Unlock with PatreonThe Problem with CI
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The World Is Round
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9 thoughts on “The World Is Round”
Even people who get Krashen (not blinded by their 4%er eyes) like to tiptoe around the enormity of the change brought by the new realization that we learn languages only by hearing them and that the entire process is unconscious.
How would you like to find out that most of the things you thought about your work were untrue and that your hard earned expertise was bogus? That is happening right now to a lot of teachers.
That fact alone shines a huge spotlight on the enormity of this change, and accounts for the resistance. It really is, in a way, as big as the realization centuries ago that the world is round.
Related: https://benslavic.com/blog/2011/08/21/11848/
“we learn languages only by hearing them and that the entire process is unconscious.”
Now, how do I take that epic truth and somehow still demonstrate to my evaluator that I am teaching “higher thinking skills” of analyzing and synthesizing, of making students more conscious, rather than unconscious, of this whole process of learning. I can see how the “metacognition piece” would fit into this scheme, but my assessment questions are supposed to demonstrate these kinds of multi-step process skills.
Maybe I’m just making this too hard; I’m rather freaking out about the new 14 page evaluation tool (the RISE model) that will be used this coming year in Indiana to evaluate teachers–at least partly–on how well their students do on an approved final assessment. It’s all about “rigor and complexity” and aligning the assessment with every single one of the content standards.
And I am to take this very round world and squish it flat so that the administrators can fit it into their paradigm.
Lori, make the higher level thinking skills about the content, not the process. For example, ask why questions based on inferences from the “text” (either your written one or the one the class creates), ask for predictions about actions, ask for transformation as students create their own new ending for a story. I’m sure others will have other ideas. But the important thing here is to make students think at a higher level about what you want them to concentrate on, which is the content.
Higher thinking skills about content, not process. I hadn’t considered that! Why hadn’t I considered that elegant solution? Thanks for coming to my rescue, Robert. That helps considerably and will not change my test questions too much:
“Why” questions based on story inferences; predictions about what happens next; new endings.
I think I can do that. (audible sigh of relief)
lori
the new 14 page evaluation tool (the RISE model)
I missed this phrase before. Any evaluation tool that is 14 pages long is essentially a non-starter. How can an evaluator keep 14 pages worth of material in mind and still pay attention to the teaching that is going on? Or is this just another “data processor” to look at student test scores?
And it’s almost amusing how testing people, assessment people, like to claim a kind of insight that teachers lack in the process of moving things up the taxonomy and getting to critical thinking. It’s the old test tube model where the teacher and the kids are in the tube and the testing people are the scientists.
But the critical thinking that CI brings is equipped with jet blasters when done properly. When we are rolling a story in the TL and the kids are locked onto the message and we know that bc we can see it on their faces, that cannot be measured – there is just too much neural activity going on. Easier to measure subatomic mass of objects than measure what happens when CI is going on.
Robert’s answer will work to make the scientists happy, but the real gains can’t even be measured by science, if Krashen is right, and I believe he is. So the scientists keep their eyes on the test tubes, making sure that we teachers stay small in their eyes, when the stupendous fact of the unconscious complexity of what we do – comprehensible input – remains far beyond anything they could actually measure.
It is therefore in their interests to freak you out lori. They really need for it to be measurable, to keep things in the measurable world, to measure you and your gains and apply numbers to what you do. Judgement is all it is, really, judgement of you.
Because, if it is true that the process of acquiring a language indeed really is unconscious, then their entire model would be melted and gone, bc it is such a sophisticated process that it can’t be measured.
It’s like someone carrying an umbrella and being told that there is a sun up there but refusing to remove the umbrella because then they would have to admit to the sun’s existence, it would blind them, and their entire calculated view of the world would be shattered.
“They really need for it to be measurable, to keep things in the measurable world, to measure you and your gains and apply numbers to what you do.”
I think this fits in with the “elite professionals” comments. Parents are demanding the best teachers for their children; administrators and those nice people on the State boards of education are going to reassure parents that this new evaluation tool is just the ticket. Ask almost any student and he/she instinctively knows who the “best” teachers are…but the quality that makes them “best” is not usually something that is easily quantified. And if it can’t be “measured” objectively, well then, the data-folks don’t know what to do with it. It’s getting worse, not better because we have better tools now with which to crunch all that data.
Those of us in this business of language acquisition are in a quandary because: “the stupendous fact of the unconscious complexity of what we do – comprehensible input – remains far beyond anything they could actually measure.”
They don’t “get” us. It’s as if we are speaking…well…another language or something!
I’m headed to a workshop in August that I think has some of the same issues with teachers. One of my interviewers for the program told me that they would be teaching us about the standards and how to address them. I didn’t respond except to say that I love teaching to the standards and I was looking forward to that collaboration, but now I’m a little concerned about what and how we’re going to be fed. I find it curious that a group who is accepting only experienced teachers thinks that they’re going to need to teach us what it means to teach to the standards. I know that we do teach to the ACTFL standards, probably better than any other set of language teachers, so I’m going to go back and get my ducks in a line before going to the seminar. If you know of posts that I should absolutely re-read, tell me what they are!
You indicate that you already know that they are not going to teach you how to teach to the standards. I agree, based on our discussion of the last year or so here. So what to do? I sure wouldn’t go to a conference like that, where you seem to already know that the teaching to the standards buzz word has been hijacked by a bunch of teachers who don’t/can’t really teach to the standards but will, therefore, end up telling you how they “teach to the standards”, which is an entirely different thing than actually doing it. If that makes sense. I would call someone and get an indication of what in the heck this conference is REALLY going to talk about. Otherwise, it sounds like it would be a waste of time and very depressing. Just my opinion.