Kolb (1984) described experiential learning as a process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience. Kolb's idea lies at the heart of the teacher development courses and projects at World Learning SIT Graduate Institute (my current place of employment). We're currently piloting a new course in partnership with AMIDEAST in Cairo, Egypt and I've had the pleasure of working both in its design and implementation. On this course, I used the image of a tree to describe the reflective process of describing, analyzing, generalizing and taking meaningful action to the participants. We continually referred back to this image as we moved through this cycle throughout the course. In preparation for a presentation I did today with my colleague Josephine Kennedy at NileTESOL called Experiential Learning for Language Teacher Development I asked our participants how the use of experiential learning has helped them on the course. Here is what they had to say:
Experiential Learning has helped me be like a good researcher – notice the problem, analyze it, then deduct the theory and make generalizations to determine the action plan I’m going to use.
Experiential Learning has helped me know what’s beneath the learning process, the relation between learning and teaching and the importance of a teacher’s affection for the learners.
Experiential learning has made me more aware of what to teach, how and why.
Experiential learning has made me realize that dealing with teaching adults isn’t the nightmare that I believed it to be.
Experiential learning has provided me a basis for interpreting and evaluating my own teaching as well as the teaching of others.
Experiential learning has helped me see how learning happens.
These quotes speak clearly to the depth of knowledge, awareness and attitude that can be reached when learning through the transformation of shared experiences.
I'm curious how you use experiential learning in your work with other teachers? How does it help your course participants develop?
Kevin Stein's DNT Challenge = not talking for 50 minutes in his freshman conversation class! You don't want to miss this one.
"50 minutes of no talking. It was a long 50 minutes for me. Judging by the students’ response, less so for them. When I finally wrote, “See you later,” up on the board as the bell chimed, I felt pretty sure that it had been a useful 50 minutes as well. Because the students reply, “See you later. I gave it my best,” was still ringing off the walls as I walked out the door."
The one principle in Do Nothing Teaching could be said to be an inverse principle, eliminate everything that is not necessary in a lesson instead of adding unnecessary things to a lesson – http://kevingiddens.posterous.com/pages/dnt-foundations.
What happened in a one-to-one class recently could be a case of no materials, all conversation. A class that eliminated everything but the necessities.
I had seen this student, who can be described as a B2/C1 level, the previous October. That time we had worked on verb + preposition, prepositional phrases, verb + to/-ing, adjective + preposition and written skills. Apart from the written work all the rest was based on two grammar books.
This time the class started off by her explaining the reason her company had sent her for some more English training. Her boss was apparently unsatisfied with the way she was managing her multi-national team particularly in conference calls. The student felt that she did not have the English necessary to resolve conflicts, motivate team members and get them to participate at meetings.
Yikes I thought! I ain’t no business coach! To imagine her situation I asked her about the primary stakeholders in her project teams which I white-boarded. She described four main ones. As she was doing this I was desperately trying to figure what book I could use to help. I soon realised that no book could help and when I did that I began to relax a little and decided to just see first what her real need was and see if we could explore solutions to it.
I found that we could do langauge work on the way she asked questions to her team members and the way she restated and summarised information. This language work turned out to be less important than the social skills and organisational factors at play in her “problems” in managing teams. This exploration took the large majority of the three hours.
In order to change subject we did talk about her family life, the education of her son, education in the UK and France, her passion for cooking and relaxation therapy. We also talked about the French elections and how in general people felt negatively about the meaning of the democratic vote. How their voices don’t seem to make a difference. This somehow nicely brought us back to how similarly people in work teams won’t feel invested unless they see concrete effects of their contributions.
This led onto whether her company had systems to publicly recognise contributions from employees, they did not. Which also reminded the student of an incident she had very recently where one of her project contacts was very surprised when she praised them for meeting a tough deadline. Finally she was stunned when I asked whether she recorded her conference calls, she had not thought of that, she would look into it.
To be honest I did not feel I had taught her anything but simply acted as a kind of facilatator and interested party. It was a strange feeling because at the same time we did use a hell of a lot of English with some minor corrections and recycling of language. It also did not feel like a lesson where I had coasted along, just going through the motions, watching the clock.
What had I just been through? Was it teaching? Was it just chatting? I am still at a loss to describe exactly how I feel about this “class”. Can I apply what I did to my group classes?
No materials? All conversation? Eliminate everything that is not needed?
"Don't underestimate the value of Doing Nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can't hear, and not bothering." - Winnie the Pooh
-Graffitti quote is attributed to Gary Snyder from "Little Poems for Gaia," in the book, "Axe Handles."
This weeks post is a chance for you to practice your skills in reflective description. Why description? What we see determines how we act. The more clearly we see - what we, the teacher, says and does; what our students say and do; and what is happening in the environment in and around the classroom - the more informed our decisions will be as we reflect-in-action.
So give it a try - Leave your interpretations at the door and describe this 2 minute teaching moment* from the classic "Good Morning Vietnam" in as much detail as you can.
One of my favorite ways to pass the time on Sunday mornings is laying on the couch with a cup of coffee, the sun streaming into my living room warming my skin and listening to Freakonomics. Their shows never fail in entertaining and messaging my brain with though-provoking ideas. I recently revisited one of my favorite episodes called "The Upside of Quitting." A brief summary from the episode reads:
To help us understand quitting, we look at a couple of key economic concepts in this episode: sunk cost and opportunity cost. Sunk cost is about the past – it’s the time or money or sweat equity you’ve put into a job or relationship or a project, and which makes quitting hard. Opportunity cost is about the future. It means that for every hour or dollar you spend on one thing, you’re giving up the opportunity to spend that hour or dollar on something else – something that might make your life better. If only you weren’t so worried about the sunk cost. If only you could …. quit.
I've recently been contemplating quitting a martial art and cultural revitalization movement that I've been an active member of for almost 10 years. The sunk cost is so deep and emotional that I find myself dreaming about the practice on a regular basis and at times the thought of so much literal sweat equity being "lost" is unbearable. That said, I know where I want to spend the saved time and energy - in studying a phd and spending more time with family and friends. While I believe that these goals will make my life better I'm struck by the paralyzing effects of sunk costs on my ability to take action.
This experience allows me to empathize with the teachers and teacher educators that I work with that also struggle with taking action as a result of sunk costs. Learning to teach takes an exorbitant amount of time, energy and sweat. So much so, that once we've got a system, framework or method that seems to work and that we're comfortable with we run the risk of becoming blinded by sunk cost and taking on high learning opportunity cost. As this relates to Do Nothing Teaching (DNT), I believe that there is value in not doing, and perhaps even quitting comfortable routines, grounded frameworks and well-designed methods in the classroom in order to create space and time for unforeseen learning opportunities.
Danielle Ofri writes in her article "When Doing Nothing is the Best Medicine" about the value of clinical inertia when advising and prescribing medications to patients. She writes:
Every time I prescribe a medication — or order an invasive test, or refer a patient to a surgeon — it always feels like I’m placing a stone on a balance scale. Intellectually, my goal is to place the stone on the side of the scale that benefits my patient. But in my heart, I fear that it could end up on the other side, the side that harms, and the weight and permanence of the stone give me pause.
While as teachers the physical well being of our students doesn't hang in the balance, I do believe that the weight of our decisions in the classroom merit pause. What we wear, where we stand, how we interact, when we correct and who we are all have implications for our students and the larger context that surrounds our classroom. Taking moments to pause and critically reflect on what's happening in and around our classroom enables us to become informed practitioners that are aware of the consequences and meanings behind our actions.
That said, in practice decisions often need to happen quickly and there is little time for pause. I've come across a few routines along the way that allow me moments of pause and reflection while teaching.
1. Write, "Now is the best time to be happy" on the whiteboard and ask student's "What time is it?" Point to the board so that students respond with "Now is the best time to be happy." After a few repetitions and practice rounds this is a set routine that can buy you pauses throughout the course. If you need longer pauses just have them ask a partner or two! (I learned this technique from friend and colleague Michael Griffin.)
2. Silent Llama: Make the sign for "Llama" with your hand. Hold it up and gesture for the students to do the same, silently. Wait until everyone is making the sign before moving on. In addition to a great classroom management tool, I've found the the time it takes to get the students' attention to be invaluable in terms of pausing and reflection on what's going on and what's coming next. (I learned this technique from my friend and colleague Tana Ebaugh).
3. Random pauses: For this you'll just need a meditation bell that's soothing. Create a routine where when the bell is rung students and teacher pause and reflect. One option here would be to focus the students thoughts during this time would be to post a daily reflection question for students to think about during the pause.
Do you have routines for pausing and reflecting during class?
The teaching context: In November of 2011 I was working in Boston, MA with colleague and mentor Radmila Popovic on a pre-service teacher training course for Americorps members in the New American Integration program. Upon completion of our course participants wouldbe placed in community based organizations serving immigrants and refugees in the Boston area. Many of our participants were non-native English speakers and they all came from a wide-range of social, economic and educational backgrounds.
The challenge: Due to the diverse needs of the participants and the demands of the various stakeholders we (trainers) were tasked with delivering a wide range of content in a short amount of time. We had a homework assignment over Thanksgiving break plus fifty-minutes of in-class time to address "Teaching Culture."
What we did: We decided that we needed to introduce participants to a framework for understanding culture as well as some pedagogical tools for teaching culture. We decided that Patrick Moran's "Cultural Knowings Framework," would serve both of these goals. We chose a reading from Patrick Moran's Teaching Culture pp. 136-155. In this chapter Moran articulates his Cultural Knowings Framework for teaching culture and provides some practical ideas for addressing Knowing About, Knowing How, Knowing Why and Knowing Oneself. In the diagram below you can see some of the guiding questions he suggests teachers to use with students when moving through a cultural experience.
For our shared cultural experience we wanted to use participants' experiences during the Thanksgiving break. We asked them to choose an artifact related to their own experience of Thanksgiving. We were clear that the artifact could be representative of an "American" Thanksgiving or of a tradition from their own culture that is similar to Thanksgiving. In addition to reading Moran's article and choosing an artifact participants were tasked with completing the following chart that guided them through an analysis of their artifact according the Cultural Knowings Framework.
The following Monday after Thanksgiving participants came to class with their artifacts and analysis in hand. We told them that they would be creating a Thanksgiving Museum for their peers to visit. We placed them into two groups. Each group worked together to design their own showcase of objects. After about 15 minutes of preparation one of the groups stayed put while the other came to visit their museum. The objects included: a box of stuffing, a picture of a participant's family at the dinner table, a CD of a participant's band that he played with over the holiday, traditional fabric given at weddings in a participant's home village, a fork, a picture of a native american in a canoe, and many more.
To illustrate the richness of the sharing that followed let's look at a brief clip from Zuruf as he describes his experience using a fork at his first ever Thanksgiving meal.
The fork was brought by another participant and to be honest my first reaction was that perhaps the participant hadn't taken the assignment very seriously. However, once we started asking probing questions and unpacking Knowing About, Knowing How and Knowing Oneself in relation to the fork the whole class was engaged in a discussion about how we use a fork, the history of fork use, comparing and contrasting different cultures' utensil use (from chopsticks to fingers) and sharing of personal experiences with different utensils. I would have never imagined that, of all the objects in the museum, the fork would be the one that inspired the most in-depth discussion.
The Results: In order to get an idea of what the students learned during this project we asked them to reflect on their experience.
I've learned that... Many of us use this opportunity to be with family and friends even when our cultures don't celebrate Thanksgiving; Some people give gifts at Thanksgiving; Thanksgiving is something that can help to build relationships and friendships; Family is not complete without friends.
I've realized... That everybody's Thanksgiving is different but a common thread is some sort of food and gathering; How lucky I am to have such a great family that gets together and expresses love for each other and our surroundings; My knowledge of the origins of the fork is less detailed than I had thought; We all have to really respect other cultures' beliefs...There are traditions that I accept and agree with and others that I will not accept.
Something that struck me was... That some of us don't really know the history behind why Thanksgiving is celebrated in America; That in some cultures they don't sit at tables and eat with forks, spoons etc...; How many people have nominal Thanksgiving celebrations, but supplant "traditional" aspects with their own cultural rituals and artifacts; That one-third of our group was foreign-born and for two people it was their first Thanksgiving ever.
Concerning Teaching Culture
I've learned that... Cultural objects seem almost self-explanatory to a person who is a member of the community, but to outsiders it really requires explanation; Being exposed to different cultures can be surprising; Most new Americans do assimilate to American traditions and celebrations but they also add their own touch.
I've realized... That bringing actual objects or pictures make cultural discussions clearer and is a great jumping off point; That as a teacher I need to be sensitive to others' cultures and very willing to learn about customs I am unfamiliar with; The value of an experiential model of teaching that can communicate various aspects/forms to students with emphasis on what is important for them to know/understand in their daily lives, including their reflections and attachments to their own cultures.
Something that struck me was... It must be a safe place and everyone needs to get a chance to speak; Every culture is different and they pride themselves on their ways and beliefs which shadows their view of other cultures' beliefs and ways; The wildly different applications of similar traditions.
-Moran, P. (2001). Teaching Culture – Perspectives and Practice. New York: Heinle & Heinle.
The teaching context: I'm currently working in Boston, MA with colleague and mentor Radmila Popovic on a pre-service teacher training course for Americorps members in the New American Integration program. Upon completion of our course participants will be placed in community based organizations serving immigrants and refugees in the Boston area. Many of our participants are non-native English speakers and they all come from a wide-range of social, economic and educational backgrounds.
The challenge: Due to the diverse needs of the participants and the demands of the various stakeholders we (trainers) have been tasked with delivering a wide range of content in a short amount of time. The example I'll use here is from last week when we realized that we had one hour and scarce resources to address "Teaching Vocabulary."
What we did: We decided that we needed to raise participants awareness of a variety of ways of conveying meaning of words, introduce them to activities for practicing vocabulary and encourage the development of clear criteria for choosing appropriate techniques for teaching vocabulary.
Step 1: We looked through Adrian Tennant's post on One Stop English, Minimal Resources: Teaching Vocabulary, and decided to use the activity "Backs to the board."Procedure:
Choose a number of words that you want the class to revise.
Place a chair in front of the board facing the class (so that it faces away from the board).
Ask one of the students to sit in the chair (with their back to the board). Write one of the words on the board.
The task is for the other students to explain the word on the board (using English) to the student sitting in the chair. Their task is to guess the word.
Repeat the activity with the other words choosing a different student (to sit in the chair) each time.
We chose words that would push participants to use a variety of techniques to convey meaning to their classmate. We assigned a few observers to note what their classmates said and did to convey meaning and played the game using the following words: Window, Cow, Lazy, Democracy, Individual.
After playing the game we processed the activity in terms of techniques participants had used to convey meaning. We were able to elicit the following techniques from participants:
miming/gesturing
using realia/visuals
using synonyms and opposites
giving examples and contextualizing
explaining and/or giving a definition
We were able to highlight how some words are easier to get students to understand and might only require one technique while others required the use of a variety of techniques. We also processed the "Backs to the board" activity and highlighted how and why it was an activity that they could use for either practicing newly introduced vocabulary or reviewing previously learned vocabulary.
The immediate results: The next day in practice teaching I was already seeing the results of our input session. In one lesson the warm-up was the "Backs to the board" activity. The teacher asked one of her co-teachers to sit in a chair at the front of the room. She wrote words on the board (unrelated to the previous or current lesson.) The students stretched their English abilities and were able to convey the meaning of the words. However, it was evident that the purpose of using the activity as either a warmer or a preview still hadn't been internalized. Perhaps after coming back to this on Monday in the feedback session will help clarify this.
In another lesson the teacher introduced vocabulary for furniture by drawing and describing his apartment on the whiteboard. The teacher used a variety of ways of conveying meaning to the students.
He contextualized the words by placing them in their appropriate rooms in his own apartment. "This is my bathroom. What might you find in my bathroom?"
He uses visuals on the whiteboard "He draws symbols to represent items such as a square with four circles inside to represent a stove."
He gave examples of how the item is used. "I put my clothes in a my dresser. I was my hands in my sink."
He uses visuals on a worksheet to check understanding. He passes out images of three rooms in a house/apartment. He says the words and the students have to point to the item.
In this lesson the teacher was able to internalize the use of a variety of techniques to convey the meaning of new words for his students. Perhaps in the feedback session we can focus on further developing criteria for choosing techniques most appropriate for the vocabulary being taught.
How do you/would you deal with teaching "how to teach vocabulary" in an hour or less?
Here's an article we gave participants for homework to reinforce our session on how to teach vocabulary.
Welcome to G^G Publishing Inc.At G^G Publishing we publish children’s books that bring light, life and laughter to the hearts and minds of children and adults throughout the world. We work with a team of highly qualified artists and writers to create books that through creative simplicity are able to illustrate life’s greatest lessons.
G^G Publishing (http://www.ggpublishing.org/) was an idea that Michael Griffin and I came up with in the fall of 2009. We were tasked with designing and running a course for Korean public school teachers. The course was to focus primarily on developing the participants' linguistic competency in preparation for an intensive teacher training course that would follow. We were given free reign to design and deliver the course. We were both keen to try out something new and creative so we decided to experiment with Task Based Language Teaching.
We showed up to class with our finest suits, stern CEO attitudes and a stack of contracts. We introduced ourselves as the CEOs of a cutting edge book publishing company that wanted to hire them to design and create a new line of children's books for the upcoming year. We passed out a contract that described their "job" and the scope and sequence of their work. They all agreed and signed the contracts! We were honored to have such a wonderful team for our project.
The idea of creating a company and taking on different roles was rooted in Mike's previous experience teaching with Marcos Benevides's book Widgets.
Like Widgets we wanted to take the students on a journey that would ask them to use English meaningfully, work in groups collaboratively and to explore their creativity. Since neither of us was knowledgeable about making books we shared a lack of knowledge and were able to join the participants on their learning journey. Out of necessity to accomplish the tasks set before us, we were pushed to co-construct knowledge around books and bookmaking.
As teachers we didn't do any "teaching' in terms of setting language objectives, designing practice activities or direct error correction. We had no lessons beyond shaping the project idea, designing tasks and setting deadlines. Language was dealt with by modeling the tasks and then noting errors that arrose in conversation. These errors were then used to help shape language focused lessons during a different strand of the course.
The project was divided into four main tasks: A project proposal, storyboard/outline, story/text and illustrations and finally a reflection on the "published" book. Each of the tasks was modeled and integrated into their role as employees of G^G Publishing. Mike and I did the tasks before or during class, recorded our process and then shared it with the class. For example for brainstorming our storyboard Mike sat in the classroom with his computer screen projected for participants to see. I sat in another room and we chatted about what we would like our story to be about. We then processed useful techniques and language for planning a story. Our idea was to model linguistic strategies and attitudes necessary for collaborative group work.
Our approach clearly addressed the criteria for Task Based Language Teaching laid out by Willis & Willis (2007, p. 13):
Does it engage the learners' interest?
Is there a primary focus on meaning?
Is success measured in terms of non-linguistic outcomes rather than accurate use of language forms?
Does it relate to real world activities?
The feedback we got from participants was overwhelmingly positive in terms of being engaged in meaning-focused tasks. They discovered new talents such as drawing or painting that they had never had the opportunity to explore before. They were thankful for the chance to learn cooperatively and autonomously. They were proud to share their product at the end of the project. The area that participants unanimously agreed on was that they felt there was not enough focus on "language." While they were using English to accomplish meaningful tasks - they didn't feel that they were learning English.
This book-making project represents many elements of Do-Nothing Teaching (DNT) as well:
Mike and I (We) did no lesson planning but instead framed the scope of work for the students to accomplish as they saw appropriate.
We did no teaching but instead modeled the tasks for participants
We did no error correction but instead noticed errors and allowed those to shape other language-focused lessons.
We did no classroom management but instead allowed participants to manage themselves.
We did not hold any expertise or special knowledge about the content of the lessons but rather co-constructed knowledge along with course participants.
When reading through the mixed feedback about our course, we kept a positive attitude by looking on the shelf in the teachers lounge where the hand-crafted, student-generated, publishable-quality books sat and saying to one another, "Yeah but, have you seen the books!"
In the end, the most rewarding aspect of this project for me was being a learner along with my course participants. I found that I could empathize with the struggles of accomplishing each task because I had to do them too! I found myself more engaged in the process because rather than conveying knowledge I was actively engaged in learning the course material. Participants felt safe by seeing the "teachers' model" because it reflected our own shortcomings as artists and bookmakers :) I can say with certainty that the process was rewarding because I experienced it myself. I feel a sense of pride and a little embarrassment sharing the result of our journey as learner-teachers - Hello Teddy, Hello World - Enjoy!
