Last week I had the pleasure of seeing Sir Ken Robinson speak to the Schools of the Future Conference here in Honolulu. His talk was engaging, funny and thought provoking, per usual. One of my favorite moments came after his formal presentation when he was answering some questions.
He told a story of his daughter who struggled with French in high school. In a meeting with the teacher Ken and his wife were told that their daughter was acting bored and checked-out in class. Ken the suggested to the teacher that, perhaps. . . maybe. . . the class was boring. Of course the teacher went on the defensive and suggested that he would have to agree that there are some elements of learning a foreign language that are "just boring", but essential. (Verb conjugations, various rules of grammar, spelling etc. . . the list could go on and on.)
He responded (or so the story went), "Well, no, I guess we don't agree on that. I don't think that anything has to be boring. If you think school French has to be boring, maybe you should consider another profession." He went on, "Imagine if you, a French teacher, devoted to teaching French, think that something in your class is boring, how would the students feel who might not even be convinced yet that they like French?" Poor teacher, but what a great message for language teachers all over the world.
That is a great story for language teachers to think about. We often say things like: "You just have to memorize this." Or "just learn this." How positively unhelpful to our kids. It is our duty to find meaning and relevance in EVERYTHING that we do, not just the easy and "fun" stuff.
Here is a recent animation of another of Sir Ken's talks. (I showed this to my classes this week):
1 comment:
Perfect timing. I attended a disappointing language training this weekend. The trainer pushed memorization as an important strategy for learning vocabulary. I was shocked at her advice. Then at lunch, I met a teacher who sounds like the teacher Sir Ken Robinson referenced. She shared how she wasn’t counting HW anymore. She was excited she didn’t, in her words, have to grade those dumb boring worksheets you have to give. What? Who says you have to give dumb boring worksheets. Clearly this practice does not lead to language acquisition. It leads to kids dropping the language. Learning languages is far from boring! I feel sorry for her students who signed up to learn to communicate in a second language. Thanks for your post.
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