Teacher in Development

Interesting thought: In sales and business and in family life, there are questions we always ask, or get asked, that derail conversation…instantly. It’s totally not your intention…in fact you’re seeking engagement…but the opposite happens.

"If you want to end a conversation with a teenager, just ask, "How was school today?"

If you want to end a conversation with a customer, just ask if you can help." (Godin, May I help you?")

 So if it happens in business, happens in family relationships, I gotta wonder if this happens in  teacher/student/client interactions too.

Engagement busters?? 

"Make sense?"

"Do you understand?"

"Need any help? — I’m guilty there. 

"If you need help, raise your hand."

Replacements?

"What do you hate the most about learning grammar? Vocabulary? Algebra? The war of 1812?" ( you fill in the blank with what you teach.)

"What do you think you’re kicking ass at in this unit? Class? Theme?"

"What’s fascinating you in this class, and would you like to dwell anywhere a bit longer?" 

And you? Are there more questions out there that we could ask our students or clients that would invite engagement?  

 Photo Credit:

 Talk talk by PinkMoose

 

Seth’s Blog: "May I help you?"

 Fast Company strikes again: What if Customers WERE the Service
I really enjoyed this post, and was wondering what this would look like in the classroom. (Go ahead, read the FC post…if you are interested in positive customer experiences (and students are our customers) then you’ll likely enjoy the ideas presented here.)

What if we, the teachers, provided more space for students to interact with each other on their own terms? No scripts. No starter questions. Just people interacting on things important or valuable to them.

Today I had an interesting experience around this theme: I was working with a pair of account executives of a major credit card company. They are not at the same level as far as their English goes, and they are both involved in very different areas of the company.

We were listening to a podcast around developing lifelong relationships between clients and companies (fascinating stuff by the way) and we ran into some difficulties in understanding a few words and phrases.

What fascinated me about this moment was that I didn’t have to do anything. The more experienced student immediatly jumped in and provided excellent "service" to the other, effectively reframing the new words and phrases in a way that was easier to understand…and sometimes better than how I would have done it.

This wasn’t planned…but I think I will look for ways to do so in the future. Students serving students just seems to work. Yes, I have a role to play…I am the teacher and am in no way advocating that we should step down from that place. But we DO learn by doing, and most people learn even better when they have to explain something new to someone else…the same should be true in the ESL classroom don’t you think?

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’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

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."