:Daniel’s Teaching Blogfolio

The majority of ESL work in the US is part-time or adjunct work, which is why I’m not interested in returning to the US as an ESL teacher. It turns out that adjunct work is becoming (or has become) normative for many other disciplines as well. At least that’s the claim of this article. 

As I read this report on a recent meeting of an organization called the Coalition of Contingent Academic Labor my thoughts turned toward a simple solution to the problems of these non-tenured teachers: change careers. Sure it’s overly simplistic but it is an option. That’s what makes Western democracies such wonderful places to live; the freedom to change one’s destiny. If universities are not offering you the kind of package you want, and there’s no reasonable expectation of the situation changing, move on to something more satisfying. 

One objection to this approach might be that it would lead to a shortage of teachers. After all, if every dissatisfied, adjunct teacher switched careers, what else could we expect? Well, we all know that not every adjunct teacher will move on, so that’s not really a consideration. However, if a large enough number of people dropped out of teaching in order to do something else, then it could lead to universities revising their packages for the better. After all, if they can’t attract qualified people with the non-tenured, low-paid, no-benefits packages which currently keep them steadily supplied with “academic labor”, universities will have to come up with something better. It seems to me that this is much more likely to produce the desired results than negotiating with unions and attempting to bring some sort of legislature pressure to bear on universities, as is suggested by some prominent members of this organization. 

Maybe it’s because I have a job in an institution that gives me a package that is so much more attractive than anything that I’ve found in the US (yet the job is certainly no more secure) that I lack sympathy for the aims of this organization. Or it might be because I’ve come to the conclusion that there are better ways to get what I want than complaining and bullying, which seems to be the approach of many teachers and their representative organizations.

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Okay, I’m back in the country, the office and action…after a fashion. It’s not been an easy return which means that it hasn’t been unusual in any way.

Classes begin on the 21st (or 22nd?) of this month. That’s when the journaling will begin in earnest.

Later I’ll reflect on the future of the Carnival of English Language Teaching.

I would also like to begin a little series of posts entitled “The Truth about EFL”.

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I’m heading out tonight.

I’ll be reflectively blogging about teaching sometime after August 8th.

Cheers.

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Just two days away from the start of my vacation and the call for proposals arrives in my e-mail this morning. Since I won’t be thinking much about it for the next seven weeks, I suppose I could mull over a possible proposal for the next two days. Fortunately I’ve got until November to submit.

Today I’m thinking about a workshop on using the San Diego Quick Assessment in an ELT environment. Since the tool wasn’t conceived for English language learners, I’ll have to come up with a justification for the application. Whether or not others agree, I think that ELT’s need an easy and FREE assessment device that we can use to quickly estimate our student’s reading level in English in order to help us guide the development of their reading skills.

In my workshop, I would explain what the SDQA is, why I chose it and how it works. The rest of the time participants would listen to student examples and score them, then discuss the results.

I’ll be experimenting with the SDQA more in the Fall and may find that I don’t want to pursue this any further but for now, that’s the direction I’m heading for this conference.

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Charles poses this question, which I’ll paraphrase:

Which is better for learning: measured response (at a distance) in one’s own blog or direct comments on the post itself?

Ultimately what Charles (and most folks I think) is after are thoughtful responses. I think that the subtext to this question is: Which response is a more thoughtful-one: one that is reflected upon and written out in one’s own blog or one that is dashed off immediately through the comment function of the blog where the post is? When unpacked in this way, it’s easy to see what the answer ought to be.

I think that there is no real dichotomy here. The avenue by which a comment travels to its audience has no affect on the quality of the comment. A well thought-out comment can arrive either through a separate post on a different blog or the comments utility of the original blog. The same is true of a poorly-thought-out comment. That being said, it probably is observable that easy and immediate access to the comment function on the blog facilitates less-than-thoughtful responses to posts. So be it. That’s why we moderate. This probably is an issue for those bloggers who get many, many comments. It’s not an issue for my blogs…or for most bloggers I would venture to guess.

Charles also posts this question:

“What would the blogging community be like if the majority of bloggers moved to a “measured discourse” mode of commenting on the ideas in other blogs? Would we learn more? Would we become better, more thoughtful bloggers? Or not?”

By “measured discourse” Charles means two things. First, a thought-full discourse-meaning that the bloggers reflect upon what they’ve read and then write a response that meaningfully adds to the discourse. Second, a discourse that takes place in the context of individual posts at bloggers’ own blogs and NOT through the comment utility. I don’t have an answer.

Does anyone have any ideas?

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I’ve been in a sort of dialogue with Charles on the issue of having comments enabled or disabled on one’s blog. His post on the question makes for a good read. I approached it with the assumption that I should come away either convince or unconvinced, but now I see that I don’t have to be either.

While the blog medium was developed in order to facilitate a type of social interaction between reader and writer, that does not mean that people will and or must use it as such. There are plenty of hammers in the world and yet some of us will choose a can of yellow cling peaches, the heel of a shoe or a brick for the job if it is closer at hand.  People are relatively free to administer their blogs as they see fit. The only problem is when a blogger has a particular purpose for blogging and fails to achieve that purpose, and then the problem is really only his own.

What I’ve come to appreciate about Charles’ blog (as well as some others) is the clear purpose which appears to be behind it. He says that his blog is about his learning and it’s clear that the way he administers it without enabling comments serves his purpose in a satisfactory manner. I think that makes it (in some manner) a good blog. After having read his post on the matter, I’m not in agreement with all of his points nor do I have to be. And since Charles has kindly added my blogfolio to his blogroll AND comments are enabled here, we can have a type of social interaction if we want to.

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We’ve been seeing lots of potential colleagues in the hallway these last few days of the academic year. People are being interviewed for positions this fall. A couple of days ago, a colleague who was part of a panel interview with one of the recent candidates commented upon how well the candidate had answered the following question. “How would you teach critical thinking?” 

This got me to thinking about what my response to that question would be. Honestly, I don’t know what would come out of my mouth in an interview situation but here’s my own answer to that question. 

I wouldn’t teach critical thinking. I don’t believe it needs to be taught because I think people do it naturally. They may not do it about all things all the time, but I believe that all people do think critically about some things some times. 

As educators, we want our students not to become critical thinkers but rather to become better at thinking critically. This can be done by modeling critical thinking ourselves, encouraging students to think critically and by rewarding students for taking up the challenge regardless of what we may think of their outcomes. 

How do I model critical thinking in my classroom? I’m not sure that I can answer that at this time. 

How do I encourage it? I encourage critical thinking by asking students to explain why they believe / say a particular thing is true, worthy, correct etc. Sometimes I challenge their suppositions about particular subjects. I also try to create an atmosphere in the classroom/community that is safe for questioning me about my suppositions. 

How do I reward critical thinking? I do this primarily (exclusively?) through verbal praise. If it’s necessary, then I admit shortcomings in my reasoning when a student “catches me out” before the class. 

Since my critical thinking skills are certainly in process and in need of improvement, I’m sure that my methods for modeling, encouraging and rewarding are also in need of improvement. 

I’m not sure how that answer would fly in an interview, but for the moment, these are my thoughts on the matter.

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Actually, I mean to say that someone is reading the CELT…sort of. Thanks to Technorati (I guess) Charles Nelson found his way to Midway 7 of the CELT and saw my editorial comment about how bloggers with blogs (like his) which do not enable readers to post comments seem to be missing the whole point of the medium. Here is the comment that he left at the CELT homepage:

“This is the blogger ”who seem[s] to be missing the point.” I’m not against comments; it’s just that I don’t have time to respond to them, and somehow, I would feel obligated to, at least to some extent. But I would be interested in your writing more at length on the necessity, or at least the value, of allowing comments directly on the blog, and perhaps why responding to other blogs “at a distance” on our own blogs (especially with the capability of RSS) is not satisfactory. Cordially, Charles”

So, the invitation is to write about:

a) the necessity and/or the value of enabling comments on the blog itself and b) why responding on one’s own blog is not satisfactory

A) Enabling readers to comment on the blog itself is NOT necessary. I didn’t mean to imply that it is. Neither is it valuable to a given blogger if the blogger doesn’t think that it is. I don’t say that to be evasive. A blog is a personal space and if the blogger doesn’t see a value in allowing readers to comment directly upon his own blog, I don’t feel any compulsion to convince him otherwise.

HOWEVER, the very design of blogs indicates that direct reader commentary is desirable at some level to some segment of the blog writing/reading populace. (Personally, my experience has been that this is the majority of the blogging community, but I accept that my experiences are limited.) Conventional web pages did a perfectly good job of publishing text. With the advent of HTML writing/editing software, updating a web page became much easier than it was during the days of writing code and using FTP to upload the documents. Yet, at some point netizens not only wanted an easier way to publish/update web pages, but also more interaction with their readers than conventional web pages were delivering, hence the blog was born. It’s my opinion that people who blog want people to read their writing. I base this opinion on their choice to use the medium which, as I’ve said already, is designed for reader commentary. So if one of the major purposes of the blog format is to provide more interaction between reader and author and a blogger disables the function of the blog which allows for this interaction, then it appears to me that the blogger is missing the point of the medium.

That being said, Charles obviously isn’t opposed to contact with his readers. If he were, then 1) he would not provide a legitimate e-mail address on his blog and 2) he wouldn’t have written the aforementioned comment. Also, I can see how some bloggers might want to put up a sort gate to ward off what might be seen as a waste of time. (I’m not suggesting that this is Charles’ position at all.) Think about it: not everyone who comments says something of interest or value. If a reader were required to go through the (miniscule) extra step of composing an actual e-mail instead of spewing his nonsense immediately at the end of the post, then the reader may not bother. Consequently, the blogger is spared reading and moderating that comment.

B) Responding to reader commentary (however it reaches the blogger) by way of one’s own blog can be satisfactory. I suppose that determination has to be made by the blogger and the commenter. I’m satisfied by responding to comments with a post (obviously). I’m not sure that I’m always satisfied to have my comments responded to in this manner since I don’t have an RSS aggregator. Then again, if I’m genuinely interested in someone’s response to my comments, I will check back from time to time or subscribe to an e-mail alert associated with that post.

So that’s my attempt at responding to Charles‘ comment, which was originally submitted through the comment feature of the CELT home URL, by way of a post on my blogfolio.

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I just added the most recent performance appraisal document to the blogfolio. The link is on the right under the Portfolio heading. Since the original document is too long, I’ve just posted the summative paragraph written by my coordinator.

I suppose the most useful thing I could do with that document is to do a bit of reflection upon it which means that I could blog a bit about it…and perhaps I will when I get the chance. I won’t be getting a chance soon. These are the final days of exams followed by the flurry of activity to depart on summer vacation. Blogging/reflecting is going to drop off quite a bit over the next couple of weeks…but maybe I’ll get some thoughts in before I go.

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Last night I was hosting a committee meeting for a family weekend retreat with the church. The committee is made up of members from South Africa, Australia, the US and India. In talking about some changes to the dates of our retreat, the man from India suggested that we “prepone” the date. At first, I assumed that he had merely misspoken. I figured that he had made an attempt to say “postpone” and had simply gotten his prefix wrong. When I “corrected” him, he insisted that he did in fact intend to say “prepone” which is a word that means to move an event forward. Easily deciphered so long as one isn’t an English language teacher whose grammar filter is nearly always on. As we discussed it a little further, I surmised that the word is probably in use in India and considered to be genuine English. This was confirmed this morning when I typed “prepone” into www.onelook.com. Take a look at Encarta’s definition and note the word’s origin.

Interesting? Do you think that you’ll take it on as part of your vocabulary?

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Here in the host country, it can be rather easy to make the mistake in thinking that what is touted as new here is also new in the West. This is because there is a Western veneer that comes with the machinery of modernization which is currently running at full-tilt. So, I will try not to speak of “value education” as something which is innovative in every place. That being said, value education is certainly being treated as a sort of new celebrity on the education scene here in the host country. At least that’s the impression that I got from a tabloid I saw today. 

Value education is…defined in the article as “a way to achieve the holistic development of an individual”. Not terribly helpful is it? Then again, wouldn’t you guess that the term means teaching people a worldview? After all, isn’t that what “values” express-an individual’s view of what is important/worthy/valuable in the world as well as what is not? So, the assumption under-lying the article is that Education has failed in the past and/or is failing in the present to impart (the desired) values to its pupils, therefore a concentrated effort has to be made to remedy this neglect. 

Nonesense. 

Here’s a quote that I have in the signature file of my institutional e-mails: 

“The notion of value-free education is a myth: every choice of teaching materials, every mode of instruction and every action by the teacher carries a set of values.” Angus M. Gunn 

Since values are implicit in education, the idea that someone(s) should say that it isn’t and ought to be is delusional in its conception and redundant in its expression. It’s like saying that the sky is not high, but it should be and then enlisting a group of engineers to come up with a way of making it so. 

Another presupposition of this short piece of writing is that Education and Business are leading the way towards the rectification of this situation. One life-long educationist is quoted to say, “If we can create teachers who actually understand value education and impart it to children it will bode well for the future.”  

The implications here are: 

A) teachers don’t understand  “value education” or to be more pointed-teachers don’t understand that Education is a tool for imparting a particular worldview/set of values 

B) teachers ought to be the ones educating children in terms of the values they should hold 

C) a good future is dependent upon teachers imparting values to their pupils. 

Have you gotten around to asking yourself which values should be promoted by teachers? (Don’t forget; there is no such thing as a value-free education, therefore the real question is “Which values are being promoted?”) A general manager for a regional company “and a distinguished Toastmaster” (I’ll spare you the obvious joke), says 

“…we should also be creating people who empathise and relate to others…”. 

Okay. I’ll imagine that no one opposes promoting empathy and move on to the rest of his statement. 

“We can lay the foundation for it in school and college.” 

Too late! Perhaps we can argue that school-agers are still in process, but college is far too late to do anything foundational regarding individual values…short of tearing out the foundation and starting over which is commonly referred to by psychologists as “brainwashing”! 

Now that we’ve heard from Education and Business, where are the parents? Remember them? The article affirms that they have a part to fulfill in value education. Take a look at the list provided by a parent training consultant: 

“Educators, parents, institutions, corporates, media, business, government and policy makers have a role to play in integrating values into the education system.” 

Personally, I don’t think it’s an accident that parents are mentioned after educators. Rather I think it’s an unconscious indicator of a tacit belief: Education (and its associates) is the proper arbiter of the worldview of a society and its members. This is in itself a value and it is one that I personally do not hold and have no intention of passing on to my children or my students.

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This morning’s session was more enjoyable than yesterday’s. This is in part due to the fact that refreshments were provided and thanks to ML’s indulgence of our questions. In fact, he was so indulgent that we pretty much side-tracked him from his lecture and ended up having a group discussion/Q and A which was very pleasant.

Originally he intended to talk about a) how radical the lexical approach can be and b) how it can and can not be used to inform teaching practice in the classroom. The conversation that actually took place did hit upon those ideas but not (I guess) in the detail that his lecture might have had he been able to give it. Not a problem really since.

In the conversation he did concede a point that I’ve made several times to folks who would listen: nearly every approach/method that’s been used has been effective to some degree. “Traditional” approaches, techniques, methods have all produced speakers of the target language. The truth of the matter is that we don’t (and can’t) empirically know that students learned because of or in spite of the method. Assuming that this is correct, it ought to make one question whether or not teaching a language in an institutional setting is a worthwhile endeavor.

Maybe I’ll ask ML his thoughts about that at lunch today…but probably not.

I’ve just finished lunch with ML. I tried very hard not to talk about ELT and language and I failed. Consequently, I did get to ask he views of the validity of ELT as a profession.  If I understood him correctly, his take on the question is that language teaching is valid if one doesn’t place too much weight upon the concept of teaching. When it comes to language learning, we (teachers) do not impart knowledge so much as we guide students through their learning process. Obviously, he is very much in line with the dominant theories (not necessarily practices) of our day; namely that teachers as authority figures are out-dated and teachers as facilitators/managers/guides/gurus are the future.

I’m content to let that go unchallenged in the context of language learning and teaching, however from a philosophical perspective, I simply disagree. I say that there is such a thing as Absolute Truth and/or Objective Reality which is/are necessary for the existence of Authority. I would also maintain that I am the authority in my classroom but I am not The Absolute Authority….but I think I digress.

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Does that name mean anything to you? It didn’t to me when I first saw the e-mail that the man was coming to do some professional development sessions with us during the two “study days” prior to the beginning of exams. It didn’t take long though for me to figure out that this is a person of some importance in the field of linguistics and ELT.

The session that I attended was his attempt to get his audience to start looking at language in a new way. Presupposing that we were all largely guided by the traditional belief that language is “lexicalized grammar” he attempted to get us to see language as “grammaticalized lexis”. I suppose this really means that instead of thinking of grammar first and training students to plug their vocabulary into the grammatical structures, we should be thinking of lexis (words and combinations of words) and then taking note of the grammatical structures in which they are found. While it was an interesting way to pass the time, I’ve not had that epiphany where I suddenly grasp how to improve my teaching by following this approach. Certainly there are some intuitively gratifying sentiments in this approach such as “forget explicitly teaching grammar” and “reading to students is good”, I don’t know how I’m going to let some of the other things I heard inform my classroom practice, but I feel like that if I continue to plumb this lexical approach, something good will come from it.

Lewis will be with us tomorrow for another session, so I hope that this one will give me something that I can practice in order to be able to use it in the classroom this coming fall.

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The Award Nomination Committee is asking for nominations from the faculty for the program’s teaching award. While I think it’s great to be recognized for the hard work that one does, particularly by one’s peers, I see a small flaw.

There are 24 potential candidates from Foundation English and the truth of the matter is that I don’t know the majority of them well enough to nominate them for anything. Take a look at the sought-after characteristics:

A. Significant contributions to teaching

B. Innovative classroom techniques and classroom materials

C. Availability to students

D. Ability to inspire students and motivate them to learn

How does one measure A? Is it the number of contact hours per week? What makes teaching significant?

I think the answer is D, however without observing the teacher, how would I know if D applies to a given nominee? For that matter, it’s necessary to observe someone in the classroom in order to address B. Of all my colleagues, I’ve only seen one in the classroom with her students and that was only one time toward the end of the class. As for C; we all keep office hours and the common complaint is that students rarely/never take advantage of them so wouldn’t it be better to evaluate the teacher’s attitude toward availability? Better still, their approachability?

Perhaps I’m over analyzing the process…I’m prone to that sort of thing, I know. Again, I’m reluctant to nominate anyone when I know so little about them in this way. That being said, I was on the verge of nominating one colleague who is passionate (to a fault) about helping his students, eager to improve his technique and easily accessible to his peers. However, I stopped short because a technical glitch with the online submission form gave me time to reconsider in light of this person’s perpetual conflict with authority.

So what’s the solution? I guess I’ll refrain from nominating anyone, look at the candidates once they’re presented and then I’ll…probably repeat this post except I’ll remark that I don’t feel good about voting for any of them for the same reasons that I couldn’t bring myself to nominate any of them. I wonder if I’ll feel more informed next time this whole thing rolls around next year?

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Recently EFL Geek asked me why I continue to put up duplicate posts here and at the blogs.ie version of my blogfolio. Since it’s a bit of a long explanation, I’ll just post it here. 

The spam was getting out of control at the old blogfolio which gave me the impression that no one was minding the store. The version of WP used at the blogs.ie address is old and I saw no signs of an upgrade coming. I think my frustration is apparent. 

Edublogs.org looked like a good alternative. It’s free. The version of WP is current. It’s free. There appears to be good support available, and finally, it’s free. I thought that I would move over here in the Fall of 2006 when a new semester begins. That seemed like a good time to do it. 

Then a commenter showed up on the original blogfolio representing himself as some one in charge of the hosting service. He said that a spam fix similar to the one that the host was using at blogsome.com would be on its way. I haven’t heard from the guy since, but the spam has subsided. A primary motivation for moving has been addressed. 

As I continued to experiment with both sites, I realized that my edublogs.org site doesn’t allow me to tweak the HTML as finely as the blogs.ie site does. While I’m not a web-design whiz, I’ve found it useful to adjust the original template from time to time. I inquired about this but James, edublog.org’s founder, hasn’t gotten back to me on the issue. So, while I like certain things about the latest version of WP here at edublogs, I also prefer the access to the code of my template at the blogs.ie site. Another motivator has been neutralized. 

Now I don’t know what I’ll do. Until I figure it out, I’ll be duplicating posts on both sites…except this one, which I think I’ll just link at the other place. 

One more thing…this version seems to be where the comments come so I’ll need to give that serious consideration.

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In keeping with the portfolio aspect of this blog, I’ve added a video of my students and one of their projects. You can find it under Presentations on the right side of the screen.

Foundation One English students were required to research an object from everyday life and explain what contributions different fields of engineering make to its production. Part of this project is putting together a poster and explaining its content to their peers in an exhibition.

Technical Notes:
The  video is formatted to be smaller than 5 MBs so I can host it from my free Geocities account. Consequently, it’s very low res.

I used XP’s movie maker.

I used about 2 minutes of a song by Rush without permission. (I’m ready to take it down when ordered. )

That’s pretty much it.
Enjoy.

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Today begins the last week of regular classes before finals begin. I’ve started conducting the second San Diego Quick Assessment with my two groups. You can read here and here about what I’ve been doing with the SDQA during this semester.

As I’ve written before, the SDQA is not meant for EFL students so its validity is highly questionable. That being said, we really need a reading level assessment on these students when they come in so we can give them some direction instead of just shoving some books at them and telling them to get started reading. Since we don’t have one, this one will have to do.

So far, it seems that the majority of students have not moved up a grade level on the SDQA. There have been some who have but not many. I don’t think that this group of students will yield the best information because as I’ve noted earlier, I’ve not been with them reliably and I haven’t applied a consistent reading enrichment scheme. In the fall, it will be different. I’ll be a lead teacher and I can be more consistent in promoting reading and following up on it.

Another thing that I’ve gotten back recently in terms of student feedback has been the questionnaire that I put in Moodle. Several students (apparently from Section A) have filled it in and their response has been favorable toward an entire period devoted to reading silently. Of course, they struggle with staying alert and they suggested that I should be doing more but for the most part, the feedback was favorable. In the fall, I’m planning on doing it again. This time while students are reading, I’ll try to split my time between reading (they suggested that I read anything-not only Russian) and roaming around. It really bothered some of them that I stayed at my desk…which is a bit funny when you consider that I let them move all around the room and read reclining, sitting and crouching under desks, whatever felt comfortable to them. Then again, I’m the teacher and different standards apply.

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Not long ago, Emily asked me, “What made you decide to start a blogfolio in the first place?”

My teaching portfolio was largely an attempt to fill some work hours in a professionally meaningful manner. In my previous job, it wasn’t uncommon for some teachers to go for long periods of time without any teaching duties. This was my situation when I came across an advertisement for a teaching position with an American university in this country which requested that applicants submit a portfolio. I’d known about portfolios for a long time but this was first time that I’d actually seen one requested. Thinking that I might have been witnessing a new trend in the region and needing something purposeful to do with my time at the office, I put together an e-portfolio.

To be honest, the e-portfolio proved not to be all that useful. No one looked at it but me. I rarely looked at it. The reflection that I engaged in to compile it turned out to be mainly a one-off. It filled my time and I improved upon some technical savvy I had, but it really didn’t do all that much for me as an EFL teacher.

Then I started exploring blogs. A friend of mine who teaches mathematics in the US was blogging and some of my colleagues were experimenting with blogs in the classroom, so my curiosity was peaked. I started out with Blogger and as I was mucking about it occurred to me that the journal was what would make my portfolio useful. I converted my e-portfolio into a blogfolio and began to write reflectively.

The more I became involved in blog culture, I realized that the true utility of the blog was the reader comments. I needed an audience for my reflections. I needed fellow teacher-bloggers to give me their input so that I could reflect upon what they said and see if I could learn anything from them.

Originally, the e-portfolio was a way to fill my time preparing for a request from a potential employer that never came. The beginning of my blogfolio was an experiment. Now, reflective blogging is becoming a habit. I wish that more people would read and comment but I understand that most people are simply readers.

The time may come when I retire the blogfolio, but then again it may not.

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This is the week that our students give their presentations about the contributions of different types of engineers to specific products that we encounter in everyday life. It’s easy to see where our mutual loyalties lie this week.

Section A asked me if I was planning on being in the class for their presentations. They sounded like they wanted me to come so I said yes. Section B did not ask and I did not go. I figured they could do their presentations for me during our only class today. They did but not with much enthusiasm. Basically, I’ve connected with Section A much better than I have with Section B. The reasons are fairly easy to see.

Section A is the top. This means that they generally have a better level of language, which means greater ease of communication. Additionally, the majority of the class is motivated, even if they are not particularly (self-) disciplined. Finally, I’m assigned to them 10 hours per week. Even though I have no input to their grades, this frequency of contact makes me better than a “substitute teacher”.

Conversely, Section B sees me so rarely that I’m more like a “substitute” than a “real” teacher. Furthermore, the majority of the class is not nearly so motivated as Section A and may be even less (self-) disciplined as a group than Section A. Section B also seems to have more students with markedly lower abilities even though Section B is one from the top. In other words, the difference in abilities from Section A to Section B is unexpectedly large.

I felt much more compelled to be present during the regular class time for Section A’s presentations than I did for Section B’s. In fact, I didn’t go to B’s presentations during their scheduled time but rather used our class time for the students to do them again for me.

I think that had I been their lead teacher, shouldering the majority of their instructional hours I would have managed to bond with them much better, even though so many of them lack motivation and maturity.

I’ll be glad to have my own class again in the Fall.

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Taking a quick look at two bits of news coverage regarding the Senate’s promoting some kind of “official” status for the English language in the US, I can’t help but feel that there’s no story here.

Apparently the terms in question are “national” versus “common/unifying” with regards to the English langauge. I’m curious as to why any statement has to be made about it at all. Is it because that the “path to citizenship” provided by this legislation has a language requirement? That’s not made clear in either article.

Look, it’s not such a complicated issue: there is no need for an official status given to any language. All the business of citizenship should continue to be conducted in English until such a time that the population of non-English speaking people is too great for this to be done. In other words, we should let “market forces” come into play here. If people wish to become citizens, then they’ll learn the language needed to do so. No government is obligated to accomodate non-citizens by providing native language support in the applicant’s quest for citizenshhip.

I once tutored an elderly couple from Ukraine for their citizenship test. They had the questions transliterated into Ukrainian and memorized. I don’t know if they ever got their citizenship, but I wouldn’t begrudge them if they did. They did what they could to do what it took to do things legally and I hope they were rewarded for it.

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I think I’m going to give up on my article about the blogfolio. 

I was planning on writing it up and either submitting it to the conference proceedings for TESOL Arabia this year or submitting it elsewhere for publication. Now I’m just so sick of trying to make the pathetic thing readable that I’ve just about decided to pack it in. 

I don’t know why it’s such a difficult topic to write about. The presentation seemed to go well enough although I didn’t get much feedback about it. As I try to organize the article, it just becomes a muddle. Whenever I read it back to myself, it comes across as boring. I find myself asking “So?” If I can’t stay interested in it, I don’t think that I can expect others to either. 

Logically, if I can’t bring myself to bore people (or myself) with an article about the blogfolio, you would think that I wouldn’t propose to do it again at TESOL in the US. However, the proposal is perfunctory. I promised myself that I would submit a proposal and so I’m keeping that promise. It’s a question of self-discipline: I said I would do a thing so I should do it. 

Unfortunately, the deadline for TESOL proposals comes hot on the heels of the conference and (in my opinion) there isn’t adequate time to come up with an idea for the next year. You almost have to be working on multiple ideas at once…and I suppose many folks do. 

Anyway, for the time-being I’m pretty much done writing about the blogfolio. Keeping one is fine but I don’t think there’s enough of interest (mine or others) to warrant writing about it.

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I was reading an article in one of professional publications (I can’t remember which one and I’m not up to walking over to the library to find out) and this is the question I came up with: Am I teaching students or am I providing a service to clients? The author was casting EFL in the mold of a service provided to clients and invoking some TESOL document as a guide. The article itself is not as important as trying to come to some kind of answer to my question. 

At first I balked at the idea that I’m a service provider to a client. It felt wrong. However the more I thought about it I came to the conclusion that this is a legitimate paradigm for some learners. For example, EFL students who are trying to get an IELTS score required by their employer could come under a professional-client paradigm. Workers at Samsung who get English lessons from the company would also fall into this group. EFL learners in a bridge-program for an institution of higher learning that uses English as the language of instruction would not come under the professional-client model. 

The difference between these situations is that the client-learner has immediate professional goals and requirements driving their language learning, while the student-learner has immediate educational/academic goals driving their language learning. Client-learners are looking at immediate compensation (hiring, retention, promotion, compliance with employer requirements) for their language learning whereas student-learners are looking at a long-term pay off for their efforts which will come when they’ve attained the education they seek and follow the career path they choose.

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I got this one over at the CELT and I think it was intended to go on this blog so I’m going to post it here and then reply:

Name: Tom
Daniel
Your thoughts are interesting particularly your frustration with the lack of response to your blog. If the bloggers don’t come to you, go forth and multiply – reach out and be in their face. Get a bloggers club and invite, ask friends to comment and once people see that there is a response, then they are more likely to respond.
Ask yourself, despite all the efforts you putting into this blog, do you really care if anyone responds. Any Tom Dick or Harry could – it is the fact that you are thinking aloud and getting it out that matters. You know in your heart that you are trying to connect that in itself is enough.

Yes, in order to be read one has to be out there reading and commenting and I’ve been making more time for that. I’ve had some folks passing through and commenting so the utility of this blog as a sounding board with other professionals is coming along, albeit slowly.

I would disagree that it’s enough to try to connect. Recently someone else made a similar comment: that whether or not his blog is read by anyone else doesn’t matter to him. If I’m not writing to be read then why bother with a blog? If it’s about typing on a computer, I can do that and save to my hard drive. If it’s merely about writing for my own sake then why not have all of my posts categorized as “private” and not visible at all? No, people who get blogs want to be read by others at some level. If we didn’t then we wouldn’t be on something called the WORLD wide web. I’d like my posts to be read. I’d like to be engaged in some thought provoking exchanges that could lead to some imporvements in my teaching. If people don’t read and comment then whether or not I continue to blog will come down to whether or not I think it’s worth my time.

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I got my evaluation back yesterday.

My students asked me today if I got a good evaluation and I could only respond “I guess so.” I got all of the tick marks in the right places so that’s good. The hand-written notes didn’t reflect anything negative about the lesson or my execution of it, so that was good. Yet, I got no usable input. Nothing in the notes pointed to what I could do better in the future. No indication of what I could work on. No praise for anything done well. This is…not good. Maybe it’s even bad.

It’s possible that my coordinator may read this and so I want to be clear: I know the man has a busy schedule. It’s unimaginable that he could observe all of his teachers and then provide any kind of detailed feedback that we could use. I don’t wish to indicate that he’s not doing his job. It’s just unfortunate that the most a teacher can expect from his evaluation is to be determined to be performing well enough as not to warrant further observation…until the next semester.

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How can you be an educator and not be drawn to an article with a title like that?

The whole thing appears on MSN where you can read it. I’ll only be reproducing bits of it here in order to share some specific, if incoherent, thoughts. Let’s begin:

The concern over quality education in the college sector has grown, due to the popular notion that a two-year degree is the new equivalent of a high school diploma.

That is, if you want greater job opportunities and earning potential, plan on getting a four-year degree or better

. Add to that the continuing trend of outsourcing high-tech jobs from the United States to other countries and the issue is immediately compounded.

I think this is the point where folks like Dave Ramsey and Dan Miller (gurus and life coaches) would step in an attempt to debunk the myth that a college degree equals earning potential. I’ll simply raise and eyebrow and question this popular misconception quietly.

After declaring that the research indicates that US graduates in the field of engineering are under qualified and over-valued, the writer tells us that one expert believes the US continues to lead the world in teaching innovation. How does that jive with this?

Perhaps the most prominent and vocal critic of U.S. universities is Derek Bok, former and returning president of Harvard. He followed up the 2005 publication of his book Our Underachieving Colleges with an article published in the Boston Globe that charts the gaps in American higher learning. Bok’s main point: Faculties tend to ignore research on how much students are learning in college, and how the instructors might help them learn more.

What we have here is a difference of opinion. After all, what are those innovating teachers doing if they’re not atttempting to assess what students are learning and trying to help them learn?

Now look at this:

So what are U.S. colleges doing right? According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the United States still spends more money on education than any other country.

…and apparently getting less bang for our buck, right? What drives me nuts about this statement is that spending is equated with good. As the article points out, the Chinese and the Indians are producing more qualified graduates than the US in certain fields yet they’re doing it at a lower cost. Sure it’s nice that we spend so much on our students but I think it’s a bit of unmerited optimism to say that we’re doing something right in this.

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I was just visiting Standford’s Center for Teaching and Learning, skimming their back issues of a quarterly newsletter called Speaking of Teaching and found this article from 1996. It’s about teaching portfolios…not blogfolios mind you. Anyway, something that jumped out at me was a box that listed “The Products of Good Teaching”.

Listed in the box are:

student test scores, lab workbooks, creative work and fieldwork reports
records of students who go on to major, do honors work, or do graduate work in the field
documentary evidence of the effects of teaching on students’ career choices

Let’s look at these a minute. Are the items of the first list truly reflective of my work as the teacher or of their work as the student? I suppose that the answer is a bit of both, but I would personally want to point at these things and talk about how they reflect the students’ hard work, diligence and self-discipline.

The next list doesn’t quite apply to ES/FL I think. It’s hard to imagine that there will be many students over the course of career who choose to become English language teachers regardless of my positive influence. That being said, it would be possible to point to students who completed their engineering studies (in English) with distinction, but again how much of their success can I take credit for?

The last list again doesn’t quite apply. I suppose a close corollary would be testimonials of students about the nature of my teaching style and classroom environment. To that end, I have in my possession a letter of recommendation written by a student who was also a sort of superintendent for my host country’s ministry of education. I think having such a letter written by an educator is particularly gratifying because the positive comments mean potentially more than “I like Daniel. He’s a nice person.” which is what so many student evaluations tend to say at their core.

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See it here.

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This post is originally found here.

When I finally make the transition to edublogs.org I’ll stop linking to the old blog host.

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The spam has gotten rather bad over at the other host and there just doesn’t seem to be an easy way to deal with it so I think I’ll be moving over to this host sooner than planned.

EFL Geek has already found me here and actually left a comment here so I’ll take that as a sign to get some content going in this new home.

If anyone else wonder over this way, watch this space as I’ll be blogging here shortly.

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As it stands now; I think I will set up house at this blog beginning in the Fall 2006 semester. That will give me time to finish up at the old place and take my summer vacation and start fresh with a new blogfolio and a new class/assignment to reflect upon.

Maybe by then I’ll also be able to come up with a way to drive some more traffic to my blog.

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I’m thinking about setting up shop here.

The latest incarnation of this blogfolio exists here, but the host isn’t updating its version of Word Press so I’m considering moving here.

Consequently, I figured it’s also a good time to rethink my layout/organization a bit. I realize now that the greatest benefit of this medium is the interactivity of the journaling and not so much the presentation (hosting) of various artifacts of my teaching career.

Anyway…still thinking.

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