Virginie, a college French student at Colorado State University and C.I. enthusiast, asks:

I just had a really random thought/question: How did TPRS become a part of your school?

 

I went to a Blaine Ray workshop in Denver about 16 years ago because I was so frustrated that despite my hard work, students did not seem to be learning much of anything in my Spanish classes.  I had heard of TPR and the flyer said that students could become fluent with the TPRS method, so I paid for it myself and went.  The workshop was on Saturday and I started using my crude form of TPRS on Monday.  I started using it in one problem class. Within 3 weeks the results were so good that I started using it in all of my classes.  The process has been long for me, since I have had much to unlearn, but I keep peeling back the layers of the grammar onion that envelops me and learning to use real language and interesting comprehensible input with my students ever since.

TPRS has come with me as I have moved from school to school.  I started in a junior high and elementary school, then moved to a high school in the same district, then later to the high school I am at right now which is in a smaller community.  Since I am now the senior teacher in my school district, the C.I. methods and materials that I have used have slowly wormed their way into the district curriculum here.
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Do you think it will ever be a part of XXX School District?! If so how?!

 

Grassroots change is the most lasting change and it starts with the individual teacher acting on personal conviction.  Change is harder to pull off in larger school districts because of the force of momentum and the difficulty in coordinating multiple schools and levels.  It can be done with skilled, focused work, as Diana Noonan, World Language Coordinator in the Denver Public Schools, has demonstrated.  Another avenue is education of college students in their training at the university, as you are receiving at CSU under Dr. Frederique Grim.