Southwest COLT

Ben Slavic commented recently on a tsunami of new young teachers. I just attended Southwest Colt in Utah where Jan Holter Kittok presented on her variety of TPRS and did a Swedish TPRS demo. It was my first chance to see things from the student point of view.

There were about 20 of us there with varying experience in both teaching and TPRS. Many were wanting to make the jump, but just didn't know how to start. I hope that session was beneficial to them. I was in the same boat a few months ago, but decided to just jump out of the boat because I couldn't keep up the same old routine and even though I wasn't and still am not a TPRS expert, the only way I will get there is just doing it and doing the best I can while I seek out better training.

Next door (unfortunately at the same time), Scott Benedict was presenting on proficiency based grading. I would have liked to attend his session as well. The 2nd half of the day, he came and joined us in the Swedish demo.

The funny thing was that throughout the three day conference, I saw a lot of the TPRS teachers in most of the same sessions I attended. It's pretty easy to see which sessions are for the grammarians and which ones lend themselves to TPRS.

I just got a grant to attend National in Minneapolis on the condition that I present on my experience at our State UFLA conference this fall. I was all too happy to do it. I didn't realize there were a lot of TPRSers in Utah and compared with Colorado, Minnesota, etc. there probably aren't, but change is on the way. There's a lot of teachers who see the benefits of TPRS, but still are afraid to take the first step. There are several other teachers I know who are watching my "experiment" and making plans to gradually start up TPRS. My only recommendation would be, don't dip your foot in the pool. Take the plunge; the water's nice.

The Journey Begins

I took a Blaine Ray workshop in October and starting after Thanksgiving, I jumped into the azure blue waters of TPRS. I told my students it was an experiment that we would do until Christmas, but I knew I we weren't going back . . . it was a long time in coming, but I only had to spend a half an hour in the workshop before I made the decision to ditch the grammar books; I haven't wavered from my decision since.

What was the allure? What enticed me to leave the "safety" of the shore? After all, I'm a 4%er and a grammar nerd . . . but now, I'm a recovering grammar nerd. I have always been smart enough to know that kids hate grammar, but for some time, I thought it was just one of those necessary evils.

The hook that convinced me of the methodology is comprehensible input. I think I first heard that expression as a grad school student 12 years ago, but even though I knew about CI and Krashen's work in language acquisition, the college professors I had couldn't really explain Comprehensible Input and especially what it would look like in a language classroom. I remember thinking at the time that CI would take the form of a teacher talking in the language every class period for a year or so while the students would just soak in the language. It seemed very teacher centered and my own experience told me kids just can't sit there and listen for that long. In short, it seemed like one of those theoretical pie in the sky ideals of a college professor who had no experience actually teaching kids. How wrong I was.

More later.