Facilitating change can be a lonely journey.

In light of recent conversations with colleagues and peers, I've really done some thinking.  I'm realizing many things about creating change, even if it's only in my classroom.  This week I've realized how isolated creating change can feel sometimes, but in a moment's time, people can really see you as a beacon of light.

This week we had a PLC meeting, I took a personal day to go to a TPRS workshop, and we started talk about creating change in my master's class.  These three events combined challenged me along with some discussions with my peers and colleagues.  I was challenged to defend my beliefs that CI will produce ANY gains in language acquisition and grammar for all learners.  I know this is true because the majority of my students have As and Bs along with some Cs and very few Ds or Fs.  At the TPRS workshop, the other extreme was clear.  I was seen as a beacon of light and hope and a valued source of information.  Teachers from all backgrounds and levels approached me to pick my brain about this method.  It felt exhilarating to be part of this grassroots change in language teaching.  Later that day in my graduate class, we began discussing facilitating change in a school.  Something resonated with me: "Just because you think something needs to change, doesn't mean that your way of changing is the way that things should or will change."  Wow. I know that I truly believe in CI as a means for learning and acquiring long term language, but that doesn't mean that this is the way it is going to happen.  However, I do know that sustainable change does occur from the bottom-up, and this is definitely the way that this change is occurring, so I hope this is the way things will change.

A lot of times throughout this past week, I've felt alone.  I've felt alone, but it's not a negative feeling because I truly believe this is the way language should be taught.  I know that I must be the change I wish to see, and this is the first step in that direction.  I also know that brain and language acquisition research support my stanch on language learning, so I'm confident that I cannot be doing harm to my students' language learning.  I'm also excited every day to go to school, so I know that I can pass the "straight face test" in knowing this is where I should be right now. 

What types of changes are you trying this year?  How is it going?  Are these changes sustainable and are they transferable to other teachers?