I send out a kind of blurb letter that I send to new members of the PLC as they join us here, and decided to share it here with experienced members of the group:
Hey ______ – welcome to the PLC!
Please explore some of the cut and paste articles that are on the “Primers” page (see the hard link at the top of page) if you are looking for articles to share with people in your building re: this work – it saves time and makes those uncomfortable hallway conversations and department meetings unnecessary when you can just produce documents by other PLC members on just about any aspect of our work with comprehensible input.
I especially recommend an article by Robert Harrell, an AP German teacher in Los Angeles who has been a member of the PLC community since it started over ten years ago. Robert is in my view a great scholar, one of the very best in the world, on language acquisition. It is called the “Harrell Primer”. The combined experience on the PLC is big-time.
If you want to research any topic connected to CI here, the best way is to use the search bar. The categories are useful for searching topics, but not as effective in finding information as is the search bar.
Please allow me a short pep talk here. This work is difficult. Few can know just how difficult and emotional except us, who are doing it. Transitioning out of the old ways is difficult, so you should know that the main focus of the PLC is in finding ways to establish and maintain good mental health throughout the year.
Actually teaching the language, we feel, will follow naturally if our focus as a community is to talk about strategies and ways of assessing and classroom management that are based on mental health and on building community with the kids first.
In fact, if you were to search the topic of classroom management in the search bar of the home page of the PLC, you would find many valuable articles dating back many years on that important topic.
One thing on questions – we grow in the process of teaching and often the best questions arise during class. So my advice, and I did this for years myself, is to go – right there in class when something arises in your mind – and write the question down. Just tell the kids you need a few seconds to jot it down so you don’t forget it, or give that task to a student. Then you can research it as described above using the search bar or immediately send the question to the PLC or to me at benslavic@yahoo.com and I will write your question up as a PLC article so that we can get more than one answer from the uniquely talented group of teachers who make up our PLC.
Glad you are with us!
Ben
