The Coalition of Traditional Schools

Last summer I invited teachers who work in Coalition of Essential Schools buildings to dialogue about how, in foreign languages, they don’t in fact align at all with the set of ten Common Principles that Ted Sizer originally set out thirty years ago. The Coalition of Essential Schools has become, over the decades, the Coalition of Traditional Schools, at least in foreign languages.

No Coalition school chose to respond to my invitation to dialogue. I did have a phone conversation with someone in their main offices who told me that I could submit an article to their journal, but nothing came of that. I guess their foreign language teachers felt that they were already essential. I say that if you are not focusing intently on how to bring comprehensible input instruction into your classroom, then you are not very essential.

I don’t want to let this discussion die, but it will. They’ll call me a radical who wants to upset their nicely floating textbook machine. It’s a shame, because the discussion is a potentially vibrant one.

I therefore formally invite any Coalition foreign language teachers who are aware of Krashen and Blaine Ray, or any PLC members who know anyone in a CES building, to investigate how or how not they in their Coalition foreign language programs are aligning with Ted Sizer’s Common Principles – just to open up the discussion. Hey, isn’t that what university methods classes are supposed to be doing? Isn’t there supposed to be a place where there is a forum, a universal open discussion of ideas for the good of all? Where is that place? Where are all points of view welcomed? I want to be there!

Having taught in the Coalition flagship school in South Carolina – Heathwood Hall Episcopal School – for eleven years in the ’80’s, and having had contact with Sizer during those years about best practices in foreign language education, I feel that Ted would want some discussion from his language people about all of this, to clear the air. So my request is reasonable.

Let me rephrase the core question of this discussion: “In what way(s) are Coalition schools aligning with a) the work of Dr. Krashen, and b) the Proficiency Guidelines set forth (at about the same time Sizer was setting forth his Common Principles) by our national parent organization, ACTFL.”

Below are other PLC entries from previous years that address this topic. If you know of anyone teaching in a Coalition school, please draw their attention to the points I make below. Maybe they will respond. Thank you.