Daily Excerpt: The Invisible Foreign Language Classroom (Dabbs and Leaver) - Artisans
Excerpt from The Invisible Foreign Language Classroom by Laura Dabbs and Betty Lou Leaver.
Defining and Recognizing the Invisible Classroom
Artisans
General Orientation
The SP seeks freedom and action.
Artisans would rather not have rules to follow but go where the impulse
takes them. To them, work is essentially
play. They have no real desire for
closure or completion of a task or assignment—to the Artisan, the doing is the learning independent of any
conclusion.
As Learners
SPs are often the most misunderstood learner in the average
classroom. The SP craves action and
hands-on learning;sitting in a regimented row, day after day, can seem like the
ultimate torture. Giving the SP freedom
to be creative and to experience hands-on learning can be the key to reaching
the SP learner. SPs are often
misunderstood in the classroom and seen as discipline problems because they
can’t sit still daily and routinely perform as does the SJ. The SP wants and needs choices and independence
in approaching learning—and the ability and time to be physically active.One of
the best analogies of comparing and contrasting the SJ and the SP comes from
Aesop’s fable “The Ant and the
Grasshopper.” The Ant (SJ) worked
all summer and fall plowing the fields, caring for the crops and reaping the
harvest storing up food for the winter.
The Grasshopper (SP) loved to play.
He would run around, playing games and tempting the Ant to have fun, to
live for today without worrying about tomorrow.
Where the SJ saves, the SP spends; where the SJ works, the SP
plays. From an educational perspective,
neither is necessarily wrong, it is simply the way these different personality
types approach life and learning.
In the classroom, then, Artisans thrive where, especially in
elementary school, there is hands-on work: manipulation of materials, building
models, painting, and the like. Language classrooms can emulate the elementary
classroom in many ways: after all, many first-time language learners compare
their experience to returning to childhood and grade school (because they know
so little initially of what they will need to know ultimately). Workbooks,
textbooks, and other traditional methods (listen and learn, read and learn) do
not work well in either exciting the Artisan or in teaching the Artisan.
Filling out a visa form, buiding a monopoly game in the target language,
conducting a field trip to a zoo and talking about the animals in the target
language—now you have the attention of the Artisan! And the Artisan will learn.
As Teachers
Artisans rarely choose to become teachers, and only about 4% end
up in classrooms. Most of those choose elementary school programs. The number
of Artisans among the language teacher population has not been surveyed as far
as we know, but clearly that percentage is quite low. Nonetheless, those who do
take up teaching, given their inclination for freedom, including freedom from
rules, can appear larger than life to their students, especially to the SJ
student, whose self-regulation means that they “would never do what my teacher
does”—and that makes the teacher look exciting and powerful. While mesmerized
by the SP teacher, though, SJ students can flounder unless the teacher
deliberately works at setting limits on the freedom that he or she so values,
provides more rules and deadlines than comes naturally, and pays attention not
only to the SJ need for tradition but also the NF need for nurturing (not a
natural inclination of the Artisan) and the NT’s intellectual curiosity (which
can be off-putting and disconcerting to the Aristan who works more actively in
the physical world, not the mental one.
In Life
Since SPs like handson work, many often become performers,
firefighters, builders, athletes, foresters, and other professionals working in
physical fields. As noted, they rarely become teacxhers, but when they do, in
our experience, generally, they are beloved.
Read more posts about this book HERE.
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