Teacher in Development

“What the heck have I been doing?”

This question comes via Barbara Ganley and gsiemens

Ganley’s quote from gsiemens’ connectivisim blog got me interested, and got me thinking. Here’s the fire starter:

“Instead of designing instruction (which we assume will lead to learning), we should be focusing on designing ecologies in which learners can forage for knowledge, information, and derive meaning. What’s the difference between a course and an ecology? A course, as mentioned is static - a frozen representation of knowledge at a certain time. An ecology is dynamic, rich, and continually evolving. The entire system reacts to changes - internal or external. An ecology gives the learner control - allowing her to acquire and explore areas based on self-selected objectives. The designer of the ecology may still include learning objectives, but they will be implicit rather than explicit.”

The ideas that got me thinking:
1. Instruction vs. Ecologies where learners forage.

I love this, and yet I find myself wondering…how to create such an environment in my classroom, where my English students can forage and hunt down what they want. Does it apply even if you don’t have net access in your classroom? The knowledge is developing rapidly outside the disconnected classroom, but what happens to the teachers and students stuck on the inside? How can we create learning ecologies? How can we encourage foragers?

Is it the “teacher becomes the net” scenario? Do we, the teachers, need to tap into our student’s passions and interest and hunt down “now” information related to it…and bring it in for students to explore?

I could say I could encourage my students to forage outside the classroom, outside the office, but to me…that’s a joke. My students are… well…slaves. They work so much that they never do homework…because they are hardly ever home. Could a learning ecology survive in such an environment?

2. An ecology gives the learner control to explore around self-selected learning objectives.

3. What got to me the most: The designer of the ecology may still include learning objectives, but they will be implicit rather than explicit.

What is an implecit objective?
wordnet at Princeton U - via google, describes implecit like this: “implied though not directly expressed.”

And from the same two sources, “explicit” is something:”precisely and clearly expressed or readily observable; leaving nothing to implication.”

I’m left scratching my head. What do implicit learning objectives look like? How are they conveyed and known by the parties involved?

How does this cross over into my esl classroom? What does a learning ecology look like there? While I totally agree with all the points listed above and in the blogs I’ve linked to and quoted from, I’m left with a mighty big question mark.

How does a teacher, in my case, an esl teacher, begin to deploy such learning environments?

The strange thing for me is around the use of objectives - and the apparent alteration around their use that siemens is advocating. I feel tension around the whole implecit vs. explicit deployment of objectives.

Up to this point in my teaching career, objectives have been drilled into my head as something every responsible, effective teacher should be doing - setting up objectives that are measurable, that make use of the right verbs, and that break out of the classroom and into the reality of my student’s lives. That demonstrate the teacher’s effectiveness at helping learning to occur. It also gives students a way to measure their “learning.” - now I’m even starting to feel cautious around using the word “learning.”

And now…I feel like I’m being asked to unlearn what I have learned. Is that a right conclusion to take out of this conversation?

What should my classroom look like? I know I’ve been practicing the following, and now I’m not so sure I should be…

“Educators are a conflicted group. The intended outcome of our activities is a nebulous concept we define as “learning” (some type of change of state or potential in the learner). We assume that through pushing buttons and pulling levers in an intricate process we call “instruction”, we will be able to “create” learning. The best we have been able to do to date is create a series of guidelines and conditions in which learning might occur. Vygotsky, Bruner, Chickering, Bloom, Gagne, and others have sought to pry open the door of “making learning happen” through checklists and best practices. In the end, most educators will admit that we are really rather clueless about the whole learning thing. And we should be. We have taken the wrong approach. We are trying to achieve a task (learning) with a tool (teaching) in an artificial knowledge construct (courses). It’s all about us.”

I feel clueless at the moment. This conversation is open, and I throw it out to you. What does this all mean? Should these ideas be informing our teaching practice, and if so, what does that look like?

J.M.’s recent post on teachers as investors still has me pondering some more about our roles today.

“People aren’t interested in how much you know until they know how much you are interested in them.” - John C. Maxwell.

That quote comes from a book I’m reading called “The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader” by John Maxwell.

Teachers are, or should be, investors.
Investors in their own learning:
Great teachers are always learning. We should never stop. We should never allow ourselves to think that we’ve reached some pinnacle of intellect where we no longer need to reach for more. We must challenge ourselves to be challenging to someone else.

We must never allow ourselves to coast. To slip into neutral, no matter how heavy our workload may be. We must remember that our market - our students - and teaching theory and methods - are smarter and faster than we are. They never coast. If we fail to invest in development and learning, we’ll quickly find ourselves stagnating and left far behind in today’s world.

A prime example of the student being smarter and faster than our old ways of doing things: Is this cheating or smart information sharing? Digital fluency: Are we aware? Are we thinking ahead, looking for ways to use this? Our market is. Has, and are. A teacher stuck in neutral will miss this, and his or her students will suffer greatly.

Teachers should be investing in passion.

“The word ‘charisma’ comes to mind, as I recall many of my teachers invested passion in the subjects they taught; they were there because they loved the subject and they loved learning (although at least one prof comes to mind as coming across as socially inept, yet he had such a drive to learn and to challenge students and was open to being challenged (as long as the challenge was given in an informed way).” - J.M.

While this is true for every subject you teach, I want to funnel this over to ESL for a moment. Are you excited about helping your students to speak and understand English? Are you passionate about lexical development and engaging conversations? Do you get pumped when a struggling student finally puts together a sentence that everyone can understand?

Grammar and memorizing those rules and vocabulary lists. Reading irrelevant content. Doing the same type of exercises over and over again. Starting a new group, but using the material you’ve always used - welcome to a direct flight into stagnation.

If you’re bored, you can bet your students are too! Invest in passion. Get excited about what you are teaching. If you’re not anymore, try to become an out-of-the-box thinker. (Invest in your development again.)

Invest in love.
I go back to Maxwell’s quote. I go back to small groups (even if you have a huge class.) Know your students. Take the time to go personal. I don’t mean that you blur the line between teacher and student. They still have to know who you are, and what that implies. But we do have to get past their student number, seating asignment, and last name.

We have to navigate into the range of influence. That happens up close. That happens when we know their hobbies and passions. That happens when we start to care about their success, and nudge them towards it.

“I must also add at this point that many of the high school teachers who stand out in my mind were ones who believed in me. They heard what I was interested in, and they encouraged me to grow in that.” — J.M.

I echo J.M.’s experiences. The teachers who have impacted me the most, and I can count them on one hand, were the ones who took the time to get interested in me. Who genuinely cared. Who discussed my ideas with me, and encouraged other directions.

No matter what subject area you teach, you need to be an expert or a developing investor. An investor in your own learning, but in a way that seeps into public. (You can tell when someone is a passionate learner.) We should be passionate about what we do, cus if not - everyone can tell. And to me, we must most of all, become passionate investors in our students. Scale down those huge classes. Move in close. Get to know, and be known, and Bam: You’re in influence range. Why? Because you took the time to care.

Teachers are investors.

Keyword: Balance.

Key thought: Learning should be fun, but in an engaged - flow state - sort of way.

I picked up this post over at Godfrey Parkin’s site.

Parkin’s Lot: Who says learning should be fun?

“The distinction between engagement and interactivity is crucial, and it’s one that many instructional designers – and those who commission the development work – do not appear to understand. Engagement is intense mental absorption; interactivity is often just busyness or sugar-coating. It is vitally important that learners be engaged. Interactivity, entertainment, and fun can contribute to cognitive engagement. They can equally well distract from it.” Godfrey Parkin

Reflection: How is my classroom? Am I working to create ENGAGED learning experiences? Or am I just handing out sugar coated interaction?

I think true engagement (The kind Parkin is referring to) means slipping into a flow state. It’s where real fun and real learning takes place.

The Power of Personal.
I’ve been wondering how to push relevant content to my legal English group. I’m not satisfied with our school’s present offerings anymore. They are…irrelevant to what my students do and need.

So where should a guy go for content around law? Thanks to a post over at the gapingvoid I followed a really weird breadcrumb trail and fell into Business Week’s Blogspotting section. I ran into this post:Where are the good law blogs out there?

Amazing. Exciting.

Welcome to the headshift: English teachers - Any teacher for that matter - should no longer be married to their course books. We should be constantly asking ourselves: is this relevant? Is it speaking to my students where they are, and what they are doing? We should be brave when and if we realize that our content is no longer engaging our students, and change it.

Work toward standards and competencies, but don’t get tied down to something that doesn’t matter anymore!

Opening the role of the teacher discussion again, J.M. dives into yet another side to the Trajectory Coach: the personal investor.
Palimpsest redux » Teacher as Investor…

Personal learning experiences: that’s where real teachers need to be spending a great deal of time. Knowing the student, and being known. Not being a know it all, but being a contagious learner yourself.

I love this post. I think you will too.

To continue my exploration into ePortfolios, I stumbled upon this:e-Portfolios@UBC Project Portfolio thanks to a post over at the elearnspace blog.

If you’re at all interested in ePortfolios, this is an amazing find. I know where I’ll be hanging out for a while.

One spot I really enjoyed was the Lessons Learned section. They suggest some great tips to help teachers help themselves and students get into “folio thinking.”

In my discussions with J.M., and watching his own pd blog roll out, we’ve been discussing some very similar ideas: the vital importance of modeling.

Dr. Helen Barrett comments on the importance of the teacher modeling portfolio development, where :

“If teachers develop electronic teaching portfolios, their students will be more likely to have their own electronic portfolios.”

I have been suffering from a lack of modeling. It seems that this is the only way to go if you want to introduce something new - specially technology related - to students or teachers. But modeling has been something I’ve not practiced, up until now. But not only modeling - where I show an example of how I’m doing it already, but also bringing in realia around ePortfolios and Reflective processes.

Show students more examples of e-Portfolios before they begin.

Show students more examples of reflection before they begin.

Wow. Show AND Tell. Not just tell. Thismorning I started telling my legal English group about portfolios. They were enthusiastic about our new direction, but I see now how vital it is to not only tell them about porfolios: what they are, what they do etc., but to also find and show examples [Teacher portfolio example, Web developer example, another teacher’s portfoli ] so they can see what they look like, what they could include in their own etc. >> Hello action step.

I also really agree with the idea of integrating ePortfolio work into course content as “a value added exercise, rather than just another assignment to complete.” - ePortfolio or portfolio work of any kind is valuable. But our students need to be aware of the value too. To me that means I need to take more time around educating my class on what a portfolio is, and how it can help development.

There must also be a fair grade assigned to portfolio development. Portfolios are complex and intensive beings, the grade should reflect that. (Assigning a grade could also help student motivation in some cases.)

What I’ve been ranting about for a while now: “Instructional Design 101: Know your learners!” Portfolios align to competencies, but are very much student centered development tools - they choose what to include and why. (Though there seems to be some negotiation around that between teacher and student.)

I know you’re out there: How have you been using portfolios in your work? Join the conversation…

Portfolios: A small exploration into what they are, and how I can use them to help our teachers develop into life-long learners.

“Definition An ePortfolio is a web-based information management system that uses electronic media and services. The learner builds and maintains a digital repository of artefacts, which they can use to demonstrate competence and reflect on their learning. Having access to their records, digital repository, feedback and reflection students can achieve a greater understanding of their individual growth, career planning and CV building. Accreditation for prior or extra-curricular experiences, a sense of control over how they are represented and direction over what is shown makes the ePortfolio a powerful tool.”

I think there are some important keywords or ideas here:

1. The learner builds and maintains a digital repository of artefacts.

2. These artefacts are stored to demonstrate competence and to aid in the reflection process.

Just from reading this simple definition by David Tosh’s pdf report via Ben Werdmuller titled ePortfolios and weblogs: one vision for ePortfolio development I am able to see some key components that are missing from our PD program.

Competency statements around our training program must be developed. They must be measurable and observable - you can tell when they have been met, and the teacher’s portfolio demonstrates that they have been meet.

The second “lightbulb” that went off for me as I read this definition was that the teacher not the institution, is responsible to build the portfolio and include information, or artefacts to borrow from Tosh, that shows how he/she has met a certain level of competence.

Quick Definition>>A competency: describes the work related skills and behaviour needed to effectively perform in a role. Core competencies are required for all role profiles. Specific competencies are required for some role profiles.

Portfolios must be portable, and must belong to the teacher or student developing it. When teacher/student moves on from present location, he/she should be able to take their portfolio with them as a means of demonstrating what they have learned, and what they are learning.

There is something so important that I am really…wanting to help our teachers realize: A portfolio is a way they can see where they have been, where they are, and where they should be going. I think great teaching spends a great deal of time under the microscope of reflection. I want to encourage passionate and engaged teachers. I think portfolios are a great tool to help accomplish that goal.

Development and maintenance are the key activities in the success of an ePortfolio, enabling a student to actively engage in their learning and progress. By maintaining their own ePortfolio a student reflects on what they are doing and have done and considers why they are doing it and the reasons for understanding of the direction a student wants to pursue.

-Tosh.

Key words from that quote:

Development and Maintenance: I think I need to spend time educating around proper useage of a portfolio: this is a living thing that must be followed up with, or it will just die. It’s like a life cache.

So far, I think many of our teachers have simply not grasped the idea of what a portfolio is, and how useful it can be. The fault is a lack of education around them. Maybe a session around portfolio development would be helpful.

Active engagers: It’s so easy for teachers to just switch into glide mode. To be sucked into the current of their lives, their busy schedules, their commute times, class prep time, family time, fun time, that the whole idea of being “actively engaged” in the teaching/learning process becomes history. Real teachers never cease to learn.

Regular reflectors: I’ve realized many things about how I teach by simply taking some time to…THINK about what just happened in the previous class. Portfolios are great for this, they provide a space to record those thoughts, those questions, those self-explorations that are so vital to development. I think a portfolio could be a launch pad for action research - a place to identify where areas of opportunity exist, and a place to store findings as a result of research, as well as record results of application in the classroom.

If the portfolio were a blog…now that is an interesting thought. The teacher/student could post their reflections, action research, personal mapping (where I was, where I am, where I’m going). The interesting thing here is adding a whole other diminsion to the portfolio: The diminsion of community. The social portfolio, where the owner is not developing in isolation, but inside a community of practice.

Other teachers can read developments, and offer praise, suggestions, advice, feedback etc. to further aid the development process.

My action step, from what I’ve been reading so far: Educate more. I need to continue learning about portfolios and how they can/could/have been deployed. I need to share about portfolios with our teachers, and explain what they can do, how they can enable a teacher, and how they can encourage growth.

What are we doing in our classrooms? Is it working? Is it having a positive impact on L2 acquisition?

Are we stuck on grammar rules? Do we drill them and fixate on them? Are we forcing students to memorize list upon list of vocabulary words that our workbook told us to focus on? Are students reading stories about business mergers and practicing memo writing - but as soon as they step out of class must deal with how to explain tax law to a foreign client, answer client e-mails (asking for explanations around how their case is doing in court) and listen to a British (nothing at all against British folk) high-up speak about relationship marketing? The topic may be interesting, but what if my students only deal with American or Indian speakers of English? What will they do when they have to answer the phone and speak with their client from Texas? Their British accent exposure, though smart to expose students to a variety of English accents, will not prepare them for the experience of day-to-day reality.

Have we flatlined? Has the TESOL profession been left behind, trapped inside teaching theory that just doesn’t work - has it ever really worked?

Updated English teachers should be reading widely. They should be asking “Why do I do things the way I do in the classroom? What theory backs me up? Is that theory up-to-date and relevant today?

They should also be following Stephen Krashen. He’s a mover. A shaker. An out-of-the-box thinker. But more than different, I think he’s really right! Take a peek at this:
Why support a delayed-gratification approach to language education?

It’s not about grammar rules. It’s not about memorizing vocabulary. Skill development based classrooms are outdated. In fact, they waste both you and your student’s time.

The updated classroom is based around rich comprehensible input. Not just any input, but - and I quote Krashen here: “comprehension that counts.”

Have you talked with your class about what “counts” to them? (Remember, the updated classroom is passionate and addictive, and unleashes engaged learning experiences because it’s built around what turns the student on.)

The updated classroom is joy based. It’s fun to go to class. (Should be.) If you and your students don’t feel happy and don’t derive strong satisfaction by what you cover in class, you need to revamp your content.

The Comprehension Hypothesis, in fact, insists on pleasure from the beginning, on acquirers obtaining interesting, comprehensible input right from the start. The path of pleasure is the only path. The path of pain does not work for language acquisition.

Are we listening? Is our profession listening? Or are we content to do what has always been done in the ESL classroom: subject students to more grammar rules, endless - often meaningless to real life - lists of vocabulary to memorize, course books that aren’t related to what students do outside of the classroom, and audio that either doesn’t matter, or is stuck on one accent 100% of the time?

Are we stuck on a forced march along the path of pain? Or are we running down the pathway of pleasure - trying to keep up with our students?

Aaron Campbell got me thinking on the topic of testing and assessment again today: specifically the role of testing and assessment the ESL classroom. In fact, his post along with Cleve and Aaron’s comments, opened up a thought chain that I would like to explore a little here.

Assessment on trial:

In a student centered classroom where should assessment fit in, and how should it look?

Obviously we [read: schools, teachers, students, the community] need some way of evaluating the quality of learning that is taking place both in and out of the classroom. That much is clear to me. Responsible assessment should, and needs to have a place in the ESL classroom.

But what should it look like? I’m thinking that in a student centered classroom, perhaps even in the classroom of today, we need to begin to distance ourselves from the way it has always been done. I wonder if it really is working, if assessment and standardized testing really gives us fair, reliable, and accurate information about those who take it and about how well schools and teachers are doing at teaching.

How often do students cram facts and information into their brains to just pass the test? How many forget what they crammed a few days or weeks after the exam has been written? How many actually use what they memorized for those tests outside the classroom where it really matters?

Thinking about my own classroom practice, I see this happening all the time. My students prepare for the end of unit exam, pass it with little to no problem, but fail to deploy unit material in day-to-day life.

They continue to make the same mistakes, continue to use old vocabulary - forgetting what we “learned” in class, and all this with a high 90’s average!

According to the test, learning happened. According to reality…

Assessment is necessary. The right question is “How are we doing this?” I think student centered teachers should think about portfolio work as a way to follow, assess, and evaluate learning.

Instead of memorizing and dumping information out on exams, portfolios encourage thought, application, and reflection of classroom material. They also follow a more “I can do this” method of evaluation. You can see or listen to the progress.

The Robust ESL Portfolio
The ESL portfolio can and should take on samples of a student’s developing skills, and follow them through their learning career. Portfolios should be readily accessible to student, teacher, and interested parties. They should be open conversations that develop over the long-term. They should even be paperless. Enter the porfolio blog.

What you could include:
1. Written samples: Likely the easiest sample to begin collecting. Blogs naturally lend themselves to this. Have your students blog on a regular basis about their thoughts on the class, what they understand and don’t understand, world events that matter to them and why, writing assignments that maybe would have normally be done on paper etc. I think that’s one of the keys: Get your class to blog what they would normally be asked to write about on paper. Encourage opinons. Encourage connections to other sources. Encourage commenting and linking. Encourage exploration.

2. Podcasting: Great for listening practice, but you can also use this tool to record your student’s spoken skill. Record conversations, presentations etc. and include these audio files in their portfolio. Over the time they work on their English, they should begin to see - or rather hear - a developing skill and proficiency with the language.

3. Podcasts for listening development: You could keep a bank of listenings your students have worked on in class, and their written and spoken interactions with them, that would show their ability and skill to understand what they are hearing. These listenings would grow in complexity and level of difficulty as time goes on.

4. A very similar approach could be followed for reading development. Articles, both electronic and paper based, could be kept in the student’s portfolio, along with their thoughts and interactions with them. Blogging would also lend itself greatly to this, as students could read a net based article, link to it, and comment on it in such a way as to show they understood the content, and not only understand the information presented, but add to it.

Portfolios lend themselves to being student centered. In the teacher training work I’m involved in we’re using portfolios as our main means of evalutaion. While I have specific questions I’m asking our teachers about the course work we’re dealing with, I’m opening the bulk of the process to them.

I’m encouraging them to write about what was interesting to them about what we’re working on in our PD sessions. I’m encouraging them to comment on what they are trying to implement from pd sessions in class, and how it is working. I’m asking them to reflect on their present teaching practice, and write about what is working and what isn’t, and what needs to be taken away and added.

The process has been slow and bumpy. (I’ll post on that later). However, I’m looking towards the long-term with this. I’m not looking for “instant” grade based gratification, but the development and growth of a teacher of English as a second language.

Maybe that’s a viewpoint all educators and schools need to adopt: It’s not about short term, grade based scores.[They likely aren’t all that accurate anyway.] Instead it’s about the meaningful development of a life-long learner.

A grade is short term. A portfolio describes a lifetime.

Hilarious, and scary at the same time. J.M. briefly raises this important issue in his comments
and I just thought this cartoon….summed it all up. LarsonsWorld | September 2005 Archive

What is the point of school? To explore the world, or prepare to take a provincial/state standardized exam?

What should be the point of school?