I got a message from a teacher today, talking about things connected to the Invisibles:
Dear Ben,
I am reading your ideas and trying to pretend they are not true even though it is as if you’ve read my innermost thoughts. I suppose I don’t want to believe they are true because that will mean I have been wasting so much time and energy.
Further, it means changing yet again, like the move to CI several years ago. I have been plagued by self-doubt ever since. At this point in the trimester I feel like I have to finish La France en Danger but can’t help wonder what if things could be different?
Thank you, I am reading and thinking and resisting for some reason but I will come around quickly to your line of reasoning. It can’t be too late in the year.
I responded:
What you wrote is very poignant. Very pointed, honest, kind of professionally raw. Welcome to the club. I always wondered how I spent 24 years teaching AP French. Such sick years personally for me.
And then the years spent trying and failing at TPRS. Had not Tina recognized that my take on TPRS over the years was unique (i.e. largely untargeted) I would never have known why I never fit it. It’s such tough work, getting to the deeper layers of the onion.
I hear every word you say above. Can’t give any advice because we each have to react to this stuff in our way, which to me represents a return to true things, to integrity, and as Tina and I say a lot to each other when we discuss this new stuff, to a call from something that we can only call divine.