People sometimes claim that TPRS/CI doesn’t work in language classrooms because it requires too much energy and the kids can get out of control. It is so much easier with the book. Easier to dismiss the method than look at oneself.
But refusing to adopt input methods into one’s classroom these days is much like inserting one’s head in the sand. This insertion of head is often done with a vague hope that the people around them won’t notice, that they can keep bullshitting the students, and that they will be able to keep their jobs for another year as long as nobody notices.
I maintain that with proper training all of this fear of TPRS/CI will disappear. Really, what Blaine Ray invented is very easy, if apt to be personally insulting. The issue is not about how hard the approach is for the teacher – the issue is about classroom discipline. And the issue about classroom discipline is one of who wins the war of what is cool in class.
I once complimented a student on how focused he is in class all the time and he told me that he cares more about what I think of him than what his peers think about him, so he pays attention. What a strong thing to say!
This kid’s statement led me to reflect that our students (the rare one above excepted) are a lot more locked on to how they are perceived by the kids around them than we have any idea. Many of us mistakenly assume (a big mistake!) that, since a particular group has signed up for our classes, they want to pay attention and learn.
But when a child is 15 years old, we are about 10% of their field of vision in class. The other 90% is how they look to their peers. And if not acting interested is the behavior du jour in the class, then even smart kids will shut down to align with that all powerful invisible pressure that marks the status quo.
This is a major topic. We must bring discipline to our classrooms not only to make the CI work, but to force the kids to put their attention 90% on us and only 10% on how their peers see them. And we can’t bring this discipline without setting the rules and making sure that they have teeth in the beginning of the year. Our current success now in October with our kids is completely related to how well we have set the rules down since our school year started.
Unless we give a lot of thought to discipline and making the CI work so that engaging in class is cool because the rules are clear , which brings the fun, we will not engage our students. In that moment of not engaging our students, the value or lack of value of input based methods then immediately becomes a moot point – the teacher who can’t engage students with input methods will never know if they work without the rules in place.
Another way to say this is that input methods are thrown out the window not because of any fault in them, but rather because the lack of rules makes it appear that they don’t work. That is why most teachers who hear about TPRS don’t use it. Most of those failures aren’t a failure of the method, but a failure of the teacher to have rules that serve to undergird the method.
Once the rules are in place, the teacher can firmly assume charge of the funny and personalized CI that then flows from the strong rules base. The class becomes cool, and the method can then show itself for what it really is – genius.