a new year, a new level of slowing down

I think I am finally learning how to go slowly. Or maybe, I already knew how to go slowly, and I’m finding a new level of understanding in it. Part of it is probably that I feel more comfortable with myself as a teacher and with being the odd man out in the department. But, part of it is students who are willing to be honest with me. I’m starting the second week of school now, which means I am going on lesson three (block schedule), and every day I find myself slowing down again and again. I have been using TPR with my level Is (TPR and circling with balls with level II), and one of my classes has been very slugglish in response. I was just chugging away and suddenly I heard Susie, or Ben, or some wise sage whispering in my ear that boredom means they don’t understand. I stopped then and there and asked for a show of fingers – not for how much they understood, but to see if I was going slowly enough. Man, I was getting one’s and two’s all over the place. I slowed down, got through half of what I thought I would, but at the end, there were mostly four’s and five’s (I do a count of five fingers, not ten, so this was good.)


In another class I heard somebody grumbling. It sounded like a complaint about having to do the actions all class period. So, again, I stopped. I asked the class if they felt like they were learning and if I should continue working like this, or if they would prefer a more traditional approach. A resounding reply to keep going. So, I slowed down again. I’m checking for comprehension two or three times a class period. I’m not quite in the range I am aiming for yet, and it really does feel painfully slow. I keep reminding them that I’m the only one in the room who speaks Spanish, but I keep forgetting that. I use a word ten times and I think they have it. I think I can speed up. They don’t and I can’t. A student hesitantly volunteered today, and somebody chuckled and said that I should give her “hard ones.” I stopped. I put on my concerned teacher face, and a Time Out signal to speak in English. I told them that I would never try to trick them. That I am not trying to see how much they have forgotten, or how much they didn’t learn. I told them that my job is to make learning so easy that they don’t even realize they are doing it. I don’t think I was imagining the look of relief on people’s faces, or the more relaxed atmosphere in the class. I am shocked by how little people were understanding me, even when I thought I was going slowly, and I thought I was recycling my words enough. Back to the drawing board for me!

On Going S-L-O-W in a GT class

The point was made that if I slow down my delivery to the point that even the slowest student in my class can understand, then I am hampering all of my other students. Is that really fair for me to do, especially considering I am trained in teaching GT students and am working towards my master’s in GT education?


Yes, it is. Because the underlying assumption is that if I slow down my delivery there is nothing left for the advanced students. But therein lies the beauty of TPRS. In any traditional class, during the direct instruction all the students are learning exactly the same information at the same time. Or at least, they are being exposed to the same information. The students at the top of the curve have already mastered the material, and they are now bored. The students at the bottom of the curve aren’t ready for it and they react by looking bored or uninterested. But really, they are just overwhelmed.

In a TPRS class, however, this is not true. Although the teacher is standing in the front of the room talking (sometimes), this is not direct instruction in the way we have always envisioned it. The teacher is leading a group into a collective effort, but each student is focused specifically on the information that is new to him/her. Slower processing students are focused solely on the words and trying to construct meaning. Faster processing students are focused on the underlying grammar behind the words, and how to construct meaning. Faster processing students are honored because they are often the students who can think of clever new scenarios in the stories the class is creating.

There have been a few studies that have shown that mixed level TPRS classes have been the most effective. I know that Michelle Whaley has posted about the results of her mixed level Russian classes on Ben Slavic’s blog, and Blaine Ray has referenced another teacher who had astounding results with her levels I-IV in the same class. When the vocabulary and the speed were not an issue, students could truly acquire some of the more subtle parts of the language. These kids often nail grammatical points that usually stick out as the immediate flag that a person is not a native speaker (in Spanish the use of the subjunctive, por and para, ser and estar) and they do this because “it sounds right” and because the many pop-up grammar lessons infused throughout every class stick.

As a teacher, I can pop-up anything I feel my students need to work on. So, for my slower students I pop-up, “Why did I put an –n at the end of that verb?” (It’s plural) and for my students who are beyond that I will point out that although this is an –ar verb, it ended in an –en, why is that? (It’s a plural command)

TPRS in a non TPRS department

TPRS in a non-TPRS department


There are 9 teachers in my department. I am the only teacher who is trying to use TPRS. I have taken a softer, gentler approach this year. Meaning, I have not advertised my use of TPRS, nor have I chastised the other teachers for using the methods they do. Instead, I have sought to find places and times where what I believe can be shared in an open way. For instance, I shared a participation rubric that Ben Slavic posted on his blog. I have shared strategies for reading skills.

I discovered that in my case, it is not that my department is anti-TPRS, it’s that the bureaucracy of the district I teach in requires a high degree of lock-step teaching. We are expected, district wide, to be on the same chapter as every other teacher within a few days.

It is also a lack of familiarity. When I have made comments, such as referencing the top 100 words used in spoken Spanish, or that “even stupid kids growing up in Spain learn to speak Spanish” that my ideas are listened to. I even brought up the topic of homework not having an impact on learning. One of the teachers decided to try an experiment with her students – and she is the most traditional teacher in the group. Not everybody agrees with me, but that’s ok. I didn’t become a teacher to have everybody agree with me. It’s enough that we can all listen to each other with respect.



Now, I don’t share everything. In part because TPRS sounds so fuzzy and not well prepared if you don’t SEE it. I mean, telling other teachers that you aren’t too worried about grammar just rings all sorts of alarms. And it isn’t even true. But, it’s hard to put into concise words what we do. So, mainly I share in small bits and pieces.

Towards the end of the year I gave up and taught the old way. The kids had to have a certain amount of information in order to be able to pass the standardized exam, and I didn’t have enough time to cover it all in a traditional TPRS manner (we lost 11 instructional days this year to snow just for starters) and the amount of vocab and grammar just cannot be acquired in that time. So, I used all the time-worn strategies of language teachers everywhere. A lot more of my students failed the second semester than the first, and my exam grades were consistent with first semester grades.

Sooo... now that I am on break I am plannning to use Backwards Designing to map out my own personal TPRS curriculum that aligns with the district pacing guide by semesters next year. There is a rumor that we might be able to keep our students for the whole year, which would ease some of the stress too. I would have a whole year to get students to where they “belong.”

Homework - can I judge?

In another post I commented implied that homework was a waste of time. To be fair, I was referring to a student who has already mastered the material and is now failing because he cannot force himself to do work that he has already surpassed. It would be like taking an advanced mathematics student and failing him for refusing to do 100 problems of single digit multiplication, simply because all the other students were doing the multiplication problems. But, if this kid can do trigonometry, why are we failing him because he got bored of problems that read 4x2=? Come on, sure it’s easy for him, but how intellectually challenging is it?




Be that as it may, I was reminded that it is not fair to judge another teacher’s assignments as being a waste of time. It’s true I do not want others to judge me harshly, and there have been times over this past year that I have worried my teaching style is being judged by many. But, I *do* think that most of the homework assignments are worthless, and not just for my brilliant yet autistic student.



There is a lot of research out there right now that shows most homework has little to no bearing on a student’s actual success in acquiring the desired information. Little to no bearing. If I have 86 minutes approximately 3 days a weeks in which to teach as much Spanish as I can, why am I going to waste precious minutes of that time with work research, supported by my personal experience, will have little to no impact on the actual learning of my students?

In Which I Rant Again

There was a kid in my class first semester. Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Brilliant, but autistic. He excelled in class, even with the language barriers that autistic children have. (Thinking in pictures tends to slow down the speaking, social "niceties" are relatively meaningless, plays on words often don't make sense because of very literal thinking, etc.) He had a few quirks, for instance he would be reading his textbook chapters ahead of the class, but if I called on him, he knew exactly what we were doing and could provide an answer. He even did unthinkable things. He would volunteer to act in our stories! He would volunteer silly answers to our story lines. He would even, sometimes, smile. Great kid.

He switched classes at the semester. And now, he is failing.

His new teacher recognizes that he is brilliant, and that he knows all the information. But she is still failing him because he hasn't turned any of the assignments in. She wanted to know how he did in my class. Are you kidding me? He was the ace! She is concerned. He has an IEP, and he is failing, so what should she do?

I took the time to explain some of the little things about autism. That's great. The problem is, she doesn't see how that has anything to do with his missing work. So, I told her to talk to his counselor, or his special ed teacher.

*GROWL*

We have a CHEETAH here, and we're going to fail him because he is refusing to walk nicely with the elephants. We're just going to reinforce the idea that he is different, and wrong, and he cannot succeed in life.

Am I really so out of touch with reality? Am I really so different than the rest of the academic world? The other teachers in my department are all about the all mighty homework assignment. This, they say, will prepare the kids for the rigors of college, for the rigors of life.  OK. Sure. But, not all the kids are going to college. Not all the kids will study languages in college. They say, try missing deadlines at work, see where that gets you. Fine. Except, we tend to pick our professions because of our personal quirks. Math is hard for me, I mean I can do it just fine, but I have to spend a lot of mental energy making sure the numbers don't move around the page, and that they stay the same. I'm "good" at math, but it isn't fun for me. I didn't go into a career where math is a strong prerequisite. I cannot stand staying still, and being boxed in. I didn't go into a career where I am sitting in a cubicle or an office all day. I stand up, I walk around, I get to talk a lot. I get to interact with people. So, my ability as a student to sit still and be quiet actually had no bearing on my future ability in a career. And you know what? I still refuse to do work I deem boring or unnecessary. So, I've missed a few deadlines in life. Nobody has fired me for it, I still have a 4.0 in grad school. I have learned to pick my battles. But please, don't make me feel like I am wasting my time. I have too little of it to waste it on useless stuff. Which is why I refuse to waste my students' time.

Again, this kid, this wonderful, brilliant, funny kid is going to fail, and he is going to have all of society's messages reinforced by his teacher, simply because he is not doing work that is a waste of his time. He doesn't need the practice. He just needs to fill in the blanks in a spreadsheet to prove to a calculator that he can do the work like a good little robot. *growl*