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.

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”.

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

Cheers.

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.

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?

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.

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.

“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.

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.

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