Today I have posted five of these posts on how languages exist and are acquired in the unconscious mind. The reason I did that was to keep reminding us here in the group that languages exist and are acquired in the unconscious mind.
I don’t think that many of us yet get that. And when we don’t get that, we set ourselves up for frustration and failure in this great and meant-to-be-fun profession and we waste $4.95 a month as well, bc if we don’t get the part about it being unconscious, we cannot succeed in this work. Yup, it’s that simple. Everything hinges on that one idea.
Too many of us in this group are failing to get the courage to just stand up in our old grammar book tractors, which are all beat up, as they continue to plow fields of boredom for our kids, and just jump over onto the new CI vehicles that are all over the fields waiting for us to jump into them.
We see the new vehicles, but we don’t jump. We are afraid of going splat in the field, I guess. We’d rather stay in the tractor. But, each day, as the old tractors, all made by Eclectic Tractors Co., grind to a halt and start turning to rust one at a time all over the country, younger teachers are jumping into the new CI vehicles. They don’t care if they go splat.
At least we in this group know the tractors don’t work anymore. Most of our colleagues don’t even get that, to the great detriment of millions of kids every day, whose self esteem plummets with each new grinding grammar class they must endure, again and again, until they have become convinced that they are bad at languages.
Let’s be clear about the images used above. The tractor is the old way of teaching where millions of teachers presented the language using English and tilled the soil of grammar and mixed language instruction until most of their students wanted to vomit and couldn’t wait to “get their two years” and get out.
The new CI vehicles represent the new way of teaching langauges where a few teachers now, but millions of teachers in the future, will present the language using it, the language, in classes that blast off the kids’ imaginations into wonderful new places.
As this happens, more and more kids will want more and more of the same and will stay in the program in their high schools for the full four years and then go on to college and, finding tractors there, will dismantle them and the people who drive them, insisting on change.
Because they experienced better in school. Because their teacher in grade school was Jody Noble. Because their middle school language teacher was Grant Boulanger. Because their high school teacher was Carol Hill.