Discover how Spanish teacher David Rice transformed his classroom with Comprehensible Input (CI) and made proficiency feel achievable for every student.

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The CI Story Series highlights everyday language teachers who have embraced CI and changed the way their students experience language learning. From struggles to breakthroughs, each story shows that creating joyful, proficiency-focused classrooms is not only possible—it’s easier than you think.

#ComprehensibleInput, #LanguageTeaching, #WorldLanguageTeachers, #SpanishTeacher, #TPRS, #LanguageLearning, #TeachingStrategies, #CIClassroom, #LanguageAcquisition, #TeacherLife

Host:

• Scott Benedict - https://www.instagram.com/immediateimmersion

Guest:

• David Rice

Resources & Links:

• CI Survival Kit - https://imim.us/discipline
• Dynamic Discipline - https://imim.us/discipline
• TPRSBooks - https://tprsbooks.com
• Somos - https://comprehensibleclassroom
• TPRS in a Year - https://benslavic.com
• PQA in a Wink - https://benslavic.com

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Host: Scott Benedict — Immediate Immersion

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Good morning, everybody.

Welcome to the CI podcast,

the Comprehend This podcast.

We're doing CI Stories this morning and

we have a wonderful guest today.

So let's go ahead and get started.

So today's CI Story is a good one. Our

guest is David Rice,

the Spanish Teacher Department Chair and

once upon a time, full

blown textbook warrior.

That's right. He was marching through

chapter three vocab

lists like the rest of us.

Until he realized it just

wasn't working. So what did he do?

He tossed a textbook grab, laying Ray's

TPRS playbook and never looked back.

Fast forward a few years and not only has

he transformed his own

classroom into a joyful,

proficiency focused space, but he's also

convinced his department and now even his

district to embrace CI.

Basically, David went from textbook

zombie to CI superhero.

And today he's sharing his story, his

stumbles and his strategies with us.

Stick around because this conversation is

equal parts inspiring, relatable and

let's be honest, a little funny too.

We'll be right back

after these short videos.

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Sign up at mm.us slash survival and let

the Survival Kit do the

heavy lifting for once.

Welcome to comprehend this real talk for

real language teachers.

No drills, no dry theory, just honest

stories, practical ideas and a reminder

you're not alone in the CI trenches.

Let's dive in.

Welcome, welcome, Mr. David Rice. How are

we doing this morning?

Doing good. How are you doing?

I'm doing excellent for a Sunday morning.

Awesome.

Give us a little bit about...

I got joined by my

cats. I don't know why.

I just cut my door. I have two dogs and

they'll bark, bark, bark.

So I cut my door on them.

Tell us a little bit about yourself that

I haven't already talked about in that

little intro just to get so people get to

know you a little bit.

OK, my name is David Rice, obviously.

I am a Spanish teacher in Memphis, Shelby

County Schools in Tennessee.

I've been teaching forever.

And as Scott said, I was a textbook

teacher and now I'm a full

blown TPRS CI teacher now.

So it's a bit of a journey.

I'm a US Army

veteran, served in Iraq, etc.

Well, thank you for your

service. We appreciate that.

No problem.

So tell us what your teaching looked like

before you went to CI.

So people...we have a lot of people on

here who are textbook teachers who are

thinking about transitioning.

We've got textbook teachers who are

dabbling in transitioning.

We got textbook teachers who want to

transition over but are terrified.

So let us know where you started from so

they can kind of get a little...feel a

little relatable there.

So when I graduated college and I got my

first teaching job at Texas High School

in Texarkana, Texas,

I went in and the textbook of choice at

that school at the time was Realidades.

And so all my training prior to getting a

job at Texas High was, you know, my

mentor teachers and my textbook teachers.

And I didn't know

what CI was at the time.

I didn't know there was anything.

And turn to page three and

let's do a little vocabulary.

Go to page four, let's do the same thing.

Give it eternity and get a grade degree.

And so and so forth.

So that was the world.

And there was...you know, I remember when

I was setting up my

classroom, there in the classroom,

there was that little green book that

Blaine Ray wrote, Blaine

Ray and Conti Sinne wrote,

Fluency through TPR, TPR Storyteller.

Now I'd heard something about TPR as

total physical response

and that was all I'd heard.

And but that was my mentor teachers

didn't know anything about it.

The teachers in the department at Texas

High didn't know anything about it.

So, you know, it wasn't ever mentioned.

So, so, yeah, that happened.

Then the army needed my services again.

So I had to go back

and we gave up that job.

That was there for

about a year in Texas High.

But yeah, and back to

that little green book.

The little green book

was in the classroom.

And I remember looking at it, flipping

the pages and like, okay, I can't set it

down because I'm a textbook teacher.

And so I did another year service with

the U.S. Army, came back and they'd

already hired somebody in

the position at Texas High,

which, you know, I understand that the

job safety measures that we

have in place and all that.

So we did because there was a job

position over in Arkansas High, which is

right across the border for two miles

because the texture can is in Twin City.

So, yeah.

So I went across the border, started

teaching at Arkansas High.

Arkansas High was also a textbook school.

And I taught there and I

taught there for about 10 years.

And like, as I was saying in our

pre-interview, you know, I taught that

book so much that I

have pages written right,

that I can tell you where this is at in

this book, where this particular word is,

what, you know, what section, what page,

what column right or left.

And then I left Arkansas High and I went

back to Texas and I taught at a small

school called D-CAB,

D-CAB High School,

Independent School District.

And it was also a textbook school.

So I'm like in my element, textbook, yay.

But it really wasn't working.

It's like, you could tell that the kids

were like, oh, my God, we're going to go

to this page, memorize this vocabulary,

do the activity, data, data.

And honestly, the kids weren't really

learning, I don't think, you know, they

were learning, but they

were just rote memorization.

And so every school that I went to, that

little green book by Blaine Ray was at,

somebody somewhere had went to one of his

things and picked up a copy.

But I don't know if they did anything

with it, but they left it

there in that classroom.

And so it was at D-CAB.

And then I was looking for

improvement and more salary.

Honestly, I was looking for more money,

as every teacher does.

We try to find those

opportunities to make more money.

And so there's a position in Memphis that

paid considerably more.

And so I was like, you

know what, let me go for it.

And so I interviewed and I got a job in

2018 in Memphis at Cordova

High School, where I am now.

When I got to Cordova, I discovered

really quickly that Memphis Shelby County

School District, we are a CI

district, not TPRS, but CI.

And so as well as they

understand what CI is.

And so there was a lot of me for that

first year at Cordova High School in

Memphis that I'm playing, teach Spanish

by the seat of my pants

because I don't have resources.

I don't have a textbook to refer to.

Now, we do have a curriculum guide here

in Memphis Shelby County Schools that

says it's divided into four units.

Unit one, unit two, etc., etc.

And specifically things that they want

level one students to

learn, level two, three, four.

And they do this curriculum guide for all

the languages taught in the district.

Everything from Spanish to Arabic and

Chinese and German and French.

And I'm trying to remember the other

languages that are taught.

There's several languages taught, at

least commonly taught languages.

But so it's a blanket curriculum guide.

And so you as a teacher, you get it and

you have to figure out like what language

do I need, what words and phrases and all

that do I need to teach to be able to,

you know, make them happy at the district

level that I'm teaching the curriculum.

And so that first year that I'm teaching

via the curriculum guide.

And there's a lot of

support in the district.

There was a lot of

support from the advisor.

Her name was Jane Davis at the time.

She's not going with us.

She since retired.

My department, I was I was just a teacher

at the time and I had a

lot of support from them.

They were great ladies and

they are still great ladies.

And but, you know, it was it was still a

bit miserable because I'm trying to make,

you know, I'm trying to make it work and

teach without a textbook.

And I had my first evaluation, which I

did not understand the system

that we use here in Tennessee.

And I didn't score very well on it.

And that bothered me because there's a

competitive side to me.

I want to be I want

to be a great teacher.

I want to be the best

possible teacher for my students.

And and so I didn't like that.

And then over the course of that year,

had a few more evaluations.

They were mediocre at best.

And so finally, spring break gets here.

And right before spring

break, we do we do the portfolio.

And the portfolio is where a selection of

of 12 of our students are chosen to

demonstrate their their speaking, their

reading, their writing and their

reflection piece on how, you know,

how well they understand the language.

And so I submitted that and had to wait

for the results to come that summer.

But then we went to spring break and over

spring break, I decided because, you

know, Blaine Ray's little

green book is in that classroom.

You know, it has it's there.

It's there.

I mean, that book has followed me.

It's I'm trying to, you know, it's like

it's just right there.

It's always in every

classroom that I've ever taught in.

I pick it up, I look at it's cute.

And I said about that down.

Well, that's spring break.

I said, you know what?

Let me take this sucker home and read

because I got to

figure out something out.

I got to make a change.

It's not working.

And I've done move my family from from

Southwest Arkansas and Northeast Texas

all the way to Memphis.

I've got to do something.

And and because I want to,

you know, it's a good job.

It's a great place to be.

And I read the book.

I said, you know what?

Let me try.

So I went on the TPR books.

I watched some videos online on YouTube.

I would be our books.

I got their first.

I got the resources there.

I got, you know, the

Spanish one resources.

I got the CD and

download the the PowerPoints.

And, you know, and it's great.

The system that Blaine Ray and Craig

Craig, she high and all them and Von Ray

created that there was all those

resources as a support resources.

And so we came back from spring break and

I looked at my kids and I said, OK, yeah.

So welcome back from spring break.

And I told him, I said, y'all, my

philosophy is this fourth quarter, you

know, we just got to make it till May

31st and we're out for the summer.

So I like to use fourth quarter as my

experimentation quarter.

I like to see, you know, let's let's try

something different.

So I want to teach via a story and I want

to teach you a story.

And I did, you know,

I did all the buy ins.

I did everything I went.

I found as many resources to help me

understand the process.

And so I started teaching and midway

through the story and I started teaching

that very, very first story, George,

George, George, George, George,

George, I did it in the past tense.

George wants to want to Coca-Cola.

And so I started teaching it.

And midway through the story, my kids

were a little bit annoyed.

And they were like,

they were like, Profe.

Why haven't you been

doing this this whole time?

This is we understand that this is easy.

We like this.

I'm like, I didn't know how.

And so and I was honest because my kids,

if you teach, if you're a teacher and you

teach in Memphis, you know

that Memphis kids are different.

The kids around the nation, I believe, in

that they can spot a fake a mile away and

and they will call you out on it.

And I didn't know how and I didn't want

to be fake with you guys.

And so they enjoyed

it and I kept doing it.

And the biggest grouch that the kids had

in the story that George wanted to

Coca-Cola and they couldn't figure out

why this boy wanted to Coca-Cola.

And it opened up the avenue to introduce

different vocabulary and different ideas.

And for example, we had George wanted

Coca-Cola because there was absolutely

nothing in the entire

state of California to drink.

There was a drought and

they enjoyed that element.

And the kids were we were

co-creating the story together.

We would get to a

point and kids like why?

And I said, tell me,

you'll give me an idea.

And so they gave me an idea.

And and so we'd add it to the story and

eventually that George story over the

course of that, you know, that quarter

became huge, became long.

And and and the kids were getting it and

they were speaking back.

And then we do like retails.

I would retell the story and just ask

them to close their eyes and listen to me

retell the story to ask.

And then, you know, I do a five finger

check, you know, five

fingers if you totally got it.

One finger.

I'm very, very frustrated.

I'm not getting it, et cetera, et cetera.

Three.

I could do it with help.

And so there was a

lot of threes and fours.

There's a couple of fives not.

And there were I think

maybe one one one finger kid.

And and he just simply had wasn't paying

attention and fell asleep or whatever.

So he missed out.

You're going to be frustrated.

You got to pay attention.

You got to buy in.

And but they enjoyed it.

And so we finished the George story.

And then we went into the many readers

where it was like this kid named Ed wants

pizza and his kid named

Rick wants wants a Xbox.

This boy named Bart wants a cat.

And since, excuse me, I get choked up.

And then this other boy

named Ben wants an igloo.

And we did those.

And the kids they were reading and they

were enjoying the heck out of it.

And so summer gets here.

So the end of the quarter.

Then we've had a successful quarter.

The grades have gone up.

The kids can do stuff.

They've enjoyed it.

And so summer gets here.

You know, we go on for the summer.

Well, that summer 2019, I had seen where

the there was a national TPRS conference

going to happen in Chicago.

And I said, you know what?

I'm going.

And I talked to a fellow teacher here at

the time here in Memphis.

Her name was Krishna.

Krishna Washburn and great lady.

Awesome teacher.

And she decided to go with me to the TPR

conference because she wanted to find out

more, too, because she we we

constantly talked about it.

She taught at another

school in the district.

And I would talk to her every day about

like what I was doing in my class or she

was doing that it up.

And she wanted to find out more.

And so we both went to the the TPRS

conference in Chicago.

And it was amazing.

It was 500 plus

people there at this hotel.

And I was just like, holy mess.

How these people do this?

Wow.

And it felt so awesome to be a part of

something like that.

And so I learned a lot.

I went to every every breakout session.

I went to Scott's breakout session.

I went to breakout session with Craig

Shehi, with Jeremy Jordan.

Like I'm meeting people that like I had

watched their videos on YouTube and use

their videos and YouTube in my classroom.

And I was like, oh, my

gosh, I was like fan.

I was fanboying out really badly.

It's like, oh, my God, that's you.

That's Jeremy Jordan.

And and it was a neat experience.

Speak with Blaine and everybody there.

And so I came back from that training and

the school year started and immediately

started teaching TPRS that day one that

we got back after I went through the

rules and procedures in the classroom.

I started teaching George

wants a cup of cola again.

And my kids from the previous year had

came by my classroom.

And when they came by my classroom, they

walked in and they were like,

they saw what we were doing.

They saw it projected on the wall.

There's George, that

and they were annoyed.

They were like, perfect.

What? Why are you

doing this with them now?

You made us wait to the end of the year.

And well, it's because

I didn't know how then.

And they were annoyed.

Like it's not fair.

We had to wait.

They need to wait.

I said, no, can you do that?

And so I knew my kids, my current kids,

the two thousand nineteen twenty kids,

they were like, what?

And but they had already bought in and we

were reading and we were doing our homework.

And we were reading and

we were doing all this.

And I had kids who they were

low level readers in English.

They were not very strong readers at all.

I had kids who were in those not so

stellar organizations outside of school.

We call them gangs.

They were in my classroom

and they were very hardcore.

And I would pair everybody up to read

with a partner, do some volleyball

reading back and forth.

And a lot of kids did not want to work

with those kids and be the partners

because either intimidated or whatever.

And so I was like, hey,

would you be my partner?

And to those kids and this one boy said

he said he was very reluctant to come up

and he and I started reading together.

And you could almost see like this light

bulb went off in his head that, oh, my

gosh, I can understand this.

This is easy. And there were other people

that were in his organization in the

classroom and they

were watching this happen.

And so the next time we decide to read

with a partner, like all these kids in

that group wanted to read with me and

like, can I read with it?

My big group will

say, yeah, sure, come on.

And so that became a good moment right

there in that, you know, the teaching

through reading and storytelling works.

It works so good.

Whatever that was.

But it works.

And those kids like they had better

grades in my class than they had in their

English class, which I always enjoy.

But they understood Spanish and and and

and it just went on.

And then sadly, unfortunately, we know we

had covid pop up in 1920.

And then so our district decided to

dismiss for, you know, for the end of the

for the second semester, we decided to

dismiss and go home and call it a wash.

That summer, we we did try to do a little

bit online material with the kiddos, with

Microsoft Teams and all that to varying

degrees as a district worked it out

because they needed to get laptops for

the kids because we were not a one to one

district at the time.

And then so the the

coming year, 20, 2021.

Yeah, we became a one to one district,

but we were doing that first bit of the

school year, you know, at home, you know,

asynchronous and that

are online learning.

And so I was teaching George via, you

know, via this platform and

and my TPR stories that way.

And also at the time, Blaine Ray

contacted me and asked if I wouldn't mind

teaching with them, teaching stories

online with them as well.

And so I would do my day job teaching my

kiddos, my current kids, and then at a

certain time, log in and start doing

stories with Blaine Ray.

I'm getting more and more training with

TPRS and I'm getting it

from the guy who created it.

And and and it's like it's wild.

And in like every opportunity I had to go

to a training, whether it was via Blaine

or via Vaughn or Craig or anybody,

Jeremy, you know, I would go to it.

And I'd get the certificates and I would

do everything I could to learn more

because, you know, like I said earlier, I

want to be the best teacher for my kids.

I want to be, you know, proficient so my

kids will do well. So ever since then.

My evaluations via the Tennessee system,

the Tim Rubrik, teaching effective

measure, teach effectiveness measure.

It went from that miserable score I had

my first year to I'm making fives.

It's it's it's five is the highest score

we can make and I'm making

fives and I'm not trying to brag.

It's just TPRS and the CI method,

especially the TPRS part of it, teaching

professional reading and storytelling.

It really leans into most of the teacher

evaluation methods and that if you do it

that way, if you follow the

formula, you do the process.

You as a teacher, you're going to score

extremely well on the rubric and whatever

rubric is because

it's involving the kids.

We do the gradual release of

responsibility, whereas I do it.

We do it. You do it with a partner and

then you finally you do it by yourself.

And all of that is that is straight up

like it's like the blame

rate model right there.

It's like that that TPRS model. You know,

it's like I'm going to

show you I want to model it.

I want to demonstrate the thing. You

know, there is a boy. There was a boy.

The boy is George. And

we're going to do it together.

I'm going to circle it. I'm going to ask

you all kinds of questions.

I want to ask you individually that will

triangle that question or

triangle that statement.

And then so the element that I had to

introduce and is is I wanted my kids to

ask each other questions.

So that was the you do together. And so I

created questions in that in that year.

I created questions and I

would display the questions.

I think I now want you to ask each other

questions based off

everything we know in the story.

And they loved it. They were you know,

they were asking questions back and forth

and they couldn't remember.

Can you go back to the story real quick?

And I'd flash back to

the whatever we read.

Let's get looking find it. OK, good. And

I go back. So now I

ask the question again.

And so they got the practice of asking

each other questions. And

it's it's grown in my practice.

It's grown to the point where I've got my

kids this year with with

no prompting on my part.

They are creating questions. And these

are level one Spanish kids.

And we're just we're in the eighth week

of the quarter for this year.

And these kids are asking questions of

me. They might be a few grammatical

errors in the question,

but you can understand what they're

trying to do with it.

They're trying to ask a question and

they're trying to create a question.

It's not just a rote memorized question

like what's your name,

et cetera, et cetera.

It's it's they're trying and it's neat to

hear because that's the effectiveness of

them learning via a story

and language in context.

Yeah. So sorry. Is that enough?

Yeah, that was amazing. I

will talk a lot about it.

Well, we can hear your enthusiasm and

that's what's really

really great to hear.

And I'll tell you a little bit about my

story because my story kind of mirrors a

little bit of what your story was.

Except I started in 2001 2001 right after

9 11. I started I started

late in the year October.

They were desperate need for another

teacher. They had too many students and

not enough teachers.

So they hired me part time

and it was not a C.I. school.

I didn't even know there was no C.I.

wasn't called that back then.

All there was was a text

book and it was all textbook.

I didn't know what TPRS was and they

threw me to the wolves.

I had no idea what I was doing. I was on

an emergency permit,

which means I had not gone through

teaching school yet.

I just had a bachelor's and so they let

me teach, which was a

mistake on their part,

because I had no idea what I was doing.

I walked into that class and I opened the

textbook and I just taught the way that I

was taught in my language

because I took high school French,

German and Spanish. And so and I sucked

at it. I was bored. They were bored.

We were both asleep in

the class. It was horrible.

I remember one of my students told me

goes I look like a scared

rabbit walking in that first day.

I was terrified in there. I

had no idea what I was doing.

I had no business being in

that classroom whatsoever.

And if they weren't desperately looking

for a teacher, I probably

would not have been hired.

As I said, it was a part time position.

There's only two periods, no

benefits, no very little pay.

So there weren't a high demand of

teachers trying to fill that position.

And then I was like you at the end of

that first semester

Christmas break, I was like,

this is not working. I cannot

do this for the next 30 years.

It's just not going to

work. So I found something.

I they put us in something called L.A.

Stars. I was teaching

in Los Angeles and Louie.

I think it's nice name was Anderson or I

forgot. I'm horrible at

names. So I apologize, Louie.

But he taught us a story in Quechua. And

I still remember parts of that story now.

You know, 25 years later, I remember

parts of the story and I

thought there's something to this.

But no one's explained to me

what TPRS was or what it was.

So I did some research. I found Blaine

Ray back then. And I had to

pay for everything myself.

I bought all the books that I could buy.

There was no trainings yet available.

I took my first training that summer and

second semester I went in, you know,

completely full fledged.

I jumped everything I had into it and it

was working. It was hard.

It was difficult for me.

We were in a textbook. We were in an old

textbook way back then.

And we were in the travel chapter. So I

went and found in Blaine Ray's books all

the travel stories that you

find and put them in there.

And I had to teach stupid words like

gaviota and aligas

marinas seaweed and seagull.

I mean, it's really high frequency words.

And it was but it was working.

And my principal told me he goes, I don't

know what you did between first semester

and second semester.

But you weren't on the track to be

rehired after first semester because it

just wasn't working.

But whatever you're doing now, keep doing

that because now you're on

the track to get rehired.

So just kind of like you and your

evaluations, mine went completely up and

it really wasn't me.

It was the method. And as I said, I

didn't even have any official training.

I joined the more TPRS list, which was

way back when what we had before the

Facebook groups that we have now.

That was the group that we did. I had

that. I had the TPRS books that we had

that I had bought in from Blaine Ray.

And I didn't get my first workshop until

that summer. And that

was with Karen Rowan.

And then the following summer I did it

with Susie Gross. And I didn't even go to

my first NTPRS until 2007 because in

California we did not get paid.

Well, you could get paid year round, but

I was getting paid so little they would

have to take like seven or eight hundred

dollars out of my

paycheck to pay for that summer.

And I couldn't afford that to pay my

rent. So it was very expensive. And so I

needed all that money.

So I had to work summer school during the

summertime to be able to

keep my finances going.

And it was always funny because a lot of

people in L.A. couldn't

do the year round either.

And so you'd see them. We our first

paycheck would come at the end of

September and they'd be all like brown

bag in it with little skimpy things.

We all lost a lot of weight before

October came. When that first check came,

we were all like, oh, we can eat again

because we were all

just for the struggle.

No struggle meals for real. Oh, yes.

Spread our salaries out. So I had a very

similar story to you. But I only did

textbook for one

semester and I stuck at it.

And I completely thought that. And after

that, I worked at TPRS schools all along.

Yeah, no, no, I was I was great at the

textbook thing. But when you get in an

environment where you don't have one,

you're like, what do I do?

And it was it was it was a you know, it

wasn't a difficult switch from textbook

to TPR, TPRS and CI.

At least for me. And I know everybody's

everybody's situation will

be a little bit different.

But if you embrace the story and just

relax and speak, I mean, I got to use I

got to stay in the target language more.

I get to stay in the target language more

as a as a as a TPRS, CI

teacher now than I ever have.

It's it's you know, ninety ninety ninety

to ninety five percent of

the time I'm in Spanish.

But the thing about it is a hundred

percent of it's comprehensible or

comprehended by the kids.

And and. And they enjoy

it. It's like I was Friday.

We're playing we're playing this

wonderful little game that I

discovered called Noes Huisto.

It's not fair. And there was a question

that came up and I saw the question.

And before I asked the question to the

kids, I prefaced it with

some background information and.

In Spanish and my kids

are like, they're tracking.

They're like, yes, we got

every detail you just said now.

OK, and now then I asked the question,

they knew the answer to the question.

And so it's being able to

stay in the target language.

And then so anyway, but yeah, a little

bit back like like how how

TPRS is coming to my school.

So I started doing TPRS and there's this

wonderful teacher down the hall from her

name is Javella Johnson.

She is she is my sister from another

mother. She's a great

she is rockin awesome.

She had always talked about when I

started doing TPRS, she was curious and

she had always wanted to try it.

But she always seen it as so much work.

And then she saw that out the way I was

doing it. And I guess she because she had

been to some trainings with

with Blaine there in Memphis.

And and I think back in the back in the

2000s earlier, earlier part, you know, a

few years ago, but she

thought it was just a lot of work.

And so I started showing her the way I

was doing and all this.

And she's like, OK. And then finally she

decided she's going to embrace it.

And she started trying to teach you. She

started teaching her first George story.

And it was like she came in. She came in

my room like David, it's magic.

It's like magic. The kids, they're

getting it. They're getting everything.

They understand it. It's like magic. And

and I know our world

language advisor at the time.

And as I said earlier, like Jane, Jane

Davis, she came to my

classroom as she was doing her

check on all the teachers in Memphis. She

gave them a classroom.

She started what I was

doing. She is not a fan of TPRs.

And and she does like CI,

but she's not a friend. TPRS.

And she said that doesn't go without

curriculum, but it does because

everything that's in our curriculum

guide, you can put in a story, you know,

and and that's how it works.

It's because you're telling the story,

you're creating

language, making it in context.

And I'm not having the kids memorize. My

name is your name is. His name is his

birthday is that it is.

But we're living in the story. And so

when the portfolio team came around

again, I made a five.

And then the first one, my first

portfolio was not a five. It was like a

three. It was an ugly three.

But I made a five. The next year, my next

portfolio made another five and another

five and another five because the kids

are able to use the language.

So and then as as Chevela started seeing

me do TPRS and she embraced

it, you know, it's kicking it.

So now we're going to the DLDs, the

district learning days and the kids.

And we're talking TPRS at the district

level. And so right now

we're going to do a book study.

And it's like it is a bit like pulling

teeth in our district to get change to

happen because the previous

lady, she was not a fan of TPRS.

But we've got new people in charge now.

And so letting them see the results.

The proof is in the pudding. And and so

we're doing a book

study on Blaine's book.

And and I told I told our new adviser, I

said, hey, if you want somebody to lead

the book study, hey, I'm your guy.

I can do it. I will lead it. And because

I'm I'm pushing it, it's

pushing so hard for it to happen.

And it's just so hopefully that will

happen very soon. But yeah, but there's a

lot of teachers who who understand

because I showed it like

one day at one of our DLDs.

We had some downtime or something

happening. And the presenter said, OK,

look, my stuff's not working with anybody

like to present anything.

And me being the guy that I am and I love

to volunteer. I said, yes. And I have my

laptop and let's give it

give me that HDMI cord.

Plugged it in. All right. And I started

teaching my first TPRS

lesson to a group of teachers and.

And I said, OK, look, I know the majority

of y'all are Spanish teachers.

Great. Love y'all. Who are my non-Spanish

teachers, my German teachers, my Chinese

teachers, my Arabic teachers that all of

y'all come to the

forward, come to the front.

And so I started teaching the George

story to non-Spanish speakers, to

non-Spanish teachers and

doing that whole TPR thing.

Now, mind you, I've had a couple of years

of training now and so I'm my

presentation is much better.

And like after I was done, they were

like, OK, we want to know

more. We want to know more.

And so I asked, you know, like, who would

like to know more? And and I got a lot of

feedback that, yes, we want to know more.

So it's trying to get them to push the

leadership to say, hey,

we want more training.

I mean, I would love to have have Blaine

have you have have all the people who can

do it come into Memphis and give our

district a good training.

And I think that's what we need to let

let our district see that

this is easy. This is magic.

And the kids will be much more engaged

because I want to build a program where

the kids, they're not just satisfied with

saying, OK, I've taken my

two years of world language.

I'm done. I want to push them to take

three years, four years to

go on into the AP program.

We have we're doing the

syllabi literacy in Tennessee.

And one of my goals is to get kids, more

kids, especially at Cordova High School,

taking the stamp test and earning their

their their their seal.

And so I think through TPRS and all that,

I think it's totally possible.

All the teachers and that's one of our

goals. That's one of our pushes at

Cordova High School.

Now, that being said, yeah, I am the

department head over

at Cordova High School.

And the way I became it is because I am

that guy that will volunteer and will

come up with new things.

The previous department head, she decided

that she wanted to go to

another school and teach.

And one day we're at a meeting and and

she announced that she was going to leave

and that we need a new department head

and everybody in the

department, there's seven teachers.

I'll point out David's going to be that.

And I'm like, wait, do I

get a decision in this?

And they were like, no. And but that's

who I am because they

know that I am that guy.

Like once I started, you know, started

with TPRS and and it just it relaxed me

and I'm much more, you know, forthcoming

with information and helping people out.

And so they appreciated that. So, yeah,

that's how we do that.

So I get to use that platform to push it

at the other schools.

And there's other schools in the district

where there's teachers

that spoke with the summer.

Who want to know more about TPRS and are

trying to teach it over at other schools,

teach that teach the method.

Since it's not a curriculum, but it's a

method and and and that's what I have to

get them understand.

This is not curriculum. TPRS is not a

curriculum. It's a method of teaching

that language and and it's

it's getting the kids to learn.

You can deal with

anything. And so there's teachers.

I've got I've got teacher friends who

have come to my class and in the

afternoons and we want no more.

And I show them how TPRS works and I've

gotten them to go to the trainings with

with Craig or with Blaine and and they're

starting to do TPRS

over at their schools.

So it's starting to grow in Memphis. It's

it's there. It's in its infancy.

I mean, I think it's probably it's the

sperm has met the egg stage,

but it's it's it's growing.

And the thing about it is it's the neat

thing is how well the kids

and that's what it's about.

It's the kids and how well they

understand the language and

they can figure out stuff.

And it's all the incidental vocabulary

that they learn

through reading the story.

And it's words that I haven't taught, but

they figure it out as

they're reading it in context.

And like it's everything that that

Krashen talks about in all of his stuff

as how effective it is that somebody will

learn 10 times faster through reading

than they will listen to some old teacher

talk, talk, talk, talk, talk.

And so my parents appreciated like during

parent teacher conferences.

I'm that teacher that that I will bribe

my kids to have their parents come in.

It's like if you if your parent comes to

parent teacher conference to see me, you

get a free 100 in power school.

And so these kids will pile it. I mean,

parents for days and like nobody else in

the building has parents coming like, why

do you have like 25 parents last night?

Well, they like me. So

don't tell them your secret.

It's in this. It's the

secret sauce. It's in the recipe.

And so anyway, these parents come like

one night the parents came in and it was

a large group of parents.

And typically I try to meet individually.

But you know what? Heck, that night is

largely because I have come on in.

You don't have a seat. And it wasn't like

I wasn't going to talk about it like your

kid is your kid has a bad

grade because they did it.

No, I just want to meet the parents. Let

them know. So you'll

come on in and have a seat.

So you've heard about me. I'm David Rice.

Nice to meet you. This is

how I'm teaching your kid.

And I started teaching the parents the

George story or whatever story we was

working on at the time.

And I'm going to use the George story as

my go to. That's the story I thought.

And the parents were like, what? I get

this. This is easy. And

so the parents understood.

So the feedback from my parents is

they're happy that the kids understand.

And they realize like he makes it easy.

How do you have a bad grade? Oh, you're

not doing the work. OK.

And so it's I mean, it's that it's it's I

showed the parents like how easy the

material is and how effective this is.

So if you don't. And I do like that one

thing that I read in Blaine's book, like

not every it's not going to work for

everyone type thing for the kid.

But because the kids has a buy in and

it's about reducing that effective filter

and letting the kid understand like how

easy it's so scaffolded.

You start with that one sentence. There

is a boy and add to it.

The boy is George. Add to it.

George is in California. Add to it. Keep

adding. Keep adding. As you've gone over

and asked like 10

questions about that one statement.

And it just it scaffolds it up so well so

that when you hand them a story to read,

you know, they might be like, oh, my

gosh, it's a pretty long story.

I can handle it and they can read it. And

so it builds that up. And so it does. It

helps the kids become not so resistant

and much more

comfortable with the process.

And so they understand everything. So my

kids from I would say that my kids know

way more now than my kids that I taught a

few years ago, textbook

wise, no way more like.

I will get kids from other school from

other schools and I'm not downing. I'm

not I'm not, you know, calling out that

teacher that taught

that child or whatever.

But they'll come into my class and

they're like over when they're like,

whoa, y'all know so much more than we do

or that that it does.

And I said, yeah, just relax. Like I got

a new student Friday. She's a great young

lady. I enjoyed talking to her.

And I said, just relax. And even my kids

in class said they even looked at her and

said, OK, look, just

relax. It's going to be OK.

You'll be lost a little bit at first.

You'll catch it. You'll get it really

fast. And so and these are my kids saying

this and not just me.

I'm saying it's true. You will. You will

get this. I kind of back them up on it.

And so Monday, we're going to tomorrow,

we're going to start our first story.

She's going to start her first story and

it's going to be Bart wanted a cat. I'm

going to do it in the

past tense with them.

And these are level one kiddos. And that

was one thing that the the previous

district adviser didn't like is because I

was teaching stories to

Spanish one kiddos in the past.

I was adding elements of the subjunctive

in it. And because it was language, it's

you know, how do we speak language?

We don't like, OK, I'm going to have a

conversation with you today and it's all

going to be in the present tense. No, you

know, we intermix tenses and moods.

And and and all of that is in a

conversation in context. And so she came

in and she saw me teaching the past.

And she said, wait, this past tense is

not taught to Spanish to my what. No,

it's not here now. My kids understand it.

They can tell you Chico, the new kids,

the boy was 15 years old now.

He's 45, et cetera, et cetera.

That's a big jump in age. But that that

they can I mean, they can get it.

And so they can handle it so long as it's

in context and it makes sense if it's

just abstractly, you know, like we're

going to do the imperfect tense today.

That's going to we don't even teach the

imperfect tense like in those terms of

those terms in English class, we don't

teach grammar in English class.

So why would you teach grammar in a world

language class? I mean, yeah, I get it.

As if you're if you're going to become a

Spanish teacher or a word language

teacher, you do you do need

to know those grammar terms.

That would be great. But

let that happen at college.

Let that happen to university right now

as a learner. You're a level one kiddo.

You don't need to know how to conjugate

500 different verbs. No, you know, it's

you don't need to know like like I'm

introducing like in the stories now,

like, you know, thanks to chat GPT, I can

take a story like one of the stories, one

of the TPR stories, and I can kind of

expand it a little

bit with chat and like.

The most recent story, it's got a couple

elements of the subjunctive in it and I

which there might be a Coca

Cola in New York and my kids.

They didn't blink at it as they were

reading it. And the statement when you

know it's possible that there might be a

Coca Cola in New York and and you know, I

suppose he got a Coca Cola in New York.

And my kids, they didn't blink at it.

They read it and understood it and say,

what's I they didn't care because they

understood it. It made sense.

You know, like I think the thing was the

the the the sentence that I added in the

story is recreated in

light like, you know, the boy.

The boy is hopeful that his friend, his

friend's friend has a Coca Cola in

Atlanta or whatever. Right. So there's

going to be Tenga and it's

going to be more subjunctive.

They're not blinking at it. They didn't

ask what it might be. They just read and

understood it. And that's language.

Language should be like

that. It's not compartmentalized.

I must teach you sales. I must teach you,

you know, if you see, oh, hello, that I

don't know. I don't know about that. I'm

just going to do it. You'll see.

You match it up. How do you learn Spanish

if you were born into that community as

you hear it? Absolutely. I

mean, does that make sense?

Absolutely. Great. You're great

explanations. I love what you're talking

about. We have a

question here from Carina.

If I'm just starting out, what one

resource should I start with? I can get

easily overwhelmed as we all can. Do you