Language teaching had changed in the past 30 years and so had she.  Thirty-five years ago when Mary Foster stood in front of the desk for the first time, she encountered 30 pairs of trusting eyes staring at her.  She was a language teaching intern during her senior year in college.  The class was ESL.  Mary was a Linguistics major and had entered the class without trepidation.  She started chatting with one of the students who looked at her with wide eyes and a broad smile.  Mary stopped talking and the girl's expression had not changed.  Wide eyes and a broad smile.  And not a sign of understanding.  Mary smiled.  She still had a lot ot learn. 

           That afternoon the professor oriented Mary to her duties.  She would lead choral responses in small groups.  Pattern practice was the way to make sure the students memorized the structures.  Simulus-response.  Pavlov would be proud!  By the end of the first week, her groups could recite any of the target structures.  And substitution drills went the fastest.  From the simplest noun substitution: (I see a book. /cat/: I see a cat.  /door/:  I see a door.)  to the complex alternating noun/adjective pattern practice.  (I see a book. /green/:  I see a green book. /table/:  I see a green table.  /cat/  I see a green cat...)  her students answered with the best of them.  One student had questioned her about the green cat but Mary told her that it was grammar, not meaning that they were learning.

           As she reflected on that first teaching experience, Mary realized that she had studied everything the theory books said, knew the audio-lingual method inside and out, but she knew nothing.  And the students knew all sorts of structures but they could not carry on a conversation or understand her when she spoke to them.  She still had a lot to learn. 

          In the early 1970s Mary decided to get her Masters degree in teaching English as a second language.  Her college experience had whetted her appetite.  Teaching English overseas would combine a way of making money with travel. 

           In graduate school she studied all kinds of teaching methods which were nothing like the pattern practices of the 60s.  Caleb Gattegno promoted teaching languages the Silent Way.  She had been taught French with Gattegno's approach.  Having to wait for someone to repeat correctly what the professor had said just one time had driven her to total boredom.  And trying to figure out the structures and how to say things using a set of colored rods had seemed so childish.  So, to this day, when people ask her whether she speaks French, she tells them that she does, The Silent Way.

           John Rassias, from Dartmouth, had come to demonstrate his confrontational approach to language teaching.  He had taught them a Greek dialogue of salutations and social phrases by shouting at them and grabbing them to hug and pat them on the back.  It was a loud and raucous class.  When Mary went to live in Greece, later in her life, she thought she had to speak Greek with an aggressive attitude.  She still remembered the phrases but she did not make many friends.

           Earl Stevick, who headed the Foreign Service Institute's language training program at the time, came to promote "meaningful language".  The students should learn phrases which have something to do with their situation.  She mused that she shouldn't have taught those first students to say "green cats".  The focus of language teaching was changing from receiving language to using it as a means of communication. 

          When her program ended, Mary's brain was full of information but she needed to put it to practice to see what she still needed to know.    She felt that all the methods and approaches to language teaching which she had learned were not yet a part of her.  She had to get into the classroom and experiment and experience.  She had learned but she did not understand yet which methods would work for her.  Their meaning was still in books and lectures.  They had not truly become part of her knowledge base.
 

            Mary's master's program had prepared her for experiential learning and teaching. So she was both excited
and apprehensive when she accepted her first teaching job abroad. Bell Helicopter hired her to prepare Iranian mechanics to work with the Texan technical teachers. Mary could picture working out on the flight line and coaching her mechanics with the phrases they would need. She hoped that their text was set up experientially.  She could envision using Asher's Total Physical Response as she gave orders and watched her mechanics fulfill the tasks. Of course, she would have to learn all about how helicopters functioned first. So much to learn! 

           In Iran,  her hopes were dashed.  Mary was teaching the old way  in a technical situation. Her burning desire was to teach  her students  to feel the language, enjoy the literature but she was back to teaching pattern practices on a military base.   Only the setting and the vocabulary had changed.  The wrench is heavy. /light/ The wrench is light. (well, which was it??) 

           After a while, she was promoted to materials writer. Conflicts with the other writers arose because she wanted to make it meaningful and the other writers wanted pattern practice. Well, how about pattern practice with meaningful structures? Do not say  "I see the cat" and then say "I don't see the cat". You can't have it both ways. It's not real language. No, but it is a way to get the right response. It's grammar, not meaning. 

            Mary wanted to combine a logical lesson with an artful presentation to build bridges between the two cultures of learning. C.P. Snow was guiding her reasoning. She decided to try again in a program known for being more progressive. Her optimism faded as she was informed that her supplies would be a tool box, a grammar book based on the audio-lingual method and the suggestion that she substitute technical words like wrench and pliers for the classroom realia used in the patterned responses. 

           Mary knew intuitively that this was not the best way to teach. So she analyzed rationally what her students needed to know by the end of the 8 week course. She wrote down where they were coming from linguistically and where they needed to end. Step by step she worked on a curriculum which systematically and logically brought them closer to the grammar and vocabulary goals. Each grammar point built on the one before and vocabulary was folded in as the students progressed from "This is a wrench" to "Oil is more viscous than water." Descartes would be proud of her! 

           She developed a course of study which left little room for error. As the students handled and discussed the tools, Mary felt that she was on the right track. She artfully presented the grammar and watched and listened as her students flourished. 

           As Mary reflected on that time in her career, she realized that that is when she had decided that language teaching needed a paradigm shift. How could one teach language without teaching meaning? As she looked back over that crisis in her career, she felt that Vygotsky was sorely needed. But she didn't know about him back then. Mary felt that his metaphor of the drop of water would have helped her. But it was the 1970s and Vygotsky's writings weren't known in Iran and much less in Texas where Mary'ssupervisors were from. Oh, she looks at the methods they used back then and cringes. How did anyone learn to speak English in their program? 

           They didn't, she concluded.  They learned to take orders and to follow directions. Communicative language was not the purpose of the program on the military base. And it was a culture not used to  change. Facing frustration, she realized that it was time to move on. Even though her knowledge base was growing and she knew that communication should be the result of language learning, Mary felt that she still had a lot to learn.

           Mary started keeping a journal in her next job. She incorporated story telling and story writing in her classes. She was teaching in Greece and she tapped into the rich cultural history passed down orally in the villages. Mary scrapped the reading anthologies which had been sent from the U.S. and used the Greek myths which the students had grown up with. So, using Snows artful presentations, Descartes logic in lesson sequencing and Bruner's narrative style, Mary designed a curriculum which was relevant and stimulating for her students. And they flourished. 

           Through the years, Mary kept abreast of the changes in language teaching. Her thirst for knowledge kept her learning about new ways of thinking as well as approaching language teaching. She kept up with new trends. Technological  advances pushed out the language lab and brought in the computer lab. In the computer lab, Marshall McLuhan would say that definitely the medium was the message. 

           Mary's students pressed her for more time on the computers. The students begged her to let them spend more time in the computer lab by saying that lab was interactive, interesting and non-threatening. The programs didn't require that they speak with a native speaker in person so they could try out new phrases and test their grammar without a teacher correcting them. And if no one was watching, they could surf the net, play games and read about their home country in their native language. English language acquisition could wait till the next lab session.  Technology had its advantages but Mary decided that she would use it to supplement language practice and continue to give her students lots of face-to-face talk time. 

           In Mary's next teaching position she was voted the most effective teacher by the faculty and the students. The accolades made Mary stop and reflect how it had all come together. She had started out using intuition more than anything and had ended up a well read teacher who still used intuition to sort out the knowledge she had gained. 

           She had continued her education throughout her career. Taking courses, reading the latest research, experimenting in the classroom and being a mentor to new teachers had kept her active in her professional field. Her goal was to promote teaching as a professional field. She gave staff in-service training on language acquisition. She provided staff development sessions on the latest research. She was a resource to the new teachers and a mentor to those who needed her. She encouraged the teachers to research what they didn't understand, keep journals with questions about what was going right or wrong in the class. Thinking "outside the
box" didn't happen frequently in her schools. So she worked with teachers to see how Vygotsky, Bruner and Snow were not meant just for ESL teachers. All elementary teachers were language teachers. Mary helped them design curriculum in a Cartesian, logical, sequential way and encouraged them to present the information in an artful way.
 

           Vygotsky guided her as she arranged demonstrations of lessons full of sensory and experiential encounters. Mary felt that even though she had come a long way since that first day in the classroom, she still had a long way to go. Reading Thomas Kuhn had made her aware of the need for a paradigm shift in her profession. In education many of the paradigms used had been established in another academic era. So much had changed in terms of demographics, and so little had changed inside the schools. New methods had been proven successful but few school districts were investing in them. 

           Mary felt that one of the reasons for the lack of change was the lack of power felt by the teachers.
After reading about the chaos theory and the butterfly effect, Mary wondered whether she could become a butterfly and create a change in her building which would spread to other schools and then to the district and to other districts. She would give it a try. But first she needed to fill in the holes which remained. 

           Mary needed to find out more about the structure of school systems and the process to make lasting change. Her summer would be filled with more courses in Educational Leadership as she got the overall
picture from the schoolhouse to the State house. Then she would go back to her school and flap her wings. 

            Even after 35 years in the academic field, Mary believed that her ways of knowing were still changing as her knowledge base increased. The field of language teaching had changed and would continue to change and so would she. Armed with her background in Vygotsky, Snow, Bruner and Kuhn, she would do her best to create chaos and effect change in her own little way.