Of time and puzzles

Last night the class went fairly smoothly. We started with a dictation. Did a few pages from the workbook. Worked on a few pages from the book. Then we had a break. After the break, I had a puzzle ready I thought would be rather challenging. It was a word search puzzle. Giving a puzzle with words running left to right as well as right to left is hard enough for a native speaker, never mind a student at the lowest level of ESL. I expected this might actually be too hard, and before class I considered holding off on it. Instead, about four people completed the puzzle within 10 minutes. It occurred to me that the book has a lot of extra work online. So as students finished the puzzle, I had them log on to the site, and find the activities. This worked and the students got into the work online. There were a few technological glitches (a bad set of headphones, occasional  crashes), but nothing that would  upset the applecart too much.

I think for me thing I learn from this is to always have more than I think I need even when I think I have more than enough. I mean, this is something I know. Having taught the upper levels for years now, switching down to a very low level poses some real challenges. It is easier to have fewer activities in a higher level. Three to four things work fine for anything above Intermediate 1. It's a different story with the lower levels. One needs to provide more activities, more change-ups, but more repetition is needed as well. I lucked out last night. I can't depend on that tonight or tomorrow or any other night.

First night of class

Things seemed to go pretty well last night. Lots of repetition. Some pronunciation issues. We worked on names, the alphabet, numbers (thru 20), we did a jazz chant I wrote (what's your name). All of this same information was in the first chapter of the book. We referred to the book by the end of class. Thus, by the time we got to the end of the book, everything was very familiar. I think that part of it went well.

One thing that sticks out for me happened as I was going through the syllabus and the ground rules for the class. After I had told the students that attendance was mandatory and that they would be dropped if they missed more than 4 classes, I asked for questions. A student looked at her neighbor, then looked at me. "No entendia nada." (I didn't understand anything.) We did go through some class instruction words later, but the critical incident to me here is that classroom guidelines or basic instructions are critical (attendance rules, sign-in routine, etc), but how does one handle this when students lack much of the basic language necessary to understand these instructions without resorting to students L1?  (For the record, my class includes students with different L1s.)

Welcome

This blog has been set up to serve as a way to reflect on and improve my practice as a teacher. Only other teachers may join this blog. This is a kind of electronic dialogue journal. I will be writing about the things I do in my classes; I hope for your questions and comments on the content that will help me grow as a teacher. Ideally, everyone here will have set up their own blog wherein they can write about their experiences with the goal that we will all be helping each other. There are some basic rules to follow here.

1. Honesty. This should seem like a given. Reflection requires brutal honesty and self-assessment on the part of the writers. When I am sharing about my experiences, I won't hold back. I hope you won't either. Indeed to get the most out of any type of reflective journal, honesty is job one. But honesty needs to be balanced with...
2. Mutual respect. Another given. Teachers are passionate when it comes to what they do. This is not a job we do for the money. ;-) More likely than, not our care for our students and our desire to help them learn is what drives us. We all want to be better at our craft, and that's why we're here. Comments should be constructive, supportive or clarifying. We here to build up, not tear down. 
3. Trust. What is written in the blog, stays in the blog. People here may say things that may not sit well with someone outside the group. We need to be able to say what we think is important, and have the trust that it would be misconstrued. Further, this type of journal can be intensely personal. We need to be free to talk about our feelings, our successes and our failures. Trust is important, and to a degree, trust depends on discretion. 
4. Openness to try new things and approaches. Research dating back to John Dewey holds that this is one of the key elements in being a reflective teacher. Trying new things may lead to failures. That's okay. There are no successes without failures. One of the things that has come up in a lot of the recent sessions many of us have attended during this flex week have underscored the need to constantly try new and challenging things in our lives. We should be willing to do the same in our classrooms. 
5. Commitment to the group. It is easy to back away from this, to stop writing and contributing. What will make this worth it for all of us is to share resources, ideas, questions, experience, knowledge, and feelings. The more we all do this, the more likely we will all grow and become better as teachers. Yes it takes time. And we all have a lot on our plates. This doesn't need to take a lot of writing every day. Please make an effort to connect at least two or three times a week. I think that will be enough to to help us all. 
6. Protect student anonymity. To the degree that we can, let's leave the student names out of it, or make up pseudonyms for them. Generalizing things this way will make the issues more applicable to us all. Indeed, the names need not reflect the actual ethnicity of the student.  

These are just some ideas. If you have other ideas, feel free to contribute them here. I think as time goes on we may develop more parameters, and we may feel that some are unnecessary. The idea here is that we will create a community of practice that focuses on improving our practice as educators through reflection. 

So, welcome!