bien/well
mal/badly
mieux/better
le mieux/better

to compare me with my kids. They are always better except that I sing better. It’s just funny to see their faces when I act serious about how well I sing. Again, this is absolutely nothing new and directions are on this site/resources/workshops/circling with balls.

I went for a football player with a scowl on his face today - his way of interacting with teachers, I guess. I cracked him up twice with the football in my hand, working away at loving him. He was all serious and I kept working on him and he burst out laughing when the ice melted and he saw that he was, today in those moments, the most important person I had ever met. If that sounds like what Susan Gross teaches us to do, that is because it is.

*In TPRS we shelter vocabulary but not grammar (grammar as correctly spoken language, not the old way). That phrase, “sheltering vocabulary but not grammar”, is now an integral part of what we now call TPRS. It is from Suan Gross.

(cont. from Part 5):

EVERYONE IS CHALLENGED (Differentiate your Instruction)

In a typical class there are several levels of participants.  Some are newbies and some are old pros. There is always somebody there for the first time who doesn’t know how to adjust the bike, doesn’t have the right clothing, doesn’t know how to pedal smoothly, and doesn’t know how to flow along with the group.  But there are also those that REALLY know what they’re doing.  There is an occasional semi-pro bicycle racer.  A trainer of Olympic caliber athletes that lives in the area shows up once in a while.  Most of us are somewhere in the middle — we have cycling shoes with toe clips and cycling shorts, and we know the routine, but we are not superstars.

So, here is this mix of people with different ability levels who are all in the same class.  The music and the bikes are the same, but not everyone is getting the same workout.  No matter what our individual levels may be, we all get challenged.  We all get pushed.  “Make sure you have enough resistance on,” Dennis says.  “You have to catch up.”

Dennis is in charge, but he is not commanding us.  It is the environment he sets up that is demanding.  He sets up the experience so that all levels will challenge themselves.  It is the spinning class environment itself that compels us to work hard, not an overbearing personality making us do it. 

To bring up the level he might say something funny like: “Bring it up to somewhere between really easy and really hard.”  What does that mean?  It means you work at an effort level that is challenging FOR YOU.  You are spinning at a cadence that YOU can hear.  You are working at an effort level that is just a bit tough FOR YOU.  It is different for different people.  Some may be dogging it, but not too many.  The mood, the music, the story, the encouragement and the group carry along even the uncertain, the ill equipped and the unfit.  Like me.

(à suivre)

Here is the fifth installment of ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW ABOUT TEACHING I LEARNED IN SPINNING CLASS by Bryce Hedstom:

(cont. from Part 4):

THERE ARE LOTS OF BREAKS (Apply 10:2 Theory)

If you have never been to a well-run spinning class you may think that it would be incredibly boring to just sit there and pedal a stationary bike for an hour.  And it could be, but in a good spin class there is variety.  We go slow and fast.  We do intervals.  We stand and we sit.  We work hard and we sweat, but there are also lots of breaks - “Resistance off, quick drink,” is a frequent directive after almost every long song.

A similar idea to Dennis’ frequent breaks in education is 10:2 Theory.  In a classroom, students need mental breaks every 10 minutes or so to make sense of new information.  Learners take these breaks even if the teacher doesn’t slow down, so we might as well build them into our instruction.  We might as well take purposeful short breaks several times each class period to allow our students to recharge and reorient before moving on.

EVERYONE IS ENCOURAGED (”Nothing motivates like success.” — Susan Gross)

I counted Dennis saying the word “Perfect” at least 15 times in spinning class one day.  In that same class he also said “Good job” 8 times, Nice job” 5 times, and “Nice” 6 times (he says it like an extremely cool and approving surfer would say it: 

(Niiiiiiiiiiccce). 

Every single class ends with “Nice job” or “Good ride.”  Dennis is obviously pleased with the overall effort.  Even if I didn’t push myself as hard as I could have, I leave feeling good about the class and I am encouraged to come back and try harder next time.

Dennis doesn’t nag, or plead, or preach at us.  He never says anything even remotely like, “You are just lazy and slow, and you need to get your sorry butts in gear.”  Why?  OK, he is just a friendly and encouraging guy — that’s just the way he is — but it is also because people choose to come to his class, and not many would come back if he treated them poorly.  And I suspect that students will not show up to my classes mentally or emotionally were I to belittle them and not encourage them.

Dennis says “Nice job, man,” as he walks around.  You always feel like you must be one of the best ones in the class.  You feel like he has noticed you, and that he can see you are working, and that he approves.  “This next one’s really good,” Dennis says, and we start in on a new song.  The whole class feels good.  “Feel good about yourself.  You are here working out,” he says.  We spin.  We sweat.  We work hard.  And we do indeed feel good about ourselves.
I may be out of shape, lazy, clueless and uncoordinated, but in Dennis’s spinning class I feel like a winner. 

I try harder because of that.  I work harder and improve more than if he ignored me or belittled me.  Don’t get the idea that Dennis is running around telling everyone that they are a superstar or that they are potential Olympic material.  He doesn’t do that.  He just encourages us where we are at.  He lets me know that he sees the effort I am putting in and he encourages me to work harder and to improve.  I feel successful and it motivates me to try even harder. 

I want the students in my own classes to feel like that.

(à suivre) …

I received an email that broke my heart the other day.  It was from a former colleague who lives in another state.  After the usual chatting about the school and families, she wrote, “I am still doing TPRS, but not exclusively b ecause I honestly can’t keep up with six 50 minute classes every day.  I do believe in it though and it does work!”
 
Yes, thousand of teachers are convinced it works.  They know it is a good method for their students.  They can feel the heart logic of it and they can see the sound brain science behind it.  They want to do it.  But we lose them.  We lose too many of them.
 
This was a colleague with whom I worked with for three years.  Those were glorious days:
 
1. She was good at TPRS. 
2. Kids liked her classes.
3. She had great results.
4. With her teaching the level 2’s and 3’s, my job of teaching the Advanced Placement track was much easier.
 
And I know that this is happening all over the country.  Teachers go to a workshop and then return to the classroom all enthused.  They jump in, but they cannot keep up the pace they have set for themselves.  They are under the impression that they have to talk like some polyglot Jim Carey all period every day.  They cannot maintain it.  They feel like failures and they slowly give it up like my friend and colleague.  What was once a torrent of CI slows to a trickle.
 
This is why we need coaching.  I am increasingly convinced that we do a disservice to people by offering only drive-by workshops.  Although20the intentions are good and right, the results are like the snake oil salesman breezing through town, getting people riled up and leaving before they ask the hard questions.
 
I am compelled to think of Harold Hill, the flim-flam salesman in “The Music Man”.  As you recall, Hill’s schtick was selling boy’s bands in small towns: uniforms, instruments, sheet music, the works.  He would convince them of the need and the beauty of music, get everyone excited about the boy’s band.  Then he would take the townspeople’s money and  leave before any child lactually earned how to play.
 
Sometimes TPRS is not much different than Harold Hill.  We need a better paradigm to train teachers.  To involve them in community.  To support them.  To teach them, nurture them and listen to them.
 
I am also convinced that this story can have a happy ending, like “The Music Man”.  By the end of the musical Harold Hill had changed.  He fell in love and he stayed in town to face the consquences of his amazing salesmanship.  He finished what he had started.  He trained a boy’s band.
 
The analogy, as all analogies, is flawed, but this little rippling in the surface of the waters of TPRS away from “big training all at once on a national level by big experts” to “little training slowly over longer periods of time on a local level by peers” is one to thin k about.
 
I am not advocating the end of national conferences. They are magnificent lightning in a bottle experiences, but lightning brings storms, and storms cause discord, and cannot reach the roots of the plants that need the water in the way that frequent light rains can.

Here’s hoping that my friend and colleague, and others in similar situations out there, find like-minded teachers to encourage and nurture one another in TPRS to the betterment of their students.