Fighting through the murk

A little bit about me and my personal reasons for starting this site.  Please bear with me as I tell you about myself -- I find that when  go to someone's internet space, the context helps me to place what I am reading into a larger narrative.  I hope this does the same for you.

I have a B.A. in Spanish and English, and I graduated in 2011 with excellent commendations but very little direction.  As many thus unfocused-but-decorated graduates have done before me, I decided to join Teach For America and I taught Spanish in an elementary school in Newark, NJ for two years.  I had hopes that I would find teaching to be something I enjoyed, something that I could be good at.

Good thing I did, too.  Because it turns out I'm not anywhere near "good" yet.  But I found something that gave my life purpose.  Teaching children, and teaching them Spanish, turned out to be the best decision I ever stumbled into.  I'd still make the argument that I was just as good (or not) as any traditionally-trained teacher with similar experience (i.e., none) in the classroom.  But I decided to stay and to figure out this Spanish education thing for myself and for my kids.

When I first started teaching in Newark, I was panicked that I had been put in charge of developing the curriculum for the kids I would be teaching.  With 1 month's notice and no experience, I did what I think all good teachers do when faced with challenge: I asked for help.  Luckily, the person from whom I asked said help knew about something called TPRS (Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling).  I learned the basics of it and used it in my classroom for the next two years.

I'm now finished with my third year in the classroom and going into my fourth.  For personal reasons (turns out I don't really like 5 year olds), I moved to middle school Spanish at the end of my second year.  And now that my classroom is settling down and I have on some level found my true teaching self in there, I can focus more attention on creating the best curriculum for my kids.  The problem I have found is that TPRS, and its larger umbrella, Comprehensible Input (CI) have a lot of different hands in the pot.  It's kind of a grassroots methodology, if you will.  So sorting through the voices, the research, and my own personal beliefs about teaching has been extremely difficult.  I have read thousands of blog posts, downloaded hundreds of "curriculum samples," story samples, templates and ideas.  I've read lots of books too, from Krashen to Blaine Ray to Ben Slavic, of course all the TPRS novels, and more.  There are things about TPRS as an ONLY THIS classroom strategy that I -- and research -- simply do not agree with.  It's all very confusing.

I have created this blog for three reasons.

First, I would like to use this space as an honest place where I can sort through my ideas and what I find in the vast interwebs.  At time of writing, I am 25 years old.  That means, on some level I am more technologically competent than some of my peers in the TPRS "movement."  Not all, of course.  But looking through hundreds of websites has made me cringe at how HARD they are to navigate, and, for people who are all about going S-L-O-W to increase student comprehension, they don't do any favors to someone trying to learn off their webpages.  More than that, I want to organize the information that I am thinking through in a way that appeals to the way MY brain works.

Second, ideally, I would love feedback and constructive criticism/response to the things that I am saying.  The best information and grasp I have gotten on this journey is from reading points and counterpoints by those who really understand what's happening.  I don't yet.  But I want to.

And third, This will be a space where I blog about my experiences in the classroom and in my own professional development.  The CI/TPRS community doesn't have a lot of visible teachers like me.  I work in a charter school in a Title I/urban area.  I am former Teach For America.  I also, incidentally, do not tie teaching to my faith.  Just say the words "data driven" or "educational reform" and I have found that many TPRS advocates get disgusted and dismissive.  When they can't possibly imagine that a TFA teacher is in the room (because why would "they" want to develop professionally?  They are poverty tourists), the things that these TPRS proponents say are astoundingly hurtful.  So I think if I can show what TPRS and CI teaching looks like in the places that I am from and in the schools that I continue to proudly work, perhaps more people like me will be interested in having their voice heard in the larger community.

Onward!