Here is a photo – published before in these pages – of one of the happiest moments of my life. I was just hanging out in the French language with my Latino students on the west side of Denver in 2014. Krashen was in the room at the time. I was soiling my pants, but I was doing a good job. When we get observed, by anyone, we must always remember that we are not being judged, but rather we are just being observed. Since we are using comprehensible input, we are automatically doing a far better job than most other foreign language teachers out there. All the observer needs to see whether they know it or not is comprehensible input, even crappy comprehensible input. Maybe we can have an initiative through the coming winter to just kick it all down a notch and stop trying to be the best teacher in the building. How to do that? Focus more on the kids, who have the uncanny ability in their brave hearts to pull us out of our self-absorption with how and what we are doing and just be with them. This, I feel, is my real work as a teacher, to learn to just attend to them and let the language come along for the ride. It will.
