“True–because university fl teaching has been so slow to change, because even methods courses are often not up to date; because textbooks and the way money is allocated for them are entrenched; because even ACTFL, although it is also a force for some good, has been very slow to let the CI wave have its full effect; because few district and school administrators have a feel for what works and what doesn’t in FL classes; all the preceding causing a culture in which so many legacy teachers still feel they can please whoever runs career ladder or evaluates them by looking for shiny new ways to review the imperfect, definite articles, indirect object pronouns and other vestiges of a failed approach which only a few thousand are aware has failed so miserably.”
Written by Brian Barabe in response to my sending him a post to a listserv asking for – get ready for it – “a fun way to review the imperfect.” Brian’s reference to Career Ladder was a generous addition to our salary if we were willing to spend our time on color-coding binders full of lesson plans, “research”, or whatever. The district had about 7K teachers and no doubt most of them got on career ladder, so think how many of those binders may still be sitting unopened in a storage facility for which taxpayers are still paying two decades later. My one trial at it, when a district administrator said she’d be my partner, set up that my students would learn 100 Russian words that year. Wow. I did get my increase, and then dropped out. (my wife went along with the salary loss – I was too busy teaching for B.S. like that).
Pat’s Polemics
On-going brilliance
