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Twitter challenge for WL teachers

2/22/2015

Fred Raven, a French teacher in Maine and former FLAME (Foreign Language Association of Maine) president posted this.
It sounds very interesting to me....

Fred wrote on the FLAME Yahoo group:

I just read an interesting blog post by George Couros. In the post the author asked a group of administrators the following question:
“What if every teacher tweeted one thing a day that they did in their classroom to a school hashtag, and they took five minutes out of their day to read each other’s tweets? What impact would that have on learning and school culture?”
Sometimes the biggest ideas are the simplest. Below is the World Language Challenge. I am going to give it try and see if it works. Who is with me?
This is the World Language Teacher Challenge.
For the school days in March, take a few minutes and tweet about something you in did class. Use the hash tag #.

#enWLclase

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The invisible classroom

2/20/2015

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“Hope is the only thing stronger than fear.” Suzanne Collins – The Hunger Games

My dear friend, mentor and encourager Jen Schongalla sent me a copy of The Invisible Classroom: Relationships, Neuroscience and Mindfulness in School by Kirke Olson just before Christmas. I have only read the forward, preface, introduction and chapter 1 but the parallels between the blog post I did on Laurie Clarcq's model of positive peer coaching “from the heart” and the book so far are striking.

Louis Cozolimo, Series editor for the Norton Series on the Social Neuroscience of Education says in the forward that:
In American education, what is most important about education has become invisible. If it is true that to a hammer, everything looks like a nail, then to modern educators, everything must be directly relevant to test scores. The human process of education has become a shadow, largely ignored by our educational system.

He also says that:
One of the negative side effects of an emphasis on test performance is a focus on weaknesses – mistakes, missing knowledge and the number of points away from perfection. This can be destructive to motivation, enthusiasm and exploration.

He then says that:
Gangs, on the other hand, who offer attachment, safety, and soul are doing better than ever.

Finally, Kirke says in the introduction that:
Extensive research over many decades shows that from the first moments of birth, human brains are wired to learn best within the context of loving relationships. This does not end because children enter schools, so cultivating a positive relational culture in your classroom and school supports learning and creates a better working atmosphere for you. What's love got to do with it? Well, everything!

I find it amazing what a paradigm shift it seems to be to focus on the positive – strengths instead of weaknesses – what one does well rather than wrong! I wonder why that is? Susie Gross' words that “nothing motivates like success” resonates loudly. I think that even more than TCI, focusing on student success and making sure that students know that I love and care for them has revolutionized my classroom and the teaching/learning experience.

So, I will end with this thought:

How can we communicate to ALL students that
1. We love and care about them.
2 We appreciate them and are glad they are in our class
3. Each person in the class is vital to the class community
4. Each student as a person is much more important to me than the content I am teaching.

What ideas might teachers share for strategies that would allow us to consciously and deliberately send those messages as a teacher and as a school? I will share three:
1. meeting each student at the door in a positive way every morning
2. by making an effort to show sympathy to and understand student behavior and to NOT take their behavior personally
3. by making a point within a few weeks time to check in with every student I have in class. It might range from asking how someone in their family is to how their team is doing or commenting on how I have noticed that they seem down, tired or distracted lately.

I am looking forward to what the rest of the book has to offer. I will keep you posted.

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Group work

2/11/2015

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The administrative team at my school has focused on "student engagement" for two years now. This year the focus has been on "increasing student engagement via group work." I am really struggling. I have tried to explain how group work and TCI really are not compatible. I have also encouraged folks to come see for themselves how TCI engages students.

Today we met again. We had to talk about challenges that group work presents and advantages of group work.   It was a long afternoon.   We now have to create a lesson plan based on group work and have a colleague observe that lesson.

I went to Ben's blog to see what had been written about group work.   There was one post. Ben opens that post by saying "We basically have no reason to group kids, but a lot of observers come in to our classrooms looking for exactly that so that they can check that box on their evaluation sheet."

He then shared an idea by Judy Dubois that incorporates group work: …I heard about the Dictogloss at the TESOL France conference. The teacher reads a short dictation At Normal Speed and students write down what they remember, then in groups put their notes together and try to come up with the original text. At upper levels, 3 + 4, this might be an interesting exercise. With students willing to stay in the target language, it would involve listening, writing, speaking and reading….

I then started wondering if there might be a place for group work when reading. Might there be a way to have students read a novel in groups in a productive and effective manner? I know that voices like Terry Waltz say that it is useless to have beginning learners listen to beginning learners read/speak in the target language. I wonder if that changes as time goes on and students begin to read quite well?

I am at a loss. The overarching issue, or course, is what we do when we are "forced" to do things at the local, state and federal level that seem to go against what we know to be best practices in language acquisition. So many teachers are facing this. Deb Soifer comes immediately to mind. She has suffered her fair share trying to do right by kids while pacifying the powers that be. Her sharing in the fall shows how much she has wrestled with this.

I would welcome your thoughts about how I can do what I am told and still do right by my students.   I think I will try Judy's idea. I continue to wonder about a role for groups in the reading of the novels.

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Peer Coaching From the heart

2/1/2015

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On January 17th sixteen teachers from area school and from as far away as NH, MA and CT, met in Lewiston, Maine, to join the TCI Maine, New England & Beyond Peer Coaching session at USM Lewiston - Auburn Campus.

Laurie Clarcq joined us from upstate New York. This session was particularly exciting and, I would argue, groundbreaking, because Laurie “experimented” with a new model for coaching, one she started at the TCI Maine New England & Beyond conference in October, 2014. It is being called “Coaching from the Heart.”

Laurie wanted to see what would happen if peer coaching were based solely on affirming what the teacher did right during their practice session. First, the peer coach would ask the teachers a number of questions ranging from “what did you feel went well,” to “what did you enjoy most during your lesson?” The teacher answered the questions and reflected in front of the entire group.

Next, each of the “students” shared one thing that was positive and effective for them. For six hours of peer coaching no negative feedback was given at all. The only feedback given to the teacher was positive, what worked, and what was effective. Over the six hours it became so clear what was happening. By emphasizing the positive aspects of each teacher's session, people watching heard over and over again it became clear to all what the teachers did that was effective and what was not so effective, even thought that was never mentioned.

A-ha moments from the day included “paying close attention to student responses made lesson go more easily” and “my lesson went best when I focused intently on the students.”

The comments following the session were overwhelmingly positive. Here is sampling:

“It was great to connect with colleagues and practice teaching in such a supportive environment. Laurie never ceases to amaze me with her energy, encouragement, wisdom, and positivity.”

“Loved the whole positiveness of the group and their comments. I think keeping it all positie gives everyone a comfortable zone to practice and feel safe.”

“I just love how open everyone is. The encouragement and positive feedback is what makes us willing to take risks, laugh at ourselves rather than beat ourselves up. treating ourselves the way we treat our students, with open acceptance and love and encouragement. It is a manifestation of attention…wherever your attention is what grows, so the more we can attend to love and encouragement the more we will all grow. i know that mainstream "advice" is all about finding the weakness and working on that, but i really think this happens naturally as we focus on what we are good at and expand that. THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH !!!”

I benefited greatly by the peer coaching training session. I am looking forward to running a similar session, based on Laurie's Coaching From the Heart, at the FLAME (Foreign Language Association of Maine) in March.

I am convinced that NOTHING will improve teacher effectiveness in the classroom than practicing in front of a sympathetic, supportive group. It seems to me that Laurie's idea of ONLY providing positive, what really worked in your lesson” feedback should be the focus in the future of peer coaching.

This may seem like we have fallen victim to the reigning philosophy of the day that everyone is a winner and negative feedback must never be given. I would argue that teachers already know what we do wrong...it is pointed out to us every day. How much more effective it is to show us what we do right/well than to show us how to fix what isn’t. Teachers came away with a confidence and enthusiasm for practicing the method than I had ever witnessed before. Comment after comment on the day reiterated the power of the positive. Only one teacher asked for specific constructive feedback on what could have been done “better.”

Might we be close to a new paradigm for peer coaching? I think so - I think it's being called “Coaching from the Heart.” Thanks Laurie Clarcq!

-Skip

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Twitter challenge for WL teachers

The invisible classroom

Group work

Peer Coaching From the heart

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