It's Official - TriState TCI is a Group!

Since I started teaching with Comprehensible Input, I've discovered a close-knit but far-flung peer group of dedicated CI language educators. Many of us are the only CI teachers in our buildings, schools, or even districts. For a while, I felt like the only CI teacher in Pennsylvania - or the TriState region! 

That was what motivated four area CI teachers, of three different languages, at three different levels, in four schools, in three states, to form a peer learning network: TriState TCI. Our group has been active for two years and has gained a life of its own, becoming a recognized community of professionals learning and growing together. We are our own institution.

So, where once our ideological isolation made it tough to take advantage of group discounts offered for conferences and workshops, we now have acknowledged group status. Lucky for us, the CI world operates in a spirit of generosity and collegiality that transcends school walls and district boundaries. Thanks to that spirit, here are the group incentives that conference and workshop organizers have made available to members of TriState TCI who want to attend training this summer:

June 27-29 Express Fluency Teacher Training, Burlington, VT
The June training features Mandarin, French, and Spanish classes supplemented by teacher workshops. Register by May 1st and save $30! Group discount $30 off per person for groups of 3+. Register here.

July 4-29, STARTALK/Confucius Institute TPRS Training for Chinese Teachers, U of Hawaii
Information here: http://confuciusinstitutehawaii.org/programs/summer-programs/teacher-sports-camp-info/

July 12-14: Teach for June summer workshops: Immediate Immersion & Power Grading,
in Sandy Creek, NY.

Scott Benedict writes: Generally we offer a $30 discount per person for 3 to 5 registrations and $60 per person for 6 or more. If you have a group registering together, email me at scott@teachforjune.com to get the discount code. Please include information about everyone in your group along with their emails.

Register here.

July 16-18: FluencyFast language classes just before iFLT in Chattanooga, TN.

Karen Rowan writes: It's $100 off for anyone attending iFLT or $200 off 2 classes. (Give or take a dollar. I'm rounding.) I'll extend that same rate to anyone who is just attending Fluency Fast classes as a group. Register online here, for classes in French and Spanish, and here, for classes in Mandarin.

July 18-22, TPRS Academy Summer Intensive 5-Day training, near Amsterdam, Netherlands

Kirstin Plante writes: Receive a DISCOUNT of €75 if you register for both this course and the Agen workshop! (See below for details about Agen, July 25-30). Information here.

July 19-23 iFLT week-long training conference, in Chattanooga, TN

Carol Gaab at iFLT has also offered us a group discount. Mary Grigonis Greenfield has generously offered to be the point person to work out logistics of handling a group registration. Any current Tristate members may message Mary on FaceBook or email her here to form a TriState TCI group at iFLT in July. Pricing and registration information here.

July 25-29: NTPRS week-long training conference, in Reno, NV

Jody Klopp writes: You will be able to register as a group for the TriState TCI peer network. On the registration page, indicate that your group is TriState TCI. On the payment page, type the appropriate discount code shown below:

3 - 5 registrations from same school district (or group) - $30 per person discount

(Use discount code DISTRICT3)

6 or more registrations from same school district (or group) - $50 per person discount

(Use discount code DISTRICT6)

Register here.

July 25-30: TPRS® Agen, week-long training conference, in Agen, France

Judith Dubois writes:

The Agen Workshop will give a reduction of 10% to groups of 3 or more that register together.

Register here.

August 11-12 or 13-15 Express Fluency Teacher Training, Burlington, VT

This August training(s) feature Latin, Spanish and French classes combined with teacher workshops. Register by May 1st and save $30. Group discount $30 off per person for groups of 3+. Register here.

How did I get where I am now?

Since I left my teaching job in June, 2014, I've had a few teacher friends ask me what helped me make the decision to quit. Here's what I tell them:

I had what many would consider a perfect job, as a PK-5 Spanish teacher in a private Quaker school with small classes, supportive parents, and a lot of caring, creative colleagues. My blessing and my challenge for 12 years was that I was the only language teacher in the building and the only elementary teacher in the language program. I had discovered this wonderful approach to language teaching and acquisition called TPRS (Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling) and was excited to share it with other language teachers. Yet some days I felt like nobody in my building (including the administrators who evaluated my teaching, planned my schedule, and chose what parents and prospective families should see when they visited the school) had a clear idea about the value of what I was doing, and few colleagues in the MS and HS language department considered what I was doing relevant to their rigorous, textbook-based, “communicative” immersion classrooms. I desperately wanted someone to bounce ideas around with— another teacher as passionate about teaching with comprehensible input as I was— and there was no one in the school who met that need. 

Along the way, both of my sons were culled out of HS Spanish due to their inability to perform at expected levels of proficiency. This despite the fact that they were both born in Peru and highly motivated to learn their natal language, just not good candidates for the grammar-based submersion they were subjected to. That broke my heart.

What finally made up my mind was a new principal who came in with tons of exciting ideas but little experience working with a faculty through a Quaker process of discernment and consensus. Where once our close-knit faculty had worked together to come to agreement about what was best for our students, now the school's administrators were working behind the scenes to implement programs and policies without our input. It didn't necessarily affect my language classroom, but it affected the atmosphere in the school and eroded the camaraderie and sense of shared purpose we had built over many years of working together.

Meanwhile, I was finding shared purpose outside the walls of my school, having a blast working with area TPRS-teachers, Lori Belinsky (then teaching French at Christiana HS in DE), La Sripanawongsa (teaching MS Mandarin at Penn Charter), and Carol Hill (teaching HS French at Bishop Eustace Prep, in NJ). Together we had founded a Peer Learning Network for like-minded Comprehensible Input-based teachers in the Philadelphia area—TriState TCI. We meet once a month with a growing community of interested teachers who are energized and inspired by our meetings and eager to learn and share ideas.

I was invited as an intern to coach at NTPRS (the National TPRS conference), so I decided I’d be fine if I left my job and worked towards building an independent career in teaching and training. I had run a freelance business when my kids were young and I was confident I could get something going again, eventually.

A year and a half later, I have finally narrowed down to some promising possibilities involving teacher training/coaching as well as staying in teaching via adult classes and one-on-one lessons. I spent a year doing a lot of things I didn’t want to— subbing and tutoring at my old school, teaching a night class for way too little money— and have learned from that what I don’t want to do moving forward.

I haven’t earned a salary during that entire time, but have been able to tap into savings to tide us over. An executive coach friend who is guiding me in this transition made it very clear that I needed to find a way for money not to be an issue so I could focus on finding my passion. That really helped.

I have not regretted making the decision to step away from my job. Not for a second. It helps that my husband is a university professor with excellent benefits. The loss of my own financial security weighs on me less when I am doing what I love— working with language teachers and language learners to help them find success. 

In December I took advantage of an exciting opportunity to attend a License Prep course in the Netherlands, which prepared me to open a TPRS Teacher Training center in the U.S. This step takes me ever closer to making a living while pursuing my passion. 

In the meantime, I am thankful to have been available to my family in this past year, as we’ve suffered a bunch of unpredictable setbacks with health, accidents, and legal difficulties. All is well, but it’s been wonderful to spend a day each week with my aging parents, to be able to meet my son at his lawyer’s office, or my husband or my dad at the doctor’s office, or give a ride to the auto body shop, or wait for the llama vet, when needed.

The story's not finished, but I feel like we're just getting to the good part! Stay tuned...