(lack of) Confidence
I seem to spend my life veering between two extremes: certainty and self-doubt.
On the whole I am a fairly positive person, and tend to be optimistic about the future. I work hard, and think about my classes with a view to improving them.
Most of the time, I am fairly confident about my skills as a teacher here in Japan (brief aside: I think some teaching skills are universal, and some context-specific -future blog post perhaps?).
However, from time to time I have a bad class, or I’m tired, and I feel like I’m just going through the motions. Or I see, hear about, or meet an amazing teacher who is doing great things with their students. Or I think about what I could be doing, and how far I’m falling short. And then I feel like maybe I should do something else.
I’m not sure how to square this circle. Perhaps on the whole it’s a positive thing, serving to keep me from getting complacent, keep me striving to improve.
Or it could be a sign that my heart isn’t completely in this teaching thing.
Anyone else feel that they’re not good enough?
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by sendaiben
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Seth Godin on education
Seth Godin’s TED talk on education is really interesting.
Very similar to Ken Robinson’s talks, eh?
If you like his style check this one out: this is broken.
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by sendaiben
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Ken Robinson’s latest talk
Ken Robinson, the most popular speaker on the TED website, and someone who talks about education to boot. I’m guessing many of my readers have seen this talk already, but just in case I’m putting it on here.
Ken Robinson is one of my favourite speakers. He is incredibly skilled. Notice how he speaks for 20 minutes in the video above, with no notes, no slides, nothing to support him, and still manages to be compelling and stay on track. I can only imagine the hours of practice that went into that one off-the-cuff seeming talk.
This particular talk struck a chord because it seems to go against everything I’m working on at the moment in terms of setting standards and expectations at my university. However, once I thought about it, our programs involve setting expectations but then giving students a lot of leeway as to how they meet them (which books they choose to read, how they talk about articles, which websites they choose to use). We don’t expect the same from all students, but we expect all students to put in similar amounts of time and effort (or understand the consequences of not doing so).
Having watched the talk, do you see any connection to your own teaching practice?
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by sendaiben
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Self-access centres in private language schools
I have always wanted to have some kind of self-access centre (room?) at Cambridge English. I feel it would offer a lot of value to some students, as well as make what we do more effective.
The room would have books, computers, and comfortable chairs. It would have nice lighting and be a quiet, pleasant place.
Students would come and use the room whenever they wanted, and regular classes would also include self-study time (students would have to spend 30-60 minutes of a 90- or 120-minute class doing self-study).
We may have the chance to create something like this this year as our current classroom is too small and there is very little real estate available in Sendai after the 2011 disaster so we have rented an apartment above the school to have classes in.
I would like to do something like this at university as well. For now, I think the best chance is to work with the library.
Does anyone have any experience of implementing this kind of system?
(photo is the Self-Access Centre at Kanda University)
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by sendaiben
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Every Kid Needs a Champion -what a great TED talk
I saw a fantastic TED talk the other day, and wanted to share it with you. I think it is very applicable to all teachers, including eikaiwa and university.
I would love to be half as inspiring as this woman.