Leading From The Heart

by Tracy Rosen, teaching & consulting since 1996, blogging about it here since 2007. All views are my own and you should take them with a grain of salt, I do.

Month: July 2010

  • Being human and classroom management

    We are just about coming to the end of the classroom management section of my summer course (Teaching French as a 2nd Language). The more I learn about classroom management the more I realize that most of it is about being human and doing the right thing.

    Strategies that arose in relation to managing a 2nd language classroom in a way that stimulates learning weren’t much different than strategies for any class:

    • Provide clear expectations with consistent consequences
    • Ensure a lot of visual stimuli around the room
    • Respect where the student is coming from (in terms of culture, readiness, needs…)
    • Ensure the availability of (French) documents and resources (from posters to books to brochures to maps to dictionaries)
    • Promote the French culture (this could be a culture of math, science, literature…)
    • Provide authentic learning situations that keep students engaged
    • Provide alternate work spaces for students who need to move during the lesson

    The one thing I’d say is different has to do with the nature of the emotional climate in the room – learning a 2nd language can be scary and stressful. It’s very much about performance in front of our peers and worries about being laughed at and ridiculed will take precedence over learning.

    “We now understand that higher-level thinking is more likely to occur in the brain of a student who is emotionally secure than in the brain of a student who is scared, upset, anxious, or stressed.” (p. 461)
    — Mawhinney, T., & Sagan, L. (2007) The Power of Personal
    Relationships. Phi Delta Kappan, Vol. 88, No. 06, 460-464.     (pdf)

    I’d say, however, that each subject probably has its own emotional climate to deal with. There are times as teachers that we act as containers for the emotion in the room, in the sense that we manage and contain student emotion so that they can continue with their learning. No wonder we are often so tired at the end of the day!

    Do you think that classroom management is about being human and can transcend subject matter? Or do you think it is about something completely different? Does your subject have a specific nature that calls for specific management strategies?

  • Google knows my friends and family, cool or creepy?

    In writing a comment for Mr Gonzalez’s post about his plans to use iPads in Science, I did a little google search on iPad’s wifi issues because, to be honest, I don’t trust iPad’s network connection enough yet to use it in a classroom.

    I was surprised to see, at the bottom of the first search page a link written by someone from my professional learning community – Chris Parsons.

    Google Social Circle and Chris

    At first I thought, Cool! Look, it’s Chris! Then I noticed the fine print by the article title:

    Beta – My Social Circle – My Social Content.
    connected via twitter.com

    Has anyone else noticed this in their google searches?

    I’m going back and forth from this is cool, to this is creepy.

    On the same note, Google street view has a view of the front of my parents’ house, with my mom in it. She’s standing in their garage. Again, cool? creepy?

  • If you allow excuses in this business you will fail

    That’s a quote from Geoffrey Canada. He also says that some teachers can’t teach.

    Yes. And. Yes.

    Here’s the video where he says those things. It kept stalling for me, I hope it works better for you :)

  • Thoughts on learning about teaching French & classroom management

    I am taking a course this summer, a 27 day intensive (did I mention intensive?) course on the teaching of French as a 2nd Language. Each week we have about 12 assignments to complete and reflect on and since it takes place entirely online, the work is mainly in the form of written response. I haven’t written so much in French in a very long time. I received this comment from our instructor yesterday:

    Tes arguments sont convaincants et bien articulĂ©s. Tu m’as fait rire avec ton beau français! Merci, ça fait du bien!

    (Your arguments are convincing and well articulated. You made me laugh with your beautiful French. Thanks!)

    I’m not sure if the ‘beau francais’ part is tinged with a bit of sarcasm or not since at times I felt I was pulling vocabulary and turns of phrases out of my nether regions but at least she was smiling while she read it :) One thing that’s certain, the more I write the better I feel about writing in French. My writing seems to be more automatic now. I check my writing – in particular for things like gender and some aspects of verb usage (do I conjugate a certain verb with etre or avoir?) – with firefox’s French spellcheck**, translation tools, and by merely conducting a search for similar phrases in google. I am finding that more often than not I am ok and so I am starting to trust my writing more and doing those checks less often, which also helps to speed up the writing process. What helps IMMENSELY is that the focus is on the content and no one mentions anyone’s errors – a fine example of acquisition theory, that real learning happens through authentic learning situations with meaningful input and not through direct instruction in grammar.

    Now that I think about it though, there is no reason why my responses need to be in writing. At times the instructions do mention writing in particular (‘Écrivez un paragraphe pour expliquer chaque image et comment elle reflĂšte vos idĂ©es’ – Write a paragraph to explain each image and how it reflects your ideas) but at times they don’t. For example, part of the assignment I am looking at this morning asks:

    Cherchez une image en ligne qui décrit vos expériences et vos pensées sur la gestion de classe. Affichez votre image et expliquez ce que cette image signifie pour vous.

    (Find an image online that describes your experiences with and thoughts about classroom management. Post your image in the forum and explain what this image signifes for you.)

    SO – I am going to go with a voicethread for this one!

    Actually, I’ll be cheating a bit since it isn’t a new image but I commented on an image I have already used to talk about classroom management – the Timmy and Mr Whiskers comic. My new comment is the last one (or, if someone adds a comment, the 2nd of my comments) and it is in French. Do you think I should post a translation in English? (a few minutes later…) Ok, I just did! So, where you see my mug twice in a row, the first is my comment in French and the 2nd in English. Do you have any thoughts on classroom management? Any thoughts on particular challenges for management in certain courses or subject areas? Add to the conversation!

    You can see this full-sized here: Classroom Management Cartoon

    **(re: using spellcheck) which, like I tell my students, I need to be careful with. I used the word ‘atteint’ for ‘attente’ all day yesterday. The word I wanted means ‘expectations’ but the word I chose could mean many things, including ‘suffering from’ :) though, to be fair with myself, we can say ‘qu’on a atteint l’objectif’ for ‘we have met the objective’, so perhaps my error is understandable. French can be very confusing at times!

  • Student Grades…Who’s Responsible?

    Image licensed from CagleCartoons.com copyright Daryl Cagle, All Rights Reserved.

    I’ve been seeing this image more and more lately, each time I smirk, shake my head. It provokes a number of thoughts:

    beginning with, defensively….

    • Why is it ok to yell at teachers?
    • Why blame the teacher for a student’s failure?
    • How/when did this accountability transition happen?

    but soon morphing into…

    • Are the parents/student upset because they were surprised?
    • If so, do you blame them?
    • I like that teachers are more approachable now, though I think the teacher has a responsibility to manage communication more effectively so that we don’t get a blast in the face from angry parents.

    What do you think?