Search results matching tags 'life' and 'teaching'

What do you care to know about the world?

Anonymous — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 14:13:00 GMT

Teaching matters.

We owe it to our children to get it right.

What do you care to know about the world?

There's a place for what used to be called boredom, for empty spaces to slide into your mind. It's not particularly unpleasant, but it lacks the dopamine we've programmed our children, ourselves, to crave.

If you sit still long enough outside, you will see things, hear things, smell wondrous things you hardly knew existed. But you need to sit still. Without music, without a screen. Close your eyes and listen. Sniff. Touch the earth.

We train our children to believe that we have mastered our universe. We teach them how to avert their eyes. We answer their simplest questions ("Why are people poor?") with You're too young to understand...It's complicated...It will make sense when you're older. We actively work to make our children jaded.

Science teachers, like art teachers, have an obligation to teach children how to seek what's true, if we hope to teach them anything at all. We cannot tell them.

Has any young child not been charmed by the edge of a July pond, or by a tray of watercolor paint? Both teem with countless possibilities that cannot be measured or tested. We cede control when we hand a child a paintbrush, a magnifying glass, a few moments of unstructured time.

Before you dare restructure the world of a child--the heart of teaching--dare to ask yourself what do you care to know about this world? If you do not yet know, get out of the classroom until you do.

What do you care to know about the world?

I have stared into the eyes of animals as millions of my triceps muscle cells release calcium ions, triggering almost simultaneous contraction, driving the club between the eyes of the critter I am slaying.

It remains an awful moment for me, that last instant.

Awful comes from agheful, "worthy of respect or fear," full of awe, full of fear, a word now reduced to meaning "very bad." We've long lost our sense of awe, at least those running the show now--if we had it, we'd not destroy the world mindlessly.

Yet when I mindfully take a life, so that I may eat, I slide into a rich universe devoid of words, but not of feelings, in the most basic sense of the word--the rhythmic writhing flesh in my hands now quivers chaotically, if the blow is true.

Yet to do so in a classroom would be obscene, an affront to our children, an act of career suicide, and (*gasp*) a deviation from our lesson plans,. with every minute programmed to match a standard designed by folks who long ago lost touch with what matters.

What do you care to know about the world ?

As fundamental as this is, that we are here on a planet, inextricably linked to each other and to everything else alive, and to many things not, many of us live in worlds that are but shells of the fundamental one held up by the ground.

Just like the earthworm, we eat, we breathe, we toss shite from our backside, we entangle together to share genetic memories we pass on to new life, and we die. We're of the earth, and for those who believe that this is but a tiny journey to bide time until another world finds them, may earthy joy find you before your last breath.

And you will draw a last, agonal breath from this world, the only one we can know, the world of art, of science, of writhing life, of decay, of dirt, of us.

The world worth knowing...

Watercolor tray from Officemax site here.
Other photos ours, usual CC applies.

Life in a drop of water

Anonymous — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 14:38:00 GMT

I wandered into school despite our Hallowe'en snow day, to prep for lab. I brought in some pond water I foolishly (and joyously) collected in the middle of the storm.

I took a drop, put it on a slide. I never know what I expect to see, and I'm never disappointed.

I saw some critters I had not seen before--first a few translucent "turtles" grazing through strands of algae, then lollygagging off to other pastures.

A few moments later I saw what looked like two flowers on springs slowly uncoiling, getting longer and longer, then undulating in the micro-currents. *snap!* Their stalks coiled back into springs, too quick for my eye to follow. I watched them unravel again, spooling out their stalks, then a minute later, *snap!*

After a session with a drop of pond water, a single drop, I do my best to get the critters off the slide.

Every drop of my pond water is full of life. Watch one or two protozoa go about their business for a few minutes, and the possibility they're sentient creeps in.

We live in an amazing world we do not, cannot, understand.

***

Today marks the anniversary of our first detonation of the hydrogen bomb, "Ivy Mike," obliterating part of the Enewetak atoll. People lived on the atoll before we started testing nuclear bombs on it four years earlier.

People had lived on it since the time of Christ, perhaps even longer. They were forced to leave.

On November 1^st, 1952, we unleashed a blast that was over 400 times stronger than the bomb dropped on Nagasaki.

What responsibility do teachers have when we share secrets ancients would have held sacred and silent?

What responsibility do teachers have as we give children the tools to manipulate the world as engineers, as scientists, as policymakers?

The atoll is again "safe for habitation," according to the same government that blasted it over 60 years ago.

In a few months, some of my students will be transforming bacteria, literally manipulating the code of life, sliding pieces of jellyfish DNA into the bacteria so that the bacteria will glow green under fluorescent light. We do this in high school without thinking twice, because it's biology, because it's technology, because it's flashy, because we can.

Humans are naturally empathic--our culture bleeds it out of our children at our own peril. If we continue to treat children as economic tools, as bits of data, we will continue to have a culture where machines matter at least as much as people. [Almost a quarter (22.8%) of women ages 40-59 years old take anti-depressant medicines!]

President Obama claims that “nations with the most educated workers will prevail."

Prevail at what? We got enough nuclear tonnage to put this planet out, including my lackadaisical pond critters munching away at this moment in a jar on my windowsill. We're pretty good at prevailing.

Maybe it's time we spent more time learning how to live.

Criminy, the zombies are winning.

The YouTube is by zaster79,credits are at the end--the good stuff starts at 0:45.

First Lesson Aims: Dave Tucker Guest Post!

Anonymous — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 09:30:23 GMT

If you’ve had time to look at recent posts on this blog, you’ll have noticed a series of “first lesson” ideas and activities… after all, it’s September, we’ve all got “back-to-school-itis”!

Stepping back from the plethora of great teaching ideas to fill the class time, today our guest blogger, Dave Tucker, looks at some broader learning and teaching goals that we might want to think about before we start planning!

First Lesson Aims

I love first lessons. I tend to approach first lessons with new groups feeling uniformly nervous but excited. I come out of first lessons feeling variously elated, charged up, determined, sometimes shocked, but never despondent. A whole school year ahead to make the most of the medley of characteristics and quirks the students have, in the same nervous mindset as me, laid bare in the first moment of meeting! Lots of activities have in mind exactly this opening and sharing: “getting to know you” is the general term applied to these jolly bare-alls, but different ages, levels and group-types have different aims and needs.

Rather than focus on actual activities which are two a penny and available from anyone who has been through at least one year of this sort of thing, I instead choose to list here the possible aims for my first lessons and encourage people to sculpt accordingly. Not all the below can be achieved in the first lesson, of course, but I would suggest that most of them should make part of your aims in the first several lessons. Otherwise the rest of the school year could well be missing something that would help preserve that glorious sense of nervous excitement and stop it from so easily shading into despondency…

Possible aims for first lessons

Achievement / challenge – students should leave feeling they have learnt something and extended themselves right at the outset
Get to know each other & the teacher – fosters a sharing, supportive atmosphere in the classroom
Get to know the course/book/exam format – gives objective and direction for the course
Establish ground rules (conduct, homework, English, hands up) – removes need for later harrying, lets everyone know where they stand
Set patterns for future lessons (signals, speaking positions, greetings, etc.) – why waste the first lesson? Get into it now and make your life easier!
Establish a positive atmosphere – we want them to enjoy their learning from the outset – we want shy or reluctant students to want to come back for more!
Provide something for learners of all styles – cater for everyone at the beginning, get new students used to new styles
Analyse learning styles – get students to start making the most of their own strong learning channels
Use the discipline system – let students see that it’s not just for show, that rewards and consequences do actually work!
Give rationale for course & methods – students like to know why they’re doing what they’re doing: sometimes the reason for movement or guided discovery isn’t as obvious as we might believe
Needs analysis – help students realise that you are willing to be flexible enough to cater for their needs from the beginning

Have fun! Above all, have fun.

Dave Tucker has been in ELT for 24 years: as a teacher with a particular focus on Young Learners, as a teacher trainer on Young Learner development courses and also as Director of Studies of International House Coimbra (Portugal) for 15 years. He is the author of three Teacher’s Editions for the Primary Macmillan Series Take Shape.

Acknowledgement: Teflgeek has simply copied Dave’s author biography from his profile page on the Macmillan website. This does not represent an endorsement of Teflgeek by Macmillan or vice versa.

First Lesson or First Week Ideas

Anonymous — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 09:30:14 GMT

Back in July I posted a selections of 20 ideas and activities that might be worth trying out as you get to know your new classes this school year – and since then there’ve been a couple of additional ideas to throw into the mix:

Recently, the 24th Edition of EFL/ESL/ELL Blog Carnival : A Journey in TEFL got posted on Eva Buyuksimkesyan’s “A Journey in TEFL” blog. I strongly recommend taking a look here if you’re in need of inspiration – Eva’s collated over 40 (I lost count) posts from different contributors.

The Lesson Plans Page also has a wide range of back to school resources and materials, though these are aimed more at native speaker young learner classes than a language learner class – and I’ve not tried any of them, so can’t vouch for them personally!

Pediatrics vs. teaching

Anonymous — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 23:21:00 GMT

I used to be a doctor, the kind with a stethoscope, the kind licensed to hurt you for you own good. It puzzles children to learn that a physician would walk away from medicine in order to teach, and there are days I am baffled myself.

I liked medicine. I love teaching. I did not know that this would be true when I left medicine, so while it is true, it is not enough to explain why I left. Why leave something you like, especially when it pays ridiculously well?

Every year children ask me this, and so far I have not quite gotten it right. I thought I had it right, but high school sophomores would kind of shake just a little bit sideways. I wasn't fooling them.

I think I got it right now.

***

I saw a lot of bad stuff in hospitals. I saw a lot of good stuff, too, but good stuff can be found in a lot of places. The truly bad stuff has a home in the hospital.

The unlucky (an elderly woman who slowly died from an infection caused by an errant piece of metal ripping through her car's floor, riveting in her thigh).

The doomed (a woman burned over most of her body, still conscious, still talking, immediately before we intubated her, rendering her speechless--we knew she was doomed when we did this. We did it anyway.)

The curious (two babies sharing the same torso, the same heart, the same fate).

The geographically screwed (an Asian toddler who needed a new heart, but who could not afford one, twisting away towards death as she lived in an American hospital as an alien).

The innocent (children wasting away from a virus we barely understood, acquired from a mother's heroin habit or her lover's proclivities).

The unlucky (a stray bullet meant for another, a victim of physics and Euclidean geometry).

I was very good at diagnosis, and not bad at making things better once a diagnosis was made. A few were better than me, but not many.

***

When you are surrounded by hurt, there are two ways to respond if you want to remain functional--fix it, or pretend it does not exist. I did a lot of fixing.

If you do medicine long enough, and if you are paying attention, you give death its due. It's real, it's usually ugly, and it's inevitable.

I can't beat death--took me awhile to get to that realization, but I got there. And it's liberating.

Turns out living isn't the goal--living well is what matters.

I was pretty good at helping people live longer. Now I'm getting good at helping people live well.

I thought my job mattered before, but had my doubts in the pitiful wail of a dying toddler, bruised and bleeding as we laid our hands, our technology, and finally our fists in futile CPR on her tiny body as it cooled its way back to entropy.

A life worth living is our only compensation against the greedy hand of death.

So I help children carve out a life worth living.

I'm a teacher.

If you teach, teach as though lives depend on it. If you think this is excessive, get out.
Photos by me or Leslie--feel free to use under CC.

Wired for Mobile learning?

Anonymous — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 09:30:33 GMT

I spotted this one on a post on the TeachingEnglish | British Council facebook page – who in turn spotted it on the Voxy Blog.

The infographic below comes out of the work of Mark Prensky and his concepts of Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants – and looks how digital natives might fit into existing education systems (or not as the case may be!).

The original post “Are we Wired for Mobile Learning?” also comes with some ideas for exploiting and using the infographic in class, so if you visit them, make sure you scroll down to below the image!

First Lesson: I don’t know what you did last summer!

Anonymous — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 09:30:07 GMT

A very quick alternative to the standard composition task “What I did on my Summer holidays”.

Essentially, you ask the learners to write the composition (100 words? I guess length will be age & level dependent) about somebody else in the class.

I think I’ve blogged a similar activity at some point before, but not sure when. Anyway, the key to the activity, is that if John is writing about Amy’s holidays, John can’t talk directly to Amy. John has to ask the other learners in the class, Frank, Marta and so forth to ask Amy the questions that John wants to know the answers to.

Thus through a constant process of questions and answers John eventually gets enough information to write Amy’s composition for her. Of course, Amy will be writing Marta’s, Marta Frank’s and Frank John’s, so it all evens out eventually.

This is intended as an alternative for classes where learners do know each other – but it also works really well as the final part of a lesson with a class where nobody knows each other, as John will constantly be explaining to his classmates WHO Amy is, thus meaning everyone should have a much better idea of who everybody else in the class is by the end of it!

Having gathered together all the information during the lesson – the actual writing up of the composition can either be done in class or as a homework task. What can then be interesting is for the writer and the subject to check how close to the truth the composition is. The subject can then feedback and edit both the content and language of the composition for later revision – though this would be an optional stage depending on the abilities of the class.

First Lesson: Find Nobody Who…

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 09:30:58 GMT

This is an alternative approach to the inevitable “what did you do on your holidays” conversation. Many first lesson activities and ideas are based on the premise that nobody knows anybody else but often the students in your classes have come up through the levels together and the only new person in the group is you…

It should also combat those conversations with teenage classes that go: T: “Hey, how was your summer?” S: “Alright.” T: ”What did you do?” S: “Nothing.”

The basic objective is that the learners have to find stuff they did over the holidays that NOBODY else did.

So a simple procedure might be:

Ask the learners if they had a nice summer and lead into a REALLY boring description of what you did over the summer. e.g. I watched TV and I played computer games and I did some laundry and stuff. Ask the learners if they did anything similar. Establish that pretty much everybody in the class watched TV and played computer games. Then tell the learners about something slightly more interesting and less usual – for example taking a plane trip – and find out how many people did the same. Finally, describe something really interesting that you did – or alternatively make something up (e.g. rented a Ferrari and drove up the West coast of the USA). Find out whether anyone else did the same.

Thus having established the exclusivity principle, ask learners to find something that they did over the summer that nobody else did. Check that they understand they need to talk to ALL the other learners in the class.

Feedback: Find out from the learners what interesting and relatively exclusive things they did over the summer. You could also do some reformulation of any language areas that came up during their mingle activity.

Redemtion song

Anonymous — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 22:32:00 GMT

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery,
None but ourselves can free our minds.
Bob Marley

We're at that point now.

We were at it once before in my lifetime.

I know what fresh bread baked from wheat ground by my hands tastes like.
I know what blueberries off an early August bush taste like.
I know what wild dolphins sound like while I lie submerged in the Delaware Bay.
I know the moment of inevitability as I raise a stone above the eyes of a fish writhing under my hands.
I want to share this.

I know death of loved ones.
I know love.
I know fear in the eyes of a parent.
I know redemption.
I want to share this.

Time for us to stop looking at the one next to us, seeing what she will do.
Time to stop acting in fear.
We're lost, and knowing this liberates us.

Do what's right by your students, by their parents, by your town.
If we've lost the battle for democracy, and it's possible we may have, live well.
The children are watching us--we can, by our actions, give them faith that things will change.

Redemption.

First Lesson Ideas / Warmers

Anonymous — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 00:32:28 GMT

For many teachers, though the school year might have just ended – the joy of summer school classes is about to start. Or may have already, but I think lessons at my habitual summer haunt are due to begin on Monday morning – I’m not there this year, so not sure.

In any event this post contains a collection of getting to know you type activities / ice-breakers or first lesson warmers for you to choose from. If you started teaching summer school last week – sorry about the delay – but you can probably use these or adapt these as warmer or lead in type activities – so it might still be useful!

A little guidance: the activities listed towards the top are intended more for younger learners and the ones closer to the base are more for older learners.

Acknowledgement: This is a collection of stuff drawn together from the last nine years so my thanks to all those colleagues who shared ideas in that time. Two in particular need a special mention – James Lambie gave an input seminar on “first lessons” in Katowice in 2004 at which I took copious notes – Sarah Robbins worked with me on running a seminar on the same topic in Coimbra about two years ago and provided many of the younger learner based ideas contained within.

So – here it all is!

Baseball Cards: Learners draw a picture of themselves and write their name and age on one side of the card. They turn the card over. The teacher asks them some questions and they either write or draw the answers on the back. Stick the cards up around the room face side down (and numbered?) Learners read all the cards and guess which answers are which learners’ (and write answers on a worksheet?). Higher levels can interview a partner and make cards about them.

Shields: An old favourite. Learners have a “shield” outline divided into quarters. Teacher dictates a question e.g favourite colour/dream job depending on level etc. Learners fill in shield with their ‘answers’ to the questions. Either put up round the room for people to guess who is who and/or get another learners to write a profile of someone else based on their shield. You could make flags instead just to vary it a bit…

Hands: The same idea but learners trace round their hand on coloured paper. As in the other ideas they write the answers to questions on their fingers. Use to make a “class tree” to display them.

Name Poems: Learners write their name vertically and write a word beginning with each letter of their name. Alternatively they can draw a pictorial representation which the other learners can then “decode”.

Rabbits/Wizards: Learners write their names on a picture and colour, decorate etc. These then all get put in an envelope and each lesson one is picked out to decide who chooses the magic word for the class. Remove from any chosen names from the envelope so that everyone gets a turn. Can also pick more than one name to decide who gives out papers, presses play on the tape recorder etc. A very simple idea but cuts down on bickering and the kids really get into it. Especially useful with primary age children / larger young learner classes.

Interests Faces – Learners create “faces” by drawing /collaging things they like /hobbies etc. Other learners can guess what the pictures represent etc.

Ordering –Again not very new but works as a quick warmer/ice breaker. Learners in two teams race to order themselves according to age, shoe size, number of letters in their names, alphabetically by best friend’s first name etc. Can be competitive or not.

TPR – You’ll probably be using lots of TPR to practice classroom language and objects but this is another variation for higher level classes. You ask q’s and s’s respond by doing the action. However, they need to watch the other people in the class to see what they do. At the end the you put learners in teams and quiz them based on their observations e.g name one person who can play the piano…Suggested actions: If you have a brother, clap.” If you have a a dog put your right hand on your head.” “If your favourite sport is football, stand on one foot.”

Snowball Fight - Learners write five things about themselves on a piece of paper. Then they crumple the paper up into a ‘snowball’ and have a one-minute snowball fight. At the end of the minute, everyone grabs the closest snowball and has to try to find the person who wrote it. They could then introduce that person to the rest of the group, sharing the facts/ask more q’s and write about the person etc…..

Memory Quiz – Learners stand facing a partner and remember everything about their appearance for 30 seconds then one person turns around while their partner answers questions about them e.g What colour are his eyes…

Guess Who – Write 10/12 facts about someone famous on different pieces of paper as if they were answering e.g I have two children. I used to live in America but now I live in London. (Obviously difficulty depends on level). Learners in teams. You hold up an answer and they race to write the correct question on a piece of scrap paper and hold it up…. 3 points for the first team 1 point for every team with a correct question. At the end of the task put all the answers on the floor the first team to correctly identify who the answers are for wins a bonus 5 points Go through any errors with question formation ….this leads nicely into any interviewing/profile writing activity as they can use the questions to interview each other or….

Interview the teacher – Good for classes who’ve been together for ages but don’t know you. Put s’s in teams of 3. Learners think of a question, one learner races to the front and asks you the question, runs back to their team and tells them the answer. They write down the answer and tell the runner the next question which they were thinking of in the meantime. To speed things up I usually say that the first team to get 12 facts about me wins. The proviso is that I will only answer each question once so every team should have different facts. After they have their 12 facts they then write a profile of you including 15 facts. 3 of which are lies. (At this point you might have to go around letting the slower teams who didn’t get 12 facts, ask you a couple more questions). Number the profiles, put them on the wall and the s’s walk around reading them and writing down the 3 lies. S’s reveal their guesses and the authors tell them if they are correct the people who spot the most lies “win”. (With Guess Who this is a whole lesson).

Find someone who Bingo - As for “find someone who” but you write the categories on a grid. 1^st person to get a line of 6 (or, if you’re feeling evil, complete the whole grid) wins. NB make it clear you have to have 6 different people!

Guess the Question - Stick an icebreaker question on everyone’s back. As learners mingle everyone else answers the question on their back without telling them what it is. They have to figure out what the question is.

What do you know about…? Again good for learners who know each other or in the second lesson as a follow up to the getting to know you activity you did in the 1^st class. One learner at the front. Everyone in teams.You ask everyone a question about that person. The learner at the front secretly writes their answer and everyone else writes what they think is their answer. The teams reveal their answers then the learner at the front reveals the “correct” answer. One point for every “correct” answer.

Crossword Names – Either student created in the first lesson or, if you’re feeling keen, teacher created later in the week / course. Basically learners ask questions and then write clues to create a crossword for and about the class. Or the teacher uses what they know about the learners to do the same. e.g 1 down – a student with 6 brothers who hates cats. Obviously watch out for things like: 5 down “a fat student who smells”

Knowledge Races – Cut up a load of questions from a workbook at a level below the level of the class or just create questions they should know. Divide learners into teams, they take one question, answer it, show you the answer, get the next… Just like a reading race. Quite useful way to find out gaps in their knowledge early on and can be very confidence building….

Clouds & Questions: Learners draw six cloud shapes on a bit of paper. Get learners to tell you topic areas you might talk to someone about when you meet them for the first time (e.g.hometown, job, hobbies etc). They write down the areas in the cloud shapes and put their names at the top. Learners then swap papers. They then have to find out about the person whose paper they have, BUT are not allowed to talk to that person directly and can only use one intermediary per question. For example: Sarah must find out about Dave, and needs to get Alexis, Neil, Jamie, Regina, Lidia, Jane and Anna to ask Dave her questions and report back to her.

Self-Directed Interviews: write up five (fun / funny) questions on the whiteboard that you’re happy to answer. Nominate random learners to ask you the qus. Give out some scrap paper and get learners to write down five questions they would be happy to be asked. EITHER pair them off and let them ask each other OR carousel the class (inner & outer wheels)

Mix & Match Identities: Like a consequences / round the room story writing task. You ask learners a series of questions and they write short answers, passing on the answer paper after each question. Ask the same number of questions as you have learners and they should get their own paper back with some interesting biographical information! They can then find out who wrote what on their bit of paper.

OK – I think that’s all for now. Any questions of clarifications needed – let me know!