Learning is Messy!

Image courtesy of Provinciales Primary School

What’s your vision of the ideal classroom?  Is it a classroom where every learner sits calmly and quietly?  Do students always raise their hands before talking?  Are they always focused on their task?

In my experience, this is what’s passed down to us as the ideal class.  But whose ideal class is it?  The teacher’s of course.  The teacher is the one who wants all the students sitting quietly and listening only to them.  They don’t want the chaos of 20 students all talking at once.  Every student should be focused on their task whether they find it interesting or not.

My classrooms rarely fit this vision because I think learning is loud.  Learning is messy.  I try my best to make learners interested in my lessons.  They don’t sit quietly because they aren’t going to get a sticker, they’ll be put in time out, or I’ll yell at them.  In fact, they generally don’t sit quietly at all.

When young learners are engaged in a lesson, they’re excited; they want to shout and move around.  A loud classroom means that they’r really happy and enjoy what we’re doing, which will make them feel positive about English and learning.  What more could I ask for?

It’s also great practice.  Sure, I could have students raise their hand before speaking, but then only one student would speak and they’d only say one sentence.  Letting them all shout out the answers, or shouting to be chosen next, or shouting to say what they want to do next is great.  Sure it’s loud and chaotic, but not only are they getting tons of practice, they’re using English to express themselves.  To say what they want to say and to get their desires and interests across.  They’re speaking in their own voice, and not just when the teacher says it’s ok.

I also love projects and tasks and role-plays where all the learners are trying it together.  Will some get side-tracked?  Of course, they’re only 5 years old.  But what would they be doing otherwise?  If you only have one pair of students at a time do something, then the others will simply be bored in their chairs and not learning anyway.  At least if they all participate, they’ll work with each other.  And the surprising thing is, most of them will do the activity to the best of their ability.  Even better, they’ll start teaching each other.  There’s nothing cuter than seeing a five-year-old teach another five-year-old how to buy fruit in English

Yes, my classrooms are loud.  Yes, learners are often moving around and may get off task.  But they’re also learning to express themselves.  They’re learning to take responsibility, share, and help each other too.  Learning may be messy, but there sure is a lot of learning ,even if it’s spread all over the classroom floor

Preventing Punishment

Image courtesy of Bankrupcy Litigation Blog.

Often it’s not what you do to stop unwanted behavior when it occurs, but what you do to prevent it that really counts in creating a classroom environment productive to learning.

There are 3 main things I look at to prevent problems occuring in the classroom:  clear guidelines & expectations, classroom awareness, and engaging activities.

Guidelines and expectations are something that need to be set right from the beginning.  For many young learners, school is a new environment and it’s often not clear to them what they are doing there or what is expected of them while they are there. 

This is especially true if your school’s program has a different environment from other schools they are going to.  In Asia, schools are very disciplined and structured, so when students come to classes at my school, they are very unsure of how to behave.  The play-type atmosphere and more open environment makes many young learners feel like they can do anything in our classrooms.  In fact, they don’t know what to do with themselves because they’ve never been in such a free environment before and this often has them bouncing off the walls the first few classes .

Not only should expectations be set early, but they should also be discussed with the students.  As teachers, we should be careful not just to set rules and expect students to follow them.  We should reach a level of mutual understanding with the students and explain the reasons for rules.  Explaining to students that it’s important to respect each other, so we should listen when others are speaking is better than simply saying “Be quiet and listen.”  Even learners as young as 3 years old can participate in a discussion about the reasons behind most rules.

This goes equally for activities as well as the general class.  Whenever a new activity is being introduced, the rules and expectations for that activity should be explained clearly beforehand.

Being aware of your classes’ needs is another easy fix for preventing students from acting out.  If two students are always picking on each other, move them to different seats. If students can’t sit in a circle without fidgeting, give them chairs. 

It’s also about reading your class.  If students are getting bored with an activity, change to a new one.  If students have a lot of energy, get them up and moving.  If they can’t focus as a group any more, move to an individual craft.  

Out of all these preventative measures, I think the most important and effective is engaging your students.  As Simon mentioned in a comment on my last post, the primary reasons most children act up are because they are bored or the task is too difficult.   This is something I commonly see in classrooms and remember from my own schooling.  When students are bored, they lose interest and start to behave in ways that are unproductive for learning. 

Making engaging lessons comes down to asking and answering the right questions.  What is the age and developmental level of the students?  What are their interests?  How long are their attention spans?  If you can answer these questions, it’s pretty easy to create activities that are the right level and length that match your students interests.  Engaged learners are active learners and don’t have time to get distracted.

Also, one thing I’ve notice is the number of students an activity involves has a huge impact on how interesting it is.  Designing activities that have all the learners participating are much better than ones where only one or two at a time participate.   

What other ways do you use to create a positive learning environment and prevent disruptive behavior in your classrooms?

Related Posts:

Discipline & Punish:  The Birth of the School

Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the School

Image courtesy of Brandon’s Useless Knowledge

Many countries around the world still use punishment, even corporal punishment, as a common classroom management technique. This has wide repercussions not only in the classroom, but within society as a whole.

The underlying idea is this – if you punish a child (or adult for that matter) they will be deterred from doing the same thing again because they don’t want to be punished.

Well, if you ask me, that’s a pretty wrongheaded way to go about it. It’s an overly simplistic behavorist model of both learning and morality, i.e. if you shock the dog, it won’t bark any more.

This is wrongheaded for two reasons. 1) It makes the assumption that humans are basically evil and need to be programmed to make the right choices (does anyone else see the influence of Christian thought on this one?). I, for one, don’t don’t feel such assumptions are productive. 2) It also removes reflection and empathy from the process of human interaction. Instead, deliquents are isolated and punished, supposedley so they can “think about what they’ve done”, but we all know that that never happens. Something more along the lines of “boy, do I hate that teacher. You just wait till I get you back!“.  Rather than initiating a dialogue and engaging with the class/society, people are being told what to do, how to behave, and are being removed from group.

What do punishments actually teach anybody? They primarily teach the sacred priniciple of “don’t get caught”. Punishment, instead of modifying behavior (which is the proposed goal), simply teaches people that they need to be smarter about doing the wrong thing. In effect, if you can get away with it, then it’s not a problem. This is why students simply find better and better ways to cheat or why you realize the dog is still drinking out of the toilet bowl every time you leave the house.

What we really want is reflection and internalization of moral principles. You shouldn’t cheat because it’s the wrong thing to do and it can have a negative impact on your learning, not because you’re afraid the teacher will give you an F if they catch you.

The other really big problem with punishment is that it builds up resentment and a negative classroom environment. How many students have you met coming out of detention that were reformed or forgiving towards the authority that put them there? How many ex-cons come out of prison a new person and with no grudges against the cops, the system, the government? The entire set of assumptions systems of punishment are based are simply ridiculous.

Instead we want to create a classroom and society where people are taught to behave the right way because they want to and because they believe it’s the right thing to do. The next few posts will explore alternatives to punishment in the classroom.

What are your thoughts on punishment in the classroom or more widely within society as a whole?

Related Posts:

Preventing Punishment

3 Kinds of Teachers by Anita Kwiatkowska

Anita Kiwatkowska, a.k.a. Little Miss Bossy, is a rising star on the ELT blog scene.  She is currently a YL teacher at private school in Istanbul, Turkey.  She also happens to be one of the few people in my PLN I have met in person.  Her blog deals with YL in ELT among other things.  I am very happy to have her over here for a guest piece, so without further ado…

There are three kinds of foreign language teachers.

1. A teacher whose nationality is the same as the students’ and they share the same mother tongue (e.g. a Turkish teacher of English teaching Turkish students)
2. A teacher who does not share the same nationality with his/her students and does not know their mother tongue (e.g. an American teacher who does not know Chinese teaching Chinese students)
3. A teacher whose nationality is different from his/her students’ but he/she knows the students’ mother tongue (pretty) well

In a great majority of countries priority is given to teachers type 2 i.e. native speakers who do not know their students’ mother tongue. But is it really the best option?

I have been lucky enough to pass through all these stages. Teaching in Poland I knew the mother tongue of my students – Polish. Having started my job in Turkey, I knew no Turkish whatsoever. Living in Turkey for almost three years now, I know enough Turkish to get by.

Of all the kinds of teachers, number 2’s job is the most difficult, especially when you have to teach Young Learners. With adults it is a lot easier even if they are beginners. Adults are capable of abstract thinking, can concentrate longer and their knowledge of the world enables them to guess a lot from context.

Young Learners, on the other hand, come to the classroom knowing (almost) no English. Eliciting usually fails, as they have no previous knowledge of English. Teaching them basic instructions involves a lot of miming but eventually a teacher is still not sure whether his/her students got what he/she was trying to explain or not. And how to check whether they understood? Concept check questions are definitely not recommended. Those of you who do not agree should try to explain the word ‘only’ to a bunch of seven-year-olds.

Another issue is classroom management. Even if you succeed in having the kids sit down and do their work, there are always cases of students misbehaving. If you tell them off, the only thing they will understand is that you are angry and possibly why you feel so. Your exact words however will remain a mystery to them.

Some students, to make the matter worse, curse and use bad language in the classroom. The only way for a teacher type 2 to find out that it takes place is after other kids start complaining to their parents. And who is then to blame? The teacher, of course.

Teachers type 1 are in a much better position. In case of an emergency caused by bad behaviour or any other problems, they can immediately switch to the students’ mother tongue and have it all settled in a couple of seconds.

These teachers have also learned the foreign language themselves. They know what the process feels like and can easily anticipate learners’ problems. Most likely they will be able to explain the rules of grammar to the students better having experienced learning them before.

On the other hand, teachers type 1 often overuse L1 usage in the classroom. It’s not that I am criticizing non NESTs – explaining things in the students’ mother tongue is simply faster and a lot easier.

To take the matter further, non native speakers of a given language tend to mispronounce certain sounds absent in their mother tongue or have difficulties with stress and intonation of English. Consequently students of non-native teachers, being exposed to mispronounced words, start copying the teachers’ mistakes and the vicious circle goes on.

In contrast with teachers type 1 and 2 is teacher type 3 – myself at the moment. I no longer have the same problems as teacher 2 and knowing my students’ mother tongue well enough lets me have more control of what is going on in the classroom.

Comparing all the types, I can honestly say that being teacher type 3 works best both for me and my students. We feel more comfortable and relaxed in each others’ presence and dealing with difficulties is no longer the main issue. Most importantly this situation provides an opportunity for a constant intercultural dialogue which enhances learning on both sides – what more can one wish for?

Related Links

Using Turkish in the Class

Controversy in the Classroom: Displacement

In addition to juxtaposing your country with the students’ you can also move the topic outside of the students’ country.  There are many topics that are quite taboo in Turkey or that the students are uncomfortable talking about that might be more safely approached from a distance.

The example I will lesson I provided is on sex education.  Even though the students may not be comfortable talking about the issue in Turkey (and I think this is an issue almost anybody can be uncomfortable talking about), you can still introduce the topic and then let the students choose how close to home they will bring it.  If the students keep the debate rather hypothetical or centered outside their home country, fine.  If they want to include their own country in the debate, great.  It’s better if it’s up to them.  The class will be more comfortable if they can set their own boundaries.

Most classes will probably move the debate to their own country as it’s a natural progression.  Give it a shot and see what happens.

Lesson plan:  Sex Education for Muslims in Sweden

Related Posts:

Controversy in the Classroom:  Juxtapostion

Controversy in the Classroom:  Push Your Students

Controversy in the Classroom: Juxtaposition

I for one love controversial topics in the classroom and I love dealing with social issues in Turkey.  These topics are always very relevant to the students’ lives, spark discussion, and they go beyond the classroom and English in terms of importance.  Things like domestic violence, environmentalism, workers’ rights, conspiracy theories, ethnic minorities, politics, and religion are all topics I personally enjoy teaching and that are very engaging and productive.

One of the things I have the biggest trouble with is safely introducing these topics into the Turkish classroom.  As my wife constantly tells me, it’s okay for criticism to come from within Turkey, but it’s forbidden for foreigners to say anything that could even remotely be taken as disrespectful.  This is also exacerbated by the fact that I’m American.  Most students here have a strong distrust of America and a very large number of students and Turks I’ve met on my travels have supposed I’m an undercover agent of some kind.  According to many Turks, America monitors the online activity of Turks on anything from Facebook to YouTube to Twitter.  These internalized suspicions make it difficult to broach a controversial issue without the students assuming you are spying on them and reporting back to some all-knowing American intelligence agency.

On top of this is the issue of fierce Turkish pride.  Any attempt to bring in something of social importance that is related to Turkey can very often be met with anger and resentment.  A feeling of inferiority over and against old imperial powers, western domination, and America’s current hegemonic global policies can create strong reactions against topics that may make Turkey look bad.  Image is incredibly incredibly important here.  It’s tied to honor.

With these problems in mind, how do you introduce very relevant and provoking topics into the classroom in a constructive and sensitive way?  I think the most important thing to do is to develop a strong rapport with your students and to remain as neutral as possible in the classroom.  If you’ve developed a lot of trust with your students and try very hard not to offend anyone and to give everyone’s opinions equal weight, your students will be much more willing to engage you on controversial issues.

Other than that, one of the ways I try to do introduce these topics is by juxtaposing a text/discussion/listening/video of the topic regarding my own country with one regarding theirs.  If you show that you are just as willing to address the issue in your own country back home, it puts the topic on equal footing with addressing the topic in their country.  The method tends to allay suspicions and prevent against wounded pride better than if you had done the topic on only the students’ country.

Basically just choose your topic and either make sure to bring in material from your own country or discuss the issue in your own country before bringing up the issue in Turkey.  I’ll post my lesson on workers’ rights as an example.  I start off with the famous Triangle Fire from American history and then I move onto the terrible working conditions present in the Tuzla shipyards not more than 40 minutes from Istanbul.  Other issues that could be brought up are miners in Zonguldak, child labor, and May Day protests.

Turks being as zealously nationalistic as they are, I still have had a few students here or there that are upset when these issues are brought into the classroom, but I have never had an incident and the vast majority of students find it interesting and relevant.  They are often nervous talking about such issues, but, at the same time, they think they are very important and think they should be discussed.  And, believe me, your English classroom may be the only place the students ever get a chance to discuss some of these issues.

Most schools in Turkey have a policy about not bringing up controversial, political, or religious issues.  What do you think?  Do you use controversial topics in class?  Has it ever come back to bite you?  Do you find them more productive that other more mundane topics?

Lesson plan:  Part 1 - The Triangle Fire, Part 2 – The Tuzla Shipyards, Part 3 – An Evil Corporation (by courtesy of Chris Westargaard)