Teacher in Development

So after reading  Assumptions have a Sell By date over at the Passionate Users blog, I got to wondering about the ideas, practices and assumptions that live inside the world of TESOL. I wonder just how many times we do things in the classroom just because it’s “the way things are done in the classroom.”

Have we, as Sierra so nicely puts it: “sniffed the milk” lately?  When was the last time we really sat down to examine the usefullness and the meaningfulness of our classroom practice? Are we really helping our students/clients with what we do? Is what we do based on updated thought and research, or have we just fallen into the well-worn paths that all other esl instructors have marched on before us?

Think about it a moment. I dare you. I have a sneaky suspicion that there are a lot of path walkers out there, and I include myself on these trails as well. Let me try out an example of a well worn path that I am trying my best to break off of: Non-authentic testing.

Non-authentic. You know: student/client finishes their unit work and we dish out an exam with fill in the blank answers that he/she should have memorized responses to. That could be vocabulary work, grammar exercises, etc. Most books these days offer built-in exams after each unit, making your life oh so easy - but the exams that I have experienced of this nature, have followed the classic memorize, memorize, memorize - then spill out format. Students usually do great on these things, but what do they really prove? How have your student’s english skills been impacted? Has their language use and on the job performance changed? I think we rarely can give a solid, affirmative answer to that.

Sniff-sniff - smells bad.  We need to check our assessment assumptions. Most testing that esl schools offer have gone bad. (Maybe they never were good to start with.)

What about the assumption of English class? Everybody “knows” that when you go to learn English, you have to do it inside the four walls of a classroom. (Meeting room, cafeteria, empty storage closet etc.) I don’t think the whole idea of this has gone bad, but I sure do think it could use a better container. Do 3 hour blocks of English time per week make a difference?  If students/clients are not encouraged to engage OUTSIDE of class, following something similar to an 80/20 ratio where 80% english learning is done by me OUTSIDE, and the other 20% is done in the classroom, then I think we’re dealing with something that has gone bad.

Sniff-sniff - yuck! Are those lumps in there!

We should all know that learning a second, third, fourth  language requires massive exposure to it. 3 hours a week kind of falls short of massive. I think it sorta falls into the “drip” category.  So what needs to change here: the way we work in the classroom. It shouldn’t be “feeding.” It should be equipping and inspiring.  By feeding, I mean WE - the teacher and our wonder books - are the source of language learning. Students are just passive receivers. Maybe we encourage them to talk, read, listen and write in class, but we fail to break out of our classroom walls. We fail to help them to “take it on” outside of class.

An updated learning experience would be helping your students/clients to find meaningful content - stuff that’s actually USEFUL and MEANINGFUL to their work or personal lives. The internet is a bank vault of rich content - podcasts can provide audio content to meet almost any listening requirement. Help your students to connect to it. Teach them how to listen to it - but on their own. Same goes for reading. (Blogs, focused articles etc.) The idea is all about equipping here. Showing and teaching how they can do it on their own, and inspiring them to do it. I love reading AJ’s blog, he’s right in the middle of this sort of work for his own language learning. (http://effortlessacquisition.blogspot.com/)

Those are just a few assumptions that are out there, but if we took the time, I think we could come up with a big bucketfull in need of careful consideration. What do you think? Are we doing “smelly” things just because it’s the way everyone else has done it before us?

Consider this: “It’s not enough to “sniff the milk.” We have to recognize that some of
the things which we believe are part of the fabric of our universe
might just be milk in disguise.”(Assumptions have a sell by date. Sierra)

I am not an environmentalist, but I live on this Earth and hope to never see it self-destruct. I read this article from Fast Company today: Resources: The Revolution Begins and just started thinking, I wonder what kind of impact the ESL industry has on the environment?

I started thinking about:

1. All the trees we destroy for the paper we use in our lovely course-books and their ever so important companion workbooks and teacher’s editions.

2. All the trees we destroy for TOEIC and TOEFL exams (the first two I could think of.) - and let’s not forget all the books we publish to hack - umm, prepare for these tests.

3. All the regular, paper based reports we dish out: student attendance, progress reports, tests etc.

4. All our publicity: brochures, posters, business cards etc.

5. I use, I admit, a fair amount of paper too. Most of my classes have gone bookless, but I still print lots of articles etc, from the net. While not as destructive as a course-book, I think I am still needlessly consuming.

So yeah, I’d say our industry has a pretty big contribution to environmental problems around the globe.

I read the Fast Company article and I thought…now this is interesting. It’s a bit scary. But I really enjoyed the FC spin. To begin solving the problem, we shouldn’t go “doomsday.” We should look for innovative ways to go green, and develop sustainable businesses in doing so.

“…a group of big thinkers has emerged in the past decade to put a newtwist on the green dream–people like William McDonough, MichaelBraungart, Amory Lovins, Janine Benyus, and Paul Hawken. Rather thantaking ecological principles primarily as moral prohibitions, they suggest, why not see them as design challenges?” (Resources: The Revolution Begins. Giller, Roberts.)

The ESL design challenge. How about we adopt more technology friendly learning environments? Instead of course-books, use the net. Students could use bloglines and their own personal blog as their info catcher and notetaking tool. (No notebooks required.)

Reading, writing, and listening activities could also all be 100% digitally based by using blogs, online articles, and podcasts.

Instead of cds, why not help your students get ipods or inexpensive mp3 players as a part of your service. (I’m already planning how to do this when I get my company rolling.)

Companies could go for paperless reporting solutions with their clients, which would cut down paper waste, increase reporting speed and efficiency, and just make the whole process smoother. Sure there would be hurdles to jump, and adoption would likely be difficult at first, but going 100% green is very doable. I know the folks at www.english360.com are working on some pretty exciting stuff that could maybe open the road to this sort of thing at some point.

Doable aside, now that I’m in the middle of trying to get my own company off the ground, I am seeing this as a very possible USP. (Unique Selling Point.) I have never seen a Green English course. I have never seen an environmentally friendly language school either. But around here, in some places, there is a rising interest in going green. What if you could build a high quality, 100% green language development solution? What if, and more importantly, why not? There’s nothing stopping us but our own laziness and addiction to doing things the way they’ve always been done.

The Green language learning solution. Crazy ideas, or a possible niche? What do you think?

This is my first attempt at using the blog feature from flock. Thanks to Vicki Davis over at Cool Cat Teacher Blog for pointing me to Langwitches.  I’ve just subscribed to them, and was scrolling through to this post:  Games in the Language Classroom

About a week ago, an idea struck me. One of my students is a jedi, number crunching accountant. Many of our classes involves going through accounting terms and practicing proper pronunciation of the “big numbers.”  Well the idea was around a computer game that I enjoy playing from time to time: Monopoly. I wondered to myself, wouldn’t this be a cool and fun way to encourage him to read, think, and talk in English? But in English closely related to his work?

I have yet to try it out, but when I do, I’ll let you know if it worked.

I just have a hunch that once he got past the learning curve of the game, he would quickly find himself addicted, and developing his English skills at the same time.

In my last post I started thinking about how to build excellence in ESL classrooms. I’d like to continue that train of thought by exploring some ideas from Fast Company.

Via Leading Ideas: The Gift of Risk

So we want to craft excellent learning experiences. We want those experiences to be meaningful for both our clients and ourselves. (Now their’s an interesting thought: classes should engage both teacher and student…ever taught a class that was boring even for you?)

The Gift of Risk really got me thinking. Just as in the article, I reflected a little on the moments in my life where I have felt the most alive, or engaged. Usually, it was when I was taking a risk. When I was busting my envelope, and stepping out of my comfort zone.

Those were intense moments that I will never forget; the experience forever "hard-written" into my programming.  

While we need to create a "safe" environment for our students - where they feel confident to speak out and try the language on, I can’t help but wonder if classrooms as we know them are far too safe. I think in many cases, ESL "learning" experiences remain securely in the pages of a book, or some prepared audio program. A nice role-play activity at the end of a unit is about as risky as we get.

But is that enough? Does this help students break out of their comfort zones? Do these typical classroom environments really create deep learning experiences that challange and transform? I’m not for a minute suggesting that we need to terrify ourselves and our students. That’s not the point. What is the point is that if we want to build excellent learning environments, we need to take a serious look at the level of authentic risk we inject into the classroom. Coursebook induced risk is really quite safe. The role-play activities I’ve used in class, and sadly I’ve used quite a few over the years, have rarely produced quality results. Why? I think deep down inside our students know it’s not "real." They know the person on the other end of the conversation stick is just their classroom buddy. If they mess up, they can laugh it off and try again.

I want to begin the pursuit of more authentic classroom work. I want to dive into activities that matter. Activities that really mean something to me and my students. I want to pursue activities that are 100% custom built to fit their needs, and I want to help my students engage in meaningful risk taking activities that will build fearlessness and confidence.

As Sundheim suggests,

"The gift of risk-taking doesn’t lie in what you achieve by risking - it lies in who you become as a result of the process. Confident. Engaged. Alive." (The Gift of Risk. Sundheim)

Tomorrow I’m working with my legal student on a presentation around client retention strategies. We’ve been following a great podcast from the Canadian Bar Association on the same topic, and our class goal is to present the same info but in the student’s own words. We’ve spent the last month or so listening to the same podcast over and over again, at full speed with breaks only between presentation chunks or points. Thus far, her task has only been to take notes - a tough task in itself as there are some really meaty "full speed" parts to the presentation. The last three classes have been reconstructing the presentation around my student’s notes. While not a perfect carbon copy of the original, my student has been able to successfully express the main thrust of the presentation with few problems.

To up the risk factor a bit, I would like to record her presentation as a podcast. But not just stop there. I would like to try and connect with other legal oriented folk - through my blog, or inside the firm where I teach, and try to do some sort of exchange. I want to bump up our audience so that it’s not just me and her. That changes things drastically. We’ve talked about this goal a lot, and it brings a great deal of focus and energy to my student’s work. She knows that this won’t just be for me. Another legal professional, possibly a stranger, could be listening in. That just does something to the whole thing. It makes it way more realistic.

That’s the kind of risk taking I want to build into class. How about you? Anyone out there interested in doing some podcast exchanges with an upper intermediate legal classroom in Mexico City? You don’t have to be law oriented. Anyone who is interested in getting and retaining clients could enjoy this theme…so what do you say? Any takers?

And what do you think about risk taking? Should we work for more of it in the classroom? As always your points of view are most welcome!

How do you build something great in the ESL classroom? Not good. Great. How do you go from average to kick-ass? How do you turn 3 hours a week into something deeply meaningful and REAL in terms of increased English proficiency?

These questions follow me around a lot. Most of my classes are 1.5 hour blocks of time, twice a week. If learning another language is largely about massive exposure to, and interaction with interesting and meaningful content, then 6 hours a month isn’t much to work with.  

Over at the Learning Is Messy blog, Cosby asks a great question:  Where are the Best Practices” Examples!???!

He then goes on to explore some reasons why it seems to be so hard to see meaningful "WOW"  stuff happening in classrooms. Point five of his list really hits home for me:

"5 - At the middle and high school level teachers tend to have students for an hour or less at a time, so doing lots of web 2.0 stuff and getting it to a polished, publishable state is tough – and publishing “works-in-progress” isn’t always appreciated by administration and some parents until they’ve been enlightened about the process." (Where are the "best practices" Examples!???!. Crosby)

 Polished Excellence from small blocks of time. How do you do it? What makes a 1.5 hour class meaningful and useful to your client’s language development? Is it about devouring some coursebook unit you and your class have been assigned? Is it about finishing coursework ahead of schedule? Is it about "moving up" to the next level after finishing a coursebook and passing some exam?

What is excellence in the ESL classroom? 

I think it has a lot to do with a few of the points mentioned in Crosby’s post. Specifically point 5.

Meaningful learning experiences that really help clients step up in their language proficiency have a lot to do with content, process, constant polishing, and publication.

A look at Meaningful Content

I preach this often: Coursebook content rarely meets the needs of the students who use them. Coursebooks are mass produced, and usually attempt to cover broad themes that are related to general business and English. As a result, they are often disconnected from your client’s unique reality. Irrelevant.

9:00 a.m.: I love to stand in the hallway after class in a law firm we work with here in the city. Dozens of students spill out and file past me, usually chattering away with coworkers.

 You can hear a lot of things as they move past you to start their day, but one of the most common things I hear are comments about how borring their coursebooks are.

Excellence in the ESL classroom needs to begin, I think, with content. The teacher is not the content. The language school should not provide it. It’s the student. They’re your content.

I have decided to make it my mission to learn about my students before I even begin "teaching English." How can I possibly hope to be meaningful and USEFUL to them if I don’t know what they need to do with the language first?

The answer is simple: I can’t. 

I’ve had a really eye opening experience. Just yesterday I started working with a lady who is a country sales manager for the Swatch watch group here in Mexico. Our first "class" was nothing more than an intense needs assessment interview. 

Through this interview, I learned that she comes from a long background of English study, but that background had turned her off to the language.

Her last language learning experience came from a mainstream English center here in the city, but it was stressful, confidence blowing, and completely useless for her career.  

She needed to talk to big English speaking clients over the phone, and deal with customer service issues via email - but her english course had her conjugating verbs and memorizing useless vocabulary.

Typical.

Not excellent. Not meaningful. Was there improvement? Nope - student said so.

During my first meeting with her, I tried my best to explain my disdain for coursebooks, and how our class would be built 100% around her. Her reaction was comical. She sorta just looked at me, waiting for me to say something about some really cool new book she’d need to buy.

Nope. No book. Just you. After a few moments of more explanation she started to smile, the idea had started to make sense. And instead of English dread, excitement was born.

Last night she brought a really cool high-end watch book that she needs to use when talking with her clients. She sat it down on the table, and said: "This is me. This is what I do. I need to talk watches." And that’s what we did. The rest of the class, and all in English, she explained one amazing watch to me. It was fascinating.

We talked production methods and timetables. We talked markets, and we talked prices and sales.

Time flew. She was totally into it, 100% engaged because of the content. It was meaningful. How do I know? She told me. As I rose to leave, she laughed and said that she couldn’t wait to get to work the next day. One of her coworkers had just signed up for English classes with one of the biggest providers here in the city.  She said that her friend would be suffering with the same old, while she just had an English class about watches. Exactly what she does all day.

The student is the content: Step one towards developing classroom excellence. What do you think? 

Just read an interesting blog post over at the Cog Dog Blog called: My Own URL

Levine discusses some really important issues that educators and students need be mindful of.

What happens when you move from your institution? What happens to your online identity? What happens to your personal learning environment? (Portfolio.)

Levine makes a great observation about permanent presence on an espace that is not your own:

"…to me the catch-22 of electronic portfolios- I cannot really see much personal investment into documenting one’s self on some other system, unless you feel extremely content (a) it will not be yanked or (b) you cannot extract it in a form that will be useful. The popularity of photo sharing sites, blog hosts lies deeply in the realm of how much it belongs to the individual, with the larger group payoff a layer behind, but if it is ours, we can have some say over the longevity of the humble URL."(My Own URL. Levine 2006)

PLE’s should be just that. Personal. Not the school’s. Not the district’s. Not the teacher’s. The student’s. Period. The student simply provides all of the above with an rss feed or link.

I followed the url www.gardnercampbell.net which Levine mentions as an example of an educator who decided to own his online presence rather than leave it to his employer. On his page, I found this very interesting comment - a comment left on Levine’s blog.

"And I agree wholeheartedly to what you’re saying here about domains. Several of us here have been talking about having students select their own domains when they enter college, and learn to manage their own web presence as part of their overall learning in higher education and beyond. That’s a conversation I’d love to have–soon."

 What a really smart idea. And why not? Domain names and web hosting accounts are not expensive. Godaddy.com has some great prices and options. I’ve used them before, and I’ll likely do it again. But I digress.

So new thought:Don’t make space on your server for your students. Instead, help them to build their own identity online. There will be folks who aren’t interested, and you won’t be able to get everyone to buy into the idea of owning their own space on the net, but I sure think this could be a trend for the future don’t you?

Instead of a business card, I hand you a weblink.