Post 485: The Courage To Teach Chapter 6

 

 

Post 485: The Courage To Teach Chapter 6

In this chapter, not only do teachers depend on their students to learn and grow, faculty also depend on each other for feedback for growth.  When I take a Faculty Development class, my favorite part of the class is interacting with other faculty and learning best teaching practices from them. Even after teaching 25 years, I always learn something from other faculty. I also like to socialize with other faculty since teaching online can be isolating when it is just you, your computer and the students.  Online teaching does not lend itself readily to interactions with other teachers outside of professional development or faculty development classes. Palmer encourages faculty talk to each other to learn and grow from each other. We form a 'faculty club' to learn from each other. Palmer states "If we want to grow in our practice, we have two primary places to go: in the inner ground from which good teaching comes from and to the community of fellow teachers from whom we can learn more about ourselves and our craft." (Palmer, 146)

Palmer continues, "The growth of any craft depends on shared practice and honest dialogue among people who do it. We grow by private trial and error to be sure--but our willingness to try, and fail, as individuals is severely limited when we are not supported by a community that encourages such risks." (Palmer, 148)

When I take classes, I learn new ways to see the many different facets of teaching. When I try out a new way to teach a topic, it is really nice to have the support of the boss. It is nice to be able to have an honest dialogue with other faculty and with the boss to try out new ways to teach a topic, or new ways to make a topic more compelling or engaging to students. It is only through such honest dialogue back and forth without fear of recrimination that we as professionals can truly learn and grow. Palmer says we should form a 'faculty club' and a 'community of teachers'. Palmer states, 'Good talk about good teaching is what we need--to enhance both our professional practice and the selfhood from which it comes'.

When Palmer holds faculty workshops, he asks faculty to talk about what best teachable moments they used to get their students to learn. Palmer calls these teachable moments, 'Critical moments'. "Critical moments is a simple approach I use in faculty workshops to invite people to share their practice in an open and honest way." (150) In other words, how do you get students to open up, learn and be excited about the topic? And what teachable moments caused your students to shut down?

The teacher wrote this in our announcements as a topic to focus on for this week:

This week's topic hits really close to home....it is about conversations between us.  Feeling open enough to bring forth your problems and being open enough to get the feedback.  It isn't easy.  We have all had managers and superiors who were were afraid to take chances with.  if we tried something new and we failed, how could we explain it?  Would they understand the purpose of trying something new?

We have to be willing to talk.  It is similar what we ask from our students.  One of my favorite take-aways from this chapter is that when we speak we want to be heard and seen....not fixed. 

Chapter 6: Learning in Community: The Conversation of Colleagues

 Part 1:

A feel good question for you for Part 1. Tell us about a mentor or teacher that evoked the teacher in you.  How did that person make such a connection with you?  Also, just as a follow-up, have you ever told him or her?

 Part 2:

On page 150 Parker discusses "Critical moments" in a class. This is one in which the learning opportunities will be high, or shut down.  Think about your teaching.....your class.  Where is a critical moment in your class and what do you do during this time? 

 Part 1: For me, the most influential teacher was the mentor that I had when student teaching for my teaching credential at CSUN. She taught me that the most important component to teaching is not so much what you are teaching, but to show students that you care about them.  My mentor's name was Merceda M.  I was assigned her French class to teach for my student teaching. Merceda always listened to her students' problems. She made sure she was always present and available for her students. As a result, students grew to love her and once the students loved her, they created an unbreakable bond that lasted throughout the students' lifetime.  I remember one parent teacher conference where the parents of a student proudly told Merceda that they had met in her classroom, and now the parents were thrilled that their child was also getting Merceda as their teacher. When Merceda taught Le Petit Prince, she would cry during the most tender moments of the novel. She would repeat her crying period after period, year after year.  She taught in the same classroom the same subject for 40 years before she retired.  At one point, all the French teachers in the area had had Merceda as either their teacher or their mentor.  Ever since I met Mercedia, I have striven to be just like her--to be a caring teacher always available to the students.  To be honest, I cannot remember if I have ever told her she was my most influential teacher/mentor.

Part 2:  Palmer talks about 'critical moments' in the class where you can motivate students to learn along a timeline. I find teachable moments when doing Zoom lectures, I stop every 10 minutes to engage in class discussion. I make up class discussion questions that I embed in my Zoom lectures so students can stop and reflect on how the topic applies to their lives and for me to gauge how much the students are understanding the topic. If they cannot answer the reflection questions, then I know to repeat that information some more in my lecture, and to repeat another version of that information in the next lecture.

Other ways I check for comprehension and mastery is to see what kinds of mistakes students are making overall as I grade their assignments. If for example, students are not placing their thesis statements as the last sentence of the first paragraph and if this is a common error among many students, then I know to create an entire power point lesson just on explaining why they need to place the thesis statement as the last sentence of the first paragraph.

The third way I scan for critical moments is that I note down all the grammar and punctuation errors my class makes as a whole. Then, I will create a lesson on the most common errors students make as a whole. Students typically make similar mistakes from class to class, so it is possible to reuse mistakes from a previous class so as not to reinvent the wheel.

To me, what would shut down students is to put too much red ink on a paper, or to cross out a students' story as 'incorrectly done'.  As Palmer says, you must always make room for the students' voice and when you cross out the students' story as incorrect due to bad essay structure or if you over correct too many grammar errors, students become discouraged and will refuse to write again in the same enthusiasm they did the first time, and they may also dislike writing thanks to overgrading. It is a careful balancing act to preserve student voice, yet still teaching students the 'correct' way to structure their essay.

I am most proud of my students when towards the end of the class just about everyone has mastered the core concepts of the class. I love looking at the Week 11 Rough drafts and be able to say to students, "You are now a pro in writing the five paragraph essay structure.'

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Post 484 The Courage To Teach Chapter 5

 

 

 Post 484: The Courage To Teach Chapter 5

I am now on the fifth week of my Professional Development class, and we are on the fifth chapter of the book, The Courage To Teach.  In Chapter 5, Palmer focuses on the importance of forming a community of learners in the classroom. Students depend on the teacher for learning, and teachers also depend on the students for End of Class feedback to improve their teaching. True community occurs when both the student and the teacher learn from each other. This week, the writing prompt for the class read

Chapter 5: Teaching in Community

 

I'm going to ask of you something that is difficult this week. 

Part 1:

I want you to describe a time in a class when you were wrong, and the students corrected you....or maybe you discovered your error later on.

 

Part 2:

The most important part of this though is that I want you to describe what you learned from it. What did you do? How did you handle it in the class? How did it change you?

 Here was my response to the Week 5 Teaching in Community Question:

     It took me a while to understand what this question had to do with this week's reading on a subject centered classroom. Then, when you said in your writing prompt...'What did you learn when a student corrects you', then I got it. You are talking about the interdependence that we need to develop between teacher and student that a teacher depends on students to learn just as much as students depend on teachers to learn. " It is possible to teach in a manner that puts part of our fate into the hands of students, as part of their fate is in ours.  Such a teaching yields not only more community but also more learning by drawing us more deeply into the community of truth." (Palmer,  2017,142)

     In other words, if a teacher makes a mistake, or receives feedback from a student about how to improve her class in the Blue Surveys, then we learn from student feedback to teach or improve the class.  You want to say that teachers can learn just as much from students just like students learn from their teachers. I think you want to ask what I have learned from students through the years when I receive my End of Class surveys.  For Fortis, I once received feedback that a student wanted me to use more Powerpoint in my lectures (since I had been using Microsoft Word for my lectures), so every since I got that correction feedback in my Blue Survey, I have used a lot more PPT in my lectures. 

     Usually, the mistakes I make are so minor I can't even remember them anymore. Sometimes students find a broken link in the class (old link I had found but now needs replacing), or I incorrectly tabulated a test grade (I no longer do that with automatic tabulation by embedded rubrics :), but whatever minor mistake I make I learn from it, and I own it. I say to the student, "Sorry, my bad." and I learn not to make that mistake again.  Also, I have students to thank for finding some of the English grammar quiz mistakes when the quiz mistakenly said that a word ending in 'ly' is always an adjective, when the correct answer is that words ending in 'ly' are always adverbs.

     I respect my students even more when they are able to find mistakes like this and report it to me. It means I have created an atmosphere of trust where students are not afraid to point out my mistakes :) and that's what I call community, bonding and trust. Only when fear is eliminated (Chapter 2) and trust is established can you have a successful classroom. 

     I think Palmer says it best when talking about this interdependence between student and teacher which needs to occur to have successful learning for the teacher (to improve her teaching or see her mistakes) and for the student (to improve her writing or whatever skill the teacher is teaching) in these words, "when we are willing to abandon our self protective professional autonomy and make ourselves as dependent on our students as they are on us, we move closer to the interdependence that the community of truth requires." (2017, 144). We always learn best when we seek out feedback from others whether it be our boss (teaching evaluations) or our students (Blue Surveys).  By seeking out feedback, we learn to improve our teaching craft as we are all works in progress.

  Also, this week's chapter focuses on the fact that we are not establishing a teacher centered classroom, nor a student centered classroom, but we are establishing a classroom that focuses on the subject that Palmer coins 'a subject-centered classroom.'  The subject is so fascinating that both the teacher and the student gravitate to the subject and discuss that subject in equal discourse.

 

     Palmer says when the teacher shows passion for her subject, students pick up on that passion, and also become passionate about that subject. Thus, a synergy develops where the passion of the teacher  for the subject infects the students as both teachers and students learn from each other. It is through this synergy of teacher and student toward the subject I think is when Palmer states the community of truth occurs.

     Also, I like it that Palmer says that for writing teachers, we are to teach writing as an expression of writing as the music of words. How fitting as one of my uplifting says has to do with 'Write from the heart,  writing is music that expresses the joys and despair of the soul" (I just made that up. I hope I am not remembering it from somewhere :) Anyway, therefore, what I am learning from this class is to make writing more fun, and to focus less on technique (5 paragraph essay structure), but more on teaching writing as music of words.  I will find ways to vary the 5 paragraph essay structure and to teach students how to write it in creative fun ways from now on--that is one of the take aways I am getting from this class.

 

Post 483: The Courage To Teach Chapter 4

 Post 483:The Courage To Teach Chapter 4

In Chapter 4, Palmer focuses on the importance of forming communities in class for successful online teaching.  He gives us two different ways to teach class, The Objectivist Model where the classroom is teacher-centered, and the students act as passive vessels of information for the teacher to pour information into the students' empty brains.  The focus of the Objectivist model is on the pure objective facts of the expert. The teacher is a figure of authority giving the facts, separate from the students, even feared by the students who give the students the facts and the students memorize these facts for their tests that the teacher gives from time to time. Little interaction occurs in this teacher centered classroom.  The teacher acts as the Sage on the Stage. This is the model that Palmer discourages teachers from using to teach a successful online class.

The model that Palmer advocates is the Community of Truth model where there is interaction between the teacher and the students as learning occurs. The teacher acts as the Guide on the Side who guides the students through the material as students master the material through interaction and community. The Community of Truth is where the teacher creates a space for learning the subject in a subject-centered classroom, where the students are so captivated by the subject that they want to learn more about it. The teacher with his passion for the topic ignites the spark of curiosity in his students to make students want to learn the subject.  In the Community of Truth, this is not a teacher-centered classroom, and also this is not a student-centered classroom, but instead, the center or object of learning is the 'great thing' or the passion for the subject.

How do I teach my Online class? With the Objectivist Model (graph on the left) or the Community of Truth (Graph on the right)?

I prefer teaching the subject centered classroom using the Community of Truth advocated by Palmer. When I taught in Koreatown, I was forced to teach the Objectivist Model and hated it.The most interesting part of Chapter 4 was the presentation of the Objectivist Model of teaching which reminds me of my Koreatown teaching where teachers were forced to do all the talking, and students were forced to just be passive receivers or empty vessels to receive the information the teacher gives vs the Community of Truth teaching which I normally teach in my online teaching.  I remember how much I hated the Koreatown teacher centered model of teaching, and after a few hours, my voice would get so hoarse from so much talking that I was constantly getting a sore throat. The director of the school would prowl the halls to make sure we were teaching the teacher centered model since that corresponded with the Korean model of teaching the Korean parents wanted for their kids.  I think this extreme teacher centered approach is very ineffective in teaching content and I disliked teaching in this manner. It just was not me. (Teaching who you are--Chapter 1).  Reinforcing fear by having a tight teaching centered classroom is not my style. (Chapter 2). I prefer a more community student centered approach to teaching where students build a community of learners and truth and develop the material together. (Chapter 3)

Instead, I prefer teaching the Community of Truth as much as possible where I get to interact with the students. I try to instill in my students a love of writing. My ultimate purpose in teaching English Composition is to make students life long lovers of writing.  However, when I give my Zoom Lectures, Zoom is a video platform software that unfortunately promotes the Objectivist Model of Teaching, so when I do my Zoom Lectures, I try to make my Zoom Lectures as interactive as possible.

I think one of the weaknesses of Zoom share screen is that it advances a more teacher (Objectivist) model of teaching because of the large share screen and the small screen of the students and teacher. With Zoom when we share screen the focus is on the teacher's voice as she goes over the material on the share screen.  Also, one of the weaknesses of a powerpoint presentation is also that the focus is on the teacher's voice as she presents the material to the class. As a teacher, you see very little of the student faces, and more importantly students see very little of each other thus further advancing the teacher centered experience for the students.  In my view when Zoom is in shared screen mode, this hinders a more community based experience or interactive experience (The Community of Truth) model for the students. Believe me on my Facebook group, Teachers teaching Zoom, and Teachers Teaching with Tech, this is a common complaint.

Of course to be fair, Zoom was not created for teaching. Zoom, Webex and other video conferencing platforms were all created for business meetings where a presenter makes a presentation while everyone listens. But when we teach on Zoom to create community, we have to make an extra effort to make Zoom more communicative and more student-centered.  In my Facebook group, teachers use two screens for Zoom teaching--one to see all the student faces, and one for share screen so then the teacher can keep track of student attention and create more of a community. As for me, I create community by stopping my lecture every 5 minutes or so with comprehension questions, or questions like , 'How can you apply topic/concept x to your life?' Have you done topicx also? Or simply ask, "Am I going too fast?'. I design my lesson to give space for students to speak and express their opinions. (Chapter 3--space for student voice paradox and space for discipline). I also give students quiz prep questions to quiz them orally on what was just said too.  I also found a book which listed hundreds of communicative activities you can do in Zoom such as Zoom break rooms and breaking students into group activities in Zoom break rooms.

I also stop screen share from time to time to see my student faces, and I would conduct an actual conversation with students away from the material to check on how the students are doing, to check to see if students have any questions, and simply to build community and trust between student and teacher. Students appreciate my efforts to include them in the live Zoom lectures.  Therefore, building community takes effort on the part of the student and the teacher. 

Palmer says that the subject should be the center of the class, and that the teacher and students find the subject so interesting, so captivating, that we all gravitate around the subject. We enter as a community of learners into learning more about the subject.  For writing, Palmer says, it is about teaching the music of the words.   I am currently going to find a way to make students understand how Peer Review can be a fun group activity where students learn to depend on each other to improve their writing.  I also build community as I mentioned in Week 1 with my Bitmoji graphics in my Announcements.  These are some of the ways I help build community of trust in my class.