Kids teach us. Let’s embrace that idea. So when they refuse our academic overtures, those are teaching moments. For us.
Students are not mean spirited or lazy, as the Teacher’s Lounge Crew would often have it. They are just bored. That’s what the textbook does – it bores people.
Now that we have a way to teach that really grabs people, we can finally repair the last hundred years that we spent boring kids.
Will it be easy? Of course not. We have to work to: (a) unlearn all the old patterns and teaching habits that were alarmingly all directed to the mind, and then (b) learn new patterns of teaching that are more centered in the heart, as this quote expresses:
“I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance.”
e.e. cummings
Most school subjects are centered in the conscious mind. But not languages, if we are to correctly interpret the research.
And if we can’t get our classes centered in the heart, which is the only place we can get real CI going, then we’re going to have to teach ten thousand stars how to dance anyway. But for that to happen, we’re going to have to learn to dance ourselves.