I’m returning to my stomping grounds in what feels like a guest post on my own site! That is, every now and then I think “if I were to teach high school (or middle school) Latin again, I’d try this.” Well, it does nobody any good to keep those ideas in my head, so here’s what’s been on my mind…

Goals
One thing that has always bothered me about student goal-setting is that it usually doesn’t allow for typical apathetic students. In my experience, goal-setting is presented as some kind of lofty pursuit in the ideal, yet rarely reflects classroom reality. I’m not saying that teachers should let students slip through and squander their time, but they should also not expect students to be experts in every single content area with graduate student zeal, either. That means every five out of seven or so high school teachers will not be teaching students that will major in what they’re teaching, which assumes those students go to college in the first place. Once we acknowledge that college enrollment is not extremely high, most recently at about 66% of high school grads, it’s more like six of those seven high school teachers will be teaching students with various degrees of less-than-amazing interest in the content.

Therefore, what kind of realistic goals can we expect these students to have? “Pass the course” is probably a typical response, if not “I dunno.” Rather than pretend that these students should suddenly develop some altruistic reason for learning a teacher’s content, I’d recommend seeing this as a genuine teachable moment. That is, for the student who cares so little that they have no goal, show them what they need to do to not have any obstacles emerge. For example, recognize that a realistic goal is neutral thinking about the content, and talk the student through what it looks like for class to have as little impact possible, which really means avoiding things that would make class a negative experience. That’s what the student is mostly walking away with, anyway: class experience.

Practically speaking, this might take the form of feedback on adjusting behavior, or developing some kind of academic process that allows the student to participate without much fanfare. After all, when at least neutral is the achievable goal, there’s always the chance the scales tip towards something more positive.

Questions or Text?
When getting signs of incomprehension, a classic move inspired by TPRS skills is to “circle” the language. That is, establish meaning of words/phrases that were incomprehensible and keep using them in subsequent questions. This is an art, and can fail miserably if not done tactfully (i.e., the teacher could do this mechanically ad nauseam, stopping all communication and diminishing purpose of students listening to the input). When done well, however, this provides students with more instances of the words/phrases in a way that more likely leads to acquisition. This is usually done through questioning, but does it have to be?

It occurred to me that it’d be worth asking students what they were more in the mood for: questions or writing a text? Since circling pauses genuine communication to make sure students can understand what is being communicated, there might actually be a chance to salvage that communication by giving it meaning.

For me, “writing a text” would mean a Type ‘n Talk about…pretty much anything the students were interested in that involved the words/phrases in question. I stopped storytelling years back, but if your students are into a good ‘ole story, then why not bank on that interest and have an impromptu story to create more instances of the words/phrases in a way that more likely leads to acquisition?

Summary
I feel like there’s a thread here of creating opportunities for more autonomy, or agency. We know these are good things for student learning. Not a bad idea for teaching, either.