Flipped: A Teacher's Reflection

What did I think about my first attempt to flip a classroom? What were some positives and negatives? What might I need to adjust or change?

Some of what I liked:

Students, as whole whole, seemed much more engaged. Students would ask questions about what they viewed and about quizzes they took. The pace and structure of class time (sans lectures) forced students to be attentive; there was always something to DO, as idle or even passive moments were few and far between.

The class was incredibly active. Not having to spend time introducing grammar material in class, time could be spent doing activities: discussions and group tasks, cognitive and physical, at the board and even on the floor. This helped maintain students' focus and kept student from always just sitting in their desks for 50 minutes.

The class was incredibly interactive. Students' questions drove "teacher time". Students sought feedback throughout class activities. Yes, I transitioned from activity to activity, but so many of those transitions were based on the pace  and needs of students. Lesson plans became lesson concepts or even lists of possible activities, all contingent on how students reacted to the activities in which the students where engaged. It was like one big feedback loop.

I could enter class with more confidence that I knew which aspects were causing students difficulty, which things they "weren't getting". I knew the content they were to have covered, and I could see which questions were proving troublesome to many students or which students were having trouble with which questions or tasks. Much more than ever before, I could enter the classroom with data-driven understandings rather than intuitions and perceptions.

Class time was maximized. At least this is my estimation. The time I most value is the time to work through the difficulties students have. Close behind is the time used to strengthen students' skills. By taking the lectures (which would have otherwise occupied time during class) and moving them online as homework, significantly more time became available to focus on those things that I, as a teacher, can really bring to the classroom.

What I didn't necessarily like:

Busy Busy Busy
Record keeping and observations were never-ending. Which students completed the quizzes? Which students watched the tutorials? Who is completing homework. You need to be aware of this every morning. (Thankfully, Moodle keeps statistics, which meant I could see the exact times that students watched tutorials, completed quizzes, or even clicked links to extra resources!)

Which quiz questions or topics are causing difficulty? If you don't know this, you won't know to address that in class. This meant that almost every morning required assessment of problems, record keeping, and adjustment to planned lessons, all before 8:30 a.m. It sometimes felt overwhelming, but it always felt worthwhile.

Also, as this past term was not a "flip" I had planned, I was doing all my work on the fly, usually only a day "(sometimes a few minutes) ahead of the students. The stress was palpable. Once done however, only tweaks are needed. I think I'm sitting relatively pretty for this next term.

Participation
There were three students who rarely (if ever) could be cajoled into participating in the flipped model. One student had excellent grammar skills already. That student only sporadically watched tutorials or took quizzes (ungraded) when he felt necessary. I wasn't worried about him. A second student was a bit more consistent, but his skills were lower and he could've used more practice. He still passed.

The third student simply would not do the work outside of class. Could he log on? Yes, he showed me. Did he log on? No. In spite of repeated encouragements and admonitions, in spite of emails and after class discussions, the student simply would not watch the tutorials. He never watched even one tutorial and completed but one quiz. It showed in his exam scores.

Had it been a traditional classroom style, would he have done homework? Perhaps not. Nevertheless, it is cause for pause when students refuse to "flip" with you.

Conclusion
Flipping a class is a lot of work. A LOT! (Unless, of course, you can rely on other people's Youtube videos. That would never do for me.) Nevertheless, I loved it. The students, by and large, loved it. I've spent this winter holiday tweaking quizzes, reorganizing materials, and reshooting some videos, all in the excitement of trying it again in just over a week!

Do students like it flipped?

If a teacher "flips" a course, obviously that teacher believes it is a useful thing to do. Rarely would a teacher go through the work to completely revamp a course without thinking it is to their students' benefit. But, what do students think?

Personally, I received an overwhelmingly positive response. Anecdotally, I had three students mention how much they liked being able to watch lectures at home, skipping ones they already knew, and reviewing areas of difficulty. Another students mentioned that he used the online lectures to review before tests, and the usage logs bear this out.

In addition, there were some great comments in the evaluations*. Some of those comments (the more instructive and exciting are listed below:

• The Moodle videos that Matthew prepares for his students as a review are very helpful. Even if we miss a class we can understand them.
• This teacher is really good. He do a lot of activities to practice all the topics and to involve all the students during the class.
• I have had class of listening and speaking with Ms. Showman before in the last term, and I did not like so much, but I always notice your effort and interest in class. Now in Grammar and Writing I love his classes. Also it is important to say that his videos in moodle are SO helpful and great. I am learning grammar as never before. And he is so kind and patient with our questions. Your organization is amazing.

Of course, not every student connects well with a given method. Below is a criticism** of the method and, I suppose, me:

• The teacher explain most of his ideas using Moodle website by uploading videos. I think it is better to explain the lecture materials inside the class, an that help us understand and ask some questions that could help us. I think the teacher try to escape from the questions that students could ask during the lecture. There is no interesting because there is no questions, ideas, and interactions during the lecture, and that because most of lecture materials that we study are online.

My reaction to this: I need to make the purpose of a flipped class even more explicit. Given that my class was questions-focused, given that I began every lesson by eliciting their questions, given that I assigned homework with the instruction that students were to write down any and all questions, I find it hard to believe that the student thinks I try to avoid questions and interactions.

That said, I know I can also make adjustments to make it clear that questions are not only welcome, but necessary to our class. I will need to be more explicit when explaining that the whole point of online lectures is to maximize time for questions and inquiries.

Onward we go!

* Evaluations are done anonymously and without course instructors present.
** Two administration aspects not related to flipped instruction were omitted.


Coming Soon: My own reactions

Flipping it

This past term I made a decision to "flip" my classroom.

I wasn't thinking about "flipping" when I did it. It was something I simply fell into.

A day or two before the term started, I was daydreaming about how my grammar lessons could be delivered more effectively. Between the cognitive psych research I read and my own experience of giving in-class introductions to grammar concepts, introductions that didn't seem all that useful anyway, I thought there must be a better way.

Suddenly it dawned on me that I had both Moodle and Blackboard at my disposal. I had Google Drive/Docs, which I was already using for in-class activities. I knew how to shoot videos from my laptop and Moto X, which I'd already been using to create materials for Listening/Speaking class. Everything I needed was quite literally at my fingertips.

What if I made short videos of the grammar lessons and hosted them on Drive? What if I posted all of these in Moodle or Blackboard? What if I wrote online quizzes to both (a) ensure students were interacting with the materials and (b) assess which points students were having difficulty with before ever entering the classroom? What if I focused in-class attention on those points? What if in-class grammar lesson time was focused completely on students' questions, practice, and quizzing? What if I never lectured at all?

It's not my personality to do something little-by-little. I'm not one to say "If I have time, then...".
No, if I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it.

This was a busy term. If I wasn't prepping materials or marking homework or grading assessments, I was writing and shooting videos and writing hundreds of quiz questions. In the end, however, I had a course that excited me, excited (most) students, and left me satisfied. Over this winter break, I will be reshooting some vids and I'll be revising some materials, but as a whole it was a great experience.


Coming Soon: Reactions, both my students' and my own.

Teachers are (or should be) role models

I'm my own worst critic. OK, I don't know that that's true, but I know I'm constantly critiquing myself. I'm often genuinely surprised when people find what I do valuable or inspiring or helpful.

There are many reasons for my potentially overly self-critical disposition. Perhaps one of the strongest reasons is the sense of responsibility I have in the knowledge that, life it or not, I am a role model. Teachers are role models.

Teaching reveals this. Having children of one's own makes it even more clear. My actions and my words, planned or spontaneous, kind or cruel, set the tone for classes, weeks, even terms. The way I live is part of my teaching, whether my students or my children. It's more true than people realize that actions speak louder than words.

I'm aware that what I eat sends messages. I know that how and where I spend my "free time" sends messages. I realize that what I post on online is not innocuous.  I'm aware that how I interact with others, in reality and in virtual reality, sends messages. I know that how I spend my money matters. I realize that what I indulge and do not indulge is not simply a "personal decision" without social effect.

I also know how severely I fail to meet my own expectations. I'm am probably more aware of my folly and failures than I am of my successes. With my children even more than my students. Sometimes it seems that every loss of temper and every poor example is indelibly engraved in my memory. That's obvious hyperbole, but it's more true than than saying I recall my successes.

I don't always cope with this pressure well. I'm too hard on myself, I always have been, which arguably leads to more errors in judgement. Nevertheless, I press on knowing that I set out to change lives, and change lives I will. I step forward in faith that students will somehow acquire what is important and will graciously ignore or forget my mistakes. We live not for ourselves.

Are many of you like this? Are you aware of the importance of the examples you set? How do you maintain perspective?


Follow me on Twitter @MatthewTShowman

Life's hidden curriculum

Fayetteville, Arkansas. That's where I live now. That's where I will soon begin working. Teaching. Doing what I love to do.

At the zoo: playing, laughing, learning.

I haven't posted regularly over these past few weeks. Road trips to look for an apartment in Fayetteville, preparing to move from Texas, actually moving to Fayetteville, setting up a new home: it's been more than time consuming. I've honestly (ashamedly?) thought little about education over the past few weeks.

But perhaps that's not entirely true.

I do in fact think about education all the time. My sons', specifically. Not about where they will or won't go to school; not about whether we will or won't homeschool (though homeschooling is my present hope, if for no other reason than to ensure my sons learn Chinese from their mother). No, it's not their future, specifically, I'm thinking about, but rather their present. I think about what they're learning right now from me and from my wife.

What do I say to my children? How do I say it? What attitudes am I projecting, and what attitudes are they perceiving? What messages do my reactions send? What are they learning in my interactions with them? What are they learning as they observe me interacting with others? What are they acquiring, as if by osmosis, about good and evil, right and wrong, invaluable and valuable and worthless?

And what about our students? These same questions apply. We must not forget that while we desire students to learn the material of a given subject, be it mathematics, English, Chinese, or sciences, students inevitably learn about life through their teachers. What messages do our reactions send? What do our interactions demonstrate about our concern for them (or lack thereof), about their value, about what is good?

What messages do we want them to understand? Does our practice transmit those messages?


Follow me on Twitter @MatthewTShowman.

What I look forward to

At the end of May I'll be in a classroom again. I'll be teaching again; formally, that is. By that time seven months will have passed since I was last in a classroom on a regular basis. I'm a bit nervous. Surely I'll be a bit rusty, and I may need to somewhat regain my "teacher legs" (legs that stand for 6+ hours a day). But there are so many things I'm looking forward to. Here are ten that I think of most often (in no particular order):

1. Smiling students
2. Unsmiling students
3. Working with other language professionals
4. Getting to know more than 100 new individuals
5. Hearing the accents of students from around the world
6. Learning about different cultures through my students 
7. Discussions of linguistics
8. Diagnosing errors (Interference? Incomplete learning? Mental slip?)
9. Developing strategies to assist students in their language learning
10. Answering students questions during office time

This is an incomplete list, but nevertheless a list of some things I'm looking forward to.


Whatever your occupation or vocation, what are some things you look forward to when you go to work?


Follow me on Twitter @MatthewTShowman

Learning through quizzing

This morning my son was eating toast with peanut butter as part of breakfast. I asked him, "What shape is this?" He didn't feel like answering. (It was a triangle.)

Have you ever noticed that we ask constantly questions like this to young children? What color is the car? What shape is a basketball? Where did we go yesterday? What is this vegetable? We ask questions, lots of questions. Why? To test them? To check their learning?

As it turns out, research shows that quizzing or testing is one of the most effective learning strategies. There has been a lot of analysis done, but here is a video summing it up. The most relevant discussion begins at 3:30 and the most pertinent comments start at 5:47.

This morning it dawned on me that we almost instinctively do this with our own children all the time. We review the alphabet or shapes or colors every few days as opportunities arise (distributed or spaced learning). We ask questions that require retrieval/recall (testing). We switch topics and activities (interleaving). Instinctively, we do this with children. What causes us as students and learners to so often abandon these strategies as we grow up?

Is it that we're lazy, so we don't want to make flashcards?

Is it that we want to  independent, so we don't want to work with others and quiz one another?

Is it that we're undisciplined, so we just want to wait until the night before?

Is it that we're ignorant, so we just do what others do?

Is it that teachers have taught us poor strategies?

I know I want to make sure my students know which strategies are more helpful. I want my students to know that how they study a crucial factor in learning. I need to help students develop effective study habits.


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What exactly is a good (or great) teacher? (Part 5: Closing thoughts)

A good teacher is hard to define. It is even more difficult to develop formal evaluation protocols. Over the past few posts, I discussed evaluating teachers based on their ability to inspire. I've discussed evaluation based on students' test scores (a very prevalent idea today). Student evaluation of teachers has been touched on, as has teachers' own test scores and academic performance.

We've also seen how all of these fail to truly and fully evaluate a teacher.

What else could be looked at? How about peer evaluation? How about changed lives of the students? How about a continuum based on the number of students who fall asleep in class? There are strengths and weaknesses of every conceivable method, though some methods would be stronger than others.

What qualities do we look for in good teachers? The following is a list of some qualities I would want for my own children and for my students:

• a sense of duty to the students
• the willingness to let students explore
• the readiness and ability to reflect upon their own practice
• the courage to make mistakes
• the humility to say "I was wrong"
• competence in their field
• a love for reading
• the willingness to be unpopular (with students or peers) it improves justice
• a desire to refine their craft through study, research, and acquiring feedback
• a love for learning
• a belief that passion for learning is more valuable than orderliness
• the hope that students will achieve

What would you add to this list? What would you take away?




Other posts in the series:
Part 1: Inspiration?
Part 2: Test scores?
Part 3: Student evaluations?
Part 4: Grades and scores?


Follow me on Twitter @MatthewTShowman

What exactly is a good (or great) teacher? (Part 4: Good grades?)

This is part four of my series examining various criteria the public, teachers, administrators, government officials and others seem to mention when answer this question: What is a good teacher?

There's no universal standard by which to define a good, let alone great, teacher. There are no universally agreed upon measures rubrics or checklists. Can we simply say we know a good teacher when I see one? We can but shouldn't.

Today's topic is an identifying construct: University grades and scores on teacher training exams.

Are good teachers those with the best grades?

My wife and I have discussed the difference between what Chinese consider a good student and what I consider a good student. For her (Chinese, also a teacher), a good student is one with good grades, and the best student is the one with the best grades. For me, a good student will usually have good grades, but I look more at motivation, diligence, and those traits that lead to success, not the success itself.

I wonder if this is true for teachers, as well. Or perhaps any profession, for that matter.

A few weeks back I was looking into getting my teaching license in Texas. Regardless of my experience or my existing endorsements listed on my Iowa license, I was told that I would have to take a battery of exams: one for teaching in general, one for my mathematics endorsement, and one for my ESL endorsement. Eventually I found a job in Arkansas, so I've put the Texas licensure on hold.

It got me thinking, however.

Exams can be positive
In some ways, the exams are surely positive. Obviously, you'd want to ensure teachers know their subject areas. A math teacher should understand math. A biology teacher should understand biology. Also, especially in elementary education, you'd want to make sure teachers have all the basic skills of math, language, etc. needed to instruct students.

On the other hand...
A teacher may not be able to recite or even identify Maslow's hierarchy of needs, but is it needed to realize hungry children, sleep-deprived children, and children in unsafe home environments will have more difficulty in school? A teacher may not be incredibly familiar with Howard Gardener's multiple intelligence theory, but is such explicit knowledge necessary to a teacher experienced in looking for their students strengths and engaging them in those ways?

Does an ESL teacher have to remember Stephen Krashen and his input hypothesis, or is it enough to know that students need to get comprehensible input, even if that term is also unknown? Does an ESL teacher have to know the term scaffolding if they've been doing it since before the term hit the mainstream? An ESL teacher may not know the term recasting, but he or she may recast successfully 50 times a day.

Back to the initial question
For those who pass these exams with the highest scores, does that imply that they are the most qualified candidates?

High school and university and graduate school: I was a good student; I worked hard, and I earned relatively high scores. At the same time, school came relatively easy to me. That's not to say that everything was easy; rather, it just never seemed like the struggle it was for some of my classmates. Does that mean I should be a better teacher? I don't think so.

Could teachers who struggled to learn be more aware of the difficulties students may have? Could the teachers who've had to work harder to develop learning strategies be better able to help students develop learning strategies? Could teachers who themselves needed more personal attention from their teachers be more willing to give personal attention to their own students? Does high performance in academic training neccessarily translate into effective teaching in the classroom?

Football players with great performances at the NFL combine don't always become great (or even good) NFL players. How many great NCAA basketball players have become NBA draft busts? Likewise, brilliant med students don't always make the best doctors or surgeons, and there have been plenty of business failures made by mediocre and great business students alike. I assume the same is true of teachers.

There are simply intangibles that refuse to be assessed by exams, but these intangibles can make or break a teacher. These intangibles separate teachers who are more and less effective. Perhaps these can be taught and learned, but tested? Not as of yet.

Other posts in the series:

Part 1: Inspiration?

Part 2: Test scores?

Part 3: Student evaluations?
Part 5: Closing thoughts

Follow me on Twitter @MatthewTShowman

What exactly is a good (or great) teacher? (Part 3: Student evaluation?)

This is part three of my series examining various criteria the public, teachers, administrators, government officials and others seem to mention when answer this question: What is a good teacher?

There's no universal standard by which to define a good, let alone great, teacher. There are no universally agreed upon measures rubrics or checklists. Can we simply say we know a good teacher when I see one? We can but shouldn't

Today's topic hits a different note: Positive (or negative) student evaluations.

Are good teachers those whom the students like?

This seems like a good criterion. If students like a teacher, surely that teacher is doing a good job, right?

Maybe.

Obviously it would matter why the students like a specific teacher. Does the teacher inspire? Does the teacher excite the students about learning? Does the teacher transform what might be dull material into something students look forward to learning? Does the teacher help students exceed their own and other's expectations? Does the teacher help students feel successful and/or be successful? Do the students know this teacher cares about them?

Obviously these characteristics would be be excellent indications that students have identified a great teacher. However...

Does the teacher give little homework? Are the teacher's tests easy? Does the teacher teach a blow-off course? Does the teacher show videos and movies that entertain the students but may do little to educate them? Does the teacher 

How did students evaluate the teacher? Were surveys given? Were interviews done? Were responses anonymous or not? Where responses confidential, or were students being "supervised"? Were the evaluation tools accurate? Did the tools ask the questions that got to the root of why students liked or disliked a teacher?

Can we assume that the students (as a whole) evaluate well? Were tehy reading questions carefully? Were they putting thought into their responses? Were they rushing through checking boxes just to finish? Were they vindictive after the teacher called them out or challenged them more than they'd otherwise prefer? Student may have felt they learned a lot, but can they be sure they actually did (see p. 61)? Could students confuse teaching ability with their own enthusiasm or distaste for the subject matter?

All said, I do think there is great promise in students' evaluations of teachers. But there are some major concerns along the way.

Other posts in the series:
Part 1: Inspiration?
Part 2: Test scores?
Part 4: Grades and scores?
Part 5: Closing thoughts


Follow me on Twitter @MatthewTShowman

What exactly is a good (or great) teacher? (Part 2: Test scores?)

This is part two of my series examining various criteria people (e.g. the public, teachers, administrators, government officials) seem to mention when answer this question: What is a good teacher?

As I said previously, there's no universal standard by which to define a good, let alone great, teacher. There are no universally agreed upon measures rubrics or checklists. And saying "I know a good teacher when I see one," is woefully inadequate, at least with regards to official designation.

Today's topic is a contentious one: test scores.

Are good teachers those whose students get the highest test scores?

Almost any teacher would say absolutely not!

It seems government leaders think so.

The general public seems to lack consensus, as well they should, being caught between propaganda machines.

Let's ask some questions:

• How high would those test scores need to be for a teacher to be good? Would the evaluation be based on what the scores were before that teacher began teaching those students? Would it take into consideration yearly variation of students? Would evaluation take into consideration regression to the mean? (I.e. Excellent years are most likely followed by less performance, and terrible years are most likely followed by better performance.)

• Given that poverty is one of the best predictors of academic success (see references below), would the test score litmus test control for poverty?

• Should a good teacher be able to teach well regardless of the school and regardless of the students? That is, should a teacher in a poverty-stricken urban school be able to teach equally well in a wealthy suburban school? Should teachers be required to teach in both so as to "prove" they're good teachers?

• If a teacher is consistently able to get students to attain the highest test scores in a school or state, but that same teacher destroys the students' desire to ever study the subject again in the future, is that a true success? Is that a good teacher?

• Are the best teachers those who teach students to pass the tests or to understand the content? (I hope there's no debate over that question.) Could both be done?

• Who should make the tests? Educators? Administrator? Education policy makers? Academic organizations? Universities and colleges? Government leaders? Here's an idea: What about having business and industry create exams to test for life and job preparedness?

• Who is to say the exams are written well? Should teacher or students be punished for poorly written or designed tests?

I am not a proponent of increased testing. That's an understatement. I don't really like testing at all, as a student or a teacher. Only two tests ever really motivated me. One was the HSK (Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi) Chinese test. But, even that was born out of a love for learning Chinese. The other was an oral exam in a contemporary Chinese society during university. The novelty of an oral exam was simply intriguing.

More often than not, however, I felt as if exams got in the way of actually learning new material and new skills. I just wanted to learn. As a teacher, I just want to teach.



Other posts in the series:
Part 1: Inspiration?
Part 3: Student evaluation?
Part 4: Grades and scores?
Part 5: Closing thoughts



Follow me on Twitter @MatthewTShowman



References (from Krashen)
Ananat, E., Gassman-Pines, A., Francis, D., and Gibson-Davis, C. 2011. Children left behind: The effects of statewide job less on student achievement. NBER (National Bureau of Economic Research) Working Paper No. 17104, JEL No. 12,16. http://www.nber.org/papers/w17104

Baker, K. 2007. Are international tests worth anything? Phi Delta Kappan, 89(2), 101-104.

Berliner, D. 2009. Poverty and Potential:  Out-of-School Factors and School Success.  Boulder and Tempe: Education and the Public Interest Center & Education Policy Research Unit. http://epicpolicy.org/publication/poverty-and-potential.

Krashen, S. 1997. Bridging inequity with books. Educational Leadership  55(4): 18-22.

Zhao, Y. 2009. Catching Up or Leading the Way? American Education in the Age of Globalization. ASCD: Alexandria, VA.

What exactly is a good (or great) teacher? (Part 1: Inspiration?)

What is a good teacher? With all the debate over how teachers should be evaluated and compensated, perhaps it's important to remember that there's no universal standard by which to define a good, or even great, teacher. There are no universally agreed upon measures, rubrics, or checklists.

It's not enough to say "I know a good teacher when I see one." Recall the proverb: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Over the next few posts, I'll discuss a aspects that could potentially be of use. Today's topic: inspiration.

Are good teachers those who inspire?

I commonly hear people remark that good teachers inspire their students. Is this a good measure?

How many kids would a teacher have to inspire to be considered a good teacher? 1 out of 100? 1 out of 10? At least 5% per year? A full 100% of the students?

Should the results of that inspiration be taken into account? Do we assign greater significance to those teachers who inspired people like Bill Gates over those who inspired some woman working full time at a supermarket and a second job at a hotel to support her family? What if the inspired student eventually became a homeless drug addict? In any of these cases, inspiration happened, but the end result differed.

Do we assign greater significance to teachers if they inspire those from less ideal social backgrounds? Is it more important to inspire students of certain economic backgrounds? Do we assign greater weight to those who inspire students of disadvantaged racial or ethnic groups? Should we assign greater weight to teachers who are able to inspire students of a racial or ethnic background different from his or her own?

What if a teacher inspired only one student his or her entire career? Would that be considered a god or great teacher?

What if that one student was Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr. or Helen Keller?

What if that one student was you?



Other posts in the series:
Part 2: Test scores?
Part 3: Student evaluation?
Part 4: Grades and scores?
Part 5: Closing thoughts



Follow me on Twitter: @MatthewTShowman

Teachers need high-quality feedback

During university I changed my major to education after becoming enamored with the process of learning and acquisition I saw in children. I've been a teacher ever since. All told, including teacher training, I've probably spent over 9000 hours in the classroom, and hundreds of others in one-on-one tutoring and the like.

I don't consider myself an expert teacher. I'm always learning more about my craft (an impetus for taking this course as well). Neither, however, do I consider myself a novice teacher.

I can't speak for people of all countries, but here in the US it seems like open season on teachers. It seems increasingly common to blame teachers for the problems in US education. It seems increasingly common for people to say teachers are just people who can't do other things well, so they teach. It seems many people think they could teach just as well as any teacher in today's schools.

Some of this criticism is surely justified. There surely are many poor teachers.

Yet as Kahneman describes, people with lots of experience teaching are really the only ones who really could have adequate expertise. Teachers who've spent 20,000 hours in the classroom, for example, would in theory be much better judges of what makes for good education. Better than students, parents, legislators, etc.

Perhaps the weakness, however, is that teachers do not often get rapid, high-quality feedback. They may know a lesson "worked" or not, but may not have time to inquire of students why it worked or didn't work. If teachers are too busy, they may not have time to reflect on those lessons that went well or went poorly. Teachers rarely have other teachers observe their classes to provide feedback: perhaps once or twice a semester, and that's being generous. Standardized tests give the illusion of teacher feedback, but that's really an availability heuristic, not a true measure of teaching effectiveness.

I wonder if more feedback (welcome or not) would be effective for bettering teaching quality. I wonder if it would be valuable for teachers to be observed by colleagues on a daily basis. What other ways could teachers get rapid, high-quality feedback so as to increase expertise?
Any thoughts?

Follow me on Twitter: @MatthewTShowman

Could we stealthily help students be happier?

Do you ever wonder how we think? I do.

I've been completing the lessons from Think101x: The of Everyday Thinking from edX. I've also been reading through the suggested textbooks: How we know what isn't so by Thomas Gilovich and Thinking, fast and slow by Daniel Kahneman. I've just finished the coursework and readings for week 3. There is so much to process; it's really quite astounding in every regard.

However, three recommended additional video posts (TED talks) have got me thinking about the concept of happiness and how schools do or do not or could help students' happiness. Perhaps it sticks in my minds because my 7-year-old nephew remarked Sunday that he hated school.

Below are the Think101x recommended extra video posts:

TED Talk by Dan Gilbert on The surprising science of happiness: "66% of the students choose to be in the course in which they will ultimately be deeply dissatisfied... because they do no know the conditions under which synthetic happiness grows."

TED Talk by Daniel Kahneman on The riddle of experience: "We really should not think of happiness as a substitute for well-being; it is a completely different notion."

TED Talk by Dan Ariely who asks, "Are we in control of our own decisions?": "The option that was useless in the middle was useless in the sense that nobody wanted it, but it wasn't useless in the sense that it helped people figure out what they wanted."

I'm not sure whether it's the educator in me or sheer curiosity, but theses are some of the questions that began to come to mind as I watched these videos and as they connected with the ideas already in my mind from the readings and Think101x course content:

1. How can students understand that getting what one wants is not a determinant of happiness?
2. Does giving students more options and more choices actually decrease their happiness?
3. Would students make better food choices and be happier with them if their options were reduced?
4. Should we not allow people to change their minds? Should we make more decisions irreversible?
5. Could lessons be rewritten or redesigned or reorganized in such a way that students remember the lesson in a more positive light and are, thus, happier with their lessons?
6. Do we tell students to do what makes them happy or teach them to do the things that will statistically lead to greater happiness, regardless of what they believe about the future?
7. What implications does Ariely's discussion of organ donation have on the way we design exam questions, seek volunteers, etc.?
8. Are students and teachers (regardless of what they say they think) more comfortable when decisions are made for them?
9. How often do policy makers and curriculum designers choose more extreme positions simply due to having too many choices?

Feel free to chime with any of your thoughts. And check out Think101x!

Messages in the Surface advertisement

Since I've been back in the US, there has been one television/hulu advertisement in particular that has caused me to feel progressively more uncomfortable. I've struggled to put into words exactly how or why it makes me uncomfortable, but this post is my attempt to do so. See the advertisement below:

From the outset, let me clarify that I am in no way an enemy of using technology, especially to educate. Obviously I blog. I have used youtube, but my education-focused vlog is on tudou (土豆网), a Chinese service that is inexplicable slow in the US. I have my own website, wherein I describe a myriad of other computer-based technologies I use or have used in my teaching career. I'm currently playing with Language Cloud, trying to determine its overall usefulness for language teaching in general and in different contexts.

I also use technology to learn. I took a online course from Iowa State University back in 2002, in the early years of online learning. It was self-paced, which meant I finished the January-May course during the second week of March. (That's just how I tend to work.) Later as a grad student in a field-based TESOL program, much peer collaboration was done online. An iPod was a crucial piece of technology while studying Chinese, both for purchased and self-produced mp3s, and I still use my computer and cell phone to tune in to Chinese radio. Even now I'm and trying to decide whether to enroll in one or more Coursura courses (Coaching Teachers, Student Thinking at the Core, Blended Learning) or edX courses (Intro to Computer Science, Effective Thinking Through Math, The Science of Everyday Thinking, China).

Despite my clear belief in the potential usefulness of computer technology to educate, I would describe myself as technologically cautious. Perhaps to use a phrasing with more positive connotation, I could describe my approach to technology integration as research-based. Simply put, technology is not a educational savior, and even if used well, it could harm more than help student learning and achievement, especially in the primary and secondary school years, as it is during these years that students acquire so many fundamental skills.

To get back to the original purpose of this post, I think there are three main reasons why this Surface tablet advertisement makes me uncomfortable.

#1 Fatalism
"Change is coming" remarks the teacher (an actor, I assume). He continues, saying, "All my students have the brand new Surface." He makes this seem so inevitable, as if there really is no choice. Because all the students have the tablet (What kind of school is this?), he feels he must utilize them. Wisdom is not something that young people are known for; wisdom requires age and experience. Just because student have them and like them, does that mean they make for good education? It seems unwise to make pedagogical decisions based on what students due primarily for fun, status, etc.

Daphne Koller has remarked, "Now, this is something that to the people of my generation is still a bit foreign, but if you talk to the kids of today, they actually prefer to text each other than to talk to each other on the phone or even get together for coffee"(1). It may be preferred, but is it a healthy preference? Is it an educationally, academically sound preference? These are huge assumptions that should not be made.

Change is coming, without a doubt, and both schools and teachers must adapt. But to adapt, must they inevitably adopt what may not be in the students' educational best interests? For better or worse, some parents working in high tech companies such as Apple and Google disagree with this inevitability, sending their children to school without computers (2). Again, I'm not saying the technology should not be used, but fatalism is the enemy of best practice.

#2 Overemphasis on entertainment
Granted, the teacher says nothing about students playing games or using Skype in school, but by juxtaposing the social networking and gaming aspects alongside the school aspects, the advertisement tries to tap into the prevailing societal idea that people should be continuously entertained, even at school. It feeds the currently popular notion that people shouldn't have to do things that aren't fun, so if school is not entertaining, school is bad. That whole idea is absolutely absurd.

I'm not anti-fun, though I admit that  my achiever orientation does sometimes lead to anti-entertainment ideas. I try to make my lessons interesting, engaging and, yes, fun. Nevertheless education and learning take work, and work is not usually fun in and of itself, though the final sense of satisfaction may be. Almost anything truly valuable takes effort or persistence or both, neither of which are inherently fun. This advertisement makes me uncomfortable because it continues to blur the lines of reality by giving the impression that good education and deep learning can and should come easily and that students should be entertained.

#3 Bandwagon thinking
The teacher in the advertisement prefaces his comments with "Honestly, I'm a little old fashioned," immediately putting to rest the idea teachers with less technological aptitude could have equal or greater wisdom than those well versed in the latest tech fads. The worldview of the advertisement is revealed immediately: Youth and excitement rule; age and wisdom mean nothing.

Perhaps the most significant reason I am uncomfortable with this advertisement is that it continues to perpetuate the notion that computer and internet technology will and does improve education, a notion that has yet to be realized. There is a rampant belief that any tech is good tech. Since the dawn of television, technology advocates have assigned messiah-like promises to the potential of technology to transform education and facilitate learning. Education is continuing to be transformed; this is true. But is learning being facilitated? For all the spending that schools have done and are doing to upgrade computers and integrate technology, the sad fact is that achievement has not risen, and in some cases has fallen (3). Yet schools, parents, and obviously the tech companies continue to jump on the bandwagon, without evidence to support what everyone assumes (4): technology makes for better learning and better preparation.

That is not to say that the promises are empty. Online learning, mobile devices, and the like do have great potential to transform learning for the better, but at the moment it is merely that: potential. While there has been success with blended learning (also called hybrid learning)(5), these are mostly in areas such as math that have definite answers that lend themselves to adaptive learning. Perhaps as teachers become more skilled at using this technology, as Koller suggests, the true benefits of computer-assisted learning will truly be revealed. In areas such as reading skills development, however, the evidence is overwhelming on the anti-technology side (6). For now it behooves teachers, parents, students and all other stakeholders to reject the bandwagon and adopt a research-based, thoughtful, open-minded but cautious attitude toward the use of technology in the classroom.

1. See William B. Bowen's book Higher Education in the Digital Age.
2. There are many articles about this. Here is one from The New York Times and another from Daily Mail.
3. For discussions and references to research about technology usage and student achievement see the Nicholas Carr and Mark Bauerlein.
4. Stephen Krashen agrees.
5. Here's an interesting article from Smithsonian.
6. Again see the discussion and references from Nicolas Carr.

Clifton StrengthsFinder

As part of my transition into the U.S. job market, some grad school classmates (and fellow ESL colleagues) suggested I complete the Clifton StrengthsFinder assessment. Frankly, whenever I hear of assessments like this (e.g. Myers-Briggs), I’m always somewhat incredulous. I cannot help but think such assessments could not possibly be able to summarize the complexity that is a human personality. However, despite my ever-present skepticism, I’m consistently shocked by how accurate the results of these types of assessments seem to be. This time was no exception.

For those of you who are as unfamiliar with the assessment as I was, here is a brief description: “The Clifton StrengthsFinder measures the presence of 34 talent themes. Talents are people's naturally recurring patterns of thought, feeling, or behavior that can be productively applied. The more dominant a theme is in a person, the greater the theme's impact on that person's behavior and performance” (strengthtest).

After obtaining an access code, I went ahead with the assessment. When finished, I was presented with a personalized summary of my five most dominant strengths along with discussion of what the results mean. According to the the assessment, my top five talents are these:

1. Leaner
2. Achiever
3. Connectedness
4. Intellection
5. Input

I had not read through the 34 themes prior to taking the assessment, so these labels were a bit bewildering. In fact, when I first looked at the results, I thought numbers 1, 4 and 5 were essentially different sides of the same coin. The provided summaries were quite thorough, however, and as I’ve read through the materials and dialogued with those who understand the assessment well, I’ve started getting a better handle on what these mean and how they show up in my life. Just yesterday I replied to a post on Facebook and only afterwards noted that it was an excellent demonstration of connectedness.

I’ve tried to remember that these are “naturally recurring patterns of thought, feeling, or behavior.” These are essentially the ways that a person’s brain is unique and how that uniqueness allows different people to see the world differently, interact with the world differently and weave different colors into the tapestries of people’s lives. These are strengths to be tapped into, developed and expressed. I’m not yet sure how to use this awareness in my future teaching or other professional pursuits, but I’m on the journey.

I am also wondering what could happen if everyone could take this assessment. As a teacher, I want to help students discover their strengths, but I know I am limited in my own ability to personally uncover each student’s strengths, not to mention helping each student individually develop those strengths. I wonder what could happen if all students could take this assessment and receive greater insight into the strengths they already possess and could subsequently apply to their educational and career pursuits.

Imagine students not simply guessing about what they’re good at, but knowing. Imagine students thriving not because they try to do what everyone else does but because they tap into their own natural potentialities. Imagine students gaining confidence not due to the blind blind, ignorant praise of self-esteem language but rather due to seeing their strengths emerge and bloom. It could be beautiful.

Of course this all assumes the assessment’s accuracy.

In transition: Reflections on the art of teaching, part 3

This is the last in a series of three reflections. In this post I’ll continue to reflect on some of the major things I’ve learned over the past 12 years of teaching. There are obviously more than three lessons I’ve learned during this time, but have been three that strike me as I am leaving China.

This particular reflection is of more practical nature that the previous two, but I hope it will still be thought-provoking. I will also point out that I am writing this at 3:00 a.m. in a jet-lag induced state of alertness.

Reflection 3: Memorization is overly maligned

Memorization has gotten a bad rap. Memorization (a.k.a. rote memorization) was the whipping post of my academic generation. It most likely still is. I'm not sure I ever heard a single professor speak well of rote memorization, let alone advocate its use. What was stressed was rather communication, critical thinking, creativity, self-expression and the like, all of which are good, essential, and perhaps even the goal of all instruction. I likewise attempt to foster these skills in my students. Nevertheless, after years of teaching English to English learners (as opposed to already literate high school students or university literature majors), I have concluded that to completely exclude memorization is neither desirable nor educationally sound.

Part of me wants to focus on mathematics and discuss multiplication tables because they are often cited when memorization is mentioned. However, in this entry I will try to stick to language, Chinese specifically.

Have you ever tried to write Chinese? Though it is a popular language choice at present and is gaining in popularity by the day, most of you have not. Here is one thing to know about writing Chinese: It cannot be studied without memorization, generally active memorization. To write Chinese (to “spell”), one must memorize. A learner can't simply “sound it out” like learners can somewhat do with English and more easily do with languages that have more standardized spelling systems (e.g. Spanish or German). Over time one simply may be able to acquire the skill relatively passively or subconsciously (Stephen Krashen's Input Hypothesis), but it is highly improbable, and not even native speakers wait for such acquisition, as young Chinese boys and girls labor to write characters over and over in their practice books. If Chinese children have to do so, would such memorization be a lesser need for second language learners of Chinese?

Of course a Chinese learner may be able to predict a possible meaning radical when writing a character (assuming those radicals been memorized), and yes, a Chinese learner can guess a possible sound radical (assuming those have been memorized as well), but when push comes to shove, a Chinese learner either knows how to write a character or doesn't. Yes, computer technology now makes is possible to “read” one’s way to writing ability. The pinyin system used to enter Chinese characters into a computer allows the composer to select the proper character from a list of many characters having the same sound, essentially letting someone read rather than write their way to a composition. Though this technology is incredibly helpful, this phenomena demonstrates a fundamental deficiency of language ability. Even well-educated Chinese forget how to write characters. I don't mean that they forget whether it's “relevant” or “relavant”. (It's the first, by the way). I mean that they sometimes cannot even begin writing the character. It's simply lost in the fog, as if they'd never learned it at all. This is a much discussed topic in China, one that has even led to the creation of a spelling bee type game show that foreign media have also picked up. (See articles in USA Today and The Wall Street Journal.)

Creativity, critical thinking and other higher order thinking skills are wonderful and are essential to academic success, but there really are some things that people must memorize: laboriously, monotonously, rigorously memorize. I am well aware of the pitfalls of overemphasizing memorization. Having worked almost exclusively with Chinese students for the past decade, I have known far too many students whose curiosity in all things not entertainment has been stamped out by the high pressure, high stakes, memorization-focused Chinese education system. I am all too familiar with the cognitive and creative underdevelopment that occurs when memorization becomes the goal rather than a component of the learning process. But therein lies the real point of contention: Is memorization the ends or the means?

There is nothing inherently wrong with memorization. Memorization itself is useful and valuable. Used well, with all strategies and mnemonic devices that have been employed over the past several millennia, it is still one of the important means to academic and professional success. Educators should not fear memorization, nor should they deride educators who ask or expect students to memorize this content or that content. However, memorization should never be a goal but should always be a means to fostering those higher order skills of thought and expression that we hold so dear.

In transition: Reflections on the art of teaching, part 2

This is part two in a series of three or four reflections. In this post I’ll continue to reflect on some of the major things I’ve learned over the past 12 years of teaching.

Reflection 2: Everyone can learn, but not everyone will.

In the education world, what I’ve just written may be as close to heresy as I can get. Let me be clear that I am in no way advocating or excusing laziness or otherwise low-quality education. Nevertheless, it is simply true that some students will not learn, not because they cannot, but because they will not. This could have any number of causes, and some of them may actually be related to irrelevant, unimaginative or otherwise poor teaching. Yet this fact remains a heartbreaking truth, even if in only a few select cases.

I’ve had two such cases in my teaching career thus far. One student never wanted to be at the school, didn’t want to go abroad and didn’t want a degree. He simply wanted his parents, who wanted him to go abroad and get a degree, to get him a job. (This is not at all strange in China for those with connections.) Eventually he began intentionally failing exams so that they would have no choice but to withdraw him from the school. A second student spent several years at the school and never seemed to improve, falling asleep in almost every class. It was so bad that the teachers eventually suggested that he may have a medical disorder needing treatment. In the end it was revealed that he was simply up playing video games all night, almost every night, for almost three years.

I bring up these examples neither to shame the students nor to justify myself or the teachers. I still think about these students and wonder if there’s anything I could have done differently to spark their interest, to provide that moment wherein everything falls into place and they themselves realize the joy (not to mention the importance) of learning and of having goals. I hope the other teachers that knew them also still think of them and wonder what could have been. Nevertheless, I also recognize that given the situations in which both the teacher and the students were placed, perhaps the outcomes were simply inevitable.

As teachers we strive to motivate students, to impart a love of learning to students, and to provide the unique sets of circumstances needed to enhance students' acquisition of knowledge, be that mathematics or language or art. Try as we might, however, there may be some students whom we are simply never able to reach. Might we have? Of course it’s possible, but a teacher has limited time, materials, and ideas. Of a hypothetical 1000 different motivational techniques, perhaps #347 would have clicked with that one student, but we merely never got around to that one. Do we have remorse for the students to whom we never got through? Yes, we do, and we must, but we must have remorse with the knowledge that sometimes, with some students, for whatever known or unknown reason, we just will not be able to break through to be the change we want to be in those students’ lives. And it breaks our hearts.

In transition: Reflections on the art of teaching, part 1

In my first post I mentioned my life in transition: transition from one country and culture to another, transition from a relatively well-paying job to what I hope will be only temporary joblessness, transition from ethnic singularity to diversity. Transitions seem to bring with them a certain opportunity to look back, to reassess, to reflect. Recently I have been reflecting about many things: about life, about hopes and desires, and about teaching.

Through trial and error, I have learned a lot about teaching Chinese students over the past ten years. I have learned much about teaching English over the past ten years. I have also learned a lot about the art of teaching itself, in all its nebulousness. Different methods, different styles, different activities―many have been attempted, many have failed, and a precious few have succeeded. Nevertheless, what I began to reflect on today is not so much about the practice of teaching itself, but rather about some truths that simply are. In this post I address what will likely be the first of three or four reflections.

Reflection 1: Living in a mystery

Teaching, like life, is something that reveals more of its mystery the longer one persists in it. Experience is wonderful, and it is said (as my more cliche-loving students like to remind me) that experience is the best teacher. After 11 or 12 years in the classroom (depending on how one calculates it), I know vastly more about managing a classroom, motivating students and effectively delivering lessons than I did as a 22 year old college graduate. Just a few years "in the trenches" can lead to more insights than an entire undergraduate education program, and a few more can sometimes even surpass a masters program. But something accompanies experience that eclipses improved technique and broader knowledge: the understanding that one does not really know as much as he or she thought.

As a young man I was armed with my Drake University education background, a resume that included stints in rural and urban summer camps, a year assisting in special education, and the certainty that I was about to change the world. I was young and impetuous, confident and arrogant. Now, 12 years later, having tasted both success and failure, having clicked with some students and having been woefully unable to connect with others, having helped some students to reach their goals and all but shedding tears over seeing some students have to give up their dreams, I emerge a still confident but much more humble educator than I once was.  Do I change the world? I hope so, one life at a time. Do I have the best ideas? I have some good ideas, but even the best ideas fall flat on the wrong days. Am I going to solve the educational needs of my students? I will certainly try to address them, but I won't always (and perhaps rarely) help as much as I or they would like. Will my students acquire a passion for learning? Some have, and I can remember each one by name. Others never saw the light.

I am still a relatively inexperienced father, my oldest son being only a month and a half past two years old. Despite this inexperience, I had a revelation one day in my living room, a revelation that I would wager most fathers before me have long since discovered. I was moving a coffee table (unrelated to the revelation) and thought, "I have read a lot of books and have talked to a lot of fathers, but I don't really know what I'm doing as a father. I'm just trying my best everyday. I'll bet that's what my father did, too. He didn't know everything or even THINK he knew everything, despite what my teenage brain may have thought. He knew he didn't know all that much, but he was doing his best with what he knew." I think it's the same with teaching. I've read a lot of books and journals, I've talked with other teachers, and I have a lot of tools I've developed, but when all is said and done, when the smoke clears and the dust settles, I'm really just trying my best to educate whomever will listen with whatever I have to offer. I can't but think that any honest teacher would say the same.