Experienced TPRS Teachers,
As a new foreign language teacher, I want to ask you all to please seek out student teachers to teach with you in your classrooms.
For my student teaching, I ended up by chance in the classrooms of Rosa Santaiti and Cindy Price, two enthusiastic and experienced TPRS teachers, in a foreign language department that used TPRS (Sprayberry High School). I’ve never met anyone who had a better student teaching experience than the one that I had there. I’m so so so grateful to all of the teachers in that department who taught me and encouraged me then, and continue to do so. I’m truly indebted to them.
When I was introduced to TPRS, it made perfect sense. It lined up with the research I had studied about second language acquisition. And I loved it! I had a semester to train in TPRS with experienced teachers coaching me. Their passion and vision were absolutely contagious.
I think student teachers are easier to convince than seasoned veteran teachers. Student teachers are at least somewhat familiar with the latest research in second language acquisition. They are idealistic and are not yet locked into the old system. And also, they have to come to your classroom every day and they will see how this works, first hand, over the course of a semester, whereas teachers who are are already working don’t usually have that option.
Please just contact a university and talk to them. Ask for student teachers. I bet they will be willing to give you one at some point. Also, you can send e-mails to FLED professors and invite college students to come and observe your classes for assignments. Most programs require lots of observations. I don’t think it’s an easy thing to do, but if TPRS teachers or comprehensible input based teachers don’t coach and train the next generation of teachers, then more traditional teachers most certainly will.
By accepting me into their classrooms, Rosa and Cindy truly changed my life as a teacher. And they changed the experiences that my students will have with foreign languages in my classroom. Many people on this blog talk about wanting to see widespread change in the way languages are taught. And if you don’t already, I hope that many of you will seriously think about opening your classrooms to future foreign language teachers in your area, and be a part of the change that we all want to see.
Thanks so much for all you do!
Stephen