The Heart of Dogme

I love dogme.  Not just because I believe it’s an effective teaching approach, but because it makes my classroom come alive, makes it breath, makes it real.  Dogme reminds me that classrooms can be real places where people interact and build relationships, not places where they come only to acquire information.

Karenne’s latest challenge asks why dogme is materials light.  Dogme is not materials light because it doesn’t favor materials (like course books), it’s materials light because it’s about the people in the class and the language they use to connect with each other.  With passion, I join Mark Andrews and say classrooms are a community, and should be approached as such!

When Scott first wrote on dogme ten years ago he asked from the heart, with this mountain of materials and resources, “Where is the story?  Where is the inner life of the student in all this?  Where is the real communication?”  EFL classrooms were and still are putting materials at the forefront of the classroom rather than the student and that’s where “we lost the plot.”

This is the true reason I am a dogmeist.  This is why dogme can be used with or without course books, with or without tech, while teaching grammar or while having a conversation.  What dogme is really advocating is that we put the relationships of the people in the class at the front and center.  Not the material.  Not the technology.  Not the subject knowledge.  Dogme’s original vows of chastity and its current guidelines are merely suggestions gently helping us remember this.  If we’re not sure how to go about this, dogme offers us what seems to me like a pretty good place to start.

Where, I ask you, is the pulse of the course book?  Can you feel the breath of the IWB?  These things are merely objects, tools to be used to mediate our interaction with each other.  But if used too much, they can become obstacles rather than aids.  By stripping away the chaf, we can find the true life’s blood of our classroom in the souls of the individuals present.

Like most teachers, I try to get feedback from students periodically on my classes.  After I finished my last Upper-Intermediate class here is the word-for-word response I got from a 16-year-old girl.

When I first started to the course, I was expecting to find a class with a serious atmosphere and a teacher who teaches grammar or uses books’ stupid texts and exercises all the time. I was so glad when it turned out to be a fun class after my first day. The way you teach is definitely excellent. I mean, you were making us speak as if we were sitting in a cafe, chatting with a few friends, and you were teaching without using books, writing someting the board and expecting nothing but taking notes from us. Most subjects were fun, too. (Thanks Yaprak ) [Emphasis mine]

This is the atmosphere I aim to create in my classroom.  It’s an atmosphere where the students view each other as friends, where they feel relaxed, and where they feel like they can talk about anything. It’s a classroom that helps us remember we’ve come together for a common purpose and we can take each other by the hand and find the way together.

Relationship & Trust Building Activities:

Circle of Trust

Trust Falls

Human Knot

Tank Game

More Posts on Dogme:

Unplugged Lesson Plans

Dogme in the Mind of a Teacher:  Memory Techniques

Dogme in the Mind of a Teacher:  Banking

An Emergent Curriculum

The Road to Teaching Unplugged

Turkish Students Learning Not to Trust

One of my biggest grievances living in Turkey is the observation that nobody seems to trust anybody else.  For this reason it’s very hard to meet people outside of established social networks and friendships tend to be very shallow unless huge amounts of time and effort are put into breaking down barriers.  One of the biggest reliefs of traveling outside of Turkey is often the renewed ability to simply walk up to people and be open (here it’s important to note there is a chasm of difference between attitudes towards strangers who are visiting Turkey and those actually living here).  Sadly, living here often develops high levels of distrust.

As this has always been an observation I’ve found to be quite accurate, I was very interested to come across an actual study that said the same thing, specifically in the context of Turkish education.  The post and link to the study by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) can be found here at Istanbul Notes.

The study sites that the degree of interpersonal trust ranges from 16-12% in upper levels of education and that distrust actually increases as education increases.  Living here, it’s something I do not find surprising at all, but it is an incredibly worrying statistic.

It’s clear from this cultural context that building trust in your classroom is probably one of the single most important things you can do.  Ideas to accomplish this can be found linked at the bottom of this page.

I could go into multiple essays on the reasons behind this, but I’d be more interested in hearing from the Turkish readers of this blog or from foreign teachers teaching here.  Why do you believe this is the case and what can be done to change the trend (at least in our classrooms)?

Related Posts:

Istanbul Notes:  Learning Not to Trust

Circle of Trust

Trust Falls

Human Knot

Tank Game

Building Relationships 2 – The Human Knot

This activity works best with between 8-15 people.  If there are too few it goes really quick.  If there are too many it simply takes too long or just doesn’t work.  You can split your class into groups and make it a race if you have a larger class.

Participants need to form a circle.  Then everyone needs to reach across the circle and lock hands with someone else, grabbing the hands of two different people.

Now tell students that they have to untangle themselves without breaking their grips.

This is a great trust-building exercise.  Most people don’t believe it’s possible at first but the vast majority of groups untangle themselves successfully.  In the end, all participants should be facing outwards, forming the original circle.

If participants get really stuck you can allow one unclasp and reclasp.

The sense of accomplishment when the knot is untangled is fantastic.

Obviously this activity brings out a lot of language related to body parts, prepositions of movement and place, directions, and imperatives.

Here’s a video of the activity being done (apologies for the religious theme):

Related Posts:

Building Relationships 1: Tank Game

Building Relationships 3:  Trust Falls

Building Relationships 4:  Circle of Trust

Building Relationships: War & Peace

Not too long ago Marisa Constantinides posted a piece that discussed building trust and relationships in the classroom.  I think this is probably one of the most important things you can do to create a positive classroom environment.  This series will look at a number of different ways to build relationships in the classroom between you and the students as well as between the students themselves.

I think relationship building is often overlooked in the classroom.  How many lesson plans list “to build bonds” or “to establish trust” in their objectives?  Activities designed to build relationships and a positive environment are extremely beneficial for lowering the affective filter.  By doing such activities we are in fact laying the groundwork for a constructive environment in which learning can occur. It’s well worth the time to think about and plan for.  Isn’t teaching really about relationships after all?  The learning of a language really comes second to this.  I think we have all seen teachers who do everything right, but if they don’t have a connection with their students, the lessons still fall flat.

Luckily for those of us in Turkey, one of the greatest things about Turkish students is how quickly they bond with each other.  Despite the many differences that exist, they will quickly form a cohesive whole without a whole lot of prompting by the teacher.  This is a strength you can exploit to the fullest.  Often classes will go to great lengths to stay together and adding or taking away students can be quite disruptive.  Although, again, new members will quickly be accepted into the group given a little time.  I think the most common positive feedback I get from my classes is that they “made some good friends.”

One way to build up bonds between students and get them to learn to rely on each other is to use pair or group work situations where they have to work together to complete the goal.  Of course, any goal-oriented group activity accomplishes this, but something with a physical element and an element of challenge can get much better results.

When I worked in domestic violence we did all kinds of trust-building exercises and I decided to modify one of them to fit an ESL context.  First, let’s look at the lesson plan and then let’s highlight some important aspects of it.  Here’s the lesson plan:

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Tank Battle!

Level: Elementary & Up

Objectives:

• Build up trust in the class
  Imperatives
  Direction vocabulary
  Prepositions of place & movement

Plan: Walk into the class and draw a big bull’s-eye up on the board (I like to tape a picture of a tank in the center).  Draw a line on the floor where people have to throw from.  Then throw a crumpled up paper ball on the floor.  Point to the ball to indicate that you want it.  You also might want to tell students not to touch it.

Leave the classroom and put on a blindfold.  Enter the classroom and start stumbling around as if you’re searching for something.  The students should catch on immediately that you want the ball.  If not, ask where the ball is.

The students should guide you to the ball using whatever language they have.  Then indicate that you want to hit the target.  Again, students will guide you to throw it using whatever language they know.  You can scaffold by asking.  For example, “should I throw it (mime throwing)?”

After you have successfully thrown the ball at the target, ask the students how close you were to the bull’s-eye.  Then put up on the board any language they used and try to elicit some more and add your own.  Students will need language like, go forward, move your hand to the right, bend down, , turn to the left, throw it hard, etc.

Depending on the level of the class you might want to do some TPR with this.  Play a quick game of Simon Says to familiarize them with the necessary vocabulary. Or you could set up 3 chairs at the front of the class and have students come up in groups.  The person in the middle gives commands while the other two follow.  Work through a couple groups this way.

Once you are sure people are fairly familiar with the necessary language, point to the tank and ask them what it is.  Ask them when tanks are used.  Tell them that they are going to learn to fight a war in English!

The Rules of War are:  1) No touching , 2) Stay behind your tank at all times, 3) Commanders cannot touch the balls, and 4) if you get hit with a ball, you are out.

Split the class off into pairs.  One person in each group is the tank.  They will be blindfolded.  The other person is the commander.  They will give the directions.

Scatter a bunch of tank balls on the floor (crumpled pieces of paper).  Explain to the students, by way of demonstration, that the tanks must pick up a ball and try to hit another tank with it. Once a tank is hit, they are out until the next round.

Blindfold the tanks and spin them around.  Keep track of who hits who.  The first round the teacher should monitor the game, but the 2nd round should have the teacher participating with someone else monitoring.  If a group uses L1, they are automatically out.

Probably after round 1 you will need to revise some of the necessary commands and directions.  Play the game for as many rounds as the students are interested in.

Get feedback on the lesson and tell students they are now ready to fight a war in English

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The first thing to notice is that the teacher demonstrates the activity themself.  When building trust, we can never ask the learner to do something we don’t do ourselves.  We can model the activity and create an atmosphere where students feel comfortable copying us.

Simon Says is your typical TPR.  All the students perform the same actions and so nobody really feels embarrassed (well, too embarrassed anyway )and it helps foster group bonds, especially as they see the teacher joining in.

The blindfold activity is great because students really have to trust one another to guide them and there is a competative element that makes it really fun.  You could also split the class up into teams, one with blue blindfolds and one with red, to foster more comraderie.

In the end everyone gets a laugh and they really start to rely on each other.  It’s a good way to get classes working together.  They really learn to trust each other and the element of putting yourself out there and taking risks creates an environment that encourages further risk-taking in the class when it comes to language use.

Here is the downloadable lesson.

What do you think?  Do you ever focus on relationship-building as a lesson objective?  What other activities can you think of that build group cohesiveness, relationships, trust, and/or a positive atmosphere?

On another note, I did a humorous guest piece over on TEFLTastic with Alex Case on what managers look for in their teachers here.

Related Posts:

Building Productive Classroom Relationships

Building Relationships 2:  The Human Knot

Building Relationships 3:  Trust Falls

Building Relationships 4:  Circle of Trust