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.

Category: Classroom

  • 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!

  • Cite, I say, Cite! Student engagement & improved learning

    I was asked to find some sources to support this statement I made:

    Student engagement is primary. Of course it guarantees learning.

    Here are a few. I’m hoping you can add some more :)

    Engagement Theories

    Strategies and how-to’s

    And, really, I can go on. Some of you know how much I love to do research! But I’m hoping for you to help out here. What proof do you have that engagement improves learning? What do you base that proof on?

    Thanks!

  • Let them be bored! For real?

    Joanne Jacobs recently posted some data about boredom levels among high school students. She closed the post with a quote from a principal in Hawaii who, when confronted with the stats that 50% of the students in his school liked school, asked the questions – “What about the rest of the kids? What are those kids doing?” (data from Teaching Now – News Flash: High School Students Are Bored.)

    Those are the kinds of questions that help to create challenging, engaging schools. I was a bit … displaced … to read some of the comments to her post. For me they represent a huge disconnect between adults (some) and students (most), steeped in a bitter brew. Or maybe those who feel that way are bored in their own lives (not challenged) and don’t feel that anyone deserves a non-boring life. Or maybe… I don’t know. But they certainly don’t represent the ‘it takes a village’ attitude we need for raising good kids. I don’t see caring. I don’t see hope.

    My query is, just how well do the comments represent what the majority of people think about learning in high school?

    • Do most adults in a given school community (parents, in particular) think that we should just make the kids sit and listen because that’s the best way to learn?
    • Do people really think that high school is a place where we should be learning how to sit still for long periods of time?
    • Can it be true that people think boredom is necessary?
    • Are educators working against the grain of community ideals?

    Yay for Topher who took the time to point out the details of the issue, as presented in the article upon which the post was based. I love how he concludes his comment:

    …it’s also important to note that students in middle and high schools, while far from being mature adults, are not dullards or wild animals who need to be tamed and broken in. It’s disheartening to see how quickly people tend to forget what it’s like to be in a lecture-only classroom and to actually perpetuate the cycle of (usually – some lecture-only teachers are great) bad teaching.

    I strive to make my classroom an active place of learning, one in which the students enjoy being. I know that it doesn’t always happen, especially when juggling a number of different courses a term. The thing is, I talk to my students and am always working towards engagement. I can not imagine teaching any other way. I can not imagine cultivating a sense of boredom as a life lesson in how to learn. I just can’t.

    ***The image was taken from a strange little blog post about observational data re: the stereotypes of asian and white students collected while the author was bored in class:

    I’m in class for four hours a day, which means I am bored to the brink of insanity 20 hours a week. I’m amazed I’m not bald from pulling my hair out from the roots. There’s nothing else to do but to analyze the people in my classes.

  • Reality check re: time

    We have 52 teaching days left this year before the evaluation period. And that includes the 2 weeks my grade 11s will spend away from school on stage.

    Holy crapola.

    52 days to accomplish the world!

    Luckily spring seems to have come early this year. I just witnessed a MOSQUITO flying up the wall in my living room! In March. In Eastern Ontario. Maybe the warm weather will make the balance of the year seem to go on forever. I feel I have so much work to do with my kids, as if we are just beginning. Some of them have achieved so much this year.

    They amaze me every day,

  • What motivates us to do good?

    This was what I posted on the blog for my Contemporary World Issues class today. I decided to share it here, too. Have you been thinking of essential questions to do with our reaction to the devastation in Haiti? Have you been talking about this with your students?

    —

    I have been addicted to the Haiti earthquake relief efforts. I spent much of the weekend reading news updates, blog updates, facebook group statuses, and listening to radio shows about how the world is reacting to what is happening in Haiti.

    Countries, organizations, and individuals around the world are reaching out, to help in any way. A question that comes to mind for me is…

    What motivates us to do good in the face of tragedy?

    Some of the documents that triggered this question for me were the following:

    A family’s wait for news from Haiti – I heard about this story in an interview on CBC this morning. I asked myself what motivated the journalist to help? Does it matter?

    Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie Donate $1 Million to Doctors Without Borders – Angelina Jolie said, “It is incredibly horrible to see a catastrophe of this size hit a people who have been suffering from extreme poverty, violence and unrest for so many decades,” If that is the case, why did it have to take an earthquake to inspire the donation?

    B.C. students in Haiti arrive in Canada – Are Canadians helping Canadians in Haiti first? Is that why the Canadian government is sending help?

    Wyclef Jean and Yele Haiti – The website of Wyclef Jean’s Haiti Relief organization.

    Here is a video of Wyclef Jean defending himself and his organization in the face of accusations of misconduct. I found it via this page at npr.

    Here are some other resources:

    Disaster in Haiti – CBC full coverage

    Haiti Earthquake 2010 – New York Times coverage

    Satellite images help focus Haiti earthquake relief

    Haiti Earthquake – Day 5: Reporting with a camera

    What do you think?

    —

    For those who are interested, this is what I’ve asked my students to do. It was a last minute, put together kind of assignment. I’ve put our current work in Contemporary World Issues on hold so as to focus on the events unfolding around the world in response to the earthquake in Haiti.

    —

    Start alone – Write a quick comment to our class blog with your gut reaction to the question, What motivates us to do good in the face of tragedy?

    Branch out – Explore the question in your research groups. Start with these documents and then find your own. Your group will need to:

    Document your resources – this means include links to any and all articles/images/video/audio etc… that you use in your research.

    Your group needs to come up with a new question that springs from the research you do about this question. Sound complicated? Don’t worry you’ll figure it out :)

    Present your research and your new question in an innovative way. Some ideas are:

    webpage – shortText is easy to use though less flexible than something like a wiki, which is easier for all group members to access. PBWorks is free for educational use and super easy to get started.

    Video – you can decide how to present your ideas via video. If you choose this option you must include your resource list separately.

    If you have another idea, clear it with me but please note that I will not allow PowerPoint for these research projects. Time to think outside the PowerPoint box!