I got an email from a teacher who is having a hard time right now in his classroom:
Hi Ben,
Hope you doing well. First of all, I want to thank you all that you do. Secondly, I am in need of a little hand holding as I am becoming tired.
I have done stories for the last few months beginning with CWB and I am finding that the kids are not engaging after one term as much as they did at the beginning of the year. This is not true for all my classes, but I was wondering if there is anything that you would suggest that I can do to change up the class to make stories more efficient when I do them.
I am starting to feel a bit burnt out after having to maintain a TPRS classroom and I am feeling the temptations to teach using grammar packets because it is just so much easier. I know this is the temptation of many teacher, but I guess I am just needing a bit of encouragement. I am one of the only teachers that I know that uses TPRS and it is a hard transition to make when you feel you are walking in waters that none of your fellow teachers have dared tread. I keep hearing grammar teachers brag about the fact that their kids know how to diagram and sentence in Spanish or French and I just can’t go back to teaching the old way, but the temptation is real.
Thanks for your time.
Well, burnout is real and we have a category on it:
https://benslavic.com/blog/category/burn-out/
My position on burnout is one of deep respect for it. I think of burnout as a sign that what we are doing is out of balance with the student population we have been assigned. Usually, the culture in a school just bears down on us and forces its way into our classrooms and we can’t fight it. Kids want to memorize. Kids want their cell phones. Kids want to talk for the entire class period because they get away with it in their other classes.
I certainly wouldn’t blame this teacher if he went back to the textbook. It brings control. But it also brings untold boredom and so it is a very difficult decision.
One suggestion is to read a lot more novels, SSR, etc. and we have talked a lot about that as a crowd control measure but ultimately it isn’t that great.
Another suggestion is to simplify everything. A lot of our issues in CI classes revolve around the students not fully understanding. They really need to understand what we present to them. So if we simplify everything, and they start understanding more, we might be able to find a foothold in our daily instruction to weather the storm.
I do hope others here in the group can offer some concrete ideas for this teacher.
Related:
https://benslavic.com/blog/category/simplicity/