{"id":6456,"date":"2018-05-27T08:24:13","date_gmt":"2018-05-27T08:24:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/?p=6456"},"modified":"2018-05-28T11:00:17","modified_gmt":"2018-05-28T11:00:17","slug":"two-conversations-about-teaching","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/2018\/05\/27\/two-conversations-about-teaching\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Conversations About Teaching"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\"BryanTwo Conversations About Teaching<\/h3>\n

by Bryan Hale.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Mina<\/b><\/p>\n

Mina (not her real name) and I are both sitting on a brightly colored and comically large chair in the reception area of the hagwon we work in. A \u201chagwon\u201d is a private language academy in Korea. Actually, our work day should be over already, but we\u2019re waiting for the hagwon owner to arrive with guests for some kind of promotional event. The hagwon is sinking and neither of us has been paid for some time.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re not quite sitting next to each other, but at a kind of perpendicular angle, almost back to back. Despite the awkward position, we\u2019re suddenly having a vivid conversation about one of our kindergarten classes, sharing a rush of details and observations over our shoulders. The students\u2019 English levels have been getting more and more divergent. Are we doing enough for all of them?<\/p>\n

Mina says something. \u201cYou never check if they\u2019ve really learned.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wow. I\u2019m stung. I\u2019ve been babbling but suddenly don\u2019t know what to say.<\/p>\n

I also kind of want to cling to Mina and beg her to tell me everything behind that comment: all the little details she took in that led to it, all the little changes she would prefer to see.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been a steep learning curve, this job. Learning how to make sure the parents are kept happy. Learning how to make sure the owner has the impression the parents are being kept happy. Learning how to do two pages of the textbook each lesson, no matter what, and learning how to make sure it\u2019s visible we did the two pages. But here, where we\u2019ve collapsed into this whirlpool of an honest talk, what Mina wants to let me know is that among all that, real learning also matters. And she can see that I\u2019m not getting real learning to happen as much as I could.<\/p>\n

Mina was my head teacher in this, my first teaching position. The conversation this day wasn\u2019t the only one like it. The hagwon\u2019s troubles accelerated things, washing away assumptions that had kept us from talking more honestly, and helping me to realize the value in really learning from Mina, beyond the prescriptions and roles of our official relationship. There was a lot to learn. She knew her students so well. She knew what they had learned and how they had learned it. And she knew how that connected to their emotional experiences. She knew her students as a whole, like a detailed landscape, full of continuities and breaks. In the middle of chaotic afternoon comings-and-goings here in the reception area, she could stand in the middle of it all and help three very different students have three different learning experiences, in a single breath. Perhaps I learned more from Mina than any other single colleague, and a part of me still wants to cling to her and ask a million questions.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Reflective Practice<\/b><\/p>\n

Somewhere outside it\u2019s a rainy day in Seoul. I\u2019m stumbling into a narrow, windowless room at the back of a cafe, guided by an invite over social media and my phone GPS. It\u2019s my first ever Reflective Practice meeting.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think I need to keep names secret here: this meeting is facilitated by\u00a0Mike Griffin<\/a>\u00a0and Alex Walsh. And\u00a0Anne Hendler<\/a>\u00a0is here too! I don\u2019t actually remember the topic of the meeting and I definitely don\u2019t remember the words verbatim like I do with Mina. I do remember Mike setting up a discussion with a friendly suggestion that we not try to solve each other\u2019s problems and instead help each other along with follow-up questions. Suddenly I\u2019m talking to someone I\u2019ve never met before, a rich and rewarding exchange about our teaching experiences flowing easily. Mike appears behind her, listening in for a moment, gently cutting in with a question that helps open up a story I\u2019m sharing. Then he disappears again. The room stops feeling small.<\/p>\n

While the details aren\u2019t burned into my memory as clearly as with Mina, this feels like a part of a bigger and ultimately much more important conversation that I\u2019m still taking part in. It connects to my present partly because I remain involved with the same Reflective Practice group, but it also extends across various professional development contexts, including KOTESOL,\u00a0iTDi,\u00a0excitELT, the temporary physical spaces around the edges of conferences, other online spaces. Although serendipity plays a role, and although there have been many opportunities for me to receive advice and to learn from teachers such as Mike and Alex and Anne, this is a conversation where I\u2019m in charge of my participation. In this conversation I\u2019m not adrift, and the need to plead or cling falls away. This conversation is collegial and collaborative and open-ended.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m grateful for both conversations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two Conversations About Teaching by Bryan Hale.   Mina Mina (not her real name) and I are both sitting on a brightly colored and comically large chair in the reception area of the hagwon we work in. A \u201chagwon\u201d is a private language academy in Korea. Actually, our work day should be over already, but … Continue reading Two Conversations About Teaching<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":108,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[124],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-teachers-talking-to-teachers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/108"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6456\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}