Teacher in Development

I’ve really been enjoying what AJ has been posting about over at Effortless Language Acquisition. 

He’s presently in the middle of teaching himself Spanish, and has been recording how he’s been going about this. What I really have been enjoying is seeing how the whole process is about deepness. 

Learning is not about how fast you can go. It’s not how much you can cover. Sadly, at least in ESL, "learning" is about speed. One of the most frequent of all FAQ’s that gets asked is the classic: "How long will it take me to be fluent?"

Our industry then dives into a beautiful looking table which outlines what course books we use and when, and for what level. Each book is neatly packaged into say six month blocks of time.

We boldly, and quite falsely claim that in a year and a half or two years, you’ll be fluent. You finish a book, you finish a level. You acquire a chunk of English.

But if you’ve been at this for a while, and better yet, if you’ve had the joy of sticking it out with the same students for a long while, you’ll notice something very disturbing: You finish a level means you just finished a book. Little to nothing has happened to your student’s language.

Self-confidence goes up. Fluency, sometimes goes up. But I’ve noticed that many of my students seem to be riding a very slow acquisition curve.

The one guy, and I’ve blogged on him before, who is really experiencing a jump is the one who is going for deepness. 

It could be that I am also starting to buyinto deeper, not the faster or wider mindset. My case in point is the "My Personal Story" project we’ve been working on for the past month or so.  

Our work has been to have my students talk about what they studied in university and why, how they started working where they are now, what exactly they do, what they love about their jobs, what they do for fun and if they have hobbies, and their plans for the future.

The objective was to prepare a few of them for some upcoming interviews. (A couple of my students are preparing to go abroad to study Master’s degrees.)

The prep work took us a good month. We did a lot of planning on paper. A lot of brainstorming. A lot of writing the story out, and a lot of talking about expectations. We watched mini videos of people talking about their story - and noticed how they did it. What language they used. What grammar was commonly present. Vocabulary words and phrases that were useful. We went deep. We didn’t branch out into ten different topics or study points. We didn’t cover three or four more chapters in a course book. We just dove deep.

We had great results. We recorded their story in the last class, which was a fun project in itself. (If I get their permission, maybe I can post them here.) We had the chance to reflect on the exercise, which turned into my grand intro into blogging…and they all had very positive things to say. 

They noticed how they talked. They noticed their areas of weakness. But best of all, they noticed where they did really well.

I had them do self-reflection, and then peer reflection. What did you notice about your buddy’s work? What did you like, and what would you suggest for them to improve on?

 The comments were really amazing. Mostly, they were very uplifting and positive. Everyone left the room wearing a smile. But most of all, everyone felt they had done something important. Something meaningful.

We didn’t rush, and the result was something quality. It wasn’t bunches of chapters in some book.  It was one skill done really well. 

Effortless Language Acquisition: More Review, More Repetition

*Blogged for future reference…* Via elearnspace  This is an interesting wiki around ePortfolios.

Interface2006 ePortfolios - Wiki.ucalgary.ca

It’s weird and cool that many people are thinking about similar things as you RIGHT THIS MOMENT. 

Bedouin Related Memes: 

Becoming a Better EFL Teacher: Could Computers and the Internet REALLY Replace TESOL English Teachers?

There has been some really interesting posts coming from this blog lately, and today’s post was another example of that. I just have two things to say: 1. I don’t use blogger anymore, and therefore I can’t add my comments. I really don’t like that about blogger! 2. I think Lynch gives a really good opening: No matter how techie we become, the teacher will never be replaced. We will always need the human touch.

But what I really liked from his post was his call for reinvention. The Concept of School must change.

That four walls thing we have going now… it’s gotta become a thing of the past.

"Schools, at virtually any level, will need to be virtually and interactively linked to an extensive array of external resources. This means that the “traditional” board, markers and OHP will need to give way to additional, integrated resources that expand the classroom environment to an almost unlimited degree."(Could Computers and the Internet REALLY Replace TESOL English Teachers?, Lynch)

Noon further explores the importance of examining our assumptions, and wonders what happens when you decide that what you believe about education is no longer valid. How do you replace the old with the new? How do you translate success stories of others into your own practice? (Can you?)

These, I think, are vital questions. I’m finding myself very dissatisfied with the classroom environment I’ve been living in. I’m tired of how things have been "working." I’m ready to explore, envision, and rethink what I do. But I want to break away from just thinking about change and classroom/teacher/student reinvention. I want to be the change. I want to live it.

Doug’s post comes via Clarence Fisher’s idea: Thinking about Change.

"It frustrates me to see all of the transformative tools we have, the networks we can form, the powerful theories of learning and change that we can implement, and yet we plod along, tinkering with assignments and where we seat kids in the classroom thinking this will change the kind of learning that develops, making it more appropriate for the century we live in."(Thinking about Change, Fisher.)

Now that’s something to think about isn’t it? I really liked the matrix he works with in his class. Test your assumptions. Think about why you do what you do. Are there other solutions out there that make more sense? Should we just keep going with the way things are? (Could we keep going and expect better results…I think we all know the answer to that one.)

Then, just before turning in to sleep tonight, I found this post from Stephen Downes. I couldn’t resist posting it here: Everybody’s a Network.

He asks a question that should sting: "What if education isn’t a business anymore - people share what they know as part of their day-to-day routine or part of the job, everybody does a little, and nobody makes any money?"(Everybody’s a Network, Downes)

That’s a brilliant question. Afterall, there’s a lot of money to be made in education. Nothing wrong with that, but I wonder about the implications of "Going liquid" as Downes suggests. Profit creation will change as well - and that could be one of the reasons why our educational environments seem to be so resistant to change; there would be too much of a loss. Downes points to BuzzMachine’s post: Everybody’s a network. Looks like a great read.

Nuff said I think. To remix BuzzMachine’s opening line: "In the future of education, which is now, everybody is a network. In the past, networks were defined by control of content or distribution. But now, you can’t own all distribution and content is controlled where it’s created."

The future is going Bedouin don’t you think? 

I just read this post over at think:lab and immediatly thought to myself: oooooohhhhh, now this is cool!  

think:lab: When Business and Education Goes All Bedouin On Ya

My two second definition of "Going Bedouin" is about being completely mobile, yet connected via the net or cell phone. Say goodbye to having to have a classroom. Learning goes informal, and no, that does not mean it ceases to be "good learning."

Christian goes on to ask a few million dollar questions, well worth your thinking time:

"As more and more businesses tip over the edge of this "go lean" paradigm, what prevents learners from taking control of their educational portfolio in the same way? 

What prevents schools from becoming loose associations of learners who acts in a "bedouin" manner, working and learning and collaborating and questioning and researching and solving in a nomadic and virtual manner? "(When Business and Education Goes All Bedouin On Ya, Long)

I’ve blogged this before, and for some reason I simply cannot let go of the idea: a virtual classroom. Just a few nights ago, I heard a conference call on MSN messenger. It was between my wife and one of her uncles. He lives in a different part of Mexico, far to the north of us, but their conversation sounded like they were in the same room. No echoes. No distortion. Perfect quality.

As I sat there, I found myself thinking about the virtual classroom again. The technology is here for it to happen. All that is missing is for a daring soul to launch out, hunt down a few like-minded students,  and go bedouin.  

I think bedouin style just makes really good sense for the ESL classroom. If the student really decided to buy into the idea, their work on and exposure to English would not be done in a block of 1.5 hours in the morning or afternoon. It wouldn’t happen just once or twice a week either. It would be nomadic.

I wonder if bedouin style English classes would be more effective than the present way we do things? Would it foster more realistic engagement with English? Would there be a rise of passionate students and teachers, or would they, robbed of their four walls and regimented 1.5 window of English,  just disengage and aimlessly wander the wastelands? (And how often does this happen anyway, even with the four walls and blocks of "English time?")

It would mean a different kind of student and teacher. The walls are not there to contain and box in. The block of "English learning time" is also vaporized. In its place there is free flowing information. Networked connections. Instant communication. Classes where I am, when I want them - but "classes" no more. Instead, classes as we know them today become a conversation. Anywhere. Anytime, and maybe student and teacher are in the same location for that conversation, or maybe not. Maybe the conversation is among peers, and has no "teacher."

Regardless of how it happens, I think students will be different. Teachers will be to.

Students will need to learn how to function autonomously, and teachers will need to learn how to allow it. We’ll have to learn that it’s not what we know now that matters, but out ability to connect to relevant sources of information to learn more - when we need it, and what we need it about.  Teachers need to learn how to do this in front of their students, modeling what you should do and how you should do it.

Teachers will need to teach metacognition for facilitating learner autonomy, in other words: they’ll have to teach how to learn vocabulary instead of just feeding word lists to their classes. (The whole give a man a fish and he’ll come back hungry the next meal. Teach him how to fish and he’ll not go hungry again.)

Perhaps this is turning into a rant, but I find the whole bedouin idea to be very interesting, but it’s so far out there on the bleeding edge of education that I think it will take a while to get "bedouin style" teachers and students, not to mention institutions. What do you think?

Is it far off on the horizon, shimmering like a mirage? Or is it far off, but quickly coming closer? 

My guess is the latter. What do you think? And if it’s the latter, what are we doing today to break our four walled classrooms and teaching styles down into something far more portable? Someday, you might thank yourself for thinking about such things…

Interesting questions raised over at the Becoming a Better EFL Teacher blog: Do EFL English Schools Really Need Native English Speaking Teachers?

My opinion: Nope, they sure don’t. Speaking as a teacher trainer, without reservation I’d hire a well trained non-native speaker any day. In most cases, Non-natives have mastered the grammar, and know how to explain it far better than their Native counterparts.

They also have first hand experience at learning English as a second language. They know the pain. They know the frustration. They know the pitfalls, and the common errors that can be fallen into.

Most of the non-native English teachers that I work with are way more patient and understanding of their students, and have the ability to effortlessly jump back and forth between Spanish (mother tongue here in Mexico) and English in order to explain a concept on a deeper level.

While our company is very careful about who we select in that we only recruit those with previous training, and strong fluency with the language, we do have an active "We hire native and non-native English teachers" policy.  

If you work with students who have anything to do with law, I’d like to pass along this really great resource blog: the (new) legal writer

 You’ll find lots of interesting and VERY useful links to articles, style resources, and it even has a grammar and useage category.

I’m no lawyer, but I’ve sure learned a lot from following law blogs for my classes. I see first hand that in today’s world, it’s no longer what you know that counts. It’s your ability to know more.

Tax Law News

The Oyez Supreme Court Podcast 

An interesting post over at Helen Barrett’s blog. (If you’re interested in portfolios, you should be following Barrett. In my humble opinion, she’s a portfolio jedi.) 

E-Portfolios for Learning: Linking ePortfolios and Student Achievement?

In Barrett’s post, a reader asks if there is a link between portfolio use and an overall improvement in student achievement. (Read: test scores.) 

I think Barrett’s response shows what a portfolio is for - it’s not so much about assessing learning, it’s about engagement for learning. 

That’s a big paradigm shift isn’t it?

Both items are important: We need to know what we’ve learned, but we also need to be engaged and "sucked into" the process of learning.  According to Barrett, that’s one of the things portfolios are great at doing.

"However, there is substantial research that supports the use of formative, classroom assessment (assessment FOR learning as opposed to assessment OF learning) with increased student achievement. Look at the meta-analysis conducted by Black and Wiliam in the U.K.: http://www.pdkintl.org/kappan/kbla9810.htm
Also, the Assessment Reform Group: http://www.qca.org.uk/7659.html

That type of formative assessment is well facilitated using a portfolio for that purpose…"(Linking ePortfolios and Student Achievement?, Barrett)

Classroom assessment typically delivers a grade. Portfolios seem to address something far more cooler: student engagement and motivation to learn.

But how can I really help my students make that level of connection with a portfolio? How can I move them beyond the erroneous idea that a portfolio is just another hoop to jump through to get the grade? (The teacher said I had to do this, so I’m doing it. Totally missed the point.) 

This is becomming a very important issue for me as I begin to learn more about my role as an English teacher. I’m learning that I’ve utterly failed if my students continue seeing me as their solution to learning English. I’m learning that I need to be an equipper who actively prepares and pushes students to step out of the classroom nest. I’m learning that I must work hard to teach myself out of a job - which means it’s a good thing to have students who can say they are able to do this on their own, and therefore it’s a really bad thing to have students who never leave the nest.

I’m introducing portfolios to my students for this purpose: not like a tool to generate a grade, but like a baton in a relay race. My hope is that they pass me, and use their portfolio as a tool for continued engagement in English - outside the classroom, and long after we’ve stopped running together.  

I read a really interesting post over at
Cool Cat Teacher Blog: ePortfolio research

It made me think again of the whole issue of ePortfolio control. Does it belong to the school or to the student?  

Vicki raises a very important issue: Motivation. If the student loses their portfolio somehow, you can say goodbye to their ever wanting to do it again. And what happens after they leave the school where their ePortfolio was created, and I assume, hosted? Do they still get access? Is that access for life? 

Portfolios, I think, need to be student owned and generated. They shouldn’t be boxy. They shouldn’t look the same for all. They should be user generated. User designed, and user populated. The person using the portfolio should be able to build it, however they want.

I do think, as a teacher, that I can ask for certain things to appear in my student’s learning space, but over all there needs to be autonomy here. I’m no expert, but I think that’s a real key to engagement. Is there a strong sense that "This is my space?"

All the institutional ePortfolio solutions that I’ve explored have all failed there. Miserably. They tell you what you can and should include. They don’t flex.

Vicki ends her post with this statement: "We need best practices (not just best software) amidst the maelstrom of Web 2.0 educational apps." I can get behind that easily.

A best practice would be teaching about portfolios and what they are for, and how to use them. A best practice would be showing how the teacher uses his/her own portfolio - become the model. A best practice would be opening the classroom to the wide wide world of 2.0 technology that is out there, and showing how to use this technology to reflect on and track learning in a responsible way. A best practice would be helping students find and choose their own tools to use in their portfolio creation - blogs, wikis, delicious, podcasting spaces etc. Best practice would not be boxing the student in by telling them what software to use, and it’s not forcing institutional portfolio software on them either.

The best practice that I’m thinking about here is pretty messy. Messy in the eyes of an institution that is. Boxy is predictable and easily measureable, but is that what teachers should be looking for? Can/should authentic learning be predictable and easy to assign a grade to?  

The portfolio I’m thinking about would be a user generated link: A conglomeration of content taken from a possibly wide variety of locations. (Built by, and decided upon by student.) At the moment, I’m personally thinking/playing with this idea on a superglu account, and what about netvibes.com?

My idea is to patch together all my online spaces, well the spaces that I would use in my professional development, and display them all in one place.  If you visit my glu site, you’ll notice that it’s very messy still…and not well organized. But the idea is there: to bring together multiple sources of content to act as my dynamic portfolio. 

The For Who Question:

A few months ago, there was a great discussion around the net on who the portfolio is for. Employer? Teacher? Institution? Student? I say it’s for the latter. The portfolio MUST be for the student if it’s to succeed as an continuous personal learning environment. But what if you could, at a click of a button, dynamically change the content on your portfolio page? In my case, superglu? 

I got this idea from delicious. Here, you can organize your account by keywords or tags. With one click, and a little bit of typing, you can instantly move entire strings of links from one category to another. I was wondering, what if you could do the same thing in an ePortfolio? Electronically tag your work so that it appears say under an Employer category - which would include all the items in your portfolio that would be important to show to a prospective employer, and that you have tagged accordingly, would dynamically appear when you send them the link. All from a simple tag. 

At the same time though, all these items are available for other uses as well. You don’t just get stuck with a one sided, single purposed portfolio. The student says: This is my portfolio. I can morph it as I please, to suit my own purposes. Today I can use it to help me get a job. Later tonight I can use it to reflect on something I learned.

But it’s not entirely digital. This idea came from Vicki as well. She wisely encourages students to plan for the worst to happen: things digital can vanish. We’ve all had that happen I’m sure. So as she so wonderfully explains here, I think a well rounded portfolio is both digital, and paper based. Perhaps paper based will be harder to customize, but I totally agree with Vicki’s reasoning - back up, back up, back up. If done properly, a portfolio could become a priceless possession.  

This post is messy, but it is what tumbled out of my head as I prepare to go deeper with portfolios with my students. As always, if you could follow my ideas, your comments are welcome! 

The language learning environment, or any classroom space for that matter, should be a breeding ground for passionate students.

I’ve had this post over at Creating Passionate Users flagged in my bloglines account since the 8th: Do something scary

Go ahead and read it. You’ll like it too, especially if you’re trying to figure out how to encourage the rise of passionate students (users) in your classroom.  

In my mind, this post lends itself very easily to educational themes, and especially to my area of work: teaching English.

How can we foster a classroom environment that dares students to grow? An environment that encourages them to experience the "I suck at this" feeling, but doesn’t allow them to stay there? How can we welcome an environment that allows for risks to be taken, so that students have that "no training wheels" first bicycle ride feeling? Sierra claims that these are the environments that produce passionate users.

These, then, are the environments I need to be building in my classrooms.

Speaking in a language that is not your own is a mighty risk. You could mispronounce something. You could use the wrong word. You could forget the right word in mid sentence. You could screw your verb tense, or perform a free sex change right in front of your listener’s eyes - a very common ESL thing. (My sister is visiting me this week, he lives in Florida.)

Yeah. Lots of risks there. Lots of ways to feel like you totally suck, and lots of ways to feel like you’ll never be able to kick ass. Been there. Done that. Still wear the t-shirt as I struggle my way through learning Spanish.

But along side those risks comes an equal potential for inspiring a passionate student. Your students will crash and burn. Lots. But why does that have to be a bad thing? Why, for example, do we get back up on the bike after we wipe out - knees bleeding, clothes dirtied up, and our brains armed with a fresh understanding of how ruthless momentum and gravity can be when they work together?

Why do we try again? I remember some wicked falls when I was learning to ride my bike without the training wheels. But deeper than the falls, I remember the fun, and the high of finally moving on two wheels. So how did that happen? Was it because my parents were always around to pick me up, and dust me off? Was it because they always got me to get right back up again, showering me with encouraging words - "You can do it!" "Try again!" Was it because I saw my friends "getting it" around me, and I wanted to join them? Was it because it was REALLY GREAT FUN to ride the bike?

I think all of those reasons played a part in helping me to break the "Suck" phase. I think all of those reasons can help our students too.

When failure happens, teachers should be there to inspire. To pick up. To dust off. To clean the blood. They should be there to shower the student with encouragement.  We should be there to draw the student back into the crash experience again, to not let them walk away in defeat. (I totally embarrassed myself that time…I won’t try that again…)

And when they do fly for the first time, how good of a job do we do NOTICING the achievement? We’re likely pretty good at doing the correction thing, but how well do we do the "You go!" part? The praise we dish out is part of the student’s high. The bigger their smile, the higher they go. I saw this happen a few classes ago with my "weak student."  

How do we deal with classroom risks? Do we step into the experience? Or are we too busy marching through course content to actually notice and inspire passionate students? 

I think AJ’s post from May 4 entitled: A Great Day sums up how I’m feeling today:
"In other words, the students did all the work, and reaped all the rewards."

I’m totally proud of one of my students. This guy has been with me for a little more than a year, and has always been the weakest member of the group. The weakest member until now that is!

After a few months break away from this group of four tax lawyers, I’ve started classes with them once again. But started in a very different way. I no longer am following a book. I’m no longer keeping the English neatly contained inside the 4 walls of our classroom. I’m no longer positioning myself as the "gateway" to English, and the solution to their English learning needs. I’m no longer subscribing to the idea that the English classroom is all you need to succeed in learning the language.

For a long time I have supported such ideals: your course book is a guide, not the LAW. It’s really good to deviate and bring in "student centered content." Real English is outside the classroom, etc. But rarely have I ever truly aligned my classroom practice to the implications of these thoughts, and rarely have I acted on them.  

That has changed drastically this year. Now I’m actively teaching my students to NOT rely on me and our classroom. I’m trying to show them how they can work and develop their English skills on their own. I’m teaching them about podcasts, blogging, and RSS as a means to individualized English content.

During class, I bring in blog posts. I download and play podcasts which speak to their interests and day to day work requirements, and the results have been fantastic, especially with the student I started this story with.

He’s swallowed the pill. He’s now an avid podcast listener. He follows several, and now comes to class buzzing about the lattest one he’s heard.

But he’s not just listening, he’s soaking! He’s starting to pay careful attention to vocabulary words, idiomatic expressions, and sentence structure, and this careful attention is really starting to pay off in the classroom. The guy’s writing and vocabulary is really starting to blossom! 

Today he floored me. A few weeks ago, as a primer activity to a project we’re starting, we watched a series of CPA promo videos from the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. Each 2-5 minute video features a CPA describing their workday, what got them into what they do, why they like what they do, etc. 

In class, we’ve been working on how to do the same thing: tell a bit about themselves, like what they studied in university and why, why they opted for the career they have chosen, what they like about their jobs, what their day-to-day activities are etc.  Their objective: to speak naturally and easily about these topics. And when they feel ready, we’re going to record their stories to include in their personal portfoflios.

So far we have been doing the work mostly on paper. We’ve spent time outlining what they wanted to include, which was quite a challenge for some, and worked on combining those ideas so that they tell their story in an interesting and engaging way.

Today my student opened his portfolio binder with three entire paragraphs that he had done on his own. I was shocked. This was completely new, ENGLISH ATTACK behavior that I have never seen in him before. I was even more shocked as he started reading. 

I thought I was watching one of those videos again. Yes, there were mistakes. A few sentences weren’t working well, and there were a few pesky preposition flubs, but over all, his work was amazing. He wrote like he was talking to someone. He shared naturally and easily, and told a really interesting story. In fact, it was so interesting that the other students stopped their own work to listen. That has never happened before!

He even attempted to employ a heavy duty  expression that he had heard on one of the  podcasts he listens to -  an attempt that failed mind you, but one he tried to use anyway.

I was thrilled, and I let him know it. This is what English class should be about. And these are the kind of results you can expect if you swallow the pill and start devouring English outside the classroom, away from your teacher.  

My student left the room at the end of class with a huge smile on his face. As AJ said: "The student did the work, and reaped the reward."