It is the end of a week that I thought would never end. I cannot begin to say how grateful I am. At work, it has been an excruciatingly intense week. Though I wouldn’t mind if this were because of teaching, it has been because of silly little conflicts over silly little things that get conflated into seething discontent of gargantuan proportions. The causes come down to the fact that our department is not really professionalized, leaving a plethora of grey areas that are nobody’s actual responsibility, but become everyone’s problem. Especially mine, since word somehow got out that I am a fastidious administrator. But while I can administrate inanimate objects fastidiously, human beings- especially in the TESOL industry- are not rectangular objects and refuse to be filed neatly away in allocated folders. Not that I would want to, but since many of my non-teaching duties require the cooperation of this motley crew of rugged individuals, this week my sleep has been disturbed and my waking hours have seemed a nightmare.
Against this bleak backdrop, teaching has, fortunately, been a highlight. The second session of my Language Through Arts course went down extremely well, with a good chunk of time dedicated to an art-based information-gap activity I call “Detectives”. As I tell the student, the principles can be modified and the rules as loose or tight as needed for a particular group, giving the activity a variety of potential uses. One student is the detective and draws a “Wanted” poster on the board without having seen the suspect. The other students are witnesses, and have to describe the suspect from a picture only they can see. The activity can be used to review descriptive words, body parts or sentence patterns, and went down a storm in all three groups. I have seldom had such universal participation, focused target language use and laughter in a senior class… and after the activity they were also very attentive and involved in the theory aspect of the lesson.
As for my Foundation Year Writing students, I interspersed today’s lesson with a fun little personality/ learning style quiz, and demonstrated the value of the “funnel” introduction by asking some of the students to pour a bowl of lentils into a bottle. Using something kinesthetic and fun and different made the ideas more tangible for everyone, especially the reluctant writers. As for the more advanced students, we discussed how they could find some more challenging material in the supplementary book while others were still working on an activity. I did have a sense that this lesson cast the learning net a little wider than my writing classes last semester, when my teaching load limited my preparation time. Time is not the only ingredient of good lesson preparation, but it certainly helps.
Feeling good about today’s classes helped to boost me out of the blue funk and fatigue of the office politics. But the discontent has egged me on to start looking at greener pastures where my contribution would have more meaning. There is a reason why they call it “divine” discontent.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Monday, February 11, 2008
Yes. No. Yes.
By the end of today I realized something. It’s not easy. But it’s not impossible either.
There are never-ending battles to be fought in teaching, and often the enemy is misidentified as an uncooperative colleague, a shortage of materials, a bad schedule, a dreadful textbook, an exam-driven curriculum. They are merely foot soldiers. In education, the enemy is Ignorance. Sometimes even the best of us inadvertently join its ranks, and its winning strategy is the very fact that we don’t know it. Ignorance casts shadows. It is knowledge and wisdom that brings light.
There are never-ending battles to be fought in teaching, and often the enemy is misidentified as an uncooperative colleague, a shortage of materials, a bad schedule, a dreadful textbook, an exam-driven curriculum. They are merely foot soldiers. In education, the enemy is Ignorance. Sometimes even the best of us inadvertently join its ranks, and its winning strategy is the very fact that we don’t know it. Ignorance casts shadows. It is knowledge and wisdom that brings light.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Crashing with Krashen
No job is all blue skies and sunny days. In fact, as a teacher, I have come to expect unpredictable weather and learnt how to keep from being blown off course. It takes some steady steering sometimes. Today I had to hold on and steer for dear life.
Teaching-wise, actually it was not such a bad day at all. I added more to the modifications I had made to yesterday’s first lesson, and the third and final class went remarkably smoothly.
What went wrong was based not on teaching, the core of my job, but on the accumulation of several non-teaching tasks which, despite my well-reasoned appeals to distribute them evenly within the department, continue to be allocated to me. This is as unfair to other teachers, who feel left out of decision-making, as it is to me, who completely forgot how to execute the breathing process today. I shall omit the tantalizing details regarding more than one last straw that broke this camel’s back today. Fast-forward to this evening.
It all left me wondering what goes wrong: in every workplace there are struggles, but my own experiences, and others I have heard of, seem to suggest that TESOL (abroad) workplaces are exceptionally dysfunctional. Is it because the industry is not really- if we are to be honest- professionalized? Is it because cultural clashes are par for the course? Is it because no self-respecting, sane person would ever consider packing up to embark on an Anglovangelism mission? All of the above? Surely, the sheer lack of professionalism I have seen tolerated here would get a MacDonalds clerk fired. And we are educators?
Suffice it to say that my affective filter is on double-glazing this evening, and I am finding it very difficult to focus on my studies- or anything else, for that matter. What did help was flipping back to the goal sheet I had the rare prudence of drawing up before I started this course. It reminded me that I am going somewhere with this. I can, at least, aspire to be the lotus flower rooted in the mud.
Teaching-wise, actually it was not such a bad day at all. I added more to the modifications I had made to yesterday’s first lesson, and the third and final class went remarkably smoothly.
What went wrong was based not on teaching, the core of my job, but on the accumulation of several non-teaching tasks which, despite my well-reasoned appeals to distribute them evenly within the department, continue to be allocated to me. This is as unfair to other teachers, who feel left out of decision-making, as it is to me, who completely forgot how to execute the breathing process today. I shall omit the tantalizing details regarding more than one last straw that broke this camel’s back today. Fast-forward to this evening.
It all left me wondering what goes wrong: in every workplace there are struggles, but my own experiences, and others I have heard of, seem to suggest that TESOL (abroad) workplaces are exceptionally dysfunctional. Is it because the industry is not really- if we are to be honest- professionalized? Is it because cultural clashes are par for the course? Is it because no self-respecting, sane person would ever consider packing up to embark on an Anglovangelism mission? All of the above? Surely, the sheer lack of professionalism I have seen tolerated here would get a MacDonalds clerk fired. And we are educators?
Suffice it to say that my affective filter is on double-glazing this evening, and I am finding it very difficult to focus on my studies- or anything else, for that matter. What did help was flipping back to the goal sheet I had the rare prudence of drawing up before I started this course. It reminded me that I am going somewhere with this. I can, at least, aspire to be the lotus flower rooted in the mud.
Saturday, February 9, 2008
From Theory to Practice and Back Again
The students are back, and the once peaceful courtyards of the college are once again bustling and rustling with abayas and dishdashas hustling between classes.
The fall from lofty theory to solid practice is seldom a soft one, and my long-anticipated, lovingly-planned lessons had mixed success. On the one hand, the students had a wonderful time. On the other hand, the very danger I warned them about in kicked in: when you teach language through the arts (or, in my case, Language through the Arts), the learning process must never disappear from sight. As aware as I am of giving my students the tools to rationalize the method in their madness, somehow things slipped in today’s first session. There was that after-holiday excitement in the class that seemed to wrap everything in impenetrable cotton-wool, and though the activities had their success and the affective filters seemed way low, the learning may have been even lower. I have analyzed this to death and found no clear answers. In the second class (same lesson) I immediately made modifications according to my post-mortem findings, and this did make a vast difference- or was it simply the time of day?
All the theory in the world does not change the fact that learning is a puzzle that has, ultimately, never been solved.
The fall from lofty theory to solid practice is seldom a soft one, and my long-anticipated, lovingly-planned lessons had mixed success. On the one hand, the students had a wonderful time. On the other hand, the very danger I warned them about in kicked in: when you teach language through the arts (or, in my case, Language through the Arts), the learning process must never disappear from sight. As aware as I am of giving my students the tools to rationalize the method in their madness, somehow things slipped in today’s first session. There was that after-holiday excitement in the class that seemed to wrap everything in impenetrable cotton-wool, and though the activities had their success and the affective filters seemed way low, the learning may have been even lower. I have analyzed this to death and found no clear answers. In the second class (same lesson) I immediately made modifications according to my post-mortem findings, and this did make a vast difference- or was it simply the time of day?
All the theory in the world does not change the fact that learning is a puzzle that has, ultimately, never been solved.
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
A Note on Notes
With eyes sticky and head spinning from reading like a machine tonight, there is one compensation. Although note-taking is usually the part of literature review that inspires me least, I have found a technique that is extremely manageable, clear, memorable and easy to reference… and looks great on paper. My current cranial fodder is Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching (Richards, J. and T. Rodgers, 2001. Cambridge: CUP), which covers the different takes on language teaching that have evolved over time. Somehow, unlike most of the hefty texts, this makes for light reading (to use the term very loosely). Perhaps because it is chronological, it reads somewhat like a story. The nature of language and learning is, after all, a mystery worthy of Agatha Christie. This is one text I could almost refer to as a page-turner, at least for the reader who want to solve this mystery.
Rather than make outline-style notes as I usually do, I simply synthesized and jotted down the authors’ two sets of descriptors in one column and- Bob’s your uncle!- started filled in the specs of each approach in the following columns. This really gave a focus to my reading and put every subsequent method in perspective. It wasn’t even painful.
Note to self: Experiment with different note-taking styles relevant to what you are working on. Occasionally, it pays off.
Rather than make outline-style notes as I usually do, I simply synthesized and jotted down the authors’ two sets of descriptors in one column and- Bob’s your uncle!- started filled in the specs of each approach in the following columns. This really gave a focus to my reading and put every subsequent method in perspective. It wasn’t even painful.
Note to self: Experiment with different note-taking styles relevant to what you are working on. Occasionally, it pays off.
Monday, February 4, 2008
Schedule for a Bookworm
Finally got round to a bit of long-overdue strategic planning: printed out a calendar with a whole page for each month, and just sat down to pencil in some targets: February is for literature review, then in March the details must be slotted into an outline. From that point, the writing starts, and I want to leave ample time for “incubation” and editing, as well as incorporating feedback from my tutors. Then there is also the small fact that the assignment for this module must be submitted by Saturday, 3 May- at the far end of Muscat. Since I can’t do that on a Saturday, I will have to hand in a few days early. Which adds a little pressure and a lot of determination to the heady mix of emotions I have about my studies right now. The planning process also made me aware of the fact that with the next module I will have a month for literature review before attending the on-site course. I would feel so much more comfortable if I have acquainted myself with the existing body of knowledge first. I sense the handicap of having tumbled into the course at a late date, but am adamant to make up for lost time.
With time a-wasting, I have deliberated to go through the recommended reading list with a more selective eye, rather than reading through everything the way I normally would- and prefer to. The trouble is just that it is all so interesting that I want to spend more time with it.
On a positive note, I can see my progress as the discipline of studying an hour every morning and three hours in the early evening is becoming more natural. And gradually I am slaying the thousand-headed hydra of a reading list.
With time a-wasting, I have deliberated to go through the recommended reading list with a more selective eye, rather than reading through everything the way I normally would- and prefer to. The trouble is just that it is all so interesting that I want to spend more time with it.
On a positive note, I can see my progress as the discipline of studying an hour every morning and three hours in the early evening is becoming more natural. And gradually I am slaying the thousand-headed hydra of a reading list.
Saturday, February 2, 2008
Learning to be a Learning Organization
A professional note on a personal event, tonight. Tomorrow is my birthday, and in keeping with tradition I have prepared a sweet treat for my departmental colleagues at work. It is usually a substantial carrot cake, but since a cake can only have so many slices, I decided to try something different this year. Tomorrow’s treat is a tiny (cubic centimeter) piece of fondant wrapped in coloured tissue paper- one piece for each one of 120 staff members who are in my professional orbit. What makes this relevant to the matter of TESOL professionalism? During the Zen practice of wrapping 120 pieces of fondant, I recalled the venomous atmosphere of the department on my last birthday. For a long time, my work environment seemed to be a viper’s nest, and I had become so accustomed to working around this that I didn’t even notice at what moment the turning point came, or what made the difference. But the workplace I will walk into tomorrow morning is one that- despite its difficulties- houses individuals who are looking forward, rather than pulling against each other, or even backwards. This truly is something to celebrate.
Among the avalanche of reading materials for my current study module there is a review of the work of Peter Senge, whose 1990 opus The Fifth Discipline pioneered the concept of the ‘learning organization’. When discussing the concept with my tutor, I automatically considered my own workplace to be anything but a learning organization. In retrospect, I see that the workplace I had been evaluating was a construct of past experience. My image of it had not kept up with recent developments, both in the college itself and in my department. My organization does not yet reach the lofty goals set by Senge, but there has been a groundswell of dedication to making things better on a holistic, ongoing basis. Staff are no longer complaining about minute hiccups, they are conspiring to beat the negativity and poor standards that have plagued us. Though not yet what Senge would call a ‘learning organization’, it seems we may have taken the first steps towards learning to be a learning organization. And that is a gift I will not refuse.
Among the avalanche of reading materials for my current study module there is a review of the work of Peter Senge, whose 1990 opus The Fifth Discipline pioneered the concept of the ‘learning organization’. When discussing the concept with my tutor, I automatically considered my own workplace to be anything but a learning organization. In retrospect, I see that the workplace I had been evaluating was a construct of past experience. My image of it had not kept up with recent developments, both in the college itself and in my department. My organization does not yet reach the lofty goals set by Senge, but there has been a groundswell of dedication to making things better on a holistic, ongoing basis. Staff are no longer complaining about minute hiccups, they are conspiring to beat the negativity and poor standards that have plagued us. Though not yet what Senge would call a ‘learning organization’, it seems we may have taken the first steps towards learning to be a learning organization. And that is a gift I will not refuse.
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