the lives of teachers

About a week ago I wrote about an experiment in silence with a class, and promised to come back with a report on the students’ reactions. It really was quite enlightening. This is what we all learnt.

1. A particular result may not mean what you think it means
Looking back through the many comments on my previous post (which was one of the most commented upon I have posted) it is interesting to see that we, as teachers, slightly misread the whole situation. As professionals, committed to our students, caring about them deeply, we all assumed that the end result (constant discussion in L1) springs from the joy of freedom, the taking up of responsibility and other positive emotions. Actually, according to the students, they were terrified.

“We actually thought that you were angry at us and abandoned us because we use too much Japanese in class.”

“I took it for granted that you were angry and you didn’t want to give our class.”

I don’t know where this leaves Krashen. Despite the cause being the negative emotion of fear, the result was very positive.

“To do task without your help was difficult for me. However, I were able to hear much English. And I could speak more in English than usual!”

“…if we have no teachers, we must think how we should study. However,this situation is very important to us too I think. Actually we try to look for the answer more harder than usual. I spoke in English more ,moreover I heared more opinions of them than usual. Though we had much difficulties, it was very interesting to me.”

Of course, anyone who has met me in real life will find this fear highly amusing. Teaching teenagers we do sometimes need to wield a big stick. However, I don’t want this to be the dominant motivating force in my classroom, which leads us onto our next point.

2. Although mystery can be effective, we must ultimately provide transparency

When the students realised what I was trying to do, they were very happy. This was a vital step in the experiment – revealing the mystery.

“But I read your comment , you tried to see our class from all kinds of directions.”

“After reading this article, I noticed you care about us more than I expected. So I’m happy that you are our teacher!”

“We were so puzzled! Me, K., M.,and M. were discussing about ﾞwhat’s happening!?ﾞ through out the whole class.
K. and I were even talking about it the rest of the day!”

So had I left the class cold, with no feedback or no discussion of what had happened, the positives of confusion may have caused longer-term damage to the rapport we have been building. I kept the next class very light, and the students kept up their good habits from the previous class.

3. Perceived teacher beliefs do not always reflect actual classroom practice

If you had asked me before this class if I believed in learner autonomy and a hands-off teaching approach, I would have given you an emphatic yes. But what I was actually doing in the class belied this. It was only by removing myself completely from the lesson that I could see how students had been relying on me to prompt them, feed them and cajole them into using the language. In the last week, I have given many of my classes similar opportunities and they have all surprised me by speaking fluently in English for as longer than I expected.  Had I been unwittingly restricting learner autonomy by doing too much, by jumping in too soon, by shutting down an activity simply because I was ready to go on to the next one?

This is why I think reflective practice has never been done properly in mainstream ELT literature. The questions we are prompted to ask ourselves are always the same, and we end up giving the answers we think we should. What was good and bad about that lesson? Why did that activity succeed or fail? We will never really know unless we break the mirror and try to rearrange the pieces.

An invitation to experiment, then. This weekends homework – choose a class and do something you never usually do. Then report back and tell us how it went and what it revealed.

The Japan Association of Language Teaching is over thirty years old now, and currently numbers around three-thousand members. One of it’s larger special interest groups is the CALL sig with an internationally peer-reviewed journal, and last weekend I attended it’s annual conference.  Paul Lewis, one of the co-chairs and someone with a longstanding involvement with the sig, details the history of the conference here.

What is the JALTCALL Conference? from darren elliott on Vimeo.

As well as making two presentations of my own, I did a few interviews, went to plenty of great presentations and plenaries, and met a lot of very nice people. Like most conferences, this one had a theme, and I thought it would be interesting to reflect on it as I walked around the campus. The question is “What’s your motivation?”, and like most conference themes it is open to interpretation.

jaltcall 2010 – what’s your motivation? from darren elliott on Vimeo.

So, what is your motivation?

Two workshop prezis from JALTCALL 2010 at Kyoto Sangyo University, Japan, May 29th – 30th 2010.

Parallel Learning: How online teacher development informs classroom practice

Video blogging and Podcasting: Interviews with English Language Teaching Professionals

As you can imagine, there is a fair bit of overlap between the two sessions, so I chose to use the ‘flavour of the month’ presentation tool to make one big slide with two different pathways. It was really fun mapping it out… I am not sure if it helps me think differently, in a less linear fashion, or if it just panders to the mind’s natural inclination towards multiplicity. But this is my first paper run through….

Anyway, I am not sure whether it is such a bad thing to have ones thoughts marshalled into straight lines by PowerPoint or Keynote. Something about Prezi does scream ‘Big Fat Gimmick!’, but let’s enjoy the whizz bang fireworks while they last.

Because I hate decontextualised slides so much (one of the greatest dangers to academic discourse today, I’ll venture, is the proliferation of mute online slideshows, stripped of the only thing which gives them a life) I have recorded a run through with commentary so you know what all the pictures mean. It’s forty minutes condensed into twenty, so it’s both too long to watch online and not long enough to make any sense. Apologies for the mumble, everyone else is asleep and I really ought to be myself.

Parallel Learning: How online teacher development informs classroom practice from darren elliott on Vimeo.

I made this using iShowU HD, which works very nicely. Screentoaster also seems good, but a bit more obtrusive.

If you were at either of the sessions in Kyoto, thanks! Questions or comments are very welcome.

It really isn’t that hard to learn how to teach. Or should I say, a teacher can be trained to stand in a classroom without making an absolute idiot of themselves within about a week, from a standing start. For something which is only actually relevant for a very small proportion of a teacher’s career, training seems to generate a disproportionate amount of discussion.  The pre-service teacher or the teacher spending the first few months in the classroom needs to be drilled in ‘the fundamentals’*, but beyond that the teacher is largely in need of development rather than training **. Guidance or mentoring from senior staff, advice and hints from colleagues in the staff room, encouragement from peers in formal or informal communities – development rarely takes place alone, but it is often initiated and directed alone. After the first year or two this often becomes a practical necessity, but I suspect is also what most of us prefer.

As so many of us plan our own professional pathways, we need to know what we are aiming at. Something of which we are infrequently reminded is that we will stumble off the path on a fairly regular basis. Teachers fail. For example.

A new class is misjudged early in the course and the teacher gets stuck in a cycle of student demotivation.

A teacher changes context (new institution, new country, new…) and finds his or her hard-won expertise meaningless.

After attempting to implement too many innovations, a teacher burns out with exhaustion.

Many longitudinal studies by mainstream education specialists and sociologists have followed teachers to identify developmental patterns and life cycles. ELT has its own too, notably Rose Senior’s “The Experience of Language Teaching“. This blog has been up for nine months now, and I have been promising a review of the book after which it is named – Michael Huberman’s “The Lives of Teachers“, a study of 160 secondary school teachers in Switzerland. If you were at IATEFL 2010 you will know that Tessa Woodward has done the job for me. If you weren’t, or you missed the plenary, or something, you really ought to watch it here.

What I particularly like about Huberman’s study is its recognition of failed outcomes, dead ends and dangerous trajectories. Self-doubt, personal crisis, lassitude, disenchantment, apathy… all possible or even likely stages in the life of a teacher. Stability can be rewarded with stagnation, rather than harmony and satisfaction. Expertise is not a permanent state, and teachers can easily slip back to previous stages of development. Everyone ends in disengagement. If you are lucky, it is serene. If not, bitter.

These are not the little failures of the novice who forgets to set up a listening, or speaks to quickly, or doesn’t know how to field an unexpected question. After a time (and given a full teaching schedule) such mechanical issues are resolved and many of the processes of teaching become automatised. If they don’t, this may spark a crisis, not uncommon after the first two years of teaching. In ELT the teacher/tourist may quit before reaching either proficiency or crisis – without, even, the concepts crossing his or her mind….

For those who continue in the profession, and reach a certain level of expertise, the next danger area is in the eight to ten year bracket. Stagnation, exhaustion or a full-blown existential crisis are all possibilities. The potential stimuli for difficult periods change as one goes through life as a teacher, but are always there.

If you are new to the profession, or in a sticky patch at the moment, I apologise. But this post is not supposed to be a negative one (or a patronising one). My point (via Huberman) is that by accepting the inevitability of difficulties, by being aware of the danger zones in the career cycle and how particular vulnerabilities manifest themselves, we have a far greater chance of reducing their impact, getting through them more quickly, and perhaps (just perhaps) avoiding them altogether.

“The teacher who had not experienced one or more difficult periods in his career was very rare…. In effect, the ‘fickle’ nature (of triggers) meant that teaching moments of exhilaration are just as fragile and ephemeral as moments of distress…. ” (p. 257)

Or shall we say, the distress is just as ephemeral as the exhilaration?

(Footnotes)

* Although even this can be approached in a more self-directed fashion. A nice link here with Tessa Woodward, too – the unplugged CELTA concept has a flavour of loop input to me.

** This refers largely to EFL or ESL teachers, who I believe are largely responsible for their own development from the very beginning – financially and practically. If we consider postgraduate degrees or diplomas to be formalised development rather than training, then I can only count five weeks of training in ten years of my own career. However, I would be interested to hear from UK ESOL, which I understand to have a much more standardised system as part of mainstream education. I would also love to know about training programmes in larger institutions such as International House and the British Council.

Two days after I first arrived in Japan, on my first day of a week-long training period, I was awarded the title sensei. You are probably familiar with the word, which is usually loosely translated as teacher in English. In Japanese, it can be used to refer to any professional or expert in a particular field. A doctor, an artist, a poet, all can be a sensei. So, what made me a sensei? My passport, my eye colour? In a private Japanese language school, basically, yes. Having said that, there were some fine teachers there – they were kind, friendly, smart… and with no official teaching qualifications whatsoever they were able to help their students learn.

When I returned to the UK, I was qualified to teach at a university thanks to my CELTA certificate. This time, I had colleagues who were not native-speakers of English. Of course, English Language instructors are not necessaily afforded the same wages and conditions as teachers in other university departments… people who have never studied teaching at all, not even for four weeks.  A historian, for example, just has to demonstrate that they know a lot about their subject. They are not required to prove they can teach it. So a teacher has to have subject knowledge to be considered a true professional?

Now I am in the higher education system in Japan, and the entry level qualification is a masters degree. It used to be unimportant what that degree was in, but now more and more schools expect it to be in English, Applied Linguistics or a related field. Competition is such that a doctorate is increasingly useful, and it is expected that teachers publish and present fairly regularly. A DELTA, whilst handy, is not well recognised. In order to call oneself a teacher, then, research is a high priority.

I don’t know enough about the UK Further Education sector, but from what I can gather there are an incredible number of hoops to jump through in order to qualify. Every ESOL teacher I have ever met, as well as being very nice, has also been in the middle of some nationally standardised training course or another. Perhaps standardisation is the key. We need to be sure that our teachers can fit into a qualification structure?

So what gives someone the right to call themselves a teacher? Because the last one was so much fun, I’ve made a poll… but this time you can vote for as many as you like. The real game is in the comments box though, so get stuck in! I’d also like to know what you have to do to be called a teacher where you are.

(By the way, I never worked at the school advertising above! My company employed teachers of all races, as long as they were native English speakers, or proficient Japanese speakers of English. Click on the picture to read more about the dodgier side of the industry)

(Teacher Development Series Number Two – Attendance of professional workshops, lectures and conferences)

When I asked ‘How do you learn to teach?’ this was another of the popular choices, at about 20% of the popular vote. People love a good conference! As IATEFL is fast approaching, I thought it was an appropriate time to tackle the topic. The trouble is, so did everyone else. Rather than trying to squeeze any more out of it myself,  you are probably better off visiting Jeremy Harmer’s recent post on ‘What makes a good conference?’. If you are presenting yourself (or planning to) it is also worth checking out this four part series from One Year, on presenting from the planning stage right through to publication…

The title of this post alludes to the elements I personally feel make a good conference. Please, please don’t read me your slides. And if you can’t get the powerpoint working within fifteen seconds, just talk. That will be fine.

If you are not presenting, take a breather between sessions.  And if you hear someone is interesting and / or funny, go and see them, whoever they are or whatever they are talking about. If you want to read my recommendations in more detail, I have an article in English Teaching Professional (November 2008) which was perkily re-titled ‘See you at the Coffee Stand’ during the editing process. If you can’t get hold of it, then this slightly inferior rip-off by notorious ELT chancer Alex Case will probably do just as well…..

Can you express the perfect conference in 140 characters or less? tweet me at @livesofteachers or comment below.

 (Teacher Development Series Number One – Classroom Observation )

This is the first in a series, inspired by this originally off-the-cuff, just-for-fun poll, looking at teacher development techniques the old-fashioned way… teacher development unplugged, if you like As much as I love my on-line Personal Learning Network, it is only a part of how manage my development. In the early stages of my career, until fairly recently, it wasn’t a factor at all. So what, I asked, is the best way to learn how to teach ‘off-line’?

In the poll, I separated observation into two types – observation OF other teachers / trainers / supervisors,  and observation BY the same. Unsurprisingly, to me, the former was amongst the most popular choices offered – running at 18% of the vote. Being observed is not considered so helpful, with just 7% picking it as their top choice.

Why do so many of us want to watch other teachers, yet shy away from being watched ourselves? As Nick Jaworski commented, when

“…there is a complaint …. management swoops in in a flurry of paper and ink. Why do so many teachers fear observations? Because at most schools, they are never done for positive reasons.”

I cringe when I think back to my early days in private language schools… this is exactly what happened. If you were doing a good job (if no one was complaining) you wouldn’t see a trainer. If you were having trouble, you’d be looking over your shoulder waiting for a trainer to show up and sit at the back of your classroom.

Fortunately for me, I was the one doing the watching. I must have seen literally thousands of classrooms hours, and then written every one up in a two page report. I like to think I was able to help some of those teachers improve. But if I am being honest, I think it was far more formative on my teaching career than it was on any of theirs. Good or bad, I took something from every lesson. A great activity. Something you should never say. A smart way of transitioning. An awkward silence… and in writing each one up, I had to reflect on what made a lesson fail or succeed and put it into to words, again and again.

I think that we have to recognise that observation is beneficial to one person, and one person only – the observer.  Unfortunately, we are set up to expect feedback from peers who are unused to giving it, and reluctant to do so.

As part of the DELTA programme, I was involved in observation from every angle. I observed and was observed by my peers, and observed and observed by the trainers. Am I alone in this, or is it actually much easier when there is a clear power differential? However well you prepare, however much you negotiate in advance, however gently you tread, the peer observation is fraught with danger. As much as I love Ruth Wajnryb’s book Classroom Observation Tasks I wonder …. are peer feedback programmes doomed to uncomfortable failure?

You may not be in such a slump as poor George Costanza, but why wait? The life of a teacher is characterized by peaks and troughs, by breakthroughs, epiphanies, bad days, difficult classes, critical incidents and culture bumps. But these things are GOOD things, because the worst thing that can possibly happen to a teacher is stagnation. Early on in our teaching life, we are too busy figuring out the basics to worry about anything else. But after that? As Frances Fuller (1969, 1974) describes, our concerns change… from self, to task, to impact. We start by asking “Am I adequate?”, move on to “Is this activity working?” and (hopefully) end up with “How are the learners?”. Achievement of a state of stability is a  both a blessing and a curse, however.

Trainers spend so much time with pre-service or novice teachers that those of us later in our careers (and I speak as someone who has actually only been teaching for ten years) are left to our own devices. Which is fine. I am happy to direct my own development… why would I be sitting here writing this, otherwise?

Part of the way we can continue working happily as a teacher is by shaking things up before we get bored. In my research into teacher development during changes in context, I was very interested to see how often ELT professionals moved on – from one institution to another, from one country to another – to fend off the impending stagnation. Any anxiety and difficulty created by the change was compensated for by the invigorating power of ‘the opposite’.

I recognise the fact that TEFLers don’t always get a choice in these matters. But I would tenetively suggest that some of us are grateful for the chance to wipe the slate clean and start anew. Do those of us attracted to the industry have shorter attention spans than teachers in mainstream education?

But if you don’t fancy moving to a new continent, or you have ties and responsibilities that make that difficult, how do you avoid getting into a rut? Well, George’s advice still holds good. Try the opposite. If you usually stand up, sit down for your lesson. If you are a great whiteboard artist, leave it blank next week. Don’t give any homework, or set loads. Teach a class without a textbook, or fire-up a laptop.

But, whatever you do, don’t let yourself get bored!

(Testing the poll function here before I try it with a class)

Are our Personal Learning Network’s becoming lopsided? Are we limiting ourselves by assuming all professional development needs to be technologically mediated? Are on-line networks better, worse, or just different to those we develop off-line?

In the pre-internet world, which I know many of you remember, how did you learn to become a teacher?

(polls)

Please vote, and if you feel the need to enlarge on your answer, berate me for my unimaginative options, or point out that I am an idiot for any other reason, please comment in the box below!

Updates: I am writing follow up pieces for each of these techniques. Please read on….

Observation

Conferences

Personal Learning Networks – the what, why and how from darren elliott on Vimeo.

A presentation at the 4th International Wireless Ready Symposium, Nagoya, February 19th 2010.

A good starting point for twitter. I’ve made a list of ELT professionals and educational technologists worth following… there are many more out there too, but these might get you started. Don’t forget to include a decent bio in your profile so that potential followers know you are a real person, not just a robot, a pornographer or a marketeer.

The reading and research for this presentation can be found on my diigo social bookmarking page – the PLN list and tags should yield most. I particularly recommend the works of Warlick, Downes and Seimens (all of whom are on the twitter list, too)

There are some great listservs in yahoo groups. I’ll start you off with the webheads group, and follow with ELT dogme. Both very different, but very lively. A tip – set to receive a daily digest.

If you are looking for blogs, onestopblogs has a good selection. Choose the ones you like, put them in your google reader… tweeters on twitter may have blogs of their own, check the profiles.

If you want something more involved, join a ning! Bloggers in ELT is a favourite of mine, Classroom 2.0 is very active.

But your Personal Learning Network should be just that  -  PERSONAL. Take your time building relationships with real people, don’t be afraid to turn off or cut out when things become distracting rather than helpful, and have fun!