Yesterday I was hanging out with my 53 year old, grey haired colleague and friend Andrew. He's comes across as pessimistic and oppositionist, and has no problem scoffing at ideas he disagrees with. At the same time, he seems to have the heart of an educator who cares about his students.
Yesterday as we sat at an octagonal park bench on our small campus, he told me about an activity he says works every time with Saudi students who are notoriously undisciplined. Though I would say that they simply have teachers who don't give the students what they need to learn. In my experience, students give teachers what the teacher gives them. It's an important and rapid example of sowing and reaping. If you give them true respect though consistently and constantly allowing students to keep their problems, and trusting students to solve them, while through kindness and courage holding them accountable to proper classroom behavior, while giving them extremely engaging classroom activities aligned with the learning objectives of the day, week, month, and semester, and with the values and skills of critical thinking and problem solving for themselves which enables them to take control of their own learning and thereby internalizing an internal locas of control, then typically students will buy in. But only if the teacher demonstrates that they genuinely care for their students, and how now's decisions change tomorrow's outcomes, for better or worse. If students don't feel the risk of failure and the authentic possibility of success by engaging in the activities of the day's lesson, then they won't do the work and will cause problems and resist instruction, and resist learning because they've already given up. They must know that the teacher authentically and deeply believes in them, and feel the teacher imbue them and their hearts and emotions with the confidence that they are capable of tackling and fulfilling the tasks of the activities of the lessons set in front of them on their path to achievement, competence, and increasing levels of intelligence and material and emotional prosperity. As it is written, "Those who believe in God must believe that he is, and that is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him." Or as the king in Beowulf put it, if you Beowulf go forth and defeat the beast, you will be rewarded with riches, silver, gold, jewels, and marriage to the princess. King Saul promised a daughter of his to David in marriage if he defeated Goliath in combat.
Students must know there is a real price for failure and reward for success that aligns with what they authentically want and need in life. And this dynamic must play out practically in how we speak to our students, and the systems of activity, or games, we offer them to enter into and engage with. From the perspective of game theory, an ineffective and inefficient game doesn't meet students needs for fun, variety, intellectual challenge, or emotional edification. But a good game accomplishes all these things and more and is intrinsically motivating because it rewards them on multiple levels for their efforts.
I think Andrew's game goes a noticeable length to meeting students motivational needs and desires.
He told me that the game he plays is having the class divide up into teams of three, and then assigns them specific roles. First, they set up a table outside with a certain text about which questions need to be answered and/or that needs to be read. What happens is, one student runs outside to read and memorize as much text as they can, then comes in and sits with the other two students on his team and communicates the information from the text to them while one of them writes it down. And then, I think, the third student is responsible for filling in the questions on the page. Then the students repeat the process until the teacher announces, "Change!" Then the students switch roles, and a different student runs outside to memorize, and then communicate the information to his or her classmates.
Apparently, it's possible to run this activity endlessly.
Now, if you take the delegation system I wrote about in the previous article and apply it simultaneously, then the class should run itself for several minutes if not hours.
This system would be a powerful way to enable students to get what they want, which is adventure, learning, risks, and change.
Monday, November 18, 2019
Sunday, November 17, 2019
Delegating to Students, November 18th, 2019
Tonight a coworker and perhaps new friend invited me to join him for dinner as I happened to see him while walking to get a bite to eat. His name is David, and he's from South Africa.
After he ordered for us in Arabic good enough to get his point across, we got seated and began conversing about teaching English at our college. We found a lot of common ground in our belief that it's good to have high expectations of students and also to find ways to practically bring them to bear within the classroom. For us, that means engineering a teaching style which enables students to take the initiative for their learning, teaches them critical thinking skills and, I would add, problem solving skills.
One of the ways David said he worked with his students was to delegate certain roles to them. For instance, one of the responsibilities of a teacher at our college is to give students permission to go to the bathroom. Since our students are fairly immature, it is a fact of teaching in Saudi that leaving the classroom must be rationed and controlled little learning would occur.
David said that he likes to give responsibility for choosing when and who goes to the bathroom to a student who enjoys the power of the role. For instance, if a student wants to go to the bathroom 10 minutes before an upcoming class break perhaps the power eager student will simply say, "No, you can wait for ten minutes. Go sit down."
He also said that he delegates responsibility for getting students cell phones from them to one student. I think this is a powerful way to give students responsibility, and offer them opportunities to learn from how they interact with students underneath their power. Additionally, it gives them a chance, as David told me, to practice for future roles they may have in their future careers.
We both agreed that while using English language learning in our classrooms, its not only possible but necessary to equip students with the practical skills of discipline, initiative, taking responsibility, and also pushing higher level students with individuated activities which keep them from becoming restless. One way that he said doing this was possible was to make that advanced student responsible for correcting the work of other students and helping them learn the material.
I am so excited to hear these ways of delegating responsibilities to students because it is directly in line with my educational philosophy, and is also a powerful and practical way to design and implement a classroom education structure which becomes self-perpetuating once students catch on to how it works.
After he ordered for us in Arabic good enough to get his point across, we got seated and began conversing about teaching English at our college. We found a lot of common ground in our belief that it's good to have high expectations of students and also to find ways to practically bring them to bear within the classroom. For us, that means engineering a teaching style which enables students to take the initiative for their learning, teaches them critical thinking skills and, I would add, problem solving skills.
One of the ways David said he worked with his students was to delegate certain roles to them. For instance, one of the responsibilities of a teacher at our college is to give students permission to go to the bathroom. Since our students are fairly immature, it is a fact of teaching in Saudi that leaving the classroom must be rationed and controlled little learning would occur.
David said that he likes to give responsibility for choosing when and who goes to the bathroom to a student who enjoys the power of the role. For instance, if a student wants to go to the bathroom 10 minutes before an upcoming class break perhaps the power eager student will simply say, "No, you can wait for ten minutes. Go sit down."
He also said that he delegates responsibility for getting students cell phones from them to one student. I think this is a powerful way to give students responsibility, and offer them opportunities to learn from how they interact with students underneath their power. Additionally, it gives them a chance, as David told me, to practice for future roles they may have in their future careers.
We both agreed that while using English language learning in our classrooms, its not only possible but necessary to equip students with the practical skills of discipline, initiative, taking responsibility, and also pushing higher level students with individuated activities which keep them from becoming restless. One way that he said doing this was possible was to make that advanced student responsible for correcting the work of other students and helping them learn the material.
I am so excited to hear these ways of delegating responsibilities to students because it is directly in line with my educational philosophy, and is also a powerful and practical way to design and implement a classroom education structure which becomes self-perpetuating once students catch on to how it works.
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