Panel 20: Maintain open communication about the program and student progress among teachers, administrators, and the general public. Over my 32 years in the classroom, I have never met a more secretive, closed door policy group of educators than foreign language teachers, as a general comment. Furthermore, I have been observed countless times by administrators who had limited […]
Panel 19: Seek frequent opportunities for professional and language growth. I’m in! But it didn’t start until I got a scholarship to Starbucks University in Colorado where Susan Gross conducted one on one instruction with me over a period of years in a non credit class that changed my life completely. So the record goes
Panel 17: Communicate regularly with classroom teachers about student progress and program goals and content. In theory, this is great. But it doesn’t really happen. At least not in the real world. Let’s be honest. Professional open sharing of information between teachers for the good of the kids is not a real common thing in schools.
Panel 16: Use a variety of strategies to maintain frequent and regular contact with parents. Of course! With the difference that in TPRS those contacts are largely positive, whereas, when I used to do the realia, activities, games, and all of the stuff described in this document, not to mention that nasty old testing, the parent contacts were largely
Panel 15: Assess learner progress frequently and regularly, using a variety of types of assessment. Definitely yes, with one major qualification. Teachers must be superhuman to do what is being asked in this Georgia document and still have to time to assess as per the above. Assessment drains the life out of teachers in most educational systems, not
Panel 14: Encourage growing independence and independent language use on the part of learners, moving them toward increased expression of individual ideas and opinions. There is an image of a child in a cardboard TV set talking about himself, presumably in L2. Again, this kind of output is not just unreasonable to expect – it is outrageous to think
Maybe I can get a second agreement with Georgia on panel 13 – right now I am pretty much at odds with those folks: Provide opportunities for learners to express personal meaning from the earliest stages of the program. The image shows a child holding up a drawing of something with the subtitle “sharing personal information” in the
Panel 12 says: Plan lessons to include a variety of activities, student groupings, and types of interaction that will appeal to differing learner interests and learning styles. And there is an image of a bunch of kids sitting around in groups drawing a picture of a monster together, subtitled as “cooperative learning experiences”. Last I heard, cooperative
Let’s go to Panel 11: Use songs and rhymes to reinforce meaning and practice language. Choose authentic songs, games, stories, and rhymes in reference to translations whenever possible. I agree with the first sentence. Songs rock. Rhymes rock. Stories rock. Games? Uh, not sure on that one. I think that when we do games the kids
Panel 10 says: Incorporate communicative use of reading and writing from early stages of instruction. There is the word communicative. It might mean something. I’m not sure what they mean though. No one does, really, do we? If you ask a teacher who uses the target language about 30% of the time in their classroom if they
Panel 9 of the Illustrations of Best Practices from Atlanta Public Schools – and please remember that this series of articles first appeared in this space in 2009. This is a reprise and it is highly possible that the Georgia tenets in slide show form are no longer in place or approved by the state
Let’s try Panel 8: Seek ways to include meaningful culture content in every lesson and every unit. It is not clear what language they mean for the Georgia teachers to use here, L1 or L2. If they are asking teachers to teach about the target culture in the target language to children, that ain’t gonna
