Preface

How It All Began

My first full-time teaching position was in Nigeria.  In addition to teaching English to primary school teachers in a teacher training college, I was required to supervise their practice teaching. Two problems: 1. The teachers I was supervising each had from 4 to 20 more years experience than I had; 2. They were teaching Nigerian history, the currency system adopted from England—pounds, shillings, pence; British systems of measurements such as poles, rods and perches; etc.—information that was all new to me.

Fortunately for me, in the primary schools where the teachers with much more experience and knowledge than I had were practice teaching, there were two primary 1 classes, two primary 2 classes, all the way up to primary 6.  Also, the timetable mandated that each stream study the same subjects at the same time each day.

I decided that only way I could be the least bit useful would be to observe the first 20 minutes of the first period in one stream and the second 20 minutes of the first period in the other stream.  I wrote down as much of what each teacher said and did as I could with the intention of sharing what the teachers did with each other.

As it turned out, I was able to write more than 50% of the interactions. One reason I was able to do this was because the teachers wrote a lot on the board for students to copy. Had they spoken more, I would not have been able to take such copious notes.

At the end of the day, when I met the two teachers teaching primary one, for example, I would say, “Okon, Benedict wrote the date and all the directions on the board and had the students copy them as they looked at the board. You said the date and had the students look at the board, then look only at their notebooks and write what they remembered.”

“Okon, tomorrow do what Benedict did. And Benedict, please do what Okon did.”

The next day, I asked them to describe what differences the small changes I had suggested had made. In some cases, they didn’t see any differences in the results. In other cases, they saw big differences.

When students wrote from memory rather than copied, for example, they made more mistakes. When the teachers saw the mistakes, they realized what they had to have their students practice more.

Imagine all the possibilities

As you know, the number of radii in a circle is infinite. But as every analysis of classroom interactions and textbook activities has shown, the number of activities done in classrooms is almost always very, very limited. The white portion of the circle below shows the usual range of interactions and activities. The rest of the circle, in blue, shows the range of interactions and activities that are possible but often not attempted.

I wrote this book to show you ways you and your students can expand the range and type of interactions and activities you experience, so you can expand your white piece of the pie.

Here are two examples of ways to expand the activities beyond the white piece of the pie.

Asking students who erase mistakes they make to keep their erasers in their pencil cases is an activity that is unusual in some countries. Mariko thought that when she gave dictations, all of her students wrote exactly what she said, because there were never any errors in their notebooks. However, when she looked at a video clip of her class, she saw that the students were erasing and writing while she wrote the correct sentences on the board. She had told them to compare what they wrote with the sentences on the board. But instead of only comparing, they were rushing to “fix” without taking time to process or question.

The next day, Mariko asked them to keep their erasers in their pencil cases. After she said, “I like ice cream.” three times, she did not write the sentence on the board. The next time she checked the students’ notebooks, only 10 out of 40 students had written, “I like ice cream.” Instead, she read such phrases as “I cream; I ice; I spring; like ice.” After that, she asked the students to correct what they had written with a different colored pen. This would allow the students to compare their mistakes with what was correct later on and allow her to find out what the students could and could not understand.

Ali, who believed that students should read, write, listen to, and say the same patterns many times, found that after students read a text two times they became bored with the activity. So, he asked his students to rewrite the same text in different formats. Then they seemed to remain engaged and enjoy the activity. Here are three versions of one sentence, created by his students:

I think that these activities also illustrate the playful spirit of language. Playfullness is very important in all learning.

Make nice, criticize and prescribe, make claims about results using jargon and general terms

In Nigeria, as you just read, I did not say how nice the teachers were with the students nor did I say that what they did, they should not have done. Almost all conversations after supervisors observe practice teachers, or after principals observe teachers, consist of only three types of conversations. In one, the person in charge says how lovely the teacher’s rapport was, how the students were so enthusiastic, how good the lesson was. I call this the “Make nice” conversation.

Another type includes critical judgments by the person observing the class and suggestions/prescriptions for how to do things better. The supervisor selects examples to fit the judgments. “Your rapport was great, but you failed to notice that the three students in the back of the class were text messaging when you stated the goals of the lesson. You must be more attentive to your students!”

The third type consists of the supervisor and teacher making claims about results using jargon and general terms. “You used scaffolding and brainstorming and ice breakers in the beginning of the lesson which activated the students’ minds so they understood more. You had them do communicative activities in pairs after they listened to the recording so they could better understand what they had heard.”

What did the students and the teacher actually do?

Scaffolding, brainstorming, icebreakers, communicative activities, — these terms mean totally different things to different people. I think using jargon and general terms to make claims is detrimental to teacher awareness and development. Instead, as you just saw, in my discussions of teaching I focus on analyzing what students and teachers actually do. If  you record students doing pair work and see they make two to five errors in each sentence you realize that so called communicative activities more deeply ingrain errors rather than develop students’ language. If you see that in a class of 40 the same 5 students answer the teachers’ questions you cannot continue to claim that the questions were effective because the students answered them correctly.

In Nigeria, I described in detail one or two actions each teacher carried out and asked them to try the other’s activities, which were alternatives for them. And in our next discussions, I asked them what differences, if any, the small changes had made.  Because they were busy teaching, they often could not notice any different results. But since all I had to do was observe and write notes, I could notice different or similar results.  When I shared descriptions of what they did as well as the results of small changes, both the teachers and I were often surprised. However, I did not evaluate, positively or negatively, what I had observed. I did not judge their teaching. I just offered alternatives for the teachers to try and compare the results of the original activity and the alternative one. Sometimes the results of the original activity were better and sometimes they were not.

When supervisors make claims about the success of scaffolding, brainstorming, etc., they rarely use the transcript of a recording to support their claims. Nor do they compare the results of the activities they label with alternative activities. I think that this type of comment after an observation is extremely dangerous as it limits analysis and exploration. The comments remind me of those made in some US cowboy movies, which show snake oil salesmen making claims about the medicinal qualities of their product.

Medical staff and economists describing in detail, making small changes and comparing the results

Nurses and doctors make mistakes when treating patients.  Like students they often try to hide their errors. The nurses at one hospital were told that if they made a mistake and reported it, they would be given $200 with the condition that they would then agree to be video recorded while working.

One nurse reported that she miscounted tablets for a patient, a not uncommon error. Later recordings revealed that as she was counting at the nurses’ station, visitors came and asked her for patients’ room numbers. “One, two pain killers, one muscle relaxant, Oh, Mr. Gray? in 205, two muscle relaxants.”

As a result of seeing how the miscounting was being caused by interruptions from visitors, the nurses decided to put a sign on the desk: “Please do not disturb. I will answer your question as soon as I finish counting these pills.” This small change reduced the number of mistakes by 90%.

Many economists have claimed that the more choices consumers have they more they buy. A few economists decided to find evidence to support or refute this claim. They placed 5 brands of strawberry jam at the entrance of a supermarket for a few days. They tallied the number of jars consumers bought.

A couple of weeks later they placed 25 brands of strawberry jam in the same location. After a few days they discovered that the number of jars of jam that people purchased was much, much lower than when consumers had only 5 choices.

Small changes, big results occur not only in language teaching but also in most areas of our lives. Observe, change just one factor, and compare the results. Nothing new, just a short version of the scientific method.

William Blake, the English poet, print maker, and painter advocated focusing on details and pointed out the danger of general claims.

He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars.

General Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer;

For Art and Science cannot exist but in minutely organized Particulars,

And not in generalizing Demonstrations of the Rational Power.

Jerusalem, (f. 55, ll. 48–53, 60–6.)

Easier to see what we are doing now than when I was in Nigeria

These days, just as hospitals can record what staff members do to better understand how they make mistakes, we can record what we and our students say. We can take digital photographs of the board, and pages from student notebooks, and students can record pair work on their cell phones. As a result, we have much more accurate data available to compare the results of making small changes than I had with only a pen and notebook when I observed practice teachers in Nigeria.

Making small changes and comparing the results

In these readings, I illustrate ways you can compare the results of activities you presently use and small changes you make as you experiment with your teaching and question the value of widely accepted practices and ideas as well as your own preconceived notions or assumptions about teaching.

When Mariko told her students to put their erasers in their pencil cases, she realized that when she had previously dictated sentences, they had erased their errors before she could see them. So, she of course had assumed that they had written what she had said correctly.

Ali’s students were bored when he asked them to read the same text more than twice. But when he asked his students to rewrite the text in different formats, they were keen to re-read the material and work with it.

So not having students use erasers and inviting students to produce texts in different formats are two small changes that produce quite different results.

You see that these conversations do not make nice, criticize and judge, or use jargon and general terms rather than actual communications. They are based on the analysis of transcriptions, video clips and pages from student notebooks—data, not recalled perceptions, not memories, of what teachers and students did.

In Part 1 Making small changes to develop self-reliance in language learning and teaching, I present assumptions that underlie the practices I suggest. If you use the list of assumptions as you create alternative practices, you are likely to introduce activities that are more powerful than if you just produce new activities at random, as I did in Nigeria.

In Part 2, Exploring and analyzing the results of small changes, I present assumptions that underlie the suggestions I make for analyzing your teaching. If you try to understand what you are doing, what you want to do, and what you think you are doing, using the assumptions I base my suggestions on, you are more likely to see things you did not see before, than if you just look at what you are doing in random ways.

As you and your students explore distinctive activities, you will realize that as helpful as what others tell us is, we each have to discover new ways and worlds on our own.  Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass (1855) said this more powerfully.

I tramp a perpetual journey, (come listen all!).

I lead no man to a dinner-table, library, exchange,

But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll,

My left hand hooking you round the waist,

My right hand pointing to landscapes of continents and

The public road.

Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you.

You must travel it for yourself.

Table of Contents

Preface: How it all began