Good point. I agree, to be honest. Mandatory schooling is one of the many authoritarian aspects that comes with the territory in any society built around the pursuit of money (meaning, by this point in the 21st century, the entire world), and I wouldn’t mind seeing it get thrown out the window totally. But there are other things that would have to be eliminated first. Why are the kids learning English? To improve their future job prospects. Why do they need to be in their seats the whole day? It makes it easier for them to learn English and other subjects, and prepares them for the adult world. Now I might fundamentally disagree with the way that adult world is structured, but it’s still there whether I like it or not, so I might as well try to be a good teacher and impart as much knowledge as I can.
I don’t let the kids run around in class.
Not that I’m all serious. I try to get them to laugh a lot, and they usually do. It’s easy to make kids laugh.
In any case, the point is that many foreign teachers don’t really have any standard that they’re trying to live up to. They just want the kids to have a good time, and to have a good time themselves. That’s the way my predecessor Robert was. It’s pretty normal for foreign teachers. But not for me. I think a lot about my flaws as a teacher and what I can do to fix them. I’m a perfectionist at heart, and I have my mother’s guilt streak, and I just can’t relax if I know I could be doing a better job, and am not making the extra effort.
On that note, I just read an article in the New York Times about a guy named Doug Lemov who co-founded a string of mega-successful charter schools. He’s been going around the country interviewing and observing teachers with reputations for excellence and cataloguing their classroom techniques. He’s of the opinion that great teaching isn’t some uncodifiable magic, but rather that great teaching is the result of a lot of little things. Example:
At the Boston seminar, Lemov played a video of a class taught by one of his teaching virtuosos, a slim man named Bob Zimmerli. Lemov used it to introduce one of the 49 techniques in his taxonomy, one he calls What to Do. The clip opens at the start of class, which Zimmerli was teaching for the first time, with children — fifth graders, all of them black, mostly boys — looking everywhere but at the board. One is playing with a pair of headphones; another is slowly paging through a giant three-ring binder. Zimmerli stands at the front of the class in a neat tie. “O.K., guys, before I get started today, here’s what I need from you,” he says. “I need that piece of paper turned over and a pencil out.” Almost no one is following his directions, but he is undeterred. “So if there’s anything else on your desk right now, please put that inside your desk.” He mimics what he wants the students to do with a neat underhand pitch. A few students in the front put papers away. “Just like you’re doing, thank you very much,” Zimmerli says, pointing to one of them. Another desk emerges neat; Zimmerli targets it. “Thank you, sir.” “I appreciate it,” he says, pointing to another. By the time he points to one last student — “Nice . . . nice” — the headphones are gone, the binder has clicked shut and everyone is paying attention.
The article goes on to explain in greater detail how Zimmerli accomplished this small feat of classroom management. Basically, he used two techniques. The first was extreme specificity in directions. “Get out your things” seems clear enough to many teachers, but it turns out to be far more effective to use more detailed and clear instructions like those offered by Zimmerli. Second, he provides the class with positive examples by singling out the students who have already followed his directions. That’s all you gotta do.
There are lot of little things like this that Lemov has collected, and he’s got a book coming out next month with descriptions of all of them. So I’m buying that. I’ve got high hopes for it. It sounds great because it’s going to be full of concrete steps I can immediately take to improve as a teacher. It's kind of part of a larger pattern for me lately of trying to learn to get better at all kinds of things. Drawing, writing, whatever. Someone leaving the country gave me his guitar and I've been practicing it an hour a day every day. It's great.
Anyhoo. That's it for now.
See y'all next week.
Love,
Randy
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