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Then God Bless You
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25 thoughts on “Then God Bless You”
I am so glad you have brought this blog back, because every time I feel like I have to throw in the towel, you post something like this. And I get the courage to go back in and fight again.
I am getting so worn down. From the system that doesn’t want the kids to actually speak the language. Everything I am told to do is based on students learning discrete facts and being able to manipulate them on command. My pacing guide… oh I have no words to describe this monstrosity. In the last two weeks I was to teach my students irregular preterit verbs, “sole” verbs in the preterit (stem-changing verbs), and two different expressions with “hace” which mean two vastly different things. A week before that it was present tense verbs that are irregular in the present tense, present progressive (we had two weeks to learn that one), etc. And that doesn’t even take into account the insane number of words the kids are expected to have mastered.
My head is exploding, and I am giving up. Because it isn’t fair to my students to test them on these things (mandatory exams) we haven’t had a chance to use in class. Forget repetitions. If I get every word in once, I’m doing great. And, while I know that acquisition is an unconscious process, and I know the best way to get students to speak and understand a second language… it doesn’t fit the paradigm I am forced to operate in. And, at least if I teach it the old fashioned way they may have a chance of passing these stupid exams and maybe learning the language one day… except I know they won’t.
But I’m also tired of fighting the kids. The ones who want to put their heads down on their desk for 90 minutes straight. The ones who come in speaking in English. The ones who don’t stop speaking in English for 90 minutes. The ones who yell, “you never taught us this!” The ones who think if I don’t give them a chart to memorize they won’t learn.
I know it’s that time of year where everything looms large. And in two weeks, when I finally get to spring break, maybe things will be rosier. But, for now, does anybody have any advice on how to survive in an environment that stifles acquisition, and forces students and teachers lock step in learning?
Profe–thanks for being so honest; sure wish I had an answer for you. I know what you mean about this blog, though. I felt lost all winter without the booster shot of encouragement and camaraderie I feel from reading the posts here.
“I am getting so worn down.” “My head is exploding.”
It shouldn’t have to be this way. When we know in our gut what works, but we are constantly stymied… I hope someone else has a real answer for you.
And–relax and recharge on your break.
Thank you, Ben, for your heartfelt and honest assessment of where we are today and where we need to be tomorrrow. The state of our union is strong and getting stronger!
Just for some support for Spanish teachers (sorry, others!) —
Check out two blogs: Martina Bex, with her lesson plans, and Jody in San Francisco. We can’t all follow them (especially with the lack of reading in Russian!!) but we certainly can take some of their energy.
http://nobleword.wordpress.com/
http://www.martinabex.com/for-teachers
I am so glad Ben is here. It’s heartwarming to be able to see the philosophy, the ideas, and the challenges people are meeting. We can do this, even in springtime, thanks to this community.
Profe look what you have written and allowed me to post permanently on this site:
https://benslavic.com/about/thoughts-on-pacing-guides.html
It is so helpful to so many! So clear and so true!
But if your state is not aligned with the ACTFL Proficiency guidelines, then nothing can help – the pacing guide will be there to uglify and ruin each of your teaching days. It is one reason I left my old district.
It sounds as if, in your situation, the wolves are guarding the henhouse and nothing will change. If, however, there is leadership that actively calls into question the use of English in classrooms in your state, then there is hope.
In Denver Public Schools, they know what is going on. Many principals are quickly deconfusing themselves. There is active dialogue, active disagreement, which we need right now. Administrators are having to make choices. It sounds as if you are operating in more of a silence.
We in DPS know that we have been hired to speak in the target language over 95% of the time and that if we don’t, if the students aren’t hearing the language in the classroom, people will get fired under the statutes of a new statewide program in all schools in all areas that has teeth – not a district but a state government initiative to require compliance with standards, none of which mention discrete grammar.
So come back to Denver, or do something. Are there no schools in your state that support the national guidelines? Nobody wants to change apparently.
I don’t know how you do it. Instead of trying to come up with an answer, which is clearly impossible here, I prefer to simply repeat some of the things you said in your comment. They are so poignant and, without providing solutions, reach the heart of we who embrace comprehensible input and Krashen:
…learning discrete facts and being able to manipulate them on command….
…the insane number of words the kids are expected to have mastered….
…and forget repetitions….
…acquisition is an unconscious process, [but] it doesn’t fit the paradigm I am forced to operate in….
…the ones who want to put their heads down on their desk for 90 minutes straight….
…the ones who yell, “You never taught us this!”….
…the ones who think if I don’t give them a chart to memorize they won’t learn….
…how to survive in an environment that stifles acquisition, and forces students and teachers lock step in learning?….
Those kids with their heads on the desk should be held accountable in terms of their grades. I am going to post over the next three days some thoughts on assessment using that new schedule I suggested here last week. Maybe it will help a little.
The ones who say …“You never taught us this!”….are the worst, by far. They have been taught how to survive in school and have become, in the original sense of the word, monstrous. They will not be able to survive in the real world, which requires human give and take and social skills. By being passed to the next level by their teachers, they have been failed by their teachers.
Maybe that is a place we can start, Profe. Is there reason to hope that you can hold them accountable for showing up in your classroom as social beings who understand their role in the language learning process? And that, if they don’t, then they will reap the results of their behavior in the gradebook?
We have to do something. This describes my own experience at different times over the past eleven years with incredible accuracty. It describes the experience of a lot more people than you may think, Profe. It is a big comment. Wonderfully honest, certainly.
Michele,
Thank you SO much for the links…. I just looked at them and started feeling hope that these might be the things that provide the “charge” and “energy” that I need to propel me into the final stages of the year. I have had a fantastic year – probably the best in 22. My Spanish 1 kiddos have been simply amazing and have allowed me to become a much better teacher… Things like these links are so encouraging and helpful. Thank You!
This time of year though, ruts seem to form…. I feel it, students feel it and I am often found scrambling for new ideas for CI…..
Ben,
This blog is invaluable you know. In fact, I am going to go so far as to say that I don’t think people will ever be fully successful in their (CI) teaching if they do not have something like this blog to feed on, to stimulate their thinking and challenge their practice. I know that I say this often of peer coaching as well, but the thing about the blog is that it is effortless (on the reader’s part of course, not yours which is why I feel so indebted to you and others that invest so heavily here).
So, thank you again!
skip
I don’t think it’s ever been said out loud on this blog, Skip, but there is something very strong holding us together. Very strong glue. And I think I know what the glue consists of – there are two main ingredients. One is the great good fortune of understanding for real what CI is – the key that unlocks the door to authentic acquistion – as opposed to those who, quite wrongly in my opinion, consider it just another tool in the toolbox of teaching. The other ingredient of this blessed glue is the pain we go through in trying to implement CI. It is not easy! I know that my own path to CI has been an incredible meditation and at times a tortuous one. Profe Loca may think that her comments here recently were unique to her, but we all feel that to some degree even if we can’t express it as eloquently as she. So few people believe, are passionate about, what Krashen and Blaine and Suan have laid out there for millions of kids. So many are quick to criticize what they honestly and truly don’t understand. You have no idea how much I look forward to stopping the public access to this blog – the meals we share here should not be shared with swine. Let’s just keep our eye on, first, making it through this particular year – one of the worst I can remember and I know that I am not alone on that, and, second, learning to serve, forehead on the dirt, those kids we have been given to teach. We cannot rip them off, and we will not. Maybe I’ll tag along with Susie to Maine in October. I miss you guys. I know that it hasn’t been easy up there this year. So thanks for the kind words, boss. We are on to something big.
Ben,
we’d love to have you up in Maine again!!! 🙂
The idea of holding students accountable for putting their heads on their desk and having that show up in their grades–I agree with this idea. But does this go along with the new idea of standards-based grading? My district has pushed standards-based grading in the middle school and is now going to be encouraging it in the high school. I understand and like the idea of wanting students to reach a standard but I don’t feel that is enough. In the past, with my version of “paye-moi”s or “crime d’anglais” I have been able to control my class and stay in the language most of the time. Last year I made a simple change that I hadn’t thought through (allowing more English for cute phrases) and suffered the consequences (I also had four more students per class than usual due to budget cuts). And I dread that if I am forced to go to standards-based grading 100% and that their beginning activity won’t count and I won’t be able to use a “paye-moi” style system to motivate them to stay out of English, then I will consequently lose my class. I have never been good enough of a disciplinarian to control my class without that special novelty of conducting a class almost all in French. That participation grade based on not speaking English is my “saving grace”. So I am beginning my year with this fear that standards-based grading will be imposed on us (we are having an all-school workshop on it THE DAY BEFORE school starts on Wednesday)! Any thoughts on this idea of standards-based grading where participation is not allowed to count as it relates to motivating students to stay in French?
At the end of the school year we had a lengthy discussion about assessment. To me, the key to accommodating the push towards standards-based assessment (which I believe is a good thing) is also adopting the ACTFL and College Board emphasis on the three modes of communication: interpersonal, interpretive and presentational. If you define “standards” as speaking, reading, writing, listening, culture, language manipulation – which I have done in the past – you are not at the core of language. The core of language is communication, so our assessed standards need to reflect that.
Here is what I wrote then about interpersonal communication:
1. Interpersonal mode is the heart of language acquisition. It is defined thus: Interpersonal mode is active oral or written communication in which the participants negotiate meaning to make sure that their message is understood. If a student isn’t actively negotiating meaning (sitting up, shoulders straight, focused eyes, cute answers, choral response, no private conversation, no distractive behavior, etc.), then he is not meeting this standard.
You are assessing the standard, you’ve just expressed it differently from the way most people do because they still think of discrete item and skills assessment rather than assessment of communication using the language.
This summer I attended an Advanced Placement Institute because German (as well as French) has a new exam. The new exam assesses the following six areas:
1. Audio, visual and audiovisual interpretive communication
2. Written and print interpretive communication
3. Oral interpersonal communication
4. Written interpersonal communication
5. Oral presentational communication
6. Written presentational communication
There is no discrete-item grammar on this exam; there is no discrete-item culture. It is all communication in the three modes (subdivided into oral and written).
I figure, if it’s good enough for ACTFL and the AP Exam, it’s good enough for my classroom. (Said tongue in cheek because the old AP Exam wasn’t a model for my classroom.)
Here’s the link to the whole discussion.
https://benslavic.com/blog/2011/05/08/robert-harrell-on-assessment/
Thank you for this. It’s helping me to think of it in a different way. Now, how to rewrite that for my syllabi! (Interpersonal communication 30%?)
I think that for levels 1 and 2 Interpersonal Communication ought to be at least 50% of the grade. This is the time that Constructing Meaning is so important. The second largest percentage should be Interpretive. Presentational should be the smallest. In levels 3 and 4/AP the percentages can change, but I think Presentational should always be the smallest in our setting.
If I were teaching heritage speakers or the last couple of years of a 13-year sequence (as the California State Standards ask for), I would make all three modes roughly equivalent, but not in a four-year program.
Addressing the need to eliminate English when you should be using CI, Sally Brownfield said ” In the past, with my version of “paye-moi”s or “crime d’anglais” I have been able to control my class and stay in the language most of the time.” Could you describe? When does a “crime d’anglais” occur? English just during talking/story-asking/etc or also during “changes” (such as getting materials, passing to the board to write, etc.)? There are so many mutterings of English I can’t catch them all so I am at a loss at how to handle them. Like Sally, I use a págame system so I am familiar with some ways that can work…it does help with lack of participation (due to talking, throwing things across the room, simply NOT working, etc.) but I still struggle with the kids using English.
English happens. To respond to it and tie its occurence to a grade is far beyond my talents. So I don’t give participation grades. What I do has little to do with standards or grading. I didn’t learn this CI stuff to be able to align with standards or be able to grade kids in some way. I just want to teach them French in the best way I know. My message to them is that in order for our class to work we have to avoid English. It’s about us and our learning and not anything else. If I use English, I have found out in the past, then they use it. If I don’t use it, they don’t. We should never, in the first week, let it get to the point where they think they have a choice.
Sally if you click on the Robert Harrell/Assessment category to the right, you can follow that thread Robert mentioned. I think it holds the key to the way we will assess kids in this century.
Diane, “crime d’anglais” was just my version of Blaine’s “paye-moi” (or pagame) but it was a little funnier. I had a big drawn switch on my board, and as soon as the roll activity (or song) was finished, I would put the switch on (French would be turned on) and then we could talk only in French. Even I could get a crime d’anglais, and if I got three of them, I owed the class a bagel party. I would keep it on almost all the time, even during our LOTO games. It was just a gimmick, but it worked for me. Using the phrase “Que veut dire ___?” or “Comment dit-on?” was a legal way to use English. Or they could ask, in French, to turn the French off. The problem I had was with story asking. How do I get the cute answers if they can’t give them in English? They would use the “Comment dit-on____?” but it can be cumbersome. To be honest, I did do a lot of successful personalisation where the language seemed to emerge, but when it came to stories, I tended to use the canned ones from Carol’s book. I found it hard to ask original stories. Another problem with this system is that I couldn’t ask “What did I just say?” Although I used to sometimes ask them for a translation with “Que veut dire ___” as a comprehension check. Last year I tried to change the system a little, allowing more English for myself and their cute answers, but it backfired on me. (This may also be due to the larger class sizes and some more difficult kids than usual). We didn’t seem to have that camaraderie of their pleasure when they could catch me and give me a “crime d’anglais”. The whole system was just weakened by it and I didn’t know how to fix it. But now, I am looking to improve and strengthen my “rules” and CI and to move my hybrid teaching to completely TPRS.
Thank you for the explanation! What about grammar pop-ups? I do those in English…did you do them in TL?
Pop ups in L1. Five seconds or less. I do less and less of those because the kids don’t care. They just want to know what is going on.
Students are the only ones who need repetition; thanks for this re-post, Ben.
I wouldn’t think I’d need reminding, but I’ll be teaching Spanish IV for the first time this year (two weeks from now!) and yesterday I wrote up a rough outline of things I want to include in class, but I used those old four modes as guidelines. Heaven knows what I was thinking; maybe summer has drained my brain. Thanks to this timely re-post, I’ll be reworking that course outline today.
“…what really matters – the ACTFL Three Modes of Communication and not the old four skills, which formed a crutch and provided an excuse for countless teachers to focus on output way too early “
obvious correction : students AREN’T the only ones who need repetition.
coffee hasn’t yet kicked in…
lori
Thanks for this discussion. I’ve been gradually making the switch to standards-based grading, but still assessing 4 skills and cultural knowledge. Today I am convinced to use the three modes. I’m also planning to use the Linguafolio chart to help my students get the picture that they are building ever-increasing skills, not just prepping for quizzes. So many of my high-achievers are content to complete a task and then kick back and do nothing, thinking they are “done.”
Back to your intro post, Ben:
“The cult of the TPRS expert must go and we must all become the experts that we think we can’t become. ”
I get so intimidated by the gurus of the method, especially when I read incredible, shiny, creative blogs and hear well-thought-out conference presentations. And I forget that those things are all done in Presentational Mode, which lends itself to impressiveness. But teaching is done in Interpersonal Mode, which is messy, complicated, halting, and prone to misstatement and rephrasing as we negotiate meaning with our students. It has helped me to watch teaching videos: I realize then that even the gurus have the same issues with keeping student attention and developing good story lines, etc., just like I do.
…those things are all done in Presentational Mode, which lends itself to impressiveness. But teaching is done in Interpersonal Mode, which is messy, complicated, halting, and prone to misstatement and rephrasing as we negotiate meaning with our students….
This is brilliant. It’s why so many people are intimidated by the gurus. I have always been intimidated by them but Diana encourages each of us in DPS to just be who we are. As long as the language is understood it really doesn’t matter if we do anything else. The hardest thing I’ve done here is put myself out there on video because there are lots of teachers who negotiate meaning much more effectively than I do, use less English, drive the story into funnier places, but what you wrote above makes me remember that I can feel good about what I do as reflective of my own personality and that is why I said the original statement that there should be no gurus. There’s just us, and we do our work in different ways. That is precisely where the greatness lies in the approach in fact – we are great to the extent that we explore who we are in our classrooms, we get to know ourselves better via our profession, which should not be some kind of hiatus we take during the day to make money but rather IS our lives, or that version of them. We should not go to work waiting to start living when we get home after school. To do that we must be ourselves in our classrooms and not some imititation of someone else. Greatness to be ourselves and earn our livings in a way that allows our own personalities and strengths and foibles to be there in the mix. The biggest thing that I’ve learned in almost four decades as a teacher is just that, really – I don’t have to be special and great and all that. I’m ok just the way I am. God will love me even if I am a fuck up as a teacher. I’m still serving his cause because I am trying to help kids feel real and important and give them something that honors them instead of insulting their intelligence with the old way of teaching them a language. This work to me is about service – the real kind. What greater thing is there but to serve others even if we don’t do it all that great? And the daily interaction with those kids is just not all that great sometimes, right? Hell, it sucks a lot of the time. Does that mean we go back to the old way? Thanks Rita for that point.
Related: https://benslavic.com/blog/2011/11/05/stuart-smalley/
Thank you Rita and Ben for pointing out that it’s OK not to be perfect – and we likely won’t be, especially with everything that we as teachers are asked to do. I love the quote “I’m ok just the way I am. God will love me even if I am a fuck up as a teacher. I’m still serving his cause because I am trying to help kids feel real and important…” I need to write it down and reference it often!
Great re-post Ben – Thank you. The entire thread was helpful, and I especially liked your comment:
“The method is so innately powerful. It is so effective in spite of our lack of confidence in ourselves!”
Cute answers – L1 or L2? (I have been allowing L1 in order to generate better ideas, but now I wonder if L2 is what I should do.)
As in much of this work, there is no one-size-fits-all answer – L1 or L2 answers – depends on the teacher and the students.
L2 is the best for cute answers, Don. It greatly reduces blurting. And it’s what the Maestro (Blaine) does and he has never wavered on that.
That said, as you may know, I advocated for two word answers in English and did it that way for three years. I finally saw it wasn’t the best option, however.
Now, an important point – if some kid comes out with a really fine cute answer in English, I am not going to reject it because of the English. I just act like it wasn’t given in English. I skate over it like my seventeen year old son skates over a curb – fast. In that way, we get the high quality answer and my quick translation into L2 of the answer is hopefully so fast that nobody notices that the suggestion was made in L1.
Now, if the suggested answer sucks, I am quick to point out that the child just broke rule #3, which is the case in the great majority of cases.