Teacher in Development

What’s the motivation behind what I do everyday? Perhaps classroom practice is motivated by a multitude of forces…school policies, state/provincial standards, HR expectations, language assessment exams and final grades, our own agendas…think about it. What moves the work in your classroom?

Fast Company has a really interesting interview entitled “Do leaders teach? Do teachers lead? Bill George and Teach for America’s Wendy Kopp take to the blackboard.” I found several fascinating spots scattered throughout this article, but for now I just want to draw attention to one…and invite discussion on it.

“At Teach For America we know that teaching successfully is an act of leadership, and I often hear our corps members and alumni describe the moment they broke through as a teacher as the moment they realized that this work is not about them, but rather about their students.“(emphasis mine) Full Text: Open Debate

There are many roads which will lead us to breakthrough in our classrooms, but one we should be familliar with is the road of focus. Speaking from a TESOL perspective, to me this idea means that my classroom is not about my coursebook. It’s not about my school’s method. It’s not about the TOEFL or TOEIC. It’s not about grammar lessons or vocabulary lists…no, the student should be the focus if we want to experience breakthrough in class.

How well do we shape and craft our work around our students? This approach defies typical classroom design which usually embraces factory style course deployment: one coursebook or activity is firehosed across the people sitting in front of you….and everyone is expected to follow along and actually learn something by the end of the course.

Does the approach work? I’m sure it does, but I wonder if it’s the best way to do things in class. I wonder if it’s the most efficient use of  very limited time. Sure..factory style is easy to deploy. You just buy the material that is designed for your student’s level…and march on. Factory style deployment and even execution is easy, and perhaps that’s one of the things that lures us toward it so much, but what happens to this efficiency as the teacher/student…language school/client relationship progresses into years?  My experience tells me that it drops like a rock. What about you?

What if we reversed the equation a little. What if initial course development and deployment were slower due to personalization? What if schools/teachers were far more careful about who they lumped together in their classes…at present we smear placement tests around and dump folks together based on their results, with little to no consideration to what these people actually need to do with the language. Some are secretaries. Some are marketing coordinators. Some are accountants…all have extreamly different language needs and demands, yet we expect them to focus on, and be interested in the same thing for an entire course simply because they scored as an Intermediate I on our placement tool.

I wonder what would happen if we really bought into the idea that it’s all about our students, and that one of our jobs as teachers is to develop learning experiences that are both relevant and engaging for students. (Please see a fascinating post about relevant engagement by Cleve over at English360.)

He effectively argues “that engagement is not enough, that indeed some kinds of engagment are counter-productive, that relevance is critical, and that material selection/design and activities should follow the “relevant engagement” rule.” (Learning content: relevance and the limits of “engagement” )

“Relevant Engagement” is all about your students. It’s all about my students. It may take longer to develop and deploy than standard material, but I wonder if it would lead to more effective learning experiences for the people we get paid to serve everyday: our students.

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