Transformative Teaching

Please check out the video before reading the post.  It’s about a program started at Bernard College.

I happened to come across this video through On War and Words blog.  For me, this project is the embodiment of good teaching.  This is the type of teaching I strive for.

There is certainly a lot to like about this style of teaching, but by far the most important for me is the creation of a critical classroom.  Students were deliberately challenged to seek out new worldviews, question preconceived notions, and identify with the Other.  I truly feel that good teaching always does those things.

Seeking out new worldviews, especially ones that challenge our current beliefs is so important to be able to critically engage with the world around us, each other, and even ourselves.  These students had to delve into a very complex and difficult topic and really look at it.

More importantly, they are doing more than  just acquiring and then passing on that information.  They are living it.  They are not just reporting what someone else says.  They are being asked to truly understand that person and become them within the classroom.  This ability to get inside the head of an other is an invaluable skill and can teach so much, especially when you are asked to do it with the side you don’t agree with.

We as teachers have very powerful opportunities to bring these critical elements into our students lives and I feel that it is something many teachers either rarely consider or shy away from.

We should ask ourselves if our teaching is truly transformative or if it simply aids the accumulation of knowledge and skills.  Personally, I feel we should do both rather than one or the other.

This project also rests on some very sound pedagogical principles.  The students are given a lot of free-reign, most of the work is done by them, and the knowledge and skills are lived rather than passively received.

I don’t know 100% of how this classroom was run, but I bet I can make some pretty good guesses.  Students were given roles, but how they developed those roles, how they acquired the information, and how they presented it was probably largely left up to them.  I’m sure the teacher merely acted as a guide, someone who could point them in the right direction or make sure they were staying on track.  It’s a class where the students were mostly teaching each other.

Students were given specific goals and an excellent framework to work within, but after this, it seems that the achievement of those goals was their responsibility.  They were provided access to materials rather than spoon-fed answsers.

The most important point here is that the lesson was lived.  It was actively experienced.  I guarantee that the students will remember most of what they learned throughout this project.  How could they not?  This is the true benefit of drama in the classroom.

Your ability to implement this kind of teaching depends on a lot of things and not everyone will be able to do it to the same degree, but I think we should all try to do our best.  Simple things like access to materials for this kind of project may be hard to come by, but I imagine there is more than enough material available on the Internet, especially for an English class.

Another problem often faced in Turkey is inconsistent students.  Extended projects are quite hard to do with students that pop in and out of classes fairly frequently and can’t be counted on to come on time.  I’ve found it’s beneficial to initiate projects that can be done regardless of who shows up.  If you have to depend on key people, a big problem arises when they don’t come that day or come 2 hours late.

There is also the matter of school policies regarding controversial issues and the students’ own reactions to them.  We can simply work within our limits and I’d say we should push them as much as we can as well.  I did a number of posts a while back on different ways of introducing controversy into the classroom:  Juxtaposition, Displacement, Pushing.

What about you?  Do you consider your teaching to be critical or transformative in the lives of your students?  How do you accomplish this?  What hurdles do you have to overcome when doing so?  How feasible is it within the English classroom?

Critical Conferences 3: Expense and Exclusion

Continuing on from my first post in this series I now want to examine some possible economic inequalities that underlie conference attendance.

Many conferences outside of Turkey come with a very hefty price tag.  Not including travel, accommodation, and food, prices of some conferences that I attended this year ranged from 68 to 150 Euro.  Now that’s a huge chunk of change, especially for someone on a teacher’s salary in a country where the conversion rate from the local currency to the Euro is 2 to 1, not to mention that time taken off of work. Already, what I’m sure is the vast majority of educators are excluded from the bigger ELT conferences simply by price.

Interestingly enough, at my last international ELT conference, I found out that I seemed to be the only person paying my own way.  I was also the only person camping out behind the hotel in a tent .  Perhaps one reason why conference fees remain so high is that the average teacher doesn’t actually attend.  Expenses are generally covered by the institutions teachers work for.  This would mean that, by and large, only teachers working at schools already interested in development and with the expense account to finance it are given the chance to go.

In this respect, should ELT conferences be considered a tool of the elite?  Generally, only those from wealthy families, countries or institutions are able to attend the big international conferences.  What about the rest of the educators out there?

In contrast to this situation, there have definitely been some positive steps forward with conferences in the form of scholarships and live Internet feeds, and that’s a trend that I hope continues into the future.  Would it be possible to do more of this?  I think it would even be reasonable to charge a small fee for access to a video archive of talks and workshops.  Perhaps more conferences could take this direction in the future.

I’ve been told by some conference attendees and organizers that very little money is made off of conferences.  I’d be curious to know for what percentage of conferences that holds true.  I’ve also been told by others that prices can be much higher than they need to be.  Any readers who have organized conferences in the past, I’d be grateful to get some numbers on either one.

I think the best example of affordable conferences done right is actually Turkey.  Conferences in Turkey are usually free or rarely cost more than 15 Euro to attend.  Often included in that fee is transportation to and from the event and lunch at the very least.  In addition, as they are often organized by large universities or school conglomerates, accommodation is provided on site for a very low fee.  If conferences can be organized for this cheap, why can’t the same be done in other countries?  Standard expenses here are often comparable to other nearby countries, so there shouldn’t be that much difference.

I think, as members of the ELT profession, we need to critically examine the role of conferences and actually look at who they are benefiting.  You seem to see a lot of the same names and faces and conferences and, to me, that‘s more an indication of who has the ability to go rather than who has the desire to go.

What do you think?  Could conferences be cheaper?  If so, how?  What could be done to allow more teachers to be able to attend?  Would lower prices even mean more teachers would attend or do the ones that really want to go make it happen?  How many people pass on conferences because of expenses?  Also – from the other side – isn’t it better to at least have conferences than have nothing?  What would be the alternatives?

Critical Conferences: PLN Pitfalls

(This post and comments have been deleted.  Originally I had tried to edit out all references to specific people or events, but I was told that that’s not really acceptable.  After some thought, I decided they were right.  I had wanted to keep core issues and important points intact, but any kind of editing that doesn’t delete everything will end up distorting messages in ways the original authors hadn’t intended.  How can you edit an issue fairly?  I have decided that you can’t.  Instead, it’s better to erase the record completely and perhaps make a fresh start.

In some ways, deleting the record is painful as I feel like it’s giving in to the very things the post was fighting against.  However, there is no other fair way to do it. So, here is to new beginnings )