Just a couple of quick events from around the edublogosphere that have been called to my attention:

First, the third Carnival of Educators is up at The Examiner.

Secondly, a nice collection – 99 Excellent Advice Sites for Teachers – is up at OnlineClasses.org.

And finally, Teachers Without Borders is hosting a Teacher Connections Writing Contest, beginning Nov. 18.  The guidelines look slightly complex, but intriguing – if you’re interested in writing about teaching and possibly winning some prize money, you might want to check out the rules and note Nov. 18 on your calendars.

And yes, I’m still trying to process everything that’s going on in my own classroom, and I might tell you about some of it soon.

Submissions are still being accepted for the Educarnival V. 2, 11th installment.

I wasn’t aware until very recently that the Carnival of Ed is up and running again in a new incarnation, and maybe you weren’t either.  But it is, and if you’d be interested in having one of you blog posts from the last week read by lots of interested and engaged educators, send your  post to imadreamerteacher@gmail.com.  She needs more submissions, and I can attest that having your post appear in the Carnival will up your traffic and widen your reader base.  Go do it now!

I’ve just finished reading Pema Chodron’s Taking the Leap: Freeing Ourselves from Old Habits and Fears. If you’re not familiar with Chodron, she is perhaps the world’s most famous Tibetan Buddhist American nun, and her works are meant to help Westerners understand the basic precepts of Tibetan Buddhism and apply them usefully in their own lives.  I found Taking the Leap, like all her books, inspiring, reassuring, and helpful.

At one point, almost obliquely, she describes a famous Buddhist image that I hadn’t heard of before.  Before mentioning the image specifically, she brings up a part of the story of the Buddha that many people are familiar with.  Most of us know that when the Buddha sat under the bodhi tree (where he eventually attained enlightenment), Mara, “the evil one,” came along and tempted him with beautiful women, delicious food, insults, and all other sorts of distracting objects.  In discussing this part of the Buddha’s story, Chodron says

In traditional versions of the story, it’s said that no matter what appeared, whether it was demons or soldiers with weapons or alluring women, he had no reaction to it at all.  I’ve always thought, however, that perhaps the Buddha did experience emotions during that long night, but recognized them as simply dynamic energy moving through.  The feelings and sensations came up and passed away, came up and passed away.  They didn’t set off a chain reaction.

This state of being – the ability to experience emotion without being “hooked” by it, without being dragged into a whole self-feeding narrative of, say, anger, self-righteousness, and more anger – is the subject of Taking the Leap and some of Chodron’s other works.  It’s also a state of mind that I am profoundly interested in, and one that I’d be willing to spend the rest of my life working toward.

For example, I’ve been seething because the students in my most difficult class absolutely refused to cooperate with an activity I asked them to do last week, an activity that is essential in preparing them to do their next assignment.  They talked when I asked them to work alone and quietly.  They insisted that they “had to leave class now” and that they should be allowed to finish the assignment at home, even though I had clearly explained that this activity was practice for an essay they would have to write entirely in class.  They refused to press themselves beyond the simple declaration that “I don’t understand this story.”

I couldn’t seem to calm my irritated feelings about this, my sense that their stubborn resistance was a personal attack.  There is, of course, room to explore whether the assignment I gave them was too difficult, whether they haven’t had adequate preparation, whether I am expecting something they can’t deliver.  But the deeper problem is that I was angry with them, and couldn’t seem to shake it.

It is possible to see any difficult situation in our lives as an attack from Mara.  We are under threat, and we can react angrily or with panic or self-loathing.  But there is another possible approach.  We can see the attack as food for our growth, as an opportunity for us to develop loving-kindness, compassion, joy and equanimity.  Difficulties are fertile soil for training our minds, and can therefore be greeted with eagerness and gratitide.

A situation like mine, for example, is an opportunity to develop compassion.  The day after this frustrating lesson, my Philosophy of Education teacher returned an assignment to me, and I didn’t do as well on it as I always expect to do on my coursework.  In reading through his comments, it became clear to me that I simply hadn’t understood the criteria he was evaluating me on, and didn’t understand the process of philosophical inquiry he wanted me to go through – in fact, I realized that I didn’t have a clear idea of what a “philosophical approach” entailed, and so had no way of engaging in it.  At first, I was furious and defensive.

And then I remembered my class from the previous day.  This is exactly what they were feeling, I realized.  They were feeling it for a number of different reasons, and the fact that they don’t understand is due to a number of factors that they could have controlled – by showing up to class more often, for example – but the feeling is the same.  I get it.  And understanding where they’re coming from, and why, can relieve some of my feelings of helplessness and irritation.

After Chodron retells the above snippet of the story of the Buddha, she mentions the image I’ve taken all this time to get to.  She says

This process is often depicted in paintings as weapons transforming into flowers – warriors shooting thousands of flaming arrows at the Buddha as he sits under the bodhi tree but the arrows becoming blossoms.

Immediately after reading these lines, I put the book down and ran to Google Images to find a depiction of this moment.  At first, I was less than satisfied with the images I found; none of them captured the beautiful scene in my imagination, the blazing arrows morphing into a shower of soft flowers and cascading around the Buddha like snow.  If I could even hold a pencil steady I would try to draw or paint it myself, but that isn’t possible.  Finally, though, I found this image, by the artist Austin Kleon:

He describes the process of creating this image, a tattoo for a friend, here.  If I someday decide to get a tattoo, I may ask permission to use this.  In the meantime, I may have to post it on the cover of my course binder, to remind myself that every challenge can be transformed into flowers if I can only see it, not as a battle to be fought, but as an opportunity for growth and for deeper understanding of the human mind and the human condition.

This doesn’t mean I can make my students do what I want.  But maybe it means I can suffer less as I try to help them.

I haven’t had much time recently for blogging, or thinking about blogging, but I came across a quote this evening that sums up where my head is at these days, in the classroom and in the world.

Remember that you don’t have to like or admire someone to feel compassion for that person. All you have to do is to wish for that person to be happy. The more you can develop this attitude toward people you KNOW have misbehaved, the more you’ll be able to trust your intentions in any situation. -Thanissaro Bhikku

Image by Eastop

Benoit’s in my remedial class – and how.  Every so often I read a student essay that makes me ask, silently or out loud, “How is it that this student was admitted to an English college?  What can possibly be done for him here?  How in the name of God is he ever going to get through?”  My reaction to Ben’s first writing assignment was much like that.

Now, I think I know why Ben was admitted.  He’s an athlete, a basketball player, and it wouldn’t be the first time such an athlete was admitted without the academic skills he needs.  Just a couple of semesters ago I worked with just such an athlete.  And then worked with him again the following semester.  In the same course.  But he did finally get through.  He got through because he really, really wanted to, and he knew that when he didn’t understand, when he couldn’t do the work or correct his own errors, he needed to get help.  He was also a sweet and even-tempered boy that everyone wanted to help, including his classmates, all the tutors in the Learning Centre, all his teachers, and his coach.

Ben is not like this.  Ben spends every class sighing loudly, thumping his desk in frustration, and asking belligerent, accusatory questions: “But why can’t I say X?  You mean I can’t ever say X?  But what about when I want to talk about Y?”  “I don’t get it.  I just don’t get it.”  More sighs.

Today I returned their first practice essay.  Ben failed it very badly.  They need to use this practice essay as the first draft for their first major assignment.  Ben sat slumped in his chair until the time came for them to use their practice essay to create an outline.  Then he stuck his hand in the air.  When I came to his seat, he said, “I don’t get it.  I don’t get why you underlined all these things.  And this…,” he turned to the rubric attached to his essay and flicked his fingers at it, “I don’t understand how you corrected this.”

Now, I have to be honest.  Ben has been complaining, sulking and accusing since the beginning of the course.  I try to be patient, but he annoys me.  It’s not that I don’t understand.  I know that he’s acting out because he’s frustrated, because he really is having serious difficulties and he doesn’t have the tools (academic, emotional or psychological) to deal with his difficulties.  But he’s very unpleasant.  He whines.  A lot.  Anyone who has had to deal with a 17-year-old who behaves like a small child knows what I’m talking about here.

Today, I had 21 other students waiting to talk to me, 21 students who were also struggling but who were doing their best.  They were all diligently creating outlines, looking over their rubrics, and trying to identify the main themes in the narratives they had written.  And here was Ben, slumped on his desk, barking, “I don’t get it.  I don’t see any errors.  I don’t get it.”

So I snapped.  Mildly, but audibly.  “Ben,” I said, “first of all, your goal today is to create this outline.  When it comes to your language errors, you need to work on them on your own, and you can come see me when you’ve made an attempt to correct some of them.  But today, please make an effort to find the main points in your story and identify them on this worksheet.  If you want to talk about other things, wait until the others have gone and we’ll discuss them then.”

So when I’d worked my way through the rest of the class, and Ben remained in his seat, folded against the wall, his expression poisonous, I made my way back to him.  “Now,” I said, “my sense is that you are frustrated.  I understand this.”

“But I don’t even get why you underlined these things,” he screeched.  “You put this mark there, to show a missing word, and I don’t even understand what word is missing.”

“Of course you don’t understand,” I said.  “If you understood, you would have put the correct word there in the first place.  The fact that you don’t understand is the first step.  Now you need to start, piece by piece, with what you DO understand.  You need to fix what you can fix before you start complaining about what you can’t fix.  You need to take this one piece at a time, not just look at it and say ‘I don’t understand, so I give up.’”

“But that’s not the case!  I understand some things.  I know why some are wrong.”

“Then begin with fixing some of the ones you know how to fix.”

“Like, this here.  What’s wrong with this?  ‘He is the best player on the team.’”

“Are you writing about right now?  Is it the team you’re on right now?”

“No.”

“It’s in the past?”

“Yeah.  So how do I fix it?”

“What is the past form of ‘he is’?”

“He was?  ‘He was the best player’?  You mean my whole story has to be in the past?  Even the details?”

“Of course it does.”  Ben sighed and thumped his paper onto his desk.  “This is the kind of question you need to be asking me, Ben, instead of just saying, ‘I don’t get it, I don’t get it.’ I think it would be a very good idea for you to take your essay to the Learning Centre and get yourself a tutor.  Do you have any interest or motivation to do that?”

His face was dark and sour.  He said nothing.  He crossed his arms against his chest and leaned against the wall.  A minute passed.  Then he said, “Whatever.”

“Do you have any interest or motivation to do that?” I repeated.

He shook his head.

“Well, that is the kind of help you are going to need.  In the meantime, you need to work on what you can fix in this, decide what questions you want to ask me, and come see me next week before you hand this in.”

Ben folded his papers together, gathered up his books, and stalked out of the room.

I mean, what’s a teacher to do?

I’m not under the illusion that I handled this properly.  I was tired and peeved, and unable to summon up any compassion for this clearly troubled young man.  But surely anyone would be tired and peeved in the face of this?  Is there something (other than some sitting meditation and a few glasses of Scotch) that I can do to soothe my jangled nerves and help this boy?  Because I’m telling you, right now I’m having some seriously unteacherly thoughts about what sort of correction he needs.

What do you do with a problem like grammar?

I’m teaching two sections of a Preparation for College English course.  These courses are designed for students whose first language is not English, and whose level of written English is too poor for them to manage in a 101 course.

At the end of the course, in addition to other assessments, they need to complete a grammar test involving mostly error correction.  We therefore need to spend time doing grammar exercises.

Now, I like grammar exercises.  To me, a grammar exercise is as much fun as a crossword puzzle, and much less cryptic.  During the years I studied French in university, I never resented having to do grammar work.

But I don’t really believe that doing grammar exercises is the best way to improve one’s writing.  I’d rather be integrating the grammar work less obtrusively into more holistic reading and writing activities. However, beyond doing writing exercises that apply the rules we’ve been studying, I’m not sure how to do this.  What’s more, the grammar test looms large, so they have to have practice doing exercises, because they will be tested on their exercise-completing skills later.

Regardless of how much I enjoyed studying grammar, I did have some terrible grammar teachers, and some good ones; when I first started teaching ESL years ago, I strove to be one of the good ones, and I thought I had succeeded.  I lectured energetically and humourously on grammatical rules.  I demanded active student participation and encouraged debate about complexities, exceptions and oddities.  In time, I had an enormous wealth of grammatical knowledge and was able to communicate it in ways that got through to students.  And we applied the principles by playing games and doing writing exercises that were not only enjoyable but effective.

This semester, it all seems to be falling flat.

One of my classes is quiet and diligent.  They always seem to have their homework done and they participate without hesitation as we work our way through the lectures and exercises.  All but the most polite, however, have glazed eyes.

In the other class, grammar time is snore time.  Half the students sleep openly on their desks as soon as I flick the lights off to show an overhead projection.  I literally have to wake them up to get them to read out a sentence or write on the board.  They make no bones about telling me that they haven’t done the homework and so “can’t write the answer;” I reply that if they know the material so well that they didn’t need to do the exercise, then surely they can just answer on the fly; they groan and write something, anything, in order to return to their seats.

Some of the students know some of the material pretty well already, and they do fine on the tests (although they don’t necessarily apply the principles well in their own writing).  But some of the students really need to do this work, because they’re struggling.  Some of these struggling students are attentive at grammar time, but some of them are not.

How can I make grammar, if not necessarily fun, at least engaging and challenging?

Image by sanja gjenero

Two of my three classes this term have been, so far, focused yet energetic, respectful yet lively. The third has been a bit of a pain in the ass.

This class meets from 4-6 in the afternoon – the worst possible time. They’re tired. I’m tired. Their brains are buzzing from a day’s worth of Red Bull and adolescent drama. They’re so done with learning.

What’s more, there’s a little gang of boys who seem to find a lot of stuff funny. I’m not sure, but from a couple of murmured, oblique exchanges that I’ve caught in passing, I’m beginning to think this has something to do with physical attributes of mine that they like.

Also: this is a remedial English class, and so far the work we’ve been doing has foundational (read: pretty easy.) Some of them are bored.

All this makes for a frenetic, nervous and silly atmosphere. After our second meeting, it became clear that this was going to be a continual problem if I didn’t do something to nip it in the bud.

What? I wondered. I stewed about it for a while. Should I throw people out? Should I give a speech? (Past experience suggests that speeches don’t work.) Should I separate the silly boys to the four corners of the room? Should I barrel through material that some students need to focus on so that other students won’t be bored?

And then I remembered something that my friend Lorri mentioned a while ago – I think she wrote it in a comment to a specific post, but I’ve searched and can’t find it. (Lorri, if you’re reading, and you remember, maybe you can point me to it…) Lorri said that begins her classes by allowing the students to shuffle around, chatter, etc. for about five minutes. Then she asks them to sit for one minute in complete silence before they take a deep breath and begin.

This, I thought, seems like a way to, if not eradicate the squirms and giggles, at least keep them more or less in check – to start on a calmer ground, so that escalation will be minimal.

So yesterday afternoon, when I was writing the class agenda on the board, I called the first item “One Minute of Solitude.” I then asked the students to make sure their desks were separated into rows and their cell phones were turned off and put out of sight.

“Last class,” I explained, “I was observing you. I noticed that there was a lot of very nervous energy in the room. It’s late in the day, people are tired , it’s hard to focus, people can’t stop laughing. So I want to do an exercise with you that I sometimes do with late classes. I want you to close your eyes. You can put your head down on your desk if you want. I’m going to turn out the light. And I want you to sit silently for 60 seconds. I’m going to time it, and if there are any distractions – if anyone speaks, if anyone’s cell phone goes off, if someone knocks on the door because they’re late – we’re going to start again.”

“Are we do this for a reason?” Khawar asked.

“Yes,” I said. “A nervous, agitated mind is not a good learning mind. Energy and enthusiasm are good; agitation is not. You’ve all been very busy all day, and your minds are busy too. This is a way to settle our minds so we can learn better.”

I turned out the light. I flicked my iPod stopwatch and said, “Go.”

60 seconds of silence is long. At about the 40 second mark, a couple of students shifted impatiently and looked around, but no one made any noise. And when the minute was up, I quietly said, “That’s it,” and turned the lights back on. They lifted their heads blurrily.

“How did that feel?” I asked.

“Calm,” Khawar said.

“Long,” Philippe said.

“We’re going to do this every class,” I said. “For some of you, it might be the only 60 seconds of calm you have all day. I hope maybe you’ll come to enjoy it.”

Did it help? I think it did, a bit. The major failing was that two of the boys who most needed this exercise came late, and so didn’t do it; as soon as they walked in, the energy in the room ramped up again. However, it never quite reached the height of foolishness that it had the class before, and overall, the work got done and the wasted time was minimal.

I’m a bit nervous about starting every class this way, but I’m hoping that, instead of becoming tedious, it really will be a tiny oasis of peace for some of them. And perhaps some of them will learn that if they can’t sit still and quiet for 60 seconds, it’s probably causing them some problems that they should really address…

Image by barunpatro

The final post in my summer-long guest series on School Gate, the TimesOnline education blog, appeared this morning.

In this post, I explain how keeping a blog made me a better, and more sane, teacher.

Thank you all so much for reading and commenting on these posts, and emailing me your thoughts! I loved blogging for School Gate, and owe the lovely Sarah Ebner huge thanks for inviting me.

Please keep visiting School Gate; it’s a thought-provoking, entertaining, and intelligent blog about education in the UK and everywhere.

Lately, I’ve had blogger’s block.

I could say that I’ve been busy. (It’s true. The school year just started. There’s stuff to do.) But that’s not really what it’s about.

I’ve been blocked. I recognize it, because I’ve experienced it so very often in the more classic “writer’s block” form. You think about writing stuff, but you are seized by inertia or resistance, both of which are really fear in disguise.

In fiction writing, the fear is usually (for me, anyway) the fear of wasting my time and effort. “I’ve spent years on this manuscript, it’s still a mess, and it will never be fixed. It’s been fundamentally flawed since the beginning, and it’s not salvageable. Nobody will want to read this book. I should throw it out and start again.”

In blogging, I’ve discovered, the fear is about something a little less subjective.

More and more people are reading this blog. That’s great. I love knowing that the little notes and essays I write are going out to the world, and that people are getting something out of them. I love it when someone I know tells me that they’ve been reading the blog and it’s been meaningful to them. I love it when I get a comment or an email, even a negative one, when it’s thoughtful, thought-provoking and respectful.

I’ve discovered, though, that there are people out there who have a lot of time on their hands, and a lot of rage that they want to express. These are the sort of people who go trolling for blog posts they don’t like and then write comments like “Kill yourself.” These are people who get an almost sexual gratification out of provoking and maintaining the equivalent of a screaming match, and become infuriated if you don’t rise to their bait (or sink to their level.)

And many of these people have a real problem, in particular, with teachers. They are angry at teachers. Maybe with one teacher in particular, but that teacher has come to represent all teachers, everywhere. And an anonymous teacher who isn’t grading them and doesn’t even know their real names is a convenient target for all that anger.

Now, I know there’s no need for me to take any of this personally. But there’s also no need for me to take it personally when some guy smashes into me in the grocery store and curses at me. There’s no need for me to take it personally when a student doesn’t show up to class for three weeks and then throws a tantrum when I don’t accommodate him or give him special treatment. These incidents are not personal, but they make me want to never leave my house.

I am, fundamentally, an introvert. Even the nice people I love sometimes exhaust me; mean, angry people who have no sense that other people are real, sentient beings make me want to crawl into a hole.

And so every time my blog stat counter begins spiking upward, I feel a little jolt of panic. A lot of people are reading my blog, and some of them are going to be mean and angry.

Any writer needs a thick skin, and in the online world this is especially true. I’m always amazed and appalled when I read the comments sections of major online newspaper articles. It used to be that the angry crackpots who spent all day, every day, writing “Letters to the Editor” were relatively rare. Now it seems that the world is lousy with them.

So I know that if I want to keep a blog, especially one that attracts more than a few readers, I need to accept that some people will give less than helpful feedback. I need to find a way to get past that and keep on writing, if writing is what I want to do.

So I will, as long as people keep wanting to read what I write (and maybe even beyond that.)

But maybe there are bloggers out there who have special internal tactics for dealing with the flack. Or maybe not just bloggers – maybe you have a job where you need to deal regularly with people who are aggressive, impolite and self-important. Maybe you’re a serious person who doesn’t get a charge out of screaming matches, but you still manage to deal with the nastiness of the world in a graceful way that doesn’t get you down.

If so, maybe you’d like to share your secrets with me.

School starts on Friday with a day-long department conference, and classes begin on Monday.  I’m tempted to say things like “Where did the summer go?”, but I’d been putting it on.

The summer didn’t seem short.  (Some Montrealers will retort, “Summer only began last Friday,” but I have nothing against cool, rainy summers, so I feel satisfied with what I got.)  It was filled with events, mostly revolving around the death of a beloved elderly cat, the acquisition of two new kittens, and the relentless health problems of said kittens, most of which we hope will abate now that the kittens have been plugged with all sorts of drugs.

In June, I committed to a project called the Professional Development Meme, in which I listed three professional goals to accomplish over the summer, and agreed to blog about them once the summer was done.  So here, again, are my goals, with commentary on whether/how they were achieved:

I did read the book, and I enjoyed it a lot.  Willingham is a cognitive scientist, and his thoughts on learning either reinforced many things I’ve learned, or suggested new perspectives.  He asks questions like, “Why Do Students Remember Everything That’s on Television and Forget Everything I Say?” (Chapter 3) and “Why is it so Hard for Students to Understand Abstract Ideas?” (Chapter 4).  The book is very readable, and whether or not you agree with all his ideas, it’s a pleasure to sink into them and his lively storytelling voice.

As for the book club discussion, I’m afraid I fell short there.  I made an effort at the beginning, but then my cat died, and so I didn’t feel up for chatting about “differentiated instruction” and “21st-century skills.”  I found the tenor of much of the (sparse) discussion in my group very jargonistic; I was always delighted to hear real stories about people’s experiences and thoughtful reflections on Willingham’s ideas, but I found many of the comments so dense and dry that I couldn’t invest the little energy I had in wrestling with them.  I intended to check out the other groups’ discussions (there were 4 groups in all), but by the time I had recovered from my grief enough to make the effort, the book club had finished.

So that was a bit of a bust, but I’m glad I read the book, and I met a couple of interesting teachers through the book club.

I left some preparations to the last minute, and the kitty illnesses have taken a bite out of these last two weeks, so I’m a bit behind.  My plan for the blog project is half-baked but workable.  I’ve put together an evaluation grid, a list of suggested topics, and an outline of due dates for posts and comments.  I need to create a handout of guidelines, and Scheduling still hasn’t called me back to confirm I can use a computer lab for the blog introduction class.  However, if all goes well this week, I should be able to get the blog assignment up and running.

This one I’m a bit concerned about.  I have a textbook.  I’ve put together a tentative course schedule.  I taught ESL for years, so theoretically, I have a bag of tricks just waiting to be opened again.  However, I’m finding it hard to get my plan off the ground.  I’m worried that it’s going to be a very dull course if I don’t find some inspiration that has so far eluded me.  In particular, I need to put together a plan for keeping lessons both content-heavy and fun.  Suggestions welcome.  (Maybe once I lay my hands on some actual students it will get the wheels turning…)

If you have any advice to offer me about how to spice up my courses or get more out of book club discussions, I welcome your suggestions!  And I’d also love to hear about your summer vacation and whether you accomplished all you desired.

Image by Chris Windras