Florida and the lack of opportunities for ESOL teachers and students

I recently wrote my last ever paper as a Master’s student on a topic that is very important to me professionally: the state of Florida’s policies towards English language learners in the public K-12 system. I could copy and paste my paper here, but I suspect that most of the people who bother to read my blog don’t come here for academic writing and education jargon. However, since this is a topic that I think is pretty important, I’ve decided to convert my academic paper into a more accessible blog post.

Something like 220 languages are spoken in the state of Florida. There are roughly 270,000 students in Florida’s public K-12 system that are considered English Language Learners (ELLs). That’s roughly 10% of the K-12 population. You would think that this would translate into a lot of available jobs for people like me: experienced, qualified ESL teachers. Sadly, that’s not the case. What is typically seen are ads for content-area teachers holding ‘appropriate ESOL certification.’ There’s little to no demand for ESL teachers in the K-12 system at all, just regular teachers with this ‘appropriate ESOL certification.’ Why is that? What does having ‘appropriate ESOL certification’ actually entail? And is this what is best for Florida’s students?

Prior to 1990, the way ELLs were treated in the public K-12 system varied substantially by district, as there was no state level legislation pertaining to how they should be treated. Some districts had really great programs, including bilingual education, sheltered content instruction (in which subject matter such as Math or Social Studies was taught to ELLs specifically by an ESOL professional), and pull-out programs (in which students were pulled out of mainstream classes during the day for one-on-one tutoring or tutoring among a group of their ELL peers). Other districts had nothing; students were simply tossed into mainstream classes with teachers who had no training in dealing with ELLs. A group of advocates filed a lawsuit against the State of Florida in the late 1980s, arguing that as legal residents of the state, ELLs were entitled to equal access to education, understandable instruction, and intensive English language instruction. They won their suit, and in 1990, the Florida Consent Decree was enacted. The Consent Decree mandated equal access, comprehensible instruction, and language instruction for ELLs, and required that the state’s K-12 teachers actually have some sort of training for working with ELLs. Elementary school teachers, as well as middle school and high school language arts teachers were required to have 300 hours of training for working with ELLs. Middle and high school math, science, and social studies teachers were required to have 60 hours of training, and all other instructors were required to have 18 hours. Sounds great, right? In theory, perhaps, but not so much in actual fact.

One of results of the Consent Decree was that the Florida Department of Education (FDOE) began pushing for mainstreaming of ELLs across the state. While it was left up to each district as to the specifics of how they would comply with the Consent Decree, there was a lot of pressure for districts to work towards mainstreaming of ELLs. (Mainstreaming – sometimes referred to as inclusion – is the practice of putting ELLs in regular classes with native speakers.) The pressure to increase mainstreaming actually led to many quality bilingual, sheltered, and pull-out programs being dismantled and replaced with mainstreaming. After all, if all teachers are now “qualified” to teach ELLs, this should be fine, right?

Well, just how “qualified” are they? Is receiving 300/60/18 hours of instruction in working with ELLs enough? And what kind of instruction is that, anyway? Since 1999, all university teacher training and certification programs in the state of Florida are required to provide their pre-service teachers with their needed hours of ESOL training. However, pretty much all of the universities did this not by adding 300 hours’ worth of required coursework for their students, but instead by creating an ‘ESOL Infused’ program. This means that topics pertaining to education of ELLs would be included in general Education courses; very few of those 300/60/18 hours would be earned in a class that actually focused in its entirety on teaching ELLs.

The university where I’ve just earned my MA in TESOL requires its undergraduate Education majors to take only two courses that are ESOL-specific. I just spent the past two semesters teaching one of those two courses, and let me tell you, my students – junior and senior Education majors – had no clue about teaching ELLs when the semester began. Even at the end of the semester, there are very few of my students whom I would recommend to work with ELLs, and yet most of them are now “qualified” to do so according to state regulations.

While writing my paper, I read a lot of articles, including a lot of published research on the views that teachers and program administrators had of both mainstreaming and of the required ESOL training. The majority of teachers and administrators did not approve of mainstreaming – with the biggest complaint being that mainstream teachers lacked the time and/or the skill to properly modify their lessons for their ELLs. The majority of teachers themselves also complained that they did not feel adequately prepared to work with their ELLs. One article I read referred to the results of the Consent Decree as the “the deprofessionalization of ESL teachers, rather than the specialization of mainstream teachers” – and sadly, that seems to be the case.

Oh, and the FCAT? That standardized test that one must pass in order to graduate from high school in the state of Florida? ELLs are given one year – ONE YEAR – to get their language skills up to par to pass the FCAT. Research in the field of second language acquisition shows that it typically takes 5-7 years to master a second language, yet ELLs are given just one to take a test that is often challenging to native speakers. Seriously?

As a professional teacher of English as a second or foreign language, I found my research into this subject disturbing to say the least. Certainly, at the moment, finding a job is a pressing issue for me. My goal is to teach ESL to adults, although there aren’t that many jobs available. I had (rather naïvely) assumed that if I could not find work with adults, the public school system would remain an option. As it is, while I have applied for several K-12 ESOL positions, none were in Florida. Straight-up ESOL teachers are pretty rare down here. Then I think about the fact that so many people sacrifice so much to come to the United States in order to give their children better opportunities. But are they really getting better opportunities? If they come to Florida, it doesn’t seem that they do.

3/4 Done!

My third semester in the MA TESOL program has just come to a close. I have just one more semester and I will have my MA and be done with school for a while.

This semester I taught my first university level classes: mainly juniors and seniors; mainly education majors; all native or fluent English speakers. I had worried that while I loved teaching EFL/ESL, I wouldn’t enjoy teaching future teachers about second language acquisition and how to teach ESOL students. I needn’t have worried; I loved it. I had a really great time with my classes, and I hope I have students next semester who are as fun to teach as these guys were. I should also have a much lighter workload next semester, as I won’t be making PowerPoints from scratch for every single lesson; I’ll just be tweaking the ones I made this semester.

My experiences teaching this semester have changed my outlook on the future a bit. I used to think, ‘Why bother getting a PhD? I don’t want to be a university professor.’ Except that now I kind of do. And I didn’t go the thesis track. It seems that everybody says, ‘Oh, if you want a PhD, you absolutely must write a thesis for your MA’ and maybe that’s true. Maybe it’s not. The thing is, I don’t want to get my PhD in TESOL. If I were to shoot for a PhD, it would be in Sociolinguistics – and it would be at a different school. I didn’t want to write a thesis for the MA because I came to this program wanting to learn more about how to become a better ESOL teacher, not to conduct research. Oddly enough, this semester I took a sociolinguistics course, and ended up getting really into my research on language policy in Kyrgyzstan – and I’m hoping to get my paper published. Here’s hoping that if I do apply for any PhD programs and I get dinged for not having written a thesis, a published article will suffice. You know, assuming it gets published. I guess we’ll see what the future brings. Were I to apply to a PhD program, it wouldn’t be for a year or so anyway.

I’m heading up to GA for the next three weeks. I’m actually going to be pretty busy designing a curriculum for a baseball-themed EFL program for a major league baseball team’s training center in the Caribbean. Which should be interesting, given my general lack of knowledge of baseball. I’m also taking a fairly large dog up to GA with me, in addition to Mochi and Charlie, as I’ll be pet-sitting her over the break. That’s going to make for an interesting car ride there and back, let me tell you. Sigh.

Lastly, vimeo seems to be letting me keep my Kyrgyzstan-is-Middle-Earth video online, so check it out:

Word Formation and Morphology

In case you're interested. We discussed word formation in our last class, and will be doing morphology tomorrow :-) (BTW, I know that my transcription of the Chinese word for boyfriend is probably way off base, but I don't speak Chinese...)

Things to share with my students (or not...)

I was watching the 2009 Star Trek last night, and the scene where Kirk meets Uhura for the first time is just so bloody brilliant from my point of view. I would love to share it with my students since it mentions so many of the things we've been discussing in class (albeit from the point of view of xenolinguistics, not plain old bound-to-earth linguistics), although Kirk's quip at the end makes it a little less than appropriate for class. As such, I'll share it with you guys instead (until youtube takes me down for copyright violations, anyway).

And in the category of things I will actually share with my classes, here's my next powerpoint. Kind of annoyed that SlideShare eliminated my Arabic script :-(

Language Learning, PowerPoints, and Teaching

This semester, I am teaching a course on second language acquisition, or the process by which we learn second languages. I was provided with a complete set of PowerPoint presentations which had been used by current and previous teachers of this course... but I'm kind of picky about my PowerPoints. To me, there are certain fonts which should never be used in a PowerPoint presentation. I'm not just talking about Comic Sans; in my opinion decorative fonts and any sort of serif font should never be used in professional presentations. Likewise, multiple colored fonts can be used for emphasis, but this should be done sparingly. ClipArt and WordArt need to go. Slides packed full of words need to be rare and limited to Really Important Things. Basically, the set of PowerPoints that I was given pretty much hit on everything that makes me shudder with regards to presentations. As such I'm re-doing them. They're based on the PowerPoints that I was given as well as on the text The Study of Language by George Yule. Here are the ones that I've used so far. Annoyingly, I haven't found any share-your-powerpoint website that lets me embed the files on my blog AND lets the animations work AND doesn't mess up my formatting here and there. Boo. I'm using SlideShare, as it seems to work the best for sharing on Blogger. If any of you know of a site that would work better, please let me know. Anyway, keep in mind that a good PowerPoint presentation should be used as the backdrop for your lecture - it shouldn't simply contain the text of your lecture. As such, a lot of the slides are just pictures, short video clips, or short phrases meant to stimulate discussion. Anyhow - enjoy!
After using this one in class, I learned that my students have no clue as to who Kirk Douglas is. I was finally able to get through to them by saying "You know Michael Douglas? The guy who's married to Catherine Zeta-Jones? Yeah, his father." Also, note to self: warn students before showing the video on brain surgery. I nearly had one guy puke. Not everyone has as tough of a stomach for such things as I have.

You can't discuss second language acquisition until you know a bit about first language acquisition. Also FYI, the last slide consists of discussion group questions. And a picture of me as a toddler.

Reading ‘Reading Lolita in Tehran’ in Orlando

The first time I read Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran was in 2008, near the end of my stint in Kyrgyzstan. This being the pre-Kindle period, my friends and I read whatever English language books came our way, from dry histories of Central Asia, to entertaining mysteries, to bizarre works of soft-core porn allegedly categorized as ‘romance.’ We read whatever we could get our hands on, simply because our supply was so limited. Some of what we read was pretty awful (the sci-fi story about the aliens and the grandmothers, the aforementioned ‘romance’ that utilized the term ‘pearly essence’ in a way that has scarred me forever, that horrid ex-pat bio I nicknamed Boobs in Bishkek, etc.), but others stood out as really well-written, entertaining and/or educational (numerous Nevada Barr mysteries, Colin Thubron’s Central Asia travel memoirs, tales of reindeer herders in Siberia, etc.). Reading Lolita in Tehran fell into the latter category. I absolutely adored it. Not only was it incredibly well-written, but it provided incredibly in-depth insight into the lives of women in Iran – insights that went far beyond the stereotypical limitations of OMG THEY WEAR VEILS! that permeates our media today. As I was, at the time, living in a predominantly Muslim country, I had so often been asked by friends, family, and acquaintances back home: ‘Do all the women wear veils?’ ‘Do they all hate Americans?’ ‘Is it safe for non-Muslims to go there?’ etc, etc, etc. I can only imagine that these types of questions increase exponentially if one were to go, not to an obscure country like Kyrgyzstan, but instead to a well-known and well-vilified country such as Iran. Additionally, Nafisi’s teaching style (encouraging her Iranian students to connect the events discussed in Western novels to the events in their lives) was something that I wanted to try. While it wasn’t something that I could use in the classes that I was teaching at the time, I had visions of creating a reading list based on the one included at the end of Nafisi’s book and incorporating it into a class of advanced EFLers who were interested in English language literature. Needless to say, that didn’t happen. Instead, 2009 happened.

Fast-forward to 2013. One of the courses I’m taking is on dealing with different cultures in the ESOL classroom. The course really seems to be designed for people who have never been out of the country before and who have never had to deal with people from different cultures before. To be honest, I personally am getting very little from the course. We were given a ‘suggested reading list’ from which we were supposed to select a book about which we were supposed to write a report. (Don’t even get me started on how lame of an assignment this is. A book report? Is this grad school or elementary school? Yeah.) Anyway, one of the books on the list was Reading Lolita in Tehran. Remembering how much I’d enjoyed it the first time around, I decided to go with that. (Hey, I’m working two jobs and taking four classes – cut me some slack for working with a book I’d read before!) I enjoyed the book as much as I did the first time around, and I got to actually formulate my thoughts into a paper on how I would use what I learned from the book inside an actual classroom.

Then, four days before the paper was due, I saw a poster advertising a speaking event in Winter Park – Azar Nafisi would be speaking that very night! Free to the public! I had a splitting headache that wouldn’t go away no matter how much Excedrin I fed it. I was so shaky from taking too many Excedrin that I actually felt dizzy. Normally I would have celebrated the arrival of such a headache by curling up under the covers with a pillow atop my head. Instead I forced myself to drive over to Winter Park. I am very glad I did. Nafisi was incredible – and surprisingly hilarious. Reading Lolita in Tehran is such a serious work that I really didn’t expect her to have such a sense of humor. I video-recorded part of her presentation, and audio-recorded the rest. I missed the very beginning, as I was having trouble getting my audio-recorder to work (which was why I ended up videoing the first segment), but I did get most of it. Sadly, despite the fact that I could have met Nafisi at the end of the program, I had to leave – my headache had reached the point where it was going to try to do me in if I didn’t take it home immediately. But at least I was able to record her for your listening pleasure:

Anyone remember that Verve Pipe song?

I'm in the process on writing a 'reflection' on a chapter in one of my texts on participatory language teaching. Participatory teaching (language or otherwise) involves a lot of power sharing between students and teachers - allowing students to take more of a role in deciding what and how they are going to learn. While there are many aspects of participatory teaching (language or otherwise) that I think can be incorporated into a classroom in a useful manner, I think the teacher/professor/instructor should always be careful not to hand too much power over to the student. The student is still the student for a reason. If he could teach himself, he wouldn't be taking the class. I don't say this because I'm a teacher and want to keep hold of the reins of power in the classroom (well, maybe to a certain extent...). My biggest problem with this concept dates back to some experiences I had in high school. I've been writing about it in my reflection, and I'm trying really hard not to reference the Verve Pipe, but...

Over the winter break spanning 1993-1994 (while I was in 9^th grade), two of my teachers (English and Biology) attended a conference on participatory teaching which really inspired them. During the fall semester, our classes had been very normal and boring. My English teacher spent a lot of time drilling us on parts of speech (which was annoying, as my peers who studied with other teachers were reading Romeo and Juliet), and my biology teacher gave daily science lectures. Normal but boring. After Christmas break, both teachers came back, having attended said conference, full of new ideas on how they planned to completely reinvent our classrooms. In both classes, the teachers decided, would be run as “businesses.” We divided ourselves up into “departments,” and each “department” was supposed to be in charge of teaching part of our Language Arts or Biology textbook. One group was elected to be management, and their job was (ostensibly) to oversee the rest of us and make sure we were on-task. At the end of each grading period, we were supposed to meet with our group members and determine what grades we felt we deserved.

At the beginning of the process, we were all very excited. This was something new, something we’d never done in a class before. However, it was problematic from the get-go. The “popular” kids were all elected to management, and friends formed their own “departments.” The teachers insisted that we (the students) were in control, and that we were responsible for planning and executing all tasks. For the first few weeks, we struggled to do some work – but as our teachers had taken to giving us no guidance, English and Biology rapidly devolved into gossip hour and study hall for other classes. We had to turn in final projects by the end of each grading period, and of course we all scraped something together at the last minute… but as we were deciding our own grades, none of us put much effort into it (especially after the first grading period ended and we learned that our teachers really had been serious about letting us decide our own grades).

I can see some merit to the general way in which my English and Biology teachers attempted to run our classes that semester; however, it is obvious to me that these specific projects were a failure. I did not learn anything in either of those classes that semester, other than how to do the bare minimum to scrape by. We, as ninth graders, were not mature enough to handle the complete responsibility for our education that our teachers turned over to us – and being immature and irresponsible, we took advantage of this opportunity to goof off as much as possible. This is one of the dangers in taking participatory education too far – it expects a lot from students, and often expects more than the students are able or willing to give. In my high school English and Biology classes, things would have gone a lot better had “management” been the teacher, as opposed to the cheerleaders and the football stars. We needed someone to guide us, to show us what we needed to do and how we needed to do it – and to make sure we stayed on task. Instead, our teachers turned the classroom completely over to us, and we took advantage of it in the worst possible way. After all, we were only freshmen.

Valentine's Themed Songs with Phrasal Verbs

Today was Valentine's Day, and my class (adults, advanced level) were still supposed to be working on phrasal verbs. I decided to spice up the lesson by using some songs with which they were all familiar, and which contained the phrasal verbs get back, come true, fog up, run out, settle down, bend over, hold back, look into, turn up, open up, and stay away. The songs I used were Someone Like You by Adele, and I'm Yours by Jason Mraz. In addition to discussions of the phrasal verbs in these songs (including whether or not they were separable or inseparable), we got to discuss words and phrases like out of the blue, time flies, the time of our lives, bittersweet, bend over backwards for someone, aim to do something, and fate.

Jason Mraz's grammar is a particularly annoying and often incorrect combination of cutsey and trashy, but my group was smart enough that we were able to go through and actually correct Mraz's grammar. And now if someone says to them something along the lines of 'I done ate that' (instead of 'I've already eaten that'), they'll know what that person is talking about. 

They also learned 'ain't' from Adele. (Only one of them had heard 'ain't' before.) While I love correct grammar and certainly don't want to be teaching my students to speak incorrectly, my goal is for them to be able to understand and communicate with the average person on the street... and with so many native English speakers using 'ain't' or other incorrect grammar forms on a regular basis, I'd like to make sure my students can understand such things when they encounter them. 

Anyway, the class really enjoyed the lesson, and they were all happily singing along with the songs, so I'd say this one was a success. Below are the lyrics to the songs with the phrasal verbs removed, if you'd like to snag 'em for your classes. (BTW, I'm Yours says 'damn' several times, and talks about nibbling on someone's ear, so definitely keep in mind the age/culture of your students!)

Someone Like You by Adele

I heard that you're __________________
That you found a girl and you're married now.
I heard that your dreams __________________.
Guess she gave you things I didn't give to you.

Old friend, why are you so shy?
Ain't like you to __________________ or hide from the light.

I hate to __________________ out of the blue uninvited
But I couldn't __________________, I couldn't fight it.
I had hoped you'd see my face and that you'd be reminded
That for me it isn't over.

Never mind, I'll find someone like you
I wish nothing but the best for you too
Don't forget me, I beg
I remember you said,
"Sometimes it lasts in love but sometimes it hurts instead,
Sometimes it lasts in love but sometimes it hurts instead"

You know how the time flies
Only yesterday was the time of our lives
We were born and raised
In a summer haze
Bound by the surprise of our glory days

I hate to __________________ out of the blue uninvited
But I couldn't __________________, I couldn't fight it.
I'd hoped you'd see my face and that you'd be reminded
That for me it isn't over.

Never mind, I'll find someone like you
I wish nothing but the best for you too
Don't forget me, I beg
I remember you said,
"Sometimes it lasts in love but sometimes it hurts instead."

Nothing compares
No worries or cares
Regrets and mistakes
They are memories made.
Who would have known how bittersweet this would taste?

Never mind, I'll find someone like you
I wish nothing but the best for you
Don't forget me, I beg
I remember you said,
"Sometimes it lasts in love but sometimes it hurts instead."

I’m Yours by Jason Mraz

Well you done done me and you bet I felt it

I tried to be chill but you're so hot that I melted

I fell right through the cracks 

Now I'm trying to __________________

Before the cool done __________________

I'll be giving it my bestest

And nothing's going to stop me but divine intervention

I reckon it's again my turn to win some or learn some

But I won't hesitate no more, no more

It cannot wait, I'm yours

Well __________________ your mind and see like me

__________________ your plans and damn you're free

__________________ your heart and you'll find love love love love

Listen to the music of the moment people dance and sing

We’re just one big family

And it's our God-forsaken right to be loved love loved love loved

So I won't hesitate no more, no more

It cannot wait I'm sure

There's no need to complicate 

Our time is short

This is our fate, I'm yours

Dooo, dooo, dooooo

Scooch on over closer dear

And I will nibble your ear

I've been spending way too long checking my tongue in the mirror

And __________________ backwards just to try to see it clearer

But my breath __________________ the glass

And so I drew a new face and I laughed

I guess what I'll be saying is there ain't no better reason

To rid yourself of vanity and just go with the seasons

It's what we aim to do

Our name is our virtue

But I won't hesitate no more, no more 

It cannot wait I'm yours

Well __________________ your mind and see like me

__________________ your plans and damn you're free

__________________ your heart and you'll find that the sky is yours

So please don't, please don't, please don't

There's no need to complicate

Cause our time is short

This oh this oh this is our fate, I'm yours!

Fun with Friends and Phrasal Verbs

I've started teaching a new class at the school where I teach part time. It's a class of adults, all advanced level, all students who are really only "studying" to keep their student visas. Even though I've only just started working with this group, I've heard them mention several time over the past few weeks that the school is a joke, and that as soon as they get their green cards, they'll be out of there. They're definitely jaded! 

I've only taught two classes to this advanced group so far - on the rather stultifying topic of phrasal verbs, with the equally stultifying Passages 2 textbook - but I've been trying to bring as much life to the topic as possible. Today, at the end of class, my students thanked me for a great lesson and said 'we actually learned something for once.' This says a lot about my place of employment. (It's a private language school.) 

Anyway,  in case you're curious about today's lesson, I modified one that I found here. Here's my version: After some boring Passages-based phrasal verb reviews, I reviewed the phrasal verbs wear in, hang on, run into, pick up, come over, drop off, and sit down - which I admit were easy for this group - and discussed whether each verb was separable or inseparable. Then we watched an excerpt from the Friends episode The One That Could Have Been Part 1, which featured the aforementioned phrasal verbs. The students in my class are definitely advanced enough to watch Friends without any problems. Then I gave them the script to the excerpt that we watched, with the phrasal verbs deleted:

Joey: Hey man, look sorry about that Archie thing. Do uh, do you need me to give you
some money?

Chandler: Hey, I may have no money, but I still have my pride.

Joey: Really?

Chandler: Ehh.

Monica: Maybe Joey doesn’t have to give you the money, TV stars have assistants right?

Joey: That’s an idea! Hey, if I hired an assistant, would-would you take money from her?

Monica: No Joey! Chandler could be your assistant! See, he could answer all of your fan mail and stuff!

Joey: That’s great! That would be great! Let’s do that!

Chandler: I could use the money; it could give me time to write.

Joey: Oh right great! Welcome aboard!

Chandler: Okay!

Joey: All right! Now hey, I need to use the bathroom. Since I don’t need any assistance in there, take a break!

Chandler: All right!

Phoebe: Hey!

Monica: Hey Phoebe! Guess what?

Phoebe: What?

Monica: Joey just hired Chandler to be his assistant!

Phoebe: Oh that’s so sweet! Oh! _________________! _________________! Go! No! No-no! I
said sell when it hits 50! 5-0, it’s a number! It comes after 4-9! No, it’s okay. It’s okay, you’re allowed one mistake. Just kidding, you are of course fired.

Ross: Hey Mon!

Monica: Hey!

Ross: Mon, look who I _________________!

Monica: Oh my God! Rachel!! You look terrific!

Rachel: Oh, so do you! Did you lose weight?

Monica: You are so sweet to notice! Yes, I lost three and a half pounds!

Ross: And, and uh, you-you remember my friend Chandler.

Chandler: Hey.

Rachel: Oh yeah.

Ross: And that’s Phoebe over there!

Phoebe: Hi!

Monica: Oh my God, _________________! _________________! How long as it been since we’ve seen each other?

Ross: 1987, the day after Christmas, at Sean McMahon’s party. I played you one of my songs, y’know Interplanetary Courtship Ritual.

Rachel: Oh yeah. Right. So now, are—do you, do you still do music?

Ross: Sometimes, you should come over sometime! I’ll play you one of my other…

Rachel: Oh my God! Joey Tribbiani from Days of Our Lives just walked in here!

Monica: Rach, he’s a friend of ours.

Rachel: You are friends with Dr. Drake Remoray?

Chandler: Oh, it’s kinda hard to be friends with Drake because of his busy schedule and the fact that he’s not real.

Ross: Hey, hey, or I could bring my keyboard here sometime…

Rachel: He’s _________________! He’s _________________!

Monica: Joey!

Joey: I know, here-here!!

Monica: Ohhh! No! This is my friend Rachel, we went to high school together.

Rachel: Hi!

Joey: Hi!

Rachel: Hi! I love you on that show! I watch you every day! I mean, when you took out your own kidney to save your ex-wife even though she tried to kill you…

Joey: Well, it’s always nice to meet the fans.

Rachel: Ah!

Joey: She’s not crazy is she?

Monica: No.

Joey: So uh, how you doin’?

***                

Phoebe: _________________. _________________ . _________________ ! Go! Who is this? Oh, okay. You’re gonna like working for me. What’s your name? What kinda name is Brindy? I’m… whatever… stop talking! Alright. From – from now on your name is Joan. You can pick your own last name.

Joey: Hey, there you are.

Chandler: Uh-oh, it’s my boss.

Joey: All right, here’s a list of things for you to do today. Man, this going to be so great! Thank you so much! All right, I got to go to work I’m delivering twins today, but only one of them is mine!

Chandler: _________________my dry cleaning. _________________my vitamins. Teach me how to spell vitamins. _________________my new jeans.

We watched the clip again, and the students filled in the blanks with the phrasal verbs. Then - since it's a class of six - the students took the script and acted it out. They really got into it and had a great time. Anyway, my students loved it so much that I thought I'd share this with you. The only problems with this activity are: I couldn't find this episode online for free anywhere (I actually bought it so that I could do this lesson). Also, you have to cut off the video right after Chandler says "new jeans" or else you get Monica telling him (and your students) that he is Joey's bitch. 

Anyway, if you've got an advanced class that's starting Passages 2, this makes a great supplement. Enjoy!

Grading over 100 students... and doing it well?

One of my grad school courses is all about how to assess your students. As this is part of a Master's in TESOL program, the course focuses on how to assess speakers of English as a second language in terms of their reading, listening, speaking, and writing abilities. The course spends a lot of time focusing on the importance of providing quality corrective feedback. One of the things the course stresses is that simply marking answers as correct or incorrect and giving a letter or numerical score doesn't do much to actually help students learn. A good teacher should explain what the student did wrong and how to fix it, in addition to providing positive feedback about the specific things the student has done well. General comments such as 'good job' or 'awkward' don't go far towards helping students know what was done well or what was awkward and why. I'm sure we all agree with this (in theory).

Then reality hits.

I am only grading for one undergrad class, but it has four sections and over a hundred students. I've taught over one hundred students at one time before, but as they've always been in separate classes I could often (although not always) make sure I didn't have a hundred assignments to grade all at once. When you have such a large number of assignments to grade, whether you're a graduate assistant grading for huge undergraduate courses at a large university, a public school teacher teaching five classes of thirty students, or teaching English in a private language institute in Korea teaching ten classes of ten to fifteen students, the reality is that you are going to spend a lot of time grading.

I don't have too much say in how the assignments that I grade are graded; I'm just a lowly grading assistant after all. The grading rubric is established by the course's instructor, and I am responsible for adhering to the established rubric for each assignment. The one thing that is left up to me is what sort of feedback I provide. In theory, I could comment on each student's assignment, providing detailed information on what they've done well and what needs improvement... but I have something like thirty assignments to grade, multiplied by one hundred and eleven students. Even if I weren't also a full-time student myself, I don't think it would be possible for me to leave quality feedback on every assignment and still manage to finish grading everything before the end of the semester.

Because of this, it seems that the students who hear from me the most are the worst ones in the course. They  hear from me the most because whenever students lose points from an assignment, I am required to email them and explain why (although the length and depth of the explanation is up to me). I could totally get away with messages like "I deducted 3 points from your score because your explanation of X was incorrect" - but I don't. I've been trying my best to explain to my students not merely what they lost points for, but why what they did was incorrect as well as what the correct answer should have been and why. As you might imagine, this takes a lot of time. 

Due to the way the grading rubrics have been established for most of the assignments that I grade, doing the bare minimum and going the extra mile earn my students the same number of points. That's an entirely different can of worms that I'm not entirely sure I want to get into here on this semi-public blog. However, I mention it because it is relevant to this topic. It bugs me that a student who does the bare minimum gets the same score as a student who has obviously put a lot of time and effort into his or her work. I've tried to encourage those who have gone the extra mile by giving them extra praise. Unfortunately, for the most part this 'extra praise' tends to consist merely of banal statements like 'Great job!' and 'Excellent work!' instead of  detailed descriptions of what it was that I thought was done well. Sigh.

And those poor students in the middle of the pack? They hardly ever hear from me. I feel somewhat guilty about this, but can't come up with a practical solution. (And to any of those people who think class size doesn't matter, let this be one of an innumerable number of possible examples as to why it most definitely matters!)

Online courses and “discussion”

This semester I am a grading assistant for an online undergrad course. I am also taking one online grad course, as well as one mixed mode grad course (meaning approximately 50% of the coursework is online, and the rest is done in a classroom setting). I have a lot of mixed feelings about this, but I think I’ll try to confine this post to my thoughts on, well, online posts – or as they tend to be called in the online course world, Discussion Postings.

In both the undergrad class for which I grade and the grad courses that I’m taking, we’re supposed to participate in online discussions about the things we read or about videos we watch (etc). These discussion postings are meant to simulate the types of discussions that would normally take place in a real-life classroom. Unfortunately, these “discussions” are so incredibly stilted, awkward, and contrived that I don’t think it serves that function at all. They are also meant to “prove” to the instructor that the assignment (reading, video watching, etc.) has been completed; however, as the postings are relatively short (the undergrad ones are typically a minimum of three to five sentences (!) and the grad level ones are typically a minimum of 500 words), it seems very easy to create a post without having actually done the reading/watching/whatever. I know that online learning is rapidly growing in importance and popularity. I love teaching in an actual classroom – and I love studying in an actual classroom – but I also realize that at some point I will probably find myself teaching an online course. As such, I’ve been viewing my online courses not just as something that I’m taking/grading, but as an example of what works and what doesn’t in online education.

So why is it I feel that these discussion postings are so inauthentic in terms of a substitute for an actual classroom discussion? Well, it has a lot to do with the specific way in which they’re scored. They’re typically graded along the following lines: X points for posting your thoughts on the reading/video/whatever, and Y points for commenting on at least two other people’s posts. This means that instead of engaging in an actual discussion, students quickly look for two posts to comment on, and then they never look back. They very rarely reply to comments on their own posts. (I try to, myself, but I am one of the very few grad students who do this. Even fewer of the undergrads do.) One of my undergrads was docked points because while she did make two comments, they were in response to two comments to her original post (as opposed to comments on other people’s posts). This was sad, because it was the only instance of actual discussion in the entire class for that assignment, and yet the student did not get full credit.

During my undergrad years, I sat through many a class discussion without saying all that much. We were given points for participation in general, but it wasn’t based on the number of times I opened my mouth in class. Sure there were times when I participated, but there were many other times when I either had nothing to say, or was simply more interested in what others (including the professor) had to say about a topic. While I certainly don’t know what motivated my undergrad classmates to speak (or not) during class, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t “I have to open my mouth X times to get a good grade.” This led to some undergrad discussions that were actually discussions. And whether I was talking or not, I was still listening and learning.

I’m not sure how that kind of actual discussion can be fostered online. Part of what makes a real-life classroom discussion work is the fact that it is moderated by the instructor in real-time. The instructor can bring up points that students have missed (or have neglected to bring up), can emphasize which aspects of the reading are more important, and can ask questions to get students to think about what they’ve said, why things happened, etc. This sort of real-time monitoring/direction is impossible to maintain in a discussion board that is open for, say, a week, with participants posting at random times throughout the week.

One of my professors responds to our posts during the discussion period and asks us questions, which at the very least leads to a mini-discussion between the student and the professor, although I have yet to see any actual discussions. My other online professor comments on our posts after the “discussion” period is over. It’s always interesting for me to see what the professor thinks of what I’ve written, but again, a comment after the fact hardly leads to discussion.

Is there any way to turn “discussion postings” for online courses into actual discussions? The only thing I can think of is to set up weekly live chats… although that would almost defeat the one of the main purposes of an online course, which is that you can take it regardless of your schedule.

As ironic as it is to be posting this online (haha), have any of you had any good experiences teaching/taking an online course? What worked? What didn’t? Please share!

Learning Styles

I am a grading assistant for an undergraduate class that is wholly online. A lot of online courses like this one have assignments that exist purely to prove to the teacher that the students have done the reading or watched the video or what have you. For the assignment that I'm grading today, students were required to write their opinions about one website (containing an article) as well as about two videos. They were instructed to include their thoughts about the website/videos, what they thought about the topic, and which one of the three best fit their learning style. As far as actual assignments go, this one is obviously very easy to complete, as long as you read the article and watch the videos. (Amazingly, there are students who didn't bother doing the assignment. SMH.)

The article in question can be found here, and the two videos are posted below. What I have found the most interesting is that among the students (and there are a little over 100), I'd say they are divided into equal numbers over which of the three items best fits their learning style - and they are very opinionated about which one(s) they like and which one(s) they don't like and why. Even though the goal of this assignment wasn't to make this point, it clearly shows that students have different learning styles, and that even if you prefer one style, you should include other styles in your classroom. (I personally prefer the article, although I enjoyed the first video. What about you?)