classses with 18 students each… too small for a California school but my principal scheduled me in again for two sections and approved to pay for the upcoming Cascadia Conference! I cant wait to break bread.
good to hear, Steven.
I am glad to hear about the turnaround, John. Thanks for hanging in there.
OH WOW!
Thank you John! I needed to read that at this moment!
I remember at NTPRS in Las Vegas I was doing a demo of a One Word Image and a kind of rude guy interrupted me and asked what I was doing at a certain point. It seemed like he wanted to be confused. There are people like that at conferences. I said that I was trying to get the group to “share the same mind”, and I used the term “mind meld”. The guy looked at me with open skepticism, like I had used forbidden Zen term from planet Zenon. But John, sitting next to the guy, just smiled, sent me the message that he got my weirdness, and helped me absorb the mild hostility from that guy. We absorbed the negativity together, like we have to do with some students, luckily with the angels standing by in case they are needed. I’ll never forget how John saved me in that moment just by sitting there. John is a mensch, a real standard bearer for this work, who has been met with as much pushback as anyone I know, and has emerged a leader. He walks the walk.
An interesting detail is that John made an amazing change about four years ago when he left a middle school job right near Grace Cathedral in downtown San Francisco to go across the bridge to Berkeley High School. Now that place may as well be in the middle of the most snobby of East Coast traditional high schools, with a traditional Latin program – we all know those teachers – dating probably back to the 19th. century. John walks in and with his CI Latin approach immediately draws fire and has taken repeated incoming firepower for much of these last four years. But now his freshman are seniors and the grammar-entitled students ahead of them have all graduated. So for him to write the above has a pleasing amount of vindication. He took the hits, held his position, and eventually has now taken out the enemy. How? With mild, calm, good will, great teaching, no attacks on anyone, and eventually everyone had to agree. He knew what he was doing!
That is a beautiful update, John. Thank you for sharing it!
I remember very well the struggle you went through, John. The pressure was surely high there at Berkeley HS, with all those big wigs. Impressive. You are a standard bearer indeed!