A few days ago I taught the last lesson of the course for adults (end of Summer semester). Each student was handed a feedback form to fill out.

Despite being a teacher for many years, this is my first experience with a real, clear cut, “for profit” framework. The message that it is a business is being hammered home in many ways. The main one is, of course, the size of the language class for the weakest students in the school -37 students.

But its the other ways in which the message “the customer is always right” is being sent that makes me wonder what the purpose of these forms really is. I have already been asked to teach the course again, so that can’t be the reason I was asked to meet with “the big honcho” (not the English coordinator) to discuss them.

A telling example has to do with use of the site Quizlet, which I believe to be a very useful tool. I put up two lists of relevant vocabulary for my students to practice. I made a simple screencast showing them how to use it. In addition I posted a page in mother tongue explaining how to use it. Despite all that, it seems one or two students had trouble with it and asked for help from the support service (students can’t write me directly, emails go through the office first). I was immediatly told not to use Quizlet.

So what happens if a student complains that there wasn’t enough groupwork or too much groupwork? What about the number of quizzes I gave in class? I gave quite a few, short, easy ones as I believe that success breeds motivation (which leads to more success) but there were a couple of students who did not hand in the tasks and did not take all the quizzes. How will “the customer is always right theory” work here?

I’d be very interested to hear how such things work in other places.

All summer vacation I had an unpleasant, nagging thought which I tried with all my might to ignore:

“I hope they don’t take my classroom away”.

Discovering the week before school begins that I no longer had a designated English room was not an unfounded fear. The previous school year had ended with an ugly change of administration and with the information that the school would be growing. In fact, we were told that caravans may have to be brought in as temporary solution.

In addition, that exact scenario did happen once, three principals ago ( I’ve seen quite a few principals come and go…). I came to school like I did this morning, to start unpacking the closets and setting up the classroom for the first day of the new school year. It was a different room back then, much smaller and in the main building. I found my two closets in a side niche of a corridor and my own overhead projector (it was donated to me, personally, not to the school!) added to the school’s stock of OVP’s. Luckily mine had a very distinctive label with the name ELMO on it so it was quite clear which one it was.

I was told, after I asked (!!!!) that the school had grown and they needed the room.

It was because of Elmo, the overhead projector, that I was given another room. When I met with the principal I told her that all this equipment I had personally gotten from donors would have to be returned to them along with the explanation that they could no longer be used for teaching English to deaf and hard of hearing students, as the school had other priorities. To be honest, I’m amazed I was able to say that to the principal as she was very intimidating and I’m not known for being eloquent when I’m upset.

I’m still in the room I got back then. Its in the yard, its sort of a makeshift room that was added on and it has some problems. But I think I’m lucky it is so. Because it wasn’t my room in the yard that was rennovated this summer and transformed into a regular classroom, it was a different one. I don’t know the details yet regarding where the other teacher will be teaching and what she was or wasn’t told in advance. I’ll see her at the general staff meeting on Thursday and find out.

I’m not phoning her because I feel so relieved that I’m afraid I will sound very impolite and not supportive…

I just read the latest blog post, entitled : Increasing Student Talking Time , which is part of the  fascinating series “The Celta Trainer’s Diary ” by Chia Suan Chong.

Taking into account that I hadn’t had a clue to what a Celta or a Delta was until I entered blogoshpere, a year and a half ago, I find such posts (by Chia and others)  fascinating, as large portions are certainly relevant and true of teaching in any EFL classroom.

I may sound awfully nitpicky, but tonight the part about how a teacher should sit down a great deal reminded me that nonetheless, these posts are about a very specific course in a different place.

Its all about the number of students in the class.

In my class of 37 adult students I actually could be phsysically seen by all students as the room we are in now has a stage. I do not feel very comfortable as yet on the stage as I’m not an actress and this isn’t a performance. The stage is certainly a barrier of the sort Chia mentions. In the previous classroom the students in the back would not have seen me if I had sat down. The rooms are very large.

Standing up allows me to easily move to the part of the classroom where one student may be talking. In this manner I show attentiveness and draw the other students’ attention to the speaker.

In such a  large class, group work is the way to let students talk more. I simply must be on my feet so that I can move from group to group.

Pacing can also be very beneficial at times. While I’m aware that Chia’s post was focusing on getting students to TALK more and I’m digressing, pacing a bit actually helps students pay attention. They know I can see that they are texting or trying to do next week’s assignment in class right now and they give up trying and focus.

Finally, I feel that keeping such a large class together, learning and progressing, requires a lot of energy on my part. That energy translates into a lot of standing.

I only sit on the chair when I’m using the projector and can point to things shown on the screen using the mouse attached to the computer on my desk.

It must be stated that the course I’m teaching focuses on reading comprehension and not speaking and as such isn’t related to the post I’m commenting on. But that IS the beauty of having one own’s blog – I can write about the links formed in my own head!

I’ve always been under the impression that the students who are good at spelling are also good at math.  Something to do with analytical thinking, I surmised.

At yesterday’s great #eltchat on spelling, (see an equally great summary of the chat here!) a few teachers disagreed and thought that if there is any connection at all, it is a negative connection; great spellers were not strong math students.

It seems to me to be a good idea to enlarge the sample and throw the question out into blogosphere. I would be delighted if you could take a moment and answer these two questions:

1) Were you good at spelling when you were a child?

2) Were you good at math when you were a child?

I’m preparing my third lesson for my class of 38 adult students.

They had their first quiz in the previous lesson. As the topic of their online exercises (this course has an e-learning component) and our first lesson dealt with the information to be gained by reading the title, names, numbers, etc., the quiz had a short and very simple text with facts about the CN Tower in Toronto, Canada. The questions were designed to have short answers too.

I’ve checked all the quizzes.

I know these students were placed in this group (weakest) based on an exam they took, which I hadn’t checked. I don’t check the exercises they do online either. While some students participate actively during the lessons and make themselves noticed right away others do not. Some place themselves at the far end of those long rows of desks that cannot be moved. I can’t even look over their shoulders to see what they’ve written when they sit there.

Now I know which are the ones (only three!) that tried to answer a rhetorical question inside the text itself as if it were another question. Now I know how many students didn’t notice the only question that had two parts. Now I can show the students why we’re going to be spending some time on grammar this lesson – not only is on the syllabus but it is related to mistakes they made.

I still can’t conjure the face behind each of the 38 names. But now that the list of names is connected to things they have written (or the manner in which they wrote them, how they organized their answers on the page) I’m hoping to have made great strides in remembering their names by the end of lesson three.

This lesson’s quiz is just a vocabulary quiz – much shorter. It will be easier to check too, not much to comment on. But that’s fine, its already the second quiz.

At the end of the first lesson a few students came to me to ask if I check their online exercises too. I think the question was based on their desire to know who is “noticing” the effort they are making. They have exercises, a reader to read and flashcards on Quizlet to practice.

It seems that even a quiz with a grade provides “a human touch”, saying “I see you”!

The amazing Tara Benwell has invited me to write a guest post about my class.

Here it is!

Teaching English to Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students/

If you find it somewhat confusing that the title mentions 36 students but my “language plant” (thanks to David Warr at Language Garden!) refers to 60, you aren’t the only one.

I began a summer job, teaching at a private language school which has a special course for adults (hearing!) who need to improve their English in order to be accepted to college. This summer course has an online component (which I don’t prepare) and I am doing the face to face meetings. In the course we will focus mainly on reading comprehension skills for weak learners, which is, of course, my specialty. Just not usually in such a setting! But in the spirit of The Teacher James’ post “Just Say Yes” it feels good to move slightly outside my comfort zone and enjoy being a teacher who can also use conversation as a tool!

When I took the job I was told that two groups were being combined and that there would be approximately 60 students. I REPEATEDLY asked for the list of registered students before the first lesson and was told again and again, that due to the increased number of students registering for the course, the list wasn’t ready yet and it would be emailed to me shortly. I was quite concerned that there would be 70 or more students and spent quite a lot of time debating (agonizing?)about a warming activity suitable for the first lesson with such a large group.

I finally received the list of students at exactly 6:30 in the evening, when the first lesson was scheduled to begin. 36 students! If only I had known! Pity the classroom is SO big, some students sat quite far apart from each other and pretty far from me. They are adults of all ages and very varied backgrounds.

I began the lesson with a moment of morale building (plan to start each lesson like that!). I brought this large poster of door knockers. The course is labeled as level D (weak!) so I told them that “D” stands for DOOR and this is the “open door course”, the course which will help them open the door to college if they study. That went down very well.

In regards to the warming activity, despite the group being smaller I stuck to my original plan. These are people who haven’t read in English for quite some time (for some, quite a long time). I felt we needed some unscripted time to review basic “Wh” questions but also to see what would come up, what were they saying and asking. So I presented them with “The Kitchen Picture” :

I wrote the first question:

What did this woman do?

A student said : “She smiling”. So I asked them about the “ing” , we looked at the “did” in the question and someone asked about “will”. Some of the students were saying:  “Oh yeah, I think I learned this once.” We mentioned better answers to the question. Then I asked them what other questions could we ask about this picture. They came up with the question:   How many bags does she have?”

They had all kinds of wild theories about what the difference between “how many” and “how much” was! They also came up with the question: “Where does she live?” The students agreed that it is probably a city. I added another question: “Where can you find such an ad?” Some students weren’t sure the word “magazine” was in English! They couldn’t think of a “who” question so I asked “Who created this ad?” They needed hints to guess the source (a credit card company) but then the class came up with the next question: “Why did they create the ad?” (easy one to answer!).

I asked the next question: “Do you think this woman has children”?  There was a resounding “NO!”. So, I wrote “How do you know?” The older students supplied the answer to that one –  children need food!

We never made it to “When” (I just added it on the board) as I felt we had had enough and it was time to move on to the first text which I was supposed to use. I really felt that now everyone seemed focused and I was hoping that some prior knowledge had begun to be prodded into wakefulness. In any case, the students (and the teacher!) looked less tense than they did when they walked in the door.

Next lesson on Thursday!

Yesterday was national exam day, or matriculation, or “Bagrut”, as it is called here. This year was one of the difficult ones.

And I’m not talking about the complexity of the exams. I didn’t have time to look at them!

Every national exam day is a busy one for me. As a national counselor of English for deaf and hard of hearing students, on the day of the exam itself (and the days preceding the exam)I respond to a large number of questions from schools who have only one such student. They generally need clarifications regarding the paperwork that needs to be stapled to our students’ exams.

At my school we, of course, know what must be stapled where but we have volume! About 30 of our 62 students took the exams, some took more than one. There is the usual round of minor crises to be solved – students who don’t bring their pens or dictionaries, students who come slightly late or arranged to be picked up an hour before the test ends, the usual.

This year, on top of that, all hell broke loose.

We have two students with issues related to anger management (a trigger will cause them to move from being sweet to “Hulk-like” at an amazing speed).

The exams are given in three sessions. During the second session one of these students (we’ll call him L) was taking an exam. The other students (we’ll call him A), along with a few other kids who had taken the first session of the exam and were waiting for the third session, camped out in an empty classroom. I wasn’t aware of this.

This empty classroom was the one adjoining the exam room. Worse, the wall separating the rooms was a dry wall (made of plaster).

It would have gone unnoticed if they had sat quietly and used sign language. But it seems that someone pulled “A”‘s arm and his watch fell off and the metal strap separated into sections. That did it. “A” started pounding the wall with his fists and screaming.

“L” is hard of hearing and he certainly heard THAT. When I came to see what was going on “L” was already getting worked up and making threats

Now, if you were under any illusion that I’m the kind of special-ed teacher that soothes the outbursts of the angry student, then now is the time to get rid of that thought. I can help them find the ways that will enable them to study English. But when a 6 foot 19 year old is enraged I call for help. Other staff members got him out into the yard, fixed his watch strap and calmed him down.

In fact he calmed down so completely that less than an hour and a half later he took his exam. “L” was supposed to be in the same room for his last exam but I moved him into another room with students taking a totally different level of exam – did not want them in the same room! That caused a bit of technical confusion but nobody disagreed with my decision!

Some exam days have gone by so smoothly that I go to gym class afterwards. Yesterday was not one of them!

But it’s over now. And I must tell you, these kids are NOT usually (except for certain days!) the ones I would call my most difficult students.

But this post is long enough and I have written a post entitled “Will the REAL Difficult Student Please Stand Up” over at the iTDi blog (as part of a focus on working with difficult students) so I’ll be off to bed now! Good night!