What can you see in these clouds? And what do you see in your students?

Hi Brad, 

I am a creature of habit, I need routine in my daily life to keep me somewhat grounded and able to respond to those opportunities which present themselves more spontaneously.  I think this is how I operate in the classroom too. At least I hope so. I definitely have the “way we do things” in terms of starting lessons with a vocab recap of some kind which is always led by the learners, but varies in the way it is done; I store new vocab on the left hand side of the board, but vary who writes it up; we check answers after tasks (duh!), but we vary who leads the feedback. However, I know that I am guilty of allowing those students you mention, the ones who you can rely on to answer when no one else does/can, to do so perhaps more often than I should. I’ve been dealing with this recently in an exam class which is made up of rather differentiated students by firstly, noticing that I am doing it, then employing strategies such as more varied feedback techniques which are more student centred and are perhaps more like an information gap activity, which means that no one student can take charge. 

I think the key here though, is noticing it to begin with. Without that, how can we adapt, develop and improve what we are doing?

As ever, a great post. Thanks. 

Jem

I saw a snowy owl:)

It may also be a question of what ‘can’ we see in our students, depending on mood, rapport ,circumstances, personality and/or emotional/social intelligence of the teacher.

They don’t teach that in teacher training, so they?

Actually, it’s very hard to get beyond both the habits of some students and our own habitual reactions to them…fascinating.

My kind of topic. We need training in white thinking hats (objective observer),  maybe?

Hi Brad,

As a teacher trainer, one of the things I always trying to do is either break or instil habits.  To an extent good teaching is about having mostly good habits, while bad teaching is the opposite.    

Hi Brad,

I absolutely have favourite students! I think if any teacher is honest about it, they will say the same. The important thing is not to give them preferential treatment. All my students know they will get praised for the same things and called up on the same things.

As for leaning on certain students more, it all depends on the situation. Some days when a lesson has started off slowly, it’s good to know there are those kids I can rely on to come up with something really creative or crazy to get everyone else into gear.

I’m with ya 100% on the noticing, and even after teaching for 10 years, I think I learned a lot in Dale’s session at TESOL France about teacher notebooks.  
I normally improve my lessons with notes before/after class, but don’t often reflect on overall approaches, like you’ve mentioned various feedback techniques, or noticing what habits we fall into and putting them back into question.

Cheers!  -b

haha… where?  ;-)

WHITE hat thinking!!! nice.  I’m just reading De Bono’s book now and I agree 100%.  I think we need training in all but Black hat thinking, eh!

There is so much that goes into the classroom environment and nothing is static, so of course we’ll get different reactions from different students on different days, and we too may have more or less energy to give.  Being sensitive to this is a responsibility of ours and it’s not always easy, though it we pay attention, I think it’s always interesting!

Cheers 4 the comments, Sylvia!  -b

Hey Stephen.  Yes, and I think we could could even lean out on a limb and generalize that to “life in general”
 

Good point, and I’ve always enjoyed Ken Wilson’s approach in “employing the big guns” in class (the strongest students) to lead certain activities, or as you say to get things moving on slow days.  Hadn’t consciously tried that till this year (after hearing Ken’s talk) and I think it was a nice mini-leap in PD.  Another good habit to add to the bag of tricks.

Cheers, b

Dear Brad,

I have appreciated your honesty! What is more, your emphasizing this point ” The important thing is not to give them preferential treatment.” Of course, there are some contexts /moments when those students can be inspirational to their partners.

Absolutely!  Thanks for stopping by Mceupc

I’ve come to mark all tests and assignments anonymously now for this reason–avoid preconceptions as much as possible.  We even had our students write research papers and put them on blogs (here’s one for example: 
http://ifpwedkakaxi.wordpress.com/) in random order so they get a group mark instead of me knowing specifically who wrote what.  Building collaboration and all that…

It’s easy to identify stronger and weaker students quickly.  It’s easy to pigeonhole them to that label quickly as well.

Fine point.

All of our final examples are anonymous for this exact reason.  I think it’s human to perceive and to remember, and it’s also human to remember to try to perceive through a new lens.

Glad to hear that you’re playing with and moving beyond such perceptions.   -b