audience

Our Why #ccourses

I have already mentioned in another post how I stumbled upon Connected Courses, how it was basically a call to arms from my friend Maha Bali and how I extended that call to another friend Carla Arena. I’d browsed some of the pre-course resources available on their site and remember finding it most invigorating to read Mike Wesch’s reflections on why the whys are so critical for the whole open and connected learning environments to thrive. I then watched the amazing video suggested for inspiration, This is Water by David Foster Wallace, and was absolutely blown away by it. All that had really struck a chord within, yet little did I know that it would yield precious fruit so soon. I guess that’s my why for sitting here and writing this post right now. I feel truly compelled to make a record of the process which naturally ensued after that in order to reflect on the project that blossomed from it and, of course, to share it with all of you guys #ccoursers #rhizo14ers #edcontexters #clavierers and all.

So the following day I shared the link to the This is Water video with a fellow course supervisor in my institute. He watched it, was blown away by it, and moved to share it on with other fellow course supervisors in my institute. I have to say that I had no idea that what it might have happened right there and then, the moment I shared that link with my friend, was that a seed was being sown, and his subsequent sharing it forward would be the watering of that seed, which began growing, and showing, and stirring the creative juices of those it touched.

Flash forward a few weeks. Yesterday night I came across Jim Groom‘s tweet on Mike Wesch’s video Why We Need A “Why?” and was instantly reminded of the exhilaration I’d felt when I first read his words on the importance of ‘whys.’ It was while I watching this amazing talk by @mwesch that it dawned on me that I’d already been put into motion to make an old project fly, one which had been sitting in the back of my mind since the beginning of the year, even before I went on my rhizomatic learning experience, even before starting my blog. I’d been longing to find a way of nurturing stronger connections among my fellow course supervisors. I truly wanted to see the ten of us be part of a close-knit group, reflecting on our educational leadership identities, exerting/exercising our agency, in the hope of boosting our professional self-confidence.

So it was that about three weeks ago I seized just the right moment to share my idea of a collective website/blog with my fellow supers. The idea itself had sprung up from the depths of my mind a while back, but it hadn’t yet been aired up to the point of being ready to get out of me in the form of a ‘what if’ sentence. The idea was instantly embraced by all. It was as if it’d been there all the time, just waiting for it to be articulated into words somehow. The next step was to find our why. Somehow I instinctively (creative juices spilling out) drawn by the idea that we needed to have our very own ‘why.’ Together we managed to come up with our mission statement, our why. And it is amazing to see how all this movement to fly this collective venture has generated just the kind of flow, the kind of dynamic which is naturally bringing us closer together, both professionally and personally. We are connected.

We will launch our collective site soon, probably this next week, and we are very excited and happy about it. It is just awesome to see how empowering it is to allow yourself to be moved by your ‘why’, and yesterday, watching Mike Wesch talk about it, made me realize the magnitude of the journey we’ve just embarked on as a group. I am certainly sharing Mike Wesch’s talk with my fellow supers for more inspiration. I have a feeling that these words might linger and yield new fruit within the work we do as teachers and administrators:

If you’re animated by the ‘whats’, by what you’re supposed to teach, you’re gonna be constrained by the model of learning that that entails, which is to say just how to deliver that content. But if instead we’re animated by a ‘why,’ then suddenly the ‘hows’ become open. ~ Mike Wesch

So, I guess we have found one of our ‘whys.’ Thanks to #ccourses for the inspiration.

To connections and to learning!

Daring and doing: the first decade

Professional development is a big deal for us here at the Casa. So much so that we hold our very own yearly seminars, which are attended not only by our local TEFL community but also by professionals coming from different cities and states in Brazil. It is an amazing opportunity to strengthen our “PD muscle” and connect with amazing professionals and individuals from all over the globe. The 2014 edition of the CTJ TEFL Seminar was no different, and yet, it had a special flavor of accomplishment to it, since this year we celebrated its 10th anniversary.

The day began with ESL professor Rob Jenkins‘ plenary on a topic which never gets old – motivation. Rob reminded us of the importance of successfully developing an atmosphere that fosters student confidence, and that we should always be deeply aware of the difference between teaching and learning. That teaching has to be regarded as a byproduct of learning, and that it is our role as teachers to be deeply aware that what may seem to be great, solid teaching may not necessarily result in learning, especially if we find ourselves teaching lessons in spite of the learners and their individual learning styles, cognitive abilities, and unique personalities.

Later on, I had the pleasure of engaging a group of ten fellow teachers and professionals in my Seminar presentation “On wearing two hats: Teaching and responding to writing”. I began my talk explaining how the idea for that session had come up. That it had actually sprung up from a training session I had delivered earlier this year, and from the connections and the contributions made by this group of pre-service teachers who were absolutely motivated to learn more about teaching effective writing lessons, as well as providing effective corrective feedback on students’ writings. I also mentioned the fact that I’d begun blogging earlier this year, sharing with them the one feature of blogging that I appreciate the most (other than the fact that I simply love writing), which is the possibility of connecting with others. It was a very productive session, thanks to the amazing contributions made by my colleagues throughout. We got to discuss extremely important concepts when it comes to teaching writing. The first one is how fostering a sense of audience in our students is critical in actually motivating them to write. The second, the awareness that our students are in a quest for finding their voice and that we teachers need to nurture that.

After a lovely lunch (some delicious feijoada) by the Paranoá lake with a dear friend, I had the pleasure of attending an ever so useful session called “Mobile devices in the EFL classroom: What’s App 101”, delivered/facilitated by fellow teachers Daniela Lyra, Leonardo Sampaio and Paola Barbieri Hanna. The session began with some very pertinent discussion on the topic of cell phone use in the classroom, and how we deal with excessive student texting during lessons, for example. We also had the chance of clarifying any doubts we had regarding the use and the functions of What’s App, followed by some discussion on sensible social media use policy in schools. Daniela Lyra took us through the SAMR model, explaining each of its stages with some practical classroom examples. The session progressed into a more hands-on stage, with each of the facilitators working separately with smaller groups, sharing some extremely engaging activities in which students use What’s App in so many effective ways for learning and practicing the language.

It was then time for the last plenary of the Seminar, a virtual plenary delivered by RELOBrazil EFL consultant Heather Benucci. The title of the plenary says it all: “Care and feeding required: Sustaining your personal learning network (PLN)”. Heather shared with us some smart strategies for building and sustaining a strong PLN, as well as the countless possibilities of achieving professional development goals with the support of a solid PLN. One particular aspect she discussed called my attention. The fact that, after a while, and after you have managed to build a good PLN, we need to beware of the echo chamber effect. We need to try and diversify our connections by finding professionals and individuals who may not have similar views as our own, and from whom we may actually learn new things and broaden our perspectives, stepping out of the comfort zone. Another highlight of her plenary was an amazing video by Derek Sivers. It reminded me of how I felt before I began blogging and building my beloved PLN.

So, I leave you with this bit:

Maybe what’s obvious to you is amazing to someone else.

Ponder that for a while.

On Wearing Two Hats: Teaching & Responding to Writing

This morning I had the opportunity of engaging with quite an interesting and energetic group of bright individuals as part of our institute’s training of newly-hired teachers. The goal was to discuss the teaching of writing to our EFL learners, what it is that an effective pre-writing lesson should entail, as well as ways of responding to students’ writings. It was a hands-on session, with some initial discussion and brainstorming of lesson stages with a specific writing prompt in mind, which was then followed by their response to and correction of an authentic writing sample. The idea was to familiarize teachers with the kind of response to writing that we believe to be in keeping with the principle that writing is a recurrent process, non-linear in its creative nature, and the very expression of one’s voice.

Roll up your sleeves and let’s get down to business

Teachers worked in smaller groups and were asked to respond to and provide corrective feedback to a first draft sample of a five-paragraph essay written by an upper-intermediate level learner. Along with the sample, they received a copy of our correction and proofreading symbols, as well as a scoring rubric by means of which they’d grade that first draft. They immediately set out to accomplish the task, industriously reading the piece, red pens in hand, and… Stop. Wait a minute. Do you feel an urge to begin crossing out and underlining spelling mistakes and wrong verb tense use? You do, don’t you?

Step away from the red pen

Before you unleash your full corrective-feedback-giving potential, put on a different hat. Be a reader. Respond to your students’ content and ideas as a real person. Familiarize them with that sense of having an audience. We use language to communicate, be it in spoken or written form. Let them know that you are truly listening to them. Try to find at least a couple of aspects in their writing that are worth a compliment. Relate to their ideas, share a little about your own experience by commenting that maybe you once felt the same way as they did facing a certain situation in your own life, and that you know how wonderful or how difficult it must have been for them to go through it, as well. Empathize. Connect. Engage.

Respect individual stylistic choices

It’s always a challenge to provide corrective feedback without stifling the writer’s voice. What I mean is, are you (over)correcting to the point of forcing the student to write as you would have if expressing a similar idea in written form? Of course there are instances of L1 interference that must be addressed, such as word order issues to name one, but we teachers walk a fine line between pointing our students in the right direction and simply imposing our own style on them. Keep an awareness of the fact that your students are experimenting with language (a foreign one, as a matter of fact), and that they are, knowingly or not, in their own quests to finding their voice. Cherish. Allow. Enable.

Sounding curious as opposed to judgemental

Instead of saying something like “this paragraph is too short. Please develop your ideas here.” how about offering something more in the lines of “I wonder if you could tell me more about this experience/situation.” or even “how did you feel?” and “what did you do next?” The point is that by asking a simple question, you may elicit just the response you want from a student, instead of making a direct comment that might come across as judgemental, in that it is an affirmation made by you, the teacher, who is supposedly the knowledge authority on all subjects language-wise. Don’t point fingers. Ask more questions. Provoke. Entice. Foster.

This set of guidelines sprang up from this group’s engagement and reflections during our training session, so that gives you a pretty good idea of how lucky we are to have gathered such a great collection of curious and avid learner-teachers. Thank you all, Casa newbies, for inspiring me to write this piece.