the lives of teachers

I was very happy to finally meet Ken Wilson, at the JALT conference in Tokyo last week. Ken gave several presentations, including a fantastic closing plenary. I’ve seen him speak before, and I can’t stress this enough – if you get a chance, get to one of his talks! His theme this time around was motivation, and I certainly left feeling refreshed and energised. That’s pretty much what I want from a plenary!

Straight afterwards, we sat down for a chat about materials writing, motivation and online community. Ken answered all my questions, even the slightly unfair ones, thoughtfully, honestly and expansively… so please enjoy.

(If you are interested in the Dick Allwright article we mention, in relation to the difference and deficiency views of textbooks, you can see it here)

I took this photo last week, as I do every year. I’m not a nature photographer, and I though I love living here I wouldn’t call myself a Japanophile, but there is something about an early blossoming sakura tree….

The hanami celebrations have been muted this year, and many people in Northern Japan will be making fresh starts in ways they had never imagined. If you want to help them, please start here – I recommend HOPE international as a Nagoya based group who have been doing sterling work collecting truckloads of stuff every day at the Hilton Hotel in Fushimi and taking it up to people who need it.

I was planning to write a post about first lessons, and the activities you do, and breaking the ice, and all that…. but it seems a bit frivolous. So, as the students return to classes, or start their university lives, what will we do in those first classes? Business as usual, or a fresh start?

*IMPORTANT*
Above all else, there are a huge number of people in Northern Japan who are going to need our help in the coming days, weeks, months, and (dare I say it) years. If you would like to help, from in or outside Japan, there are a number of ways you can do so.

The situation in Japan since March 11th when a massive earthquake struck, followed by a devastating tsunami, which knocked out the systems at a nuclear power plant, has emphasised how important it is to be able to access, filter and decipher media. Events at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant, in particular, have been difficult to clearly interpret.

How media has changed
You may remember that, even in the pre-internet age, it was possible to read British journalism abroad. It’s not hard to find ‘The Sun’ or ‘The Mirror’ on the Costa Del Sol, and amongst others ‘The Guardian’ and ‘The Telegraph’ produce weekly digest editions for expat audiences. In the last twenty years, however, the number of channels available for the dissemination of ‘news’ stories has exploded. This has had a three-fold effect.
1. The authority of the previously unquestioned ‘establishment’ information sources has been undermined. This is positive, in that it allows the media-literate to gather a broader range of information and assess that information for themselves. It also allows alternative points of view a greater audience, and should (in theory) make it harder for those in power to abuse that power. On the other hand, it enables those with erroneous or misguided views the same platform. Unfortunately, many people are not media literate enough to distinguish between, for example, an English conversation school teacher and the head of the International Atomic Energy Association. Especially when such sources have their words remixed, recast, organised and obfuscated by journalists.
2. With a 24 hour news cycle, the news business needs to find new angles, connect stories to meaningful reference points and generate emotions which will keep consumers watching. Unfortunately, most news organisations will be working from pretty much the same source material, and have to ramp up excitement or fear accordingly.
3. Local and national media spread beyond their appropriate audiences. British newspapers, written for and by the British in Britain, are not necessarily intended to convey accurate and timely information to people living in Japan. One might argue that journalists should recognise that their work has a wider impact, and should act more responsibly accordingly. One might also argue that media consumers should become more media literate, learn how to interpret local media more effectively, and rely less on media from their homelands.

Why are they telling us what they are telling us?
Organisations and individuals who are in a position to disseminate commentary may overstate or understate the seriousness of any given situation. They may do this for benign purposes, or with more sinister intent. Let’s say, for example, that the Tokyo Electric Company and the Japanese government have been understating the level of radiation released from the Fukushima power plant (although I haven’t yet seen evidence which suggests that they are). This could be done to prevent widespread panic, or cover up for corporate irresponsibility – one of which we might accept, the other we should not.

However, we are finding an enormous amount of commentary on this topic by people who should be disinterested, people who have no direct link to Japan, let alone the plant, and people who have previously had little knowledge of the local contexts. So why are they chipping in? Well, some have an agenda to push. I was quite surprised to read what Rush Limbaugh had to say about the story …. until I got halfway down the page and realised that he was using this case to back up his previous comments on the BP oil spill. So not only is this nothing to do with Japan, it is actually nothing to do with nuclear power. At least Representative Ed Markey (D. Mass), of the House Natural Resources Committee, isn’t using a nuclear power plant to talk about oil, although his warnings about ‘a new Chernobyl’ may be influenced by his long-standing opposition to nuclear power. Of course, just because he is against nuclear power, it doesn’t mean we should disregard his words out of hand. Indeed, it is difficult to do so because without extensive research it may be hard to find exactly what he said and in what context. Contrast these two references to his comments – one in The San Francisco Chronicle, and one from The Wall Street Journal. Both are well respected media outlets, but the articles take very different approaches to the same source material.

Now, the president’s call for the government to back a new generation of nuclear power plants as part of his “clean- energy” agenda may be challenged as Japan struggles to control damaged reactors….Workers battled to prevent a nuclear meltdown after a second blast rocked a plant north of Tokyo following an 8.9- magnitude earthquake and tsunami on March 11. The cooling system failed at Fukushima Dai-Ichi station’s No. 1 and No. 3 reactors after the temblor, and it stopped working today at the No. 2 reactor. Fuel rods in the reactors may have melted when water levels fell, according to Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano.
SF Chronicle

Early speculation was that in a case like this the fuel might continue melting right through the steel and perhaps even through the concrete containment structure… But Three Mile Island proved this doesn’t happen. The melted fuel rods simply aren’t hot enough to melt steel or concrete. The decay heat must still be absorbed, however, and as a last-ditch effort the emergency core cooling system can be activated to flood the entire containment structure with water. This will do considerable damage to the reactor but will prevent any further steam releases. The Japanese have now reportedly done this using seawater in at least two of the troubled reactors. These reactors will never be restarted.
WS Journal

Choice of vocabulary (‘struggled’, ‘rocked’, ‘battled’), grammatical structures (the passive forms in the second article are far cooler than the active forms in the former) and even punctuation (note the way that the Chronicle places “clean-energy” in quotation marks) influence our reading of the material. It’s not hard to understand what each writer aims to achieve, and not a great stretch to pick out how they do it. But why? One might speculate that a San Francisco based paper would be particularly nervous about earthquakes, and also about possible contamination drifting across the Pacific, whereas the Wall Street Journal would be more concerned about market than geological stability. That would be speculation, so we can’t be sure. We do know, however, that neither paper is targeting its reports primarily to expats living in Japan.

From the UK, The Daily Mail provides us with a number of interesting examples. If you don’t know, The Daily Mail is fairly ripe for parody – you can generate headlines here, and check the Mail’s ongoing attempts to classify everything as either cancer-causing or cancer-curing here – but nonetheless, I think it is important to look at exactly what they do, how they do it and why they do it.
Consider their readership. The average Mail reader is white, middle-class, middle-aged and conservative. They don’t know any Japanese people, and have never been to Japan – what’s more, they don’t understand it. They have a similar attitude towards nuclear power. Thus the paper is charged with the task of locating this story in a referential landscape which the average reader will be able to grasp. The human face of this tragedy, then, has to be one which the reader can recognise. The Mail achieves this through celebrity, in this story about British Formula One driver Jenson Button’s girlfriend Jessica Michibata, or by finding another middle-Englander, like this young teacher from Wolverhampton.

Likewise, the disaster itself needs to be referenced, hence the frequent references to Chernobyl and Three-Mile Island. This article refers to both in the helpful bullet points laid out below the headline, if the reader is too busy to go any further he or she will not get to the rather underwhelming reality described in the expert quotes. It is not surprising that these two events have been frequently referenced, although a little research shows that neither was especially deadly, nor especially similar to the current situation. But in using each as shorthand, journalists need to be aware of what they are shorthand FOR. Likewise, technical jargon needs to be explained fully rather than tossed away. I wouldn’t condemn anyone for leaving Tokyo at the moment – the aftershocks, especially in conjunction with rolling blackouts, would have anyone’s nerves jangling. But to leave after reading about the increase in microsieverts? Who honestly knew what a microsieveret was last month? I certainly didn’t. And reading this from a blog on the website of Ireland’s national broadcaster I am not sure if this journalist does now – and this perfunctory explanation was not unusual in the early days of the situation. Take another word like ‘meltdown’. What it actually means and what it means to most of us is reflected in the fact that ‘Charlie Sheen meltdown‘ will get you more than three million hits on Google.

If you are living in Japan, but basing your understanding of Japanese issues solely on overseas media, you need to be fully aware of how and why it is being filtered. This is not to say that all foreign media is bad, although there is enough on this wall of shame to suggest so. Neither would I say that the Japanese media was purer than pure, although NHK in particular has been very level-headed – they clearly recognise their responsibility as information providers in a life or death situation (if you have an iPhone, the free English language NHK world app allows you to watch anywhere. If not, you can stream on your desktop pretty easily). Usually, I find The Japan Times painfully dry, but in times like these its rather reassuring.

Realise that it is your responsibility to understand what you are being fed. That everyone who chips in is pushing an agenda, selling advertising space, covering something up or just plain stupid. Unfortunately, there are plenty of people at the moment who aren’t able to take their time, choose their sources and find the ‘truth’…. if you can, don’t waste the luxury.

How to be media-literate

1. Evaluate the author of the text and the editorial policies of the publication in which it appears. This article, for example, is very reassuring. But from the pen of the man who also wrote “Terrestrial Energy: How Nuclear Power Will Lead the Green Revolution and End America’s Energy Odyssey” what do you expect? At least his affiliations are clear, though. Most of The Daily Mail articles cited above are attributed to ‘Daily Mail Reporter’.
2. Evaluate the source quotes. Are quotes attributed clearly to real people with authority and credibility? Anything coming from ‘sources’, ‘experts’ or ‘a spokesperson’ is pretty weak.
3. Evaluate the facts. Are there any? Are they checkable? Pay particular attention to explanations of technical aspects of the story which are beyond the knowledge of the average person in the street. If a reporter uses statistics, numbers or measurements in explaining a situation, are these clearly defined? Are they used to speculate possible outcomes? Are these outcomes plausible based on the evidence?
3. Evaluate the language. Given the same source material, could you write the same story with a completely different tone. Go through and play with verbs, nouns and adjectives. You might notice that throughout this piece I have used the word ‘situation’ rather than ‘catastrophe’, ‘crisis’ or any of the other more dramatic terms which have been bandied about in the last week.
4. Evaluate the organisation. Newspapers need to grab attention in the headline (which usually comes from the sub-editor rather than the reporter who wrote the rest of the story). The less exciting part, often the part with the closest relationship to reality, will probably be buried in the middle somewhere.

Whether it qualifies as a fully fledged language is very doubtful. It may be a lexicon, but that doesn’t really give it the full sense of social gravitas it deserves. It’s not really a dialect, a pidgin or a creole. To call it a jargon would imply that it was a technical or professional form, so we should probably refer to it as an argot.

So what is it?

Polari was a language spoken predominantly by gay men in the earlier part of the twentieth century. A mixture of Italian, backslang, Pig Latin and who knows what else, it had its roots in the slang of outcasts through history, from theatre, from the circus and from the criminal underground – linked especially to the actors form Parlyaree, and Cant, an underground language of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries used to obscure meaning and cover up illegal activity from the general public. Of course, homosexuality was illegal for many years too, and dropping the occasional Polari word or expression into a conversation was a great way to tell if a new face was trade or naff.  Polari was popularized by Kenneth Williams and Hugh Paddick as the two out of work actors Julian and Sandy in the 1960′s.

But almost as soon as Polari entered the mainstream, it died. Partly because it had entered the mainstream – a savage blow for any slang. And partly, too, because it was no longer necessary – once homosexuality was legalised there was a movement in the community to take pride in one’s sexuality, and to shun the camp language of Polari (and the figure of ridicule represented by mainstream media).

What is interesting about Polari is that it served to both declare and obscure the user’s membership of a tribe. It acts as a particular reminder of the way in which language is selected for an audience, to ingratiate or distance ourselves from a listener, and that a single word can convey an entire biography for the astute listener.

As English teachers we often ask ourselves what motivates our learners. One classic understanding is the  integrative / instrumental paradigm, which sees the learners orientation towards the target language group as important. I imagine that, as a proportion of learners worldwide, those who have a particular desire to join a native speaker group, and thus need to attain certain native speaker norms in order to gain entry to such groups, are limited. Even amongst ESOL students there may be a stronger desire to succeed in everyday transactions (instrumental motivation) than to become a member of the local English speaking society. In language learners studying in their home countries, with little likelihood of extended stays in English speaking countries, integrative motivation will probably be non-existent.

I know a number of students who, having spent parts of their childhood in English-speaking countries, retain native-like pronunciation. Yet when talking to another student, their English becomes thickly Japanese – membership of the group they are with is more important at that moment than displaying their ‘true’ English voices. Many students will choose to retain or emphasise linguistic elements from their local context, phonological, grammatical or lexical. So are these learners failures, or merely asserting their pride in their own biographies?

This post leans heavily on Paul Baker’s work, particularly his book…

Baker, P. (2002) Polari – The Lost Language of Gay Men. London: Routledge

…which I stumbled across whilst trolling around the basement of the university library, snuggled up next to ‘Negro Orators and their Speeches’. How lucky I am to work here! You can see an interview with Dr. Baker here, and read an article of his on the topic here.

I also read Quentin Crisp’s well known biographical work ‘The Naked Civil Servant’ recently. You can see Britain’s stately homo here, in an interview which helps one understand, perhaps, why Polari was swept away as a reminder of a time when homosexuality was even more of a dirty secret than it is now. The title of this post means ‘How lovely to see your pretty face again’ … or something like that, anyway!

the lives of teachers

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an interview with kip cates from darren elliott on Vimeo.

Kip Cates is an English teacher based in Japan but with an interest in collaborating with teachers and learners across Asia and the rest of the world. Just over twenty years ago, he founded the Global Issues in Language Education (GILE) SIG in JALT to help network with likeminded global educators.

Kip was representing his SIG at the PanSig conference, a yearly get together for members of the association special interest groups for cross-pollination. This year, we met in Osaka. In this interview Kip and I discuss the Asian Youth Forum, what global education is, why it is important and how technology can facilitate it, and Kip’s own experiences in Europe as a young man. We didn’t have time for the peace boat, Temple University or life in the Middle East! Maybe we can do a part two some day….

Kip’s website is at http://www.kipcates.com/

This is my first simultaneous podcast and video release. You have a choice of formats today!

the lives of teachers

Download here

This is a podcast version of the video interview available here.

If you have ever taught children, you may well have come across the ‘Let’s Go!‘ series, now on the third edition and a multimedia behemoth! I met with Barbara, one of the authors, at the ETJ Chubu Expo in October 2009 and she was kind enough to give this interview. She is delightful company and I wish I’d left the camera running because we talked for as long again after I turned it off. She has a lot to say about teaching children and professional development in particular, but we also touched on a few other topics. If you haven’t already, you should check out Barbara’s blog and have a look for her on twitter (@barbsaka ). Being in this part of the world opportunities to meet members of the online ELT community are limited, so it is always especially enjoyable to catch up with someone as lovely as Barbara… even if it is only a few times a year ; D

If you like this, please subscribe via iTunes as there are plenty more on the way.

I got tagged by Jason at the wonderful English Raven as a part of the “It’s worth taking a look at this blog”  thing which is doing the rounds. It’s quite a timely initiative, with the ELT blogosphere a little bit tired and emotional recently. Nice to share the love again. Had I decided to do this straight, Jason’s blog would certainly have been in my top ten… but I am pretty sure that anyone who is reading my blog is reading his. I really do recommend all the blogs in my blogroll – none are there for show, they are the ELT blogs I regularly read, and often comment on. So my list is made up of the twenty one blogs in my blog roll. Can I call that my ‘trad’ list, and then give you something a little more wonky?

Here is a list of ten blogs you probably don’t read…

I’ll kick off with the two who are blogging most specifically about ELT. What I like about them both is that they are writing fairly specifically about the minutiae of classroom activity. A lot of ELT bloggers like to address the ‘big’ issues, but I love to read about the daily concerns of practising teachers. Eisensei is working in Japanese universities, like me. This post is an account of his experiments with dogme, part of a journey which I am really enjoying watching and (to a small degree) participating in. Rich is in Spain, and his writing is quite affecting. I love this pithy piece about online community.

Now three bloggers who teach English, but don’t really blog about it. ELT does seem to attract the creative, or perhaps it makes one creative? Maybe once people realise that the life of a TEFLer is a precarious one, they invest more in their lives outside work. There are plenty of us who do it because it’s all we can do, because it enables us to live where we want, because it offers us little and expects little in return, leaving us free to pursue our passions. For every one of us who defines themselves as a teacher, there is another who ‘teaches’… but is actually a writer, a photographer, an entrepreneur…

I am sure that all three of these bloggers are committed and talented teachers. Nevertheless, it is refreshing to read about the other things they love. Pig Sty Avenue is currently learning the piano, but also writes a lot about football and photography. This is a rare piece about teaching, and an initiative which needs to get off the ground. Scribe of Light is an incredible photographer working mainly in China, who I first came across via Flickr. This piece, about itchy feet, will resonate with many of you world travelling teachers out there. And finally, I have actually had the pleasure of meeting the author of Troutfactory Notebook, another brilliant photographer and writer, based in Osaka. This piece on the soapbox derby is a dazzling example of his thought-provoking writing about art and ideas.

There are a few news blogs I read regularly. The first is Mashable, which you may be familiar with, collecting techie, social media type stuff. This one on David Letterman’s Twitter Machine is a lot of fun. For an alternative take on the mainstream news, for the stuff that falls through the cracks, Global Voices Online is a great resource. I enjoyed this recent post about the new company recruits here in Japan. And speaking of Japan, Education in Japan does a great job in gathering stories together without editorialising (and without the awful, awful comments you often get on Japan News blogs). Everything you need to know about the collapse of the GEOS language school chain is here.

I have long been an admirer of George Siemens, and he is a very prolific blogger about education and (of course) connectivism. His blog is like a fat twitter. Libraries is a nice spot to start. And if you like that, there are about eight years of archives, updated several times daily….

I have now idea how to categorise the last one, but I love it. Pull Up the Roots bills itself as “a visual essay exploring teaching, learning, and society”, and it utilises the tumblr platform perfectly. My first blogging experiments came via tumblr, when I noticed a lot of my flickr photos were being linked there. If you can imagine a twitter for visual artists, designers, and the painfully young and hip, that’s tumblr. Even though I am none of those things, I love tumblr!

So, thanks Jason. And it’s a nice idea, but can we shake it up a bit? I am pretty sure that the ELT blogosphere has been sufficiently mapped. I’d like everyone to do this again, but actually surprise me

I have three interviews scheduled for next month, and I am inviting questions.

The first interview is at the PanSig conference in Osaka, with Kip Cates. Kip has been active in promoting global issues in language education for many years, and I am looking forward to talking about his work with the Asian Youth Forum, JALT, the Peace Boat and other socially aware associations.

The next two interviews will take place at the JALTCALL conference in Kyoto. The first is with Joy Egbert of Washington State University. I am especially interested in the book she is bringing out this year about CALL in limited technology contexts. Looking forward to hearing about how we should engage our students.

I will also talk to Larry Davies, mainly about Learning Management Systems. Are they old hat? Are institutions living in the 1990′s whilst the students move into 2020?

The abstracts for both Larry and Joy’s plenaries are available here.

So, this post is a bit of a taster, but also an appeal for questions. I have actually been invited to JALTCALL in an official capacity this time around, so I feel a greater responsibility to make the interviews the best I possibly can! Cheers all!

As a classic symbol of Japan, and a dying breed, the geisha is a skilled practitioner of her art. She is elegant, highly trained. Unfortunately, this is not the parallel I am going to draw between ‘Geisha’ and ‘Teacher’. Let’s skip ahead to the modern era.

There are now said to be about 2000 professional geisha and maiko left. If you bump into one on the streets of Kyoto, she is probably a tourist costumed for the photo op. However, the spirit of the geisha remains, the need which created her continues… indeed, grows more fervent. ＊

All over the country, ‘hostess’ clubs thrive… places in which a tired salaryman can sit and relax while pretty young women pour his drinks, laugh at his jokes and engage in him in light conversation. And in progressive new Japan, there will be a place around the corner in which pretty young men provide the same service for hardworking women.＊＊

Is this, perhaps, how some students see their teachers? Is this how schools are set up? Let me ask you these questions.

Have you ever been required to attend after school social functions with students?

Have you ever been brought in to meet a prospective student and clinch the deal?

Have you ever taught a lesson without a textbook, not a a dogme-ist, but because the student ‘just wanted to talk’?

I don’t doubt that most native speakers who have taught in a foreign country have experienced such situations. Many NNESTs too. And the younger, more attractive and more affable you are….

The question should be, I suppose, ‘Do I care?’ Does it matter that the student is not here to learn, but to have fun, and that I am getting easy money for entertaining him? Do I mind, effectively, working as a host or a hostess? That’s a question I can’t answer for you individually, but as a profession we ought to be a somewhat concerned. I’ve had this particular post on the back burner for a while, but having just read the Marxists I thought it was time to get it out there….

＊No, not sex. Whilst some geisha or maiko may have had physical relations with their clients, there is not a direct correlation between prostitution and the geisha system. Likewise, some hosts or hostesses may take on ‘patrons’, but it is far beyond the remit of this blog to get into the murky world of Japanese sexual politics. I’ll make one thing clear though. I am not using prostitution as a metaphor for teaching.

＊＊Ironically (?) many of the host’s clients are hostesses. They have the money, and the free time… but they have no one to listen to them talk.