All Kinds of Minds

When I started my teaching journey sixteen years ago, I knew a few things. I knew that I didn’t want to teach the way I’d been taught. Not just Latin, but overall. I had a few shining exceptions, but I had spent my career as a student watching the few who were like me privileged and elevated at the expense of the majority of students who just weren’t made for the cookie-cutter factory school scene.

I also knew that I wanted to communicate with teachers in other areas, especially among my department (i.e., foreign language) and the special education department to make sure I was offering the best and most modern teaching methods to my students as often as possible.

Finally, I had heard about and experienced a tiny excerpt from a language method called TPRS, demonstrated by the inimitable Jason Fritze, and I was sold. In three hours I was able to speak more Spanish than I had been able to speak after three semesters of college Spanish. So I knew I wanted to learn more about TPRS and learn how to use it in my classes. I felt like it was the key to teaching all kinds of minds.

Here’s what I didn’t know. I had focused on the concept of teaching to all kinds of students and all kinds of minds—that was my starting point for my entire teaching philosophy—but I hadn’t yet realized that all kinds of students and all kinds of minds was more than intellectual. I figured out when I was a kid that “smart” was a term that really didn’t mean much to me; it was used to define kids who learned a certain way that society seemed to value, but I found there were a lot of people I had really deep, meaningful, and useful conversations with who weren’t “smart” and were often considered “stupid” by societal definitions. Even worse, these other students believed these categories they’d been put in and considered me intellectually superior just because I was “smart.” So I was already seeking a betterway to do school long before I even knew I was going to be a teacher.

However, I didn’t yet know that some of these categories were also culturally tied. That has been a major part of my growth over the past sixteen years. When I became a teacher with the things I already knew, I hit the ground running, reading Krashen like he was going out of style and attending a training called All Kinds of Minds that focused on the different ways students can struggle with learning. It wasn’t until a few years later that I read Ruby Payne’s A Framework for Understanding Poverty and began thinking about the possibility that some of the behaviors that I considered inappropriate could be socio-economically based and within that socio-economic context not only not inappropriate, but even
positive and supportive.

It has taken even more years to understand that all kinds of minds are more than just intellectual—they are cultural, medical, and socio-economic. Students come from backgrounds that shape how they learn just as much as their mental propensities.

And the amazing thing is, TPRS is still relevant. TPRS, and, more importantly, Comprehensible Input, allow me to teach to all kinds of minds. By focusing on live, comprehensible input instead of memorization and homework, I help both students who have processing difficulties and those who have after-school jobs and obligations. By taking the time to make sure my classes are compelling and full of material that reflects student interests and cultures, I reach students who usually have difficulty making deeper connections between concepts both intellectually and personally. By caring about my students, their lives, their worries, their fandoms, and their passions, I regularly demonstrate to students that no matter whether they look and act exactly like me and love the things I love, or have completely different backgrounds and interests, I am there for them and they are important to me.

This is why for fifteen years Comprehensible Input theory (or some form of it) has been my primary focus. By following the basic tenets of CI—Comprehensible, Compelling, and Caring—I am constantly reaching out to all kinds of students and all kinds of minds.

-Rachel Ash