Teacher in Development

 Have you ever wondered if your classroom work is actually impacting the lives of your students? ARe you really making a difference? In my case, I often find myself wondering if my students are actually making progress in learning English as a result of my classes. Is their fluency being improved? Are they a little more fearless when speaking English now than when they first met me?

Sometimes you can easily notice improvement. Confidence is one area that I frequently see improve with many of my students. For many, speaking English is first of all, a great inner battle against the fear. There’s the fear of looking and sounding stupid: "What if I forget what to say, or how to say something?" "What if I speak with a heavy accent?" "What if I use the wrong word?" "What if I speak like Tarzan when I meet my native speaker boss?" Fear, at least in my classes, is often the first place where both myself and my student notice progress. Very often they just come out and tell me that they feel much more confident with their English speaking skills.

But what about the slower skills of say grammar and writing? Once you reach intermediate level language proficiency, progress is much harder to notice, and usually takes a great deal more time to accomplish. Is it possible to craft learning experiences that help students transfer what is taught to their slowly growing skill sets?

Keep it Relevant: Link your content to THEIR reality.

Charles Nelson over at Explorations in Learning, recently posted on this theme here: The Transfer of Expertise. Cool quote to think and ponder on:

Transfer is a problem. Although first-year composition is designed to prepare students for academic writing in other courses and eventually to their careers, the skills they acquire often, even usually, do not transfer in part because the concepts in FYC are not seen as relevant to other contexts. (Nelson, The Transfer of Expertise)

 Nelson goes on to say that if teachers want to encourage concept transfer, they must focus heavily on helping students realize subject relevancy for their lives today. He suggests that one way for this to happen is via journaling "…the presence of classroom concepts and practices outside the classroom." (Nelson, The Transfer of Expertise.)

I like that idea, but I also would suggest that the teacher must first of all DELIVER content in meaningful ways. Why ask students to journal something they don’t care about to begin with? Don’t get me wrong: I think journaling or even blogging class work is a great way to encourage connection with the content. But that connection should begin solidly in the classroom with the teacher.

A Possible Application 

Prepositions: They suck. They’re boring to try and teach, and even more boring to try and learn. (Prepositions are words like in, at, on, under, around, through, with, etc.) Native speakers throw these monsters around without even thinking about them, but try helping a non-native English speaker figure out how and when to use them. Prepositions are rebels. They rarely follow rules, and there are so many different word/preposition combinations out there that memorizing them is just…well..a depressing idea to contemplate.  

A few weeks ago, a student gave me a three page list of word and preposition combinations and asked me to help her learn them. I took it home, and asked her for a few weeks to think about how best I could help. I knew that if I went with the typical drill and memorize routine, we would likely go nowhere, except to frustrationville. Instead, I got a new idea: Flickr+Powerpoint = an interesting and highly visual way to work on prepositions.

So I dove into flickr, and stayed up way to late prepping a series of slides that would help my student visualize word/preposition combinations in meaningful ways. Example: "Angry with" — I got this angry looking Hulk pic here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/throughmyeyes/191432700/  by without you. 

Then I plugged it into Power Point as a slide, and wrote "Angry" in nice big bold text. Then I wrote "with" and "at" as hidden text on the slide, and animated them to appear after mouse clicks. I made about ten slides like this, of course with different word/preposition combinations.

This activity was completely engaging for me in that it forced me to think differently about something I use everyday. It made me think: "How can I express this preposition visually in a way that would almost instantly make sense to my student?"

The hard work paid off. Big time. My students LOVED it. Not only were they engaged by the pictures, but they actually had fun trying to figure out what preposition went with the main word on the power point slide. Instead of slogging our way through another drill, we were laughing and actually having fun WHILE working on something that is normally not a fun thing to do.

To make the activity even more relevant, after the student got the right preposition, I got them to create their own sentences using the word/preposition combination.

Did transfer occur? Well, in some cases it’s still too early to tell. But I did notice my students successfully recycling newly met word/preposition combos in conversations held later on after the powerpoint activity was finished. (And without my instigation.) And even more interesting to me: after each preposition presentation, my students have all asked for a copy of it for their own computers so they can practice at home.

What I learned: Connect your content with your student’s reality if you want to see transfer happen. 

How are you being relevant to your students? Would you share how you make meaningful links between your content and your student’s lives?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo Credits

The Transfer of Goods by SyN+H

http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=93715447&size=s

Linked by  HP - LaFilipinaNegra

http://www.flickr.com/photos/halfpinay/167702137/ 

This short post comes just after reading Artists using their spin for good…
on the crisp reflective disarray blog.

 I’d like to invite you to go check this Sarah McLachlan video out. Even if you aren’t into her style, watch the video. It will make you think about some pretty amazing, shocking, and overall…inspiring things.

I ask myself and my audience this: What does it take to start making poverty history? The answer is simple: 1. Use what’s in your hands. (hint: you don’t have to be the UN or a country president with wide access to resources.) 2. Use intelligence to invest what you have. 3. Decide to act, and ACT.

Be inspired. Simple, intelligent acts of compassion can change lives.

What could you do? What could I do? The comments are wide open.

Photo Credit

Poverty by Saital 

 

 Distance work via the internet has always been a point of great interest to me. For independent TESOL professionals, it just makes really good sense.

Increased flexibility that "instant" communication and connection offers. You could offer classes at hours when many other schools or teachers simply do not. I have a few students who want classes at times when I am normally in commute, or on my way to take my son to school, which means that they are not teachable - at least not by me, not  yet.

Reduce waiting time. Some students chronically arrive late. Wouldn’t it be a better use of time if you simply signed onto your Skype account, and then went about doing all the other things you needed to do while waiting for yours student to show up?

Reduced Cancelation Frustration. Skype would also reduce that terrible sensation of commuting to class only to have the group cancel as you pull into the company parking lot. With Skype you could feel the frustration in the comfort of your own home.

Skype Adoption = Steps towards a Greener Work Solution.  I don’t see myself as an environmentalist, but I am sure thinking more seriously about how I could be Greener in how I work. One way this could happen is if more of my classes were done over Skype. I think this is more wishful thinking at the moment, for a few reasons that I’ll get into in a moment, but Skyping to class instead of commuting to class….well…that would be a lovely thing. On good days I loose 2 hours in traffic, or in simply waiting for students to arrive. I can sure think of other things I could do with that time. But what about the traffic and pollution I help create by driving my lovely car? Multiply that by the thousands of other ESL teachers in this city…would there be an impact? And what if a culture of telecommuting grew in acceptance throughout the city? Could there actually be some impact on environmental levels?  VOIP technology is on the increase here, and maybe as the years go by, "hotdesking" to class will become a stronger possibility.

I’ve never actually tried a Skype class. I’ve used it lots to stay in touch with my family in Canada, but never for work purposes. I find myself wondering about a few things:

1. Would Skype classes help teacher and student create the needed connections for language development to occur? We learn our first language (L1) from direct, face to face contact time with the people around us. We have eye, facial expression, touch, and emotional
contact with the people who help us learn the language. These contacts, I think, are vital to how well we learn the language. Could Skype, or any other online initiative, ever reach us on these levels in authentic ways? I don’t know.  I have a feeling that real face to face time is something we will never be able to distance ourselves from, and maybe we should never try.

2. There are difficult tech gliches like lag and video crashes. I often experience this when I get into long discussions with my family. I get echos of my own voice (weird…feels like I’m talking with myself through a long pipe sometimes.) but most difficult has been starting video chats. Very often we can only have one video screen open at a time, or we simply crash the conversation.  I’m not the first to mention this: TeacherDude
first got me thinking seriously about the difficulties in Skyping a class back in June 2006.

I think the only way Skype would fly well in the classroom would be if both teacher and student had high speed net connections with the right computer to handle it. These variables are likely the most difficult to balance out.

On Skypecasts
Just today I was reading through a post via Stephen Downes who comments on, and points to a very interesting read around this subject. Oddly enough, one of the major difficulties mentioned by VanDrimmelen, and I’ve heard this on other occasions too, are frequent interruptions by enthusiastic ESL learners wanting to practice their English. Go figure.

What do you think? Do you see telecommuting to English class (or any other class you teach) as a possibility in the days and months to come? Would you ever adopt it? Have you? What have been your experiences?
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Photo Credit
Telephone Boxes by malias
http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=50216300&size=s
Traffic by Sarah Jane
http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=84167136&size=s

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Teaching 2.0 Emancipation. Just finished reading this post over at think:lab, and totally enjoyed it. What I enjoyed even more were the video links at the bottom of the post. Ok, it’s really very late, so I couldn’t watch them all, but what I saw was a great example of a normal teacher trying to make a meaningful connection with his students.

Sure, the approach won’t work for everyone. That’s not the point. The point is MEANINGFUL interaction. While I don’t know if I ever see myself doing something similar to what Drew has done here, watching his video around resume prep just got me thinking about how important framing or presenting our content really is.

If we just go with the ole fire hose approach, and soak our students with our content without actually trying to make it meaningful, we’re really just wasting our time don’t you think?

I wonder what would happen in the ESL classroom if a teacher, maybe you…maybe me, decided to employ a similar approach to explaining say…the past tense…or the past perfect tense. Most people that I know HATE grammar. Why? It’s sorta boring. Your brain (well, mine anyway…) seems to switch off the moment those rules come rolling down the aisle. So…what if we thought of different ways to package them? Would they make more sense to students? Would teachers have more fun teaching them? And would having fun while learning something USUALLY very boring, make a difference in what folks actually take on board?
 
I’m just thinking about TV shows like Beakman’s World. I’m 31, and I still find his style to be very engaging. I’m having fun, but I’m learning something…like what halitosis is. (Go ahead and watch…you might enjoy it, and you might just learn something new.)

I guess I’m just thinking that teachers have a really big responsibility. That responsibility, among many others, is to help their students REALLY understand what is taught. If the book explanation doesn’t cut it, or if the lecture totally flopped, what are we willing to do to make that vital connection with our students and the content? What have you done?

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I can’t even remember how I came across this blog, but I’m really enjoying the videos by Chris Walsh. They are very entertaining, but also share valuable resources and ideas for the classroom. Check out the Infinitie Thinking Machine.

Taken from their “About” page: “The Infinite Thinking Machine (ITM) is designed to help teachers and students thrive in the 21st century.”

Enjoy.

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“Do you think I could learn English better if I just went to Canada or the United States for a few months?” I’ve been asked this question many times over the years I’ve been teaching English. It’s an interesting question, with “does immersion work better than what I’m doing now?” at its heart.

Most people immediatly think that 100% immersion works better and faster than the usual classroom experiences that they are used to. (And just to clarify, when I say immersion at this point, I’m talking about living in an 100% English speaking country for an extended period of time.) So…does it work?

I almost always share my own experiences with them around Spanish immersion. I’ve been living and working in a 100% Spanish speaking environment for around seven years now. I can happily say that I understand pretty much everything. I can watch movies in Spanish. I enjoy listening to Spanish radio. I can understand most telephone conversations, and easily follow extended conversations at “native speaker speed.”

That’s the listening bit.

My speaking skills are little further behind. I feel completely comfortable talking with everyone in Spanish. I no longer translate - think about what I want to say first in English, and then translate over to Spanish. Nope.  I just let loose, and am usually pretty fluent. However, I still get into trouble with my verb tenses. I find it hard to stick to the correct time of my sentences sometimes. If I’m talking about stuff in the past for example, I sometimes screw up the verbs.  I sometimes, especially around more complex topics, find myself on thin vocabulary ice. I sometimes need my kind listeners to help me out with missing words, that they almost always can supply given the previous content of our conversation. I am also getting much better at giving extended presentations and speeches on a wide variety of topics…so the fluency and speaking part is getting pretty good.

My worst area is still writing stuff in Spanish. I am really terrible at this. I often find myself writing in Spanish as if I would in English. (Direct translation.) Sometimes I’m successful at taking “snippits” of Spanish that I’ve heard people say, and include them in my writing, but most of the time I just suffer. Spanish spelling and accents…ha. We won’t even talk about that.

So, a very brief report card of 7 years spent in 100% immersion, but with some additional information that is very important to consider:
1. I’ve never taken an officialy Spanish class. No teachers. No tests. No lessons. Nada. Just plain ole suffering.
2. Until recently, I’ve never really tried to focus my attention to careful and deliberate study in order to improve a Spanish skill area.

So what’s the point of writing about this? Well,  a couple of posts I’ve read recently have gotten me thinking about the immersion issue. Those posts, though dealing with immersion, also provide some really interesting ideas to consider for “normal” language learning experiences. (Non-immersion.)

The first comes via the post: Immersion Plus on the Bill Kerr blog. (Thanks to Graham Wegner for the blog tip.)

Is Immersion Alone Enough?

I still like the Marshall McLuhan quote, “I don’t know who discovered water but it wasn’t a fish” - that some things seem effortless in certain environments - but have come to think that it doesn’t tell us all we need to know about learning. It is too clever. Immersion is essential for learning, but not enough.

Bill Kerr: immersion plus

Kerr goes on to describe some experiences he has had with English learners who have been immersed in Australia for 20 years, but still had poor English skills. Why is that? And in my case, why, after seven years, do I still sometimes struggle? Here are some of Kerr’s ideas:
1. No effortful study.
2. No deliberate practice.

And this great insight: “Just putting in more hours (immersion) is not the same as effortful study with clear goals to improve ones understanding.” (Kerr,2006)

I totally agree. While we can take in A LOT of new language from just floating around in it everyday, there is great need for focus, deliberateness, and goal setting.

Recently, I’ve started trying to be more deliberate with my Spanish development. I’ve started subscribing to local (Mexico City) blogs, with the purpose of expanding what I read. I’ve also forced myself to start leaving Spanish comments on those same blogs. (And just to confirm that authentic language tasks do indeed work: Leaving comments has been a REAL challange let me tell you. Due to the public nature of a blog comment, I certainly feel added pressure to produce a quality bit of work in the target language! I work real hard at making sure my comment is as well polished as I can possibly make it before I click the publish button!)

So what could this mean for classroom work?
1. It’s really important to encourage students to practice FOCUS, DELIBERATENESS, and GOAL setting with their language development. Maybe it would be useful to help them think about what each of those words would mean for them and their English learning.

Focus: Maybe decide to take 30 minutes or an hour each day to do something in English - outside of work, and on my own. Maybe it would mean making a solid committement to classes. (Say no to other things that would suck you away.)

Deliberateness: Learning how to focus on Quality not Quantity. Perhaps this would mean listening to the same English podcast, repeating it, until 100% of content is understood. Maybe this would mean helping students build an “English routine.” Seed up a bloglines account with personalized English content that the student finds interesting. Then encourage daily reading and learning addiction. Help students find interesting podcasts to listen to, but not just listen to: subscribe to.
Maybe it would also mean, and I cringe here cus I think this could be for me: but maybe encourage verb drills and vocabulary building exercises. Deliberately focus on problem areas: the past tense. The pefect tenses etc. Maybe it would mean encouraging students to pick ten new words to try and own over the next month.

Goal setting: Big topic, and not so easy to wrestle down. Most students come out with “My goal is to be a fluent English speaker.” So first of all, we need to learn what goals are, and what goes into making a doable goal: 1. Behaviour based so I can see the outcome. 2. Due date is set. (I will x by January 12, 2007.) 3. Realistic. (Hint: speaking fluently perhaps functions better as a vision or mission statement….but doesn’t work too well as a goal.) Maybe you could say: I will OWN and DOMINATE  the following five vocab words by December. That gives me three weeks to work on them.) Or: I will start English conversations with two Native speakers this week. I’ve likey left a lot out under this point, but setting up learning goals could really be useful.

Kerr has a lot of really interesting things to say, but one thing I really agreed with was around the importance of crafting experiences that help immersion to happen:

So, the learning materials and the learning environment created by the teacher are vitally important! Some situations are more likely to lead to immersion combined with effortful study than others! This turns pedagogy, the art of teaching, into an art form. It is certainly not simple to create rich learning environments.

Bill Kerr: immersion plus

This quote comes from Kerr’s discussion around the role of appropriability (how things lend themselves to learning), evocativeness (how materials evoke personal thought), and integration (how well materials carry multiple meaning and concepts.) Kerr argues that teachers need to learn how to effectively balance all three while at work in the classroom. Hence the reference to teaching as an artform.

Kerr’s post, and then a follow up one from Graham around the same topic, have really given me much to think about. I have a feeling, that this is just a “part one”, with some more ideas to come.

An older, but related post over at the English360 blog, explores the “Teacher as Artist” meme: Strickland Series II: teaching artistry

What do you think? The conversation, as always, is wide open.

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What frustrates you about teaching?
I seem to have the bad luck of working with  folks who are incredibly busy. I don’t work with children or university students who HAVE to be in their English classrooms in order to graduate. I work with business professionals, lawyers, company directors, team leaders, account executives, and university coordinators…people who are in a perpetual state of scramble and motion.

What frustrates me are the consistent interruptions. In the last month, I’ve had a 40% last-minute class cancellation rate. In the case of some, this has made progress absolutely impossible. We start working on one project, and then have a spree of class cancellations that keep us off target for two or even three weeks at a time.

That frustrates me. I totally understand my student’s situations, but how am I supposed to help them make progress with such a difficult environment to play with?

80/20 Rule Sounds Great but…No Real Sale.
On the first or second day of class, I always walk my students through some ideas or habits that will help them be able to work on their English development on their own. “I want you to fire me,” I always say, “Because if you learn how to learn and work your English on your own, you really can do it without me…”

One of those ideas that I try to share with my students comes from business: the 80/20 rule. 80% of your profits should come from 20% of your efforts or work. In English class, 80% of your language learning and practice should come OUTSIDE the classroom, and only 20% should come from classroom work and me. Why?? Because classroom time is simply NOT enough to get the quality contact time you need to actually make significant learning progress. It’s about getting fire hosed in the language, and English classes are all to often like getting hit with a squirt gun. You barely notice it.

During the class, EVERYONE excitedly buys the idea. They are enthusiastic about it, and we explore how they can make the 80/20 idea work. (Podcasts, how to listen for QUALITY not QUANTITY. etc.) It all makes sense to them, but when they step out of class, it’s all swept away by busyness.

“Sorry, can’t make it.”
Really starting to hate that phrase. Again, understand the outside demands that are being placed on the students I work with, but how do you deal with a group of 6 people when only half show up on a regular basis? And how do you deal with the even bigger problem of that half being different members of the group almost every time?

Is this normal? In my whole 7 year ESL teaching career, there has always been an obstacle X out there to slow you down. Since I’ve started freelancing however,  I’ve noticed a sharp increase in these obstacles. It’s really frustrating some times, and I just wonder if any of you have any ideas to more effectively deal with these problems.

I guess this was more of a rant, and to be fair, not all of my students are like that. I do have a few who are really committed to their English growth and development, and they are slowly but surely putting our classroom ideas into practice, but the going feels pretty slow right now, and I am just wondering how do you deal with Obstacle X?

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I am just reading a post over at the Hello, my name is BLOG blog, and I really enjoyed it, agreed with it, and wanted to pass it along to you for your consideration. It’s called “The World is a Mirror, Part 13. M is for Mundane.”

Scott’s opening is great, in my humble opinion, and it’s something teachers…perhaps especially ESL teachers, should be thinking about constantly: How can we make mundane things memorable?

How can our classrooms be fantastic places?

If you’re a freelancer, I think “breaking mundane” is vital if you want to expand your practice. I don’t mean to pick on any company or way of doing things, but I’ve just gotta mention something I see almost every day.  I always drive by a major language training center on my way to work. They’re a big time company, and can afford nice offices and classrooms. The classrooms that I always see, are on the second floor, and are completely glass. As a marketing ploy I suppose, you can see everything that is going on inside the classroom. Wanna know what I see? Pretty much the same thing every moring: Business people sitting around square tables. Their heads are usually down, working through some exercise in a workbook.

To be honest, I don’t know what the environment is like on the inside of the glass. Maybe they have lively discussions, and a wonderful teacher who excels at crafting engaging learning experiences. But somehow I doubt it. I’ve known a lot of people who have worked for/with this company. They often have similar opinions of the methodology: It’s boring, and there’s little freedom to go off the beaten curriculum path.

But even if you’re not a big shot company, I think you have to strive to ward off the mundane. Think about it for a while. Would your students describe your class as being: monotonous, tedious, irksome, tiresome, or humdrum? (Those words are all synonyms for boring at thefreedictionary.com. ) An even better question: How would you describe your classes?

According to Scott, killing mundane is vital for growth. Here’s how he sees the results of killing mundane:

Breaking the silence = breaking the pattern.
Breaking the pattern = mundane into memorable.
Memorable moments = increased comfort.
Increased comfort = increased approachability.
More approachability = strangers into friends.
Friends = people who become loyal, aka, fans.
Fans = people who love your stuff.
More fans = more positive word of mouth.
More people talking about how much they love your stuff =

HELLO, my name is BLOG: The World is a Mirror, Part 13

A week ago, I decided to do something different in one of my one-on-one classes. I arrived a few minutes before, and dropped into a nearby bakery. I picked up two AWESOME looking apple strudels, and took them into class. Food and drink totally transform most gatherings where people are involved, and classrooms are no different. While this particular class is almost always relaxed and easy going, the strudel brought the conversation even deeper. We had a great time, and our conversation ranged all over the place. Most of all though, there was greater comfort and confidence: key ingredients to successfully building language fluency don’t you think?

What do you do to break the mundane?

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Over the last three months I’ve been working with lots of interesting people. We’ve been studying powerpoint and presentation styles with the help of Guy Kawasaki and Dick Hardt, we’ve been learning how to write email that is faster, and more efficient, we’ve been delving into podcasting in education, and most recently, how to use RSS and Bloglines to enhance market research.

Sound like your typical ESL classroom? Well, in one way, it shouldn’t. I think every ESL classroom should be buzzing about something uniquely important to its participants. There should be no cookie cutter classrooms, where you drop in on the intermediate level folks of one classroom, and then drop into another room of intermediates in another classroom and hear/see the same content being taught.

I think, if we want to be successful at what we do, then there must be strong personalization of classroom work.

So lately I’ve been doing a lot of listening to what my clients tell me. One group, that has turned out to be the one of the most interesting for me, are regional sales reps at a major credit card company. They do tonns of presentations, and are constantly having to troll the news for what their clients are up to in order to offer better services. 

They’ve loved Kawasaki’s stuff, and were floored by Hardt’s Identity 2.0 presentation. (So was I the first time I saw it.) Then we tried applying it to their own work. One student profusely thanked me. She was terrified of making her first English presentation in front of the "big bosses" of her company. She showed me her presentation one class before her debut, and it was the perfect candidate for a Kawasaki makeover. We spent the rest of the class talking about how we could transform her presentation, and she went to work all that night, giving it a total makeover.

The next afternoon she called me and excitedly told me how well it went. Before the makeover, she was deadly nervous because she was trying to cram as much info as possible onto her ppoint slides, scared that she might leave something important out. 

We worked on cutting all the "stuffing" down to key words and phrases, which would force her to really know what she had to say. The result: some nervousness, but far greater confidence in the actual presentation. She said that it went brilliantly, and had Kawasaki to thank.

And lately we’ve been working on using RSS to enhance market research. A few of my students rely  on outside news sources to help them do their job, so the other day I started talking with them out RSS coolness and how Bloglines could help reduce their workload.

I totally loved this article by Anita Campbell around removing the "geek factor" from RSS. While explaining RSS, I focus my attention on helping my students understand what it would allow them to do, instead of the more geeky side of feeds, and code, etc.

The result: One student who has already used bloglines to spot some new services she could offer to a client she manages in Peru.

This is my vision for ESL classrooms that matter. There shouldn’t be a disconnect from what you do in class, and what you do when you leave class. There should by synergy. What do you think?

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