ELT News Think Tank

This Month's Think Tank Panel

Marc Helgesen

Chuck Sandy

Setsuko Toyama

Curtis Kelly

Panelists: Marc | Chuck | Setsuko | Curtis
Date: April 2003
Discuss this topic on our Message Board.

Topic: "How are you going to change your teaching this year?"

Setsuko Toyama

I intend to concentrate more on raising awareness and less on care-taking.

Although I haven't taught young adults for the past two years, I am going to teach college classes again this year. So I think it's appropriate for me to share my thoughts on this topic.

The courses I will teach are on teaching English to children for trainee teachers. This will be a new challenge for me. Although I have been training teachers for many years, they were mostly classroom teachers who were able to bring their experience to the sessions. This year, I am in charge of 20-year-old students who wish to go into teaching children when they graduate. Some hope to visit primary school in the local area as volunteer teaching assistants. I will have two objectives: helping students to improve their English skills and giving an overall insight into what it takes to teach English to young children. I will need to help the students to become independent, active learners who will not simply imitate the way they were taught English. Here are a few of things I need to consider.

1. Having taught young children for a long time, I tend to be more of a care-taker than is necessary even when I teach young adults. I need to stop that. I will use the first lesson to discuss what the students expect to learn from the course and the effort they will have to make to achieve their goals. During the semester, I will need to keep reminding the students and myself that learning is more important than teaching and that it has to be done by the learners.
2. I will conduct a "learning channel preference check" at the beginning of the course. I have done this at various teacher-training seminars to raise awareness on how each of us learns and to help each individual find their own effective ways to learn. Marc Helgesen hands out a list of tips on improving skills at the beginning of each new semester, and being a generous person, he sent me a copy. I will follow his path. Thanks, Marc!
3. I will also use the results from the "learning channel preference check" to encourage the students to think about the kind of teaching styles they tend to use and what learners gain from various styles. This will help them become teachers who can cope with the many different learning types that they will face in every class they teach.
4. I will set aside 10 minutes of each lesson for "All About Me" questions and discussion. I'm looking at a book a friend gave me 2 years ago. The book has questions on things like family, friends, ego, top threes, etc,. I will pass out a sheet of question at each lesson and at the end of the course each student will put the sheets together to make a book.
5. I will, of course, be very happy to return to this Think Tank at the end of this school year and let you know how effective the changes were.

References:
Teaching the Whole Class. Betty Lou Leaver, 1997, Kendal/Hunt Publishing Company
Learning Styles in the ESL/EFL Classroom. Joy M. Reid, editor, 1995, Heinle & Heinle Publishers
Understanding Learning Styles in the Second Language Classroom. Joy M. Reid, editor, 1998, Prentice Hall Regents
Practical Techniques for Language Teaching. Michael Lewis and Jimmy Hill, 1985, Language Teaching Publications
Strategies for Success. H. Douglas Brown, 2002, Longman
All About Me. Phillipe Keel, 1999, Broadway Books

Curtis Kelly

A couple weeks ago, I attended a presentation by Mitchell Resnick, the head of the MIT Media Lab, at the S.I.T.E. Conference in New Mexico. Professor Resnick has inspired me to change the way I use technology in teaching.

His main point was that we are using computers in education for the wrong purposes. Rather than using computers like TVs, to broadcast information (at this time he projected a slide showing elementary school kids wearing headphones and staring into screens), we should use them as paint brushes. Computers should be used to allow the users to express their creativity or communicate (he then showed us a video of student-built robots competing in a game). This way, we could move from the knowledge society to the creativity society.

So that led me to think, even though I don't really teach any computer classes, how could I use them as tools rather than conduits? And although I have just started pondering the possibilities, here is what I have decided to do:

1. In the first day of class, I will put my e-mail address on the board, have all my students take out their keitais, and then send e-mail me their names. That way, I have all their addresses and they will have mine. (Actually, I have already been doing this)
2. It is rather easy to make mailing list groups, so I am going to put all my students addresses into a list on the Web, through Yahoo.com or Topica.com. I can remind them of assignments or discuss their work via the list, and they can do the same. (I got this idea from Steve Larsen.)
   
   Still not that creative though...
   
   
3. Okay, in my computer class, I am going to teach desktop publishing and graphics instead of spreadsheets, and ask each of the students to design a ad/brochure/notice that can replace a dull one someone is really using (our school is full of them).
4. For the teacher training Web site I am working on, I will use simulations to induce the teachers to learn, not readings. I've already written the first simulation, which involves a meeting with the principal.
   
   Okay, this is getting better, but still...
   
   
5. ...
6. ..

...All right. No great ideas. I guess I am a product of the non-creative society myself, but how about you? Can you come up with some creative ways to engender creativity with computers in an otherwise mundane classroom? I'm waiting.

Panelists: Marc | Chuck | Setsuko | Curtis

Discuss this topic on our Message Board.

Setsuko Toyama, Toyama English House

Co-author of Journeys: Listening and Speaking & Development Editor of SuperKids

Curtis Kelly, Heian Jogakuin University

Author of Writing from Within

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