We work so hard. We slug. Especially in those years learning how to do the CI. We should be gentle on ourselves. I remember for the past ten years I would aggressively try to fill each class with only CI.
But, lately, I have become aware of how hard that is to do in a school. I’ve never done CI anywhere else, but I would think that doing CI in a place where people were paying for the learning would be markedly different. I know so.
If we were to instruct people who simply wanted to learn the language, minus the school drama, it would be so easy! All the students would be so grateful to hear the target language presented to them in ways that they could understand to actually learn what the language sounds like and be able to decode it with their eyes and ears.
But, in schools, it’s different. We have grammar/translation enemies looking at us. We have administrators who don’t trust the current research because they have been swayed to do so by teachers who are afraid of it. We have kids who shouldn’t be in the room.
So, here in the mud slugging part of the year, I would like to suggest a way to schedule a 55 minute class for those of us who are pretty much exhausted by the slugging, by their efforts to deliver an entire class period of CI. If this is not you, stop reading.
Those of us who are tired now need to watch our mental health and not get exhausted by the fact that we are, in a way, trying to do something nearly impossible, and that is to bring current research into buildings that don’t really want it.
So, for those interested, here is what I have been doing lately in my 55 minute classes, just to be more gentle on myself, something Duke has been working with me on lately and, if the research that he and Jim and I are doing shows what we think is possible, will really take some of the CI pressure, if you will, off of my shoulders:
1. The kids come in and I play some twexted music – to set up Friday’s class, more on that later) – while they settle in quietly with a book for 10 minutes of FVR. The song ends and the kids move into a nice period of FVR.
2. I then write a simple grammar sentence for translation. They translate it in their composition books. 3-5 minutes. Kind of a brain break because it takes them into the part of their minds that don’t learn languages, but it placates the school watchdogs (see last blog entry Throw The Dog A Bone 1). By throwing the five minute grammar bone out there, the grammar critics are silenced, if that is possible.
[Note how different these first fifteen minutes are from a standard CI story type of class. The kids are actively reading and writing. They shift from reading to writing, and only then into the CI. They do three activities – two that actually have value – in the class. If the research that kids can only handle 20 min. of input at a time, brain break or not, then it seems that teachers trying to do a story all class period are setting themselves up for some blank stares. Maybe CI would work better in shorter spurts. Just a thought.]
3. Now class starts, 15 to 20 minutes later than usual but I’ve been resting, doing less CI because I am tired. Same weekly schedule: stories on M/W, readings of the created stories on T/Th. Twexted music on Fridays. (The M/W story CI is harder to do than the T/Th reading CI – it just is – but the class goes by quickly and easily because 30 minutes of CI often feels like five minutes of fun.)
4. So, in 55 minutes, with the first 15 – 20 minutes being described above in steps one and two requiring, in real time, about twenty minutes, then I only have time, if I am going to do the Quick Quiz at the end of the period (five minutes), about 30 minutes for the CI. This is, on some days, a good thing.
Again, this plan is not ideal. But it helps me sleep better. It is a response to the strong invisible negative pushback in most school buildings to the rather bizarre idea that best practices in teaching something as human as conversation (which is what language is) is best achieved by human conversation.
(Personally, if I had my choice, I would rather learn Russian from Michele Whaley by speaking with her – she first for a few years – than by her setting up some really cool stuff on the web for me to learn from. I can’t learn as well from a machine as from a human.)
If you are not currently in a classroom, if you haven’t ever tried to do TPRS in a typical American school where most teachers are using outdated methods, you could never understand the feeling of invisible negative pushback, perceived threats that aren’t there. The invisible world is exploding with lack of communication.
Yes, with the above plan there is a feeling of restfulness in the evening when I go to sleep knowing that the next day I don’t have to try to drag 55 minutes of CI into each of 5 classes each day. The FVR and the short grammar lesson preceding the CI and the quiz just make things easier.
I don’t do this schedule all the time. Just on those days when the mud flies into my eyes with all the other crap I have to do as a teacher. We deserve restful days in our classrooms. We don’t have to work ourselves to death.
Everything I get about Krashen and Blaine is that they are humanizers, and when things are more human and less robotic, life is easier. We can actually take a deep breath and enjoy our jobs.
I have noticed, and maybe we can discuss it, that some of us, me included for the past ten years, forget that what we offer is not always wanted, and selling stuff to people who don’t want it, who think that high heels will get them over the mountains, is exhausting. That’s why we got to keep on truckin’.