Teacher in Development

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?