What I learned in 2012 – Divya

Strong Voices Rocking OnDivya Brochier

If you’re reading this then you’re probably a teacher. And you’re probably the sort of teacher who is in the habit of questioning. You perhaps question your practice, your methods, your use of technology, your dependence on materials, or your attachment to avoiding materials.  Questioning is not a bad thing, by the way.

Questioning opens pages, or in our case, windows. And when we open these windows, we glide into the self-discovery of reflective practice. We become empowered in admitting that we don’t have all the answers and the act of accepting that often makes our professions come alive.

Our industry has some very strong voices and iTDi is but one platform that hosts some of these voices. They’re so strong in fact, that we now have the force of being ‘an industry’ which we weren’t really about 50 years ago. We were perhaps a ‘field’, and we still are a ‘field’, but we are an internationally established blogging, conferencing, publishing, educating industry… with strong voices. These voices theorize, they debate, they argue, they reveal, they research… and they resound with the eloquence of self-questioning and echo the philosophical values of education.

Over the summer I heard an educator whom I deeply respect describe our ELT industry as one of pendulum swings. I took some time to digest the impact of these words… and yes, I suppose there is a pendulum. It has perhaps swung methodologically from learning by translating to translating learning into real life. It has perhaps swung ideologically from the performing teacher to the autonomous learner. It has perhaps swung economically from investing in learning, to learning to invest of oneself — in our age of technological and information abundance. But what is so fabulous about our industry is that we all ride the pendulum. I believe that few of you who are reading this have not heard an idea or a method or a lesson plan or game at a conference, in a blog post or from a colleague and have not just gone into class the next day and had a go at it. That is why ELT teachers like you and me make up an extra special niche of teachers… because we love the stuff we make and live it with childlike uninhibitedness.

For me, one of the more textured moments on the ELT pendulum’s trajectory was when we all started worrying about motivation and affective processes. When we did this, we started worrying about the meta-perspective of why we do what we do in big way. This texture is for me so rugged and so determined because we yielded the floor to so many other fields: psychology, sociology, philosophy and business. We took so much newness into stride based on the entry-level qualifications of being interested and wanting to be educated. I have colleagues who have embraced Complexity Theory and Regression Analysis with matched enthusiasm. I know peers who read for doctorates alongside full-time careers, without funding. I know teachers who have instigated online debates on the use of technology as their job security is churned through turmoil of a magnitude that they didn’t imagine possible. And I have friends who have rocked my world and then rocked it again a few months later because they’re just so inspiring.

So, what have I learnt in 2012? That our not-so-rugged practitioner voices need to carry on being heard. That classroom stories and the teachers that tell them are ready to take centre stage in the research spotlight. That these stories, the essential accounts and recounts of the magic in our classrooms, will shape the textures of the future. I think we need to capture the magic in as many ways as possible because you and I, the practitioners, are perhaps the real pivots that suspend the pendulum and let it swing.

What have you learnt in 2012? What are you learning?

What I learned in 2012 – Chuck

Undone Business        —      Chuck Sandy                           

Chuck Sandy

All this new stuff goes on top / turn it over, turn it over / wait and water down / from the dark bottom / turn it inside out / let it spread through / Sift down even. / Watch it sprout. / A mind like compost.  — Gary Snyder

Recently I’ve been thinking about my teachers. I haven’t been remembering. I’ve been learning what they taught me, and learning in ways I never imagined I would. Ideas I heard more than thirty years ago rise from the bottom of my mind and combine with what I’m learning now in new ways.

Perhaps it’s my age. I’m 54 and so it’s natural I should think back. Perhaps it’s the year I’ve lived through as I battled illness, resigned from the university where I’d been a professor for almost 20 years, and helped launch iTDi. Who wouldn’t reflect? Or perhaps it’s the season, the darkening winter days when news could make the darkness darker. Whatever the reason, a lot’s come together this year and made sense as I’ve continued the undone business of becoming the teacher I believe myself to be and am becoming.

One of the teachers who helped me on this journey is Winston Fuller.  Although it’s been 35 years since I sat in his poetry workshops, I’ve recently heard him saying:  “All teachers teach what they most need to learn” and “it is only by letting go enough to trust ourselves and others that we finally learn who we are.”

This is why I talk and write and give so many presentations about motivation. That’s what’s been most challenging for me recently. Illness and university stress had gotten me so down that it became a long jump up from where I was to where I needed to be. It’s because I needed to figure this out that I began my public conversations about motivation. This need led me to read widely, reflect on my current and past practices, and not only think about Winston Fuller, but to pull out a folder of my work at 21 that included a long typed comment in which Winston wrote:

As I read your work, I sometimes hear the voice of a guilty man accusing others of sin. We all do that of course. More often than not I find myself teaching in the evening what I have been telling myself in the morning. You might review your work with an eye to seeing how much of what you say to others amounts to a conversation with yourself. All serious people do this. What’s needful to know is that you’re doing it”.photo 

All serious people do this? Winston meant me, and he meant me at 21. As I read his words again, I see him in class, pulling a chair close, looking the gathered students over with a twinkle in his eyes as he begins telling us what’s on his mind. As he talked, he’d weave the poetry we’d written and were learning about into what was going on in his life, the lives of the people he loved, and our lives — as if there was no gap between the classroom and our lives – and of course there wasn’t. He asked questions. He listened. He was entirely present as he talked repeatedly about soul making —  by which he meant being a writer, a teacher,  and a person who takes life seriously even in the midst of a culture that does not.

“We must take our lives and the lives of others seriously,” Winston said.  “If we do not do this for ourselves and others, who will?”

I realize now that Winston talked so much about soul-making because this is what he was teaching himself.  It is what I’ve been doing myself this year. It’s why I’m telling you about it now.

Recently I read an essay about how alienation, loneliness, and the lack of community just might be  the root cause of the horrifying world news we’ve recently heard about. As I read that essay, I thought of that circle Winston Fuller built for us in his classes, and of the importance that community still holds for me.

Then, I thought about the iTDi community we’ve been building and the work these teachers do as soul-makers — forming a circle and learning together the steps we can take towards healing each other, our students, and this world. This is what gives me hope on this day as my mind turns it all over and watches it rise up, sprout, and stretch out across the seas.

A year ago I did not even know most of the people I am working with now, and yet we have formed this circle of hope that for me goes back to Winston’s class, where we learned what I’m learning now, what I will be continuing to learn, as I hear Winson’s voice read the Charles Olson poem Maxiumus To Himself that ends without conclusion with these lines:

It is undone business

I speak of, this morning,   

with the sea

stretching out

from my feet.

 

 

Rules We Follow – Michael

Doing and Being: How Mike Rolls               Michael Griffin

As an enthusiastic rule finder, bender, breaker and scoffer it was interesting and hopefully useful for me to think about which rules I always try to follow. For other teachers reading this who are allergic to rules being imposed on them (like me), I must mention that these are not rules I am suggesting you follow but just sharing rules that I choose to follow for myself.

Be on time

I like to start class on time, every time. I think it is more efficient to make sure we all know when class is going to start and to do so. Starting on time one of the easiest things for teachers to control but is something that can be overlooked or forgotten. I feel the teacher starting on time is a good model for students and I don’t think we can expect students to be on time if we are not.

Be prepared

In this case, I don’t mean that I need to have mountains of handouts, all my teacher talk clearly written out, or a minute-by-minute breakdown of what I am hoping will be done in each moment of the class (though I have surely had all of these things at various times in the past). I simply mean I must have a few different ideas about different activities we might do in class while always keeping the overall goals and objectives of the course in mind. As much as I sometimes enjoy and feel comfortable “winging-it” I can’t imagine going to class without at least a few options and ideas.

Be flexible
Sometimes, regardless of how well-prepared we believe ourselves to be, we need to stray from the plan. At various times in my teaching career, I have pushed the plan or materials that I toiled over the night before too hard and have realized being stubborn about using the plan or materials is not productive for me or my students. It’s always important to keep in mind that my job is to teach the students not the plan or the material.

Be aware of students
It can sometimes be easy to forget about students as we focus on “covering” material. My personal rule is to always try to think about the students as I plan and teach especially in terms of abilities, personalities, needs, interests, and current mood and situation.

Be yourself

It is becoming more and more apparent to me how important being myself in class is to me. Part of this is because I have realized I am not so good at being anyone else and the other part is that students seem to respond to the “real me” better than any fake version of myself I might create. Being myself in this sense includes but is not limited to giving my real opinion (especially when asked), joking around, showing care for students’ lives outside of class, telling the truth, disclosing personal information when comfortable, and at times choosing not to disclose personal information.

Be positive
This is easier said than done sometimes but I think it is important for me to remember (especially on down days) how much I love my job and why I choose to do this kind of work. Thinking of this usually cheers me up, or at least helps me focus on the job at hand.

As I wrote this list I realized that a lot of my rules are things to be rather than things to do. Perhaps this shows that for me a lot of teaching is more about being than doing.

Rules We Follow – Malu

Malu’s One Rule – Malu Sciamarelli                    

I was reading a magazine last week, and an ad caught my eye: To break the rules, you must first master them. It got me thinking how true that was, but being busy, I simply forgot that as I moved into reading something related to work. Coincidentally, the following day when I was asked about rules in the classroom, that line came back to me and a myriad of new questions buzzed in my mind: Do I follow rules in my classroom or do I break them? Do I really need to master rules to break them? Lots of questions — but still no answers.

Then, curious about that ad and wanting to know about its underlying principles, I searched on the Internet and I found out it’s a way of thinking about how you learn a technique. It comes from Aikido. Alistair Cockburn

< http://alistair.cockburn.us/Shu+Ha+Ri

introduced it as a way of thinking about learning techniques and methodologies for software development. The main idea is that a person passes through three stages of gaining knowledge: Shu-Ha-Ri. I reflected this could be extended to stages in teaching development. So, how do I see this concept in my classroom?

Shu: In this beginning stage you follow the teachings of one master precisely. You remain faithful to rules without deviation. You learn how to make groups in a communicative classroom, for example, and stick to the method you were taught.

Ha: At this point you begin to branch out. You can make innovations, which means rules can be broken and/or discarded. As an example, you use different ways to correct students, mainly adaptations as your confidence grows.

Ri: Now you aren’t learning from other people, but from your own practice. You create your own approaches and adapt what you’ve learned to your own particular circumstances. In this phase, there are no rules, only creativity leading to where you act in accordance with what you judge to be the best.

Here you create completely new ways to practice a negotiation skill that you came up with yourself, not following a tried or tested formula, for instance.

I do believe that in order to get to this point, we need to learn skills and practices that develop us first. Only then can we break rules and explore.

I remember two cases in which I followed different routes. In the first, a group of teenagers had an oral test, and as it was a beautiful day they didn’t want to stay inside, but begged for the school garden. We are allowed to do some activities outside, but not tests. I decided to follow the school rules, making sure they all knew about my decision and all the reasons. They complained a lot at first, but at the end of the test, they all agreed it was one the best things we ever did. They were not only assessed, but also learned a lot from each other and we all had a great time together. That test developed into projects for several other classes – this time in the school garden.

In the second case, I was replacing a teacher and I had to follow her lesson plan. They had a very long listening that would take almost the whole class and leave no time for other activities. I then decided to change her whole lesson plan, shortening the listening and doing activities in which the students would benefit more. I deliberately broke the school rules. When I told the teacher what I had done and showed her the results, it led to a good peer collaboration.

In both cases all I had in mind was to do what I judged would benefit students best at that given moment. And the results showed I made the right decision. Following the rules in the first example didn’t make me feel restrictive and limiting, just as breaking the rules in the second one didn’t make me feel powerful or freer. In both cases, I just felt I made the right decision.

So, what rules do I follow in my classroom?

Only one: choosing what is the best for my students.