Welcome back?

 It has been almost FOUR YEARS since I have blogged. And I stopped because I felt like I wasn't adding anything new to the conversation. But in those four years, I've learned quite a lot, changed some things, and hit a low post-Covid that I am just starting to crawl out of. 

I guess I will focus this blog on something that has been really bothering me these last few months. And it is the idea that just because I "teach with TPRS/CI," I don't do anything but tell silly stories about blue cats with six tails. This has always kind of been the assumption, but it hasn't been as black and white as what I've seen lately.

For example, I had a colleague tell me that there is no culture in my curriculum because the stories and movie talks I use in the first two levels are designed to be language-focused. They are easy to adapt to any classroom, any language, etc. While it is true that the story-asking stories do not have culture in them, that does not mean that I do not include culture in my classroom. 

Here are just a few ways I include culture in my beginning classes:

• Date talk (or On this day): For each school day, we highlight a francophone person, holiday, or event in history. The students are exposed to a multitude of French-speaking people on a daily basis.
• Cultural articles: One of my colleagues has done an exceptional job of finding strange news stories that go along with our non-culture-centric stories. For example, we use an old story from Look I Can Talk about special chocolate (mainly because the original story has the character going to Lee's Summit, where we live and teach!). To supplement that, we have a reading on the best chocolatier in France.
• Manie Musicale: Thank goodness for this group of sharing teachers and their work to include diverse voices!

I'm sure there are so many more, but I'm drawing a blank.

Another idea is that, because I am focused on Comprehensible Input, my students never talk or write. That is crazy talk! My students talk from the moment they arrive at my door (with a password or a question of the day) and it doesn't end there! The difference is that I don't correct their speaking unless I am confused and I rarely grade it. I tell them they are competing with what they did last time and not with anyone else. In my mind, it makes no sense to grade all students the same when it comes to production when we know that toddlers all develop their speaking skills on different timelines. 

** A quick side note: I had an AMAZING student a few years ago who LOVED French. She would come in during study hall and work one-on-one with me, watch French TV shows and movies, etc. But her speaking was always a struggle. I had this child for FOUR YEARS before I found out that she didn't start speaking in sentences until she was like four years old. Had I told her she was a failure in French 1 because she mixed up words, she would have dropped out and robbed me of so many memorable moments. I'm sorry, but I refuse to do error correction. 

Okay, this is long enough. What assumptions about CI/TPRS/ADI drive you bonkers?