Greg was Awesome!

I want to share this report from Greg with you.  He's an amazing teacher who was ready to quit the profession and was looking for another job when he discovered TPRS/CI just three months ago.  He has not yet been to a workshop, but decided to dive right in and try it.  Ben Slavic and every one else on Ben's PLC has been encouraging him and trying to answer his many questions.

"I have to share some good news from an observation today – especially some great reactions from an administrator.

I’ve had several good days since I started using CI, but today tops them all.  Never before have I felt so elated after a day at school.  Except after the last day of school last year, but that was for completely different reasons.

My observation today was of a French 1 class.  They are 32 kids, in about their 10th week of TPRS/CI instruction and they are FULLLLLL of energy, which we are getting better and better at rallying into something productive (much slower than I would prefer, but I’m grateful nonetheless). This period is split, so we have class for 45 minutes, kids go to lunch, then they come back for 45 more minutes of class…a nice built-in brain break every day (Or just a wild rampage when they come back all sugared/caffeined/hormoned-up from lunch).  The AP came in today about 10 minutes into the start of class.  We were just getting started on asking the third scene of a story we had started two days ago.

The script is the one Ben came up with on a train and posted on here a few days ago [is sitting across from / looks like / is trying to / one must not].  I was a little apprehensive with the AP seeing this story becuase the kids made the main character “Herbert le Pervert” and another character was “Chester Mo Lester” (really did not want to allow that last one and probably shouldn’t have, but the whole class practically demanded we keep it and I made them keep everything else PG).  By the way, those 4 structures are awesome – so much fun to be had with those.

Our agenda was: 1) finish asking scene 3 of the story we started two days ago -lunch- 2)  choral translation of story text off smartboard 3) class retell prompted by my questions, using artist’s illustration on old school overhead projector 4) take volunteers for individual retells, either whole story or as many scenes as you want.  Skip this step if no one wants to volunteer.  (Individual retells only added today to show the kids off to the AP and sell this method) 5) Quick Quiz.

When the kids left for lunch, the AP commented “This is so entertaining, but I wish I could understand French.” Also, he said he loves the checklist and that he’s going to steal it (Thanks Bryce Hedstrom and Susan Gross! and Robert, I thought my AP would like to have a bunch of things to check off, but I do like the conciseness of your checklist and plan on using it as a checking tool for myself).  Then he asked what level of French it was and I told him French 1.  He said, “Wait, this is French 1?  Really?” 

Ha…I can’t believe it myself (to bring myself back to the ground, today was an unusually shining class).  He also said “It’s interesting – the class feels very casual, but you obviously have a lot of structure in place and the kids know what’s expected of them.”  Well, all of the credit for that comment goes to you all on this PLC.  He then asked about storytelling, which he seemed very interested in, and I said it’s something that a lot of WL teachers around the world are using and that I found out about it through an online community.  I’ll be telling him about “Ben Slavic’s PLC”, TPRS/CI, Krashen, and anything else he wants to know about during my post-conference next week.  I have some preparation to do!

The best part is, the AP said he wanted to come back and watch the second half of class after lunch if he could make it.  What?! 

We had just finished choral translation when the AP made it back.  Then we did a class retell/Q+A type thing prompted by my questions, with the illustration.  That flowed very nicely and took quite a while because I asked a lot of questions.  Then I asked for individual retells of the whole story or as much as they wanted to do.  I asked several times, because I knew that several kids would be able to do it alone.  Finally, TJ raised his hand to volunteer.  He said two or three sentences with PERFECT pronunciation, flow, and confidence, and asked if he should continue.  I very enthusiastically said “Oui, exact!  Très bien!  Continue!” He kept on trucking and the kids got AMAZINGLY still. 

Before I knew it, he had beautifully retold the entire story.  I couldn’t help but have a huge smile on my face.  But my favorite part is this:  right before he got to the end, I was getting ready to ask the kids to applaud for 10 seconds, but before he even finished his last word my whole class voluntarily erupted into a huge applause.  That unrequested applause for their classmate will ring in my ears for a long time, as well as TJ’s smile while he retold the story and his classmates’ smiles when they applauded. 

The feeling of happiness, support, and success in the room at that moment is THE highlight of my first two years of teaching.  I literally felt like I was dreaming.  I thought it would be years before I felt this way during a class.  I know not every day will be this thrilling, but I am so grateful for today.  The AP left with about 2 minutes to go of class, we squeezed in our Quiz, and then I praised them all as they filed out for such a good class.

Lastly, the AP sent me an email tonight that says,

“Fantastic job today.  I couldn’t believe it was a French 1 class!  I look forward to talking with you next week.”

I only wish I had a video of some of my classes pre-CI so that you all could understand how absurdly unlikely it is that I would have an email like this from an AP in my inbox.

A huge thank you to you all.  Thank you on behalf of my students.  Thank you Ben Slavic.  Thank you Stephen Krashen, Blaine Ray, Alfi Kohn, et al.  Thanks French people for your great language and sorry for frequently butchering it.  Thank you God."