as professionals is competence in accessing and sharing knowledge."
Connie Malamed
Hello!
I am here to share about something I am really proud of being part: iTDi.
I love iTDi because it has made the cutting edge of ELT knowledge available to teachers around the world in a very democratic way through free and affordable online courses and webinars.
One of iTDi's initiatives, together with Gallery Teachers, was the Summer Intensive for Teachers, an online free series of speakers sharing their views on issues that they are passionate about. And I was invited to be one of them!
Due to my travelling and course schedule the only day I could present was July, 31st which was even before the official opening on the next day. I hosted my very first webinar and guess what? I loved and it was great fun!
Buddy and I were super kindly hosted by Chuck Sandy and Jason Levine with the great theme song that made all of us full of energy. I was a little bit lost at first, but with time I got more and more comfortable with this new webinar format. I would like to thank everybody who made the effort to attend it live. You guys rock!
You are probably saying "Come on, Juan, where is the link?". Right here, without further delay.
It is very easy to watch my first webinar. Just click here and sign up for a free account with iTDi. Then just log in and find the Summer Intensive for Teachers. My webinar is the very first one.
Get yourself some coffee, tea, or lemonade and enjoy the course with Buddy the Frog and me.
It was a great experience and I look forward to hosting another webinar. I am then officially open to invitations!
Which part did you like the most?
Do you have any hints for my next webinars?
It is with great pleasure that I am part of the May issue on Leadership of the iTDi blog! In my article I share postures and practices that my sister Sosô and I have learned and that have been both affective and effective in our leading of the language school for children we direct in São Paulo, Brazil. Feel free to steal all the ones that you feel might work for you and your school!
Never heard of iTDi?
iTDi is a global online teacher development institute that is owned and staffed by dedicated teachers. iTDi provides Online courses to improve your classroom teaching or English language skills, written by some of the most respected authors in English language teaching.
iTDi's mission is to provide quality professional development that is meaningful, accessible and affordable for all teachers. The iTDi community brings together teaching professionals working at every level -- newcomers and veterans, native and non-native teachers from a wide range of contexts, all sharing a common belief that being a teacher means a never-ending commitment to growing and learning.
Make sure you check iTDi's site and check out the offered courses and webinars!
After Vicky Loras interviewed me last week, I thought I should also start interviewing enthusiastic educators I admire. It didn't take me more than a few seconds to know who I was going to invite for my very first interview: Sandra Rodrigues.
Sandra Rodrigues
I met Sandra Rodrigues many years ago in one of the open training courses we offer for teachers of young leaners at Juan Uribe Ensino Afetivo. I can still clearly remember how Sandra was very involved and took notes of everything we discussed. After this first meeting, we always kept in touch and Sandra became a regular at our courses and events, even bringing her lovely daughter, who was still a child at the time.
Sandra's determination, enthusiasm, and curiosity led her to explore the world of young learners learning like very few people I know. She read educational books, studied methodologies, shared her experiences with other educators, and travelled to educational centres. But what I really find fascinating is how she has been able to align all her studies, experience, and values in her teaching.
The result is admirable affective language learning!
Here we have our first interview:
Juan: Sandra, we
have been together many times at school and I can truly say that I admire your
energy and your passion for education. I would like to thank you very much for
accepting to give me this interview and for sharing your work with the ELT
community.
Sandra: It is a pleasure to share my
ideas and my passion for education with you Juan. I’m very grateful for
everything I learned and still learn with you. And you know, I love talking
about my work so thank you for inviting me.
Juan: It is m great pleasure, Sandra. I will start by asking you how you
entered in the world of education. Did you have a special teacher that influenced
you?
Sandra: In fact I started when I was just
14 years old. I worked as a class assistant for four years and once I finished
high school I started learning English in a private course at USP - University
of São Paulo. (Unfortunately dear readers
around the world, here in Brazil students don’t learn English in state schools
yet. We do have English classes in our curriculum but if you want to be fluent
in a second language, you better pay for a private course).
Sandra, Buddy, and I many years ago.
Anyway, soon after I followed
some teacher training courses and started teaching adults. Business English, actually. Most of my students didn’t like to learn English. They used to say
they had to learn it because of their career and ever since they were kids,
English class had been a synonym of boredom and repetition.How come? Since they were
kids? How could we teach a second language to a child? Was it really boring? Could it
be different? Could I do it?
It was time for a change. Thereupon
I initiated my studies on Child Language Acquisition and attended several
courses about Teaching Young Children. By happy chance, in my search
for new approaches and techniques I found your school, Juan Uribe Ensino Afetivo, in São Paulo, Brazil. There I discovered that learning a second language as a
child can be fun, effective and the most important for me…children can learn in
a very affective way.
A special teacher who
influenced me? I have now 14 years
experience as an English teacher. All through these years I have had many teachers,
tutors and coordinators who somehow influenced my current way of teaching. However
some of them are special just because after listening to my questions or
aspirations, they had the perfect “food for thought comment” or even better,
they asked me more questions. I guess I can say that the
teachers, tutors and coordinators who influenced my way of teaching were the
ones who were able to listen and to understand me: Juan Uribe, Débora Schisler,
Clara Garcia, Sosô Uribe, Kátia Valle, Nina Lauder and Fátima Freire Dowbor.
Juan: I am happy to be in your list, Sandra! I consider
you to be a very affective person and language educator. How do you have affect
present in your life and in your teaching? How do you know it makes a
difference in students’ learning?
Sandra: Well I have an eleven year
old daughter who thinks she’s already a teenager, so dealing with affect is
something I have in my life every single day. Along with that I’m a very passionate person. People usually say they
can see in my eyes whether I’m happy or not. Consequently enabling students to
experience good emotions is part of my job. As a special Dutch former teacher
told me once, children can learn anything when they feel good about themselves.
If they are happy, they will learn. So how do I make my students
happy? Letting them do just what they want in class? No!
I usually say I’m inspired by
my students and I get this inspiration by listening to them. By respecting
their opinion, accepting their suggestions and providing a stress free environment. Of course we are not
Pollyannas and sometimes we get up on the wrong side of bed. In my classes we
make room for this kind of emotion as well. Students are encouraged to say when
they are not having a good day, and that also goes for the teacher. We are human beings not super
heroes.
Juan: I couldn't agree more with you, Sandra. Presence and authenticity are key to true affective learning. Changing subjects, we have both
taken countless courses and travelled to different places around the world to
learn about how young learners learn best. What have been some of your most
surprising findings?
Dutch children learning in the museum.
Sandra: When visiting the Netherlands
I found out that Dutch kids are one of the best of the world when it comes to
Math. I had the chance to talk to a former primary teacher there and she told
me that Math is traditionally valued by parents and teachers. At school teachers
stress the construction of knowledge and the understanding, but not the tricks. Moreover,
there’s a heavy weight on the fundamentals where theory and practice are linked
to daily life.
All over the world is common
to find parents who are proud to say: “hey, did you know my five year old son
can count to hundred?” – then the other parent would say – “my son can count to
hundred in two languages!”. In The Netherlands, young
kids can count to ten but they know what they are counting. One to ten is not a
chant of words.
Another great experience I
had in the Netherlands was visiting the National Museum of Education in
Rotterdam. Besides photos and
educational films, you can also find several objects related to education:
furniture, textbooks, wall-charts, schoolbags, atlases, ink jars and school
uniforms.
More museum learning!
Downstairs there is a world
of discovery. The discovery of science by the child itself. With low cost
material and high educational value, children can explore a couple of daily wonders. So they can
build a miniature dike and learn about water flows or peel potatoes
mechanically and turn them into Dutch fries. They can also risk to work on an
old fashioned feet powered singer, experience friction by hitting the nails, or even write with an ancient feather-pen.
The learning is not structured but is far
more effective by the intense interaction between the kids of different ages,
all eager to show how it should be done in their way.
Work of children in a Reggio Emilia classroom.
Another surprising finding took
place in Reggio Emilia, Italy. Inspired by Loris Malaguzzi, preschool
educators there believe that the school environment, mainly the classroom, can
be conceived as a third educator (they have two educators per class).
Therefore I visited some
schools to find out how they organize these environments and if would be
possible to apply this approach in my classroom in Brazil. Basically everything
they do is FOR and WITH the students. The daily routine poster, the drawings
and all the artwork you find around the school is made by the children.
Wooden Reggio Emilia furniture.
One of the schools I visited
had only non manufactured toys. There were kids painting a big box to use it as
a stove, parents donating some old pans and spoons and boys building their cars
or trucks with pieces of wood and plastic bottles. It was a great experience.
Juan:This year you showed me lovely pictures
of your projects with your students.What makes a project involving and productive in your opinion? Could you
give us some examples?
Sandra: The more you know your
students, the more you will learn from and with them. This is a great thing
about working with projects, we can learn so many things together. The first
thing I do with a new group is to take some time to watch them play during
school break. Listen to their talks with friends and when possible ask about
their favorite books, toys, games and music.
Different mudras one can make!
You have to be all ears and
take notes whenever is possible. I remember a class when students were spelling
each other’s names. Once one of them needed help to remember the letter B and I
helped using sign language. They started laughing and tried to imitate the
letters I was doing with my hands. Soon a student said “this is nice because we
can speak with our hands”.
Then I said “well, you can even tell a story with
your hands”. At that instant I explained that in Indian dance they use to tell
a story through “mudras” and that each mudra has a meaning. Then I started
showing them each mudra with my hands: Pataka, Tripataka, Ardhapataka, Kartarimukha, and so on.
Students learning about the Indian culture.
My little kids went crazy and started to ask more questions about
Indian dances and about the Indian Culture. I had some of the answers because I have been
studying Bharatanatyam, classical Indian dance, for the last eight years, so teaching
them about India was not that difficult.
We listened to a version of “twinkle
twinkle little star” with Indian accent, I told them the story of Taj Mahal,
they used Indian water coloring technique to personalize their t-shirts, and I even invited an
Indian friend to talk to the students at school. They asked my friend all type
of questions, including if in India they were used to sleeping on a bed of nails.
So if you want to have an
involving and productive project, besides a very good planning you also need to
listen carefully to your students.
Juan: I find impressive how you were able to share our love for the Indian culture, even dancing Indian
music to your students in one of the
school celebrations! What are you working on right now with them?
Sandra: Showing the whole different
world of India to my students was mixing pleasure with work. More pleasure than
work I should say. This is a brand new year for
me. New school, new colleagues, new students, and new projects. I am working now
in a Franciscan school, so for the first time I had to plan some activities
related to Saint Francis of Assisi.
After reading “The Song of
Francis” by Tomie DePaola, my students wanted to know more about the author
(who also illustrates the book) so we sent him an email. While we were waiting
his reply, students made some drawings from the book. Their work was so
beautiful that we made a book for the school. Recently we got an email from Tomie dePaola answering all our questions. That was
something brand new for my students, receiving an email from an author and in
English!
Besides this book project, I
also travelled to Assisi with 49 students in my backpack during school break in
July. Don’t you believe me? Yes, I did it!
Juan: Please leave
a final message with advice to our readers around the world.
Sandra: Once again I would like to thank you
Juan for this opportunity. You and your sister Sosô helped me to open many
doors in my career and I will be forever thankful for everything.
Readers around the world…find
your passion, grab it and never let it go. When we love what we do, anything is
possible.
Respect, believe and surprise
yourself.
Find people around the world
with similar aspirations and share your ideas. Break routine every now and
then, take a pause.
Never forget you are an
example for your students. If you want them to read more books, leave your own
books on the table. Be the change. Inspire them to do their best.
Respect, believe and surprise
yourself.
Respect, believe and surprise
your students.
Baci a tutti!
Sandra Rodrigues
I'm happy to have had our very first interview with Sandra Rodrigues. It's very clear in her words and actions that Sandra is an effective and affective educator! How did you like our first interview? Which was your favourite part?
"Schools for critical empowerment, not for subjugation."
Henry Giroux
Are our students engaged? Or putting it better, are we engaging teachers?
In order to answer this question, I
went to the dictionary to look for a definition of what it really means to be engaged. Busy, occupied, involved, tied up,
preoccupied, employed, committed, unavailable, promised, and absorbed are some of the synonyms found in my search. Looking at them with more attention I could clearly see that there were two very distinct groups of
synonyms and I decided to separate these in two groups.
The first group had words such as busy, occupied, tied up, preoccupied, and employed, which seem to be descriptors of low-energy superficial engagement. The second group, on the other hand, had synonyms like involved, committed, and absorbed, which seem to be descriptors of high-energy authentic engagement. These two distinct understanding of engagement are the tip of the iceberg as they reveal conflicting educational beliefs and imply in different ways students, parents, teachers, staff, and administrators experience schools.
Superficial engagement can be seen when students are well-behaved, quiet, full of work, on task, giving the right answer quickly, and ready to follow commands. Teachers, with their experience, focus on their teaching, managing timing and efficiency as the curriculum has to be fully covered. Punishment and prizes are strategies for motivating students, and private tutoring might be needed for weaker students. As a result this banking system produces people that are conformed to the system, who will be "good citizens", good employees when told what to do. They are ready to listen and act. If you have noticed some similarities with a production line you are right. Concepts like following commands, managing time and efficiency, and carrot and stick aren't here by chance. These are the words used the neoliberal paradigm uses in education.
Authentic engagement can be seen when students are euphoric, in movement, and full of ideas about their own learning, making choices, sharing discoveries, and reflecting about their progress. There are smiles and laughter, powerful motivators not only to learning, but to life. Teachers focus on students' learning, making sure that all students are reached, being also learners in this process of understanding how to make meaningful connections to students' lives. Individual and group learning discussions are powerful ways of engaging students. As a result this system allows skills such as empathetic listening, advocating speaking, individual and group awareness. These students are ready to promote change in how things are done in schools and in the world. They want to be heard and make it better. Similarities again. Choice, sharing, reflection, reach, empathy, and change are words that are associated with democracy. Can you imagine these in a production line? I can't. This person would be kicked out as a trouble maker!
By now, you have probably guessed that this real and authentic engagement I'm talking about can only be achieved in one way: power sharing. Here below I share some ways in which we can create more democratic classrooms:
Develop your own sense of awareness, consciousness, and availability to be fully present with students, parents, peers, staff and administrators. You will see yourself more tolerant and respectful in your interactions. Meditation and mindfulness are a way of doing it.
Develop new internal and external spaces of transparency, vulnerability, uncertainty, and hope to substitute old spaces of fear, repression, anger and conformity. It's ok to say: sorry, I messed up, I do not know, I forgot, etc. Be honest.
Remember you are a powerful manifestation of your values and beliefs and that students learn these, even more than the actual content. The ways we teachers act and behave shape our students' thoughts and actions.
Model language that students can use to give their opinion and have these sentences visible on boards. Create moments in which children can participate both orally and in written with what and how they would like to learn. Have a crazy ideas box.
Help children deconstruct what it is to be at school. Discuss and raise awareness with them about the school culture, routines, procedures, desk positioning, and class decoration. Inspire students by creating together new social rules, social identities, and interactions. Show them that they can be agents of change in society.
Bring out the the hidden values and assumptions around measurement, discipline, trust, surveillance, moral, social understanding, assessment, and most importantly the definition of success.
Start always by asking to value what students already know about a topic. Foster learning from then on with them as guides pointing directions.
Prefer cummulative evaluation in the form of portfolios that allow students to self-reflect and self-evaluate their performance. Older students can be asked to research, discuss, study and write about their experience of schooling. A journal is a great way to empower them to share their views, involve other students and parents.
Make sure to have plenty activities and discussions that foster curiosity, appreciation, and respect for the different traditions and origins of humanity, giving a broader repertoire to children.
Use stories, movies, music, toys, games and puppets that deconstruct sexism, classism, and racism. Build collective identity to create solidarity.
Analyze the good and bad characters in stories according to their physical appearance and race. Help them to build different mental models from the master narrative present in the media.
Meet peers, share experiences, and
mainly discuss the conditions of your professional practice. The coherence of
the working environment and the teaching practice is essential to the flourish
of democratic facilitators, who can truly influence how students experience democracy in their school lives.
I will always consider myself a learner in the theme of democracy. I felt the need to write this post because I often see discussions about engagement that do not address the issue of power sharing in schools. I know that this is not an easy issue, specially in regular schools that have tight curricula. It's much easier in my setting of an independent language school for children. I truly believe that we should all invest in forms for a more robust democracy in our schools. These democratic acts can be the spark for the authentic engagement that I mentioned in the beginning. These are my 2 cents on the topic! Let me know your views! A big hug,
Today I share a fascinating indigenous ritual that I once read and unfortunately I cannot remember where it happens. Do tell me if you know where the singing circle comes from.
In this tribe, people get together and make a big circle in the middle of their village when they have their significant moments. Nothing new, so far.
When a child is born they place this person in the middle of circle and create a unique welcome song for this person that reflects the joy of having a new group member. When it is this person’s birthday, the person goes to the middle and everybody sings it. This ritual is repeated when the person goes through passage rituals, including adulthood and marriage. The unique song is also sung when the person dies and after that to frequently remember this loved person.
But the part that struck me the most was that when this person did something very wrong, they didn’t expel the person from the tribe. They would put the person in the middle of the circle and sing their individual song. So, discipline would be fostered through group acceptance.
I have no data on how effective it was, but if it lasted long enough to become a tradition, it must have worked somehow to a certain degree. This singing circle method puts us to think on how social institutions usually address troubled children, teens, and adults with anger and repression, making their way back to society much more difficult. This is certainly not an easy them to handle, but this indigenous singing circle is something to have in mind.
Hope you have enjoyed it as much as I did when I first learned about it.
How is it exactly that teachers involve students to learn by integrating emotion, cognition, and language?
The answer to this question has intrigued me for at least 20 years and still today I feel fascinated by the simplicity and complexity of affective language teaching. Simplicity in knowing and understanding and complexity in implementing and living.
Even though I have studied the theme for almost two decades, I still consider myself a learner in this vast domain. Here below I outline some key features and teacher postures in affective language teaching:
Affective teaching requires respecting our students. This happens when we value and accept their background, beliefs, religions, sexual preferences, political views, and social status, even when different from ours. We respect our students when we attentively listen to them, sincerely ask for their opinions, and truly value their previous knowledge. Respect is present when we live up to our promises, when we allow them to fully express with their bodies, and certainly when we fully believe that all students are able to learn, not giving up on any of them.
Affective teaching requires listening to students. When teachers listen to students, teachers are able to discover previous learning histories, fears, expectations, dreams, and passions. This extremely interesting emotional world of learners is essential in the planning of future classes as emotional states certainly influence student's learning. Important is also to listen with our eyes, to what is not said, as silence may reveal feelings and thoughts that are not ready to be openly expressed. The teacher can choose to verbalize these silent messages and bring them to discussion by asking students to confirm his/her impressions. Circle time is important to everybody, not only to the little ones. This is not lost time, but time invested in the group. It is amazing how students get excited when they notice we really listened and prepared something for the class that is especially significant for them.
Affective teaching requires communicating affectively with students. This means always using English as a real means of communication, in which authentic interpersonal exchanges happen. These take place when teachers mean what they say and say what they mean. One example is to only ask questions that we do not know the answers. Asking students “Is this a frog?” when showing the card of a dog makes absolutely no sense, because students and teacher know that a dog is in the picture. When language is used in this alienating way, children lose motivation to learn (and teachers to teach) because language is dissociated from their lives. Teachers should ask themselves how children would feel if they listened to that very same sentence in the native language. If perceived as silly or nonsense, language was certainly not being used as a means of communication.
Affect is not only present in our words, but also in how we express ourselves. Our tone of voice, volume, speed and intonation may carry messages of acceptance, patience, partnership and faith. Affect is also present in modified discourse that allows all students to understand and interact. Not to be forgotten is our body language, especially our smiling, looking and moving in the classroom.
Affective teaching requires fostering curiosity. Curiosity makes learning much more interesting and fun for all involved. Curiosity can be enhanced by surprising children with novelty, contradictions and thought-provoking questions. Curiosity happens when we risk ourselves out of our comfort zone and venture in knowing more about different animals, places, food, music, and people. Teachers can foster children’s curiosity through music, poetry, literature, theater, and all other relevant artistic expression means. But let’s remember to be curious, not fussy, about ourselves. Curious about how our families, our pets, our hobbies, and our learning. Listening to others and talking about ourselves in English is a very affective experience, in which language is just a means.
Affective teaching involves sharing power in the classroom. Power sharing happens when teachers make decisions with the students about the content and path of future learning. Students feel empowered when they can teach peers, evaluate themselves, and choose how to complete tasks. But most of all, power sharing happens through listening, and this can be worked by being aware.
Affective teaching requires being self-aware. Being aware of our physical presence, our movements, our listening, our talking, our respect, and our commitment to students and to our beliefs. Self-awareness can be developed by reflecting about the dynamic classroom system through reflective journaling, mutual supervision, and self-recording, among others. Meditation, yoga, and mindfulness are also self-knowledge paths that may nurture our well-being and availability with students. Feeling our prejudices, incompetence and impatience is accepting that we are also learners in development to become better teachers and people.
What affective teaching is not
A common misconception to affective teaching is that the teacher is more of a friend to the student than an actual teacher. In this misconception, children would learn as long as they “like” the teacher, who as a result might be inclined to only teach what the child wants to know or to only do what the child wants to do, resulting in a mixture improvisation and permissiveness. Last but not least, affective teaching doesn’t have to do with kissing, hugging or excessively praising children.
Conclusion
I end up this post by trying to define the challenging concept of affective teaching in one sentence.
Affective teaching is the democratic empowering act of students and teachers learning together in a caring, conscious, curious, and committed way.
