In many schools there are all sorts of vertical and horizontal and sideways articulation meetings. Standards are being packed and unpacked and sent to Norway. Scope and Sequence discussions are taking place without any clear definition of what the term means. Confused discussion about assessments of the common, formative and summative kind are added into the mix of the greater discussion.
The research and the data that must necessarily provide the foundational rock for these discussions are not clear – no one agrees on what the research and the data are. Nobody can find any research/data that supports teaching a language using a textbook.
Teachers at the elementary through university levels all have their ways of doing things that work for them if not for the students. The discussion has become too big, the gaps between areas too wide. The conversation at the national level does not resemble the conversation at the local levels.
People in buildings who are responsible for organizing and keeping a lid on all the confusion tie things down neatly with the admonition to the teachers in the building to agree on things via a common assessment, a Scope and Sequence that makes sense. But it’s odd to do it that way. If we can’t agree on the research, how can we agree on how to assess?
I feel that the gap is now too wide. It’s not worth it to me to get into fights. The fatal flaw in foreign language education today is that people think that agreeing on the what is more important than agreeing on the how. The how necessarily drives the what. Can the what (content, thematic units) drive the how? Really?
The people in charge in the buildings want their what, and they want it clean, without any mess. They want to agree that at a certain level students in different classes will emerge from the same classes with the same what. They want this even if they are taught by different teachers in different places using different hows and the students are themselves widely divergent in their own speed of processing the language.
The biggest fear of CI teachers in this schema is being made by someone (who doesn’t know) to teach in a certain way – to be made to teach the what (thematic units) when the how (CI) doesn’t lend itself to that. Some close their doors and successful get by unnoticed. Others get in bloodbaths where careers and friendships are ruined.
In future if I find myself in a situation where the what drives instruction, I will continue my CI instruction (the how) until the end of March and in the months of April and May teach the kids exactly what the kids need to know in their next class if it is not a CI class. I can do that easily in two months.