Satiric news organization does it again!

You may remember when Congressman John Fleming of Louisiana took this article about Planned Parenthood a little too seriously and posted it on his Facebook page a couple of weeks back.

Well, it’s happened again. Hakim* is a news buff. He usually stays at his desk during our mid-class break and watches news reports (in both English and Arabic) on his phone. Yesterday, he showed me what he was watching (WARNING: If you are at work, if you’re with a small child or your grandmother, or if you are offended by crude language, you probably shouldn’t click on this link!). Yikes! I told him it wasn’t real, it’s a joke, it’s supposed to be funny, but I’m not sure he believed me. It’s not often that I wish my students had smaller vocabularies, but I really hope he doesn’t know what a slut is.

*Names have been changed to protect the innocent.

“If I could save time in a bottle, the first thing that I’d like to do…”

The term is half over. In fact, the entire school is going on a ski trip tomorrow, so there are really only six classes left. It’s not a lot of time. This was a recurring theme at the mid-semester meeting last Friday. Agatha and I met with the other Intro teachers (speaking/listening, grammar, and writing) to discuss the students’ progress and strategize for the remainder of the term. Over and over I heard them say things like, “At this level, having class twice a week just isn’t enough. We need to see them every day.” “There is no way we can meet all of the objectives in this amount of time.” “We’ve barely even gotten to know the students and the term is already half over.” “If they’ve missed class even once, we’ve only seen them six or seven times ever. That’s more like tutoring!”

It’s looking like three students (of the group of eight) won’t be ready to move up to the next level at the end of the term. And the other five are questionable. Can any of them really “use the structures covered at this level in extended oral and written discourse with reasonable accuracy and some ability to self correct?" Probably not, if we’re being honest.

So, how do you help your students meet their learning outcomes when there just isn’t enough time? Cover everything and hope that they are (really) quick studies? Just focus on a few things? Assign more out-of-class work? Count on them getting a review in the next level? Hold them back for another term?

If only there were more time...

Things don’t always go as planned.

I’m a planner. Seriously. I find things like spreadsheets and calendaring and color-coding to be freakishly satisfying. Plans help me to get my thoughts organized, and allow me to feel prepared and confident standing up in front of a group of wily students. But…

Things change.
I had a writing activity planned for Thursday, but other things took longer than expected and I knew we couldn’t finish it in the eight remaining minutes of class. So I did something else.

Also, sometimes your plans to plan fall through.
Agatha and I usually take a few minutes after class to discuss what we’d like to cover in the next class and divide up who’s planning/leading what. We didn’t get to this on Thursday, then campus was closed on Friday because of a massive snow storm, then Agatha got sick over the weekend and didn’t come into work yesterday. There was no time to plan today’s class until about an hour before it this morning, so that’s what we did. We prepared bits and pieces asynchronously, then figured out how to make them flow together in the ten minutes before class started… Then Agatha remembered that a colleague would be observing during the second half of the class, so we completely rearranged things again three minutes before class. Then things took longer than expected, so we rearranged things on the spot throughout the class.

Lesson learned: Planning is nice, but not planning or not following the plan can be okay too.

Assessment

The school where I’m teaching generally uses an outcomes-based assessment method. In order to advance at the end of the term, students need to have learned the skills and content that the current level is designed to teach. It’s Agatha’s* (and, to some degree, my) responsibility to assess whether or not the students display these outcomes, but it’s not always easy. For one thing, our textbook doesn’t include any assessment materials, so anything we use has to be found elsewhere or created by one of us.

Sometimes Agatha assigns homework that can be collected and graded, but many of the students don’t turn it in. They also tend to work with their friends, so it’s difficult to get a true read of how each student is doing.

Tests are another way of assessing, but they take up already-limited instruction time. In three weeks of class, Agatha has only given two “formal” in-class assessments. There was a vocabulary test a couple of weeks ago, and Thursday’s class started with a reading test. They were given 15 minutes to complete it, but only two of the students finished. The rest begged for more time. I think it really shook their confidence. Tariq*, in particular, was having a lot of trouble. Several of the students were “using the dictionary” on their cell phones until Agatha asked them not to, but Tariq couldn’t let it go and had to be asked several more times. Once he gave up on the phone, he resorted to looking at Mustafa’s* test for help. Agatha asked him to please just try on his own, to which he replied, “I can’t thinking. I feel… I feel…dumb.”

Agatha also has a great way of assessing the students without their knowing that it’s happening. She created a simple grid of the student’s names and some of the outcomes we’re looking for. This could easily be adapted for other contexts. While one of us is teaching, the other is listening. Any time we hear a student hit or miss one of these outcomes, we add a check or an X to the grid. Though it’s definitely not the only kind of assessment we should be doing, I love this method because:

1. It doesn’t take away from instruction time 
2. It isn’t as stressful for the students 
3. It’s relatively easy, especially with both of us in the classroom 
4. Because we do it during every class, we have a good sense of where the students are, what we still need to work on, and how much they are improving. 

*Names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Conundrum

I have held a professional job for the past five years. Over this time, I’ve built up a wardrobe of rather boring and conservative work-appropriate clothes. Given that it’s wintertime, I’m usually covered from my neck to my ankles these days… at least while I’m sitting at my desk. When I’m teaching, I’m standing and I raise my arms a lot (to point to my hair when reviewing vocabulary for body parts, to write on the whiteboard, when I say “raise your hand if…”, etc.). When I raise my arms, ALL of my tops (I may or may not have tried a few on just to prove my point) have a tendency to rise up too, exposing a sliver of flesh above my pants. According to some, this is inappropriate and unprofessional. What should I do about it? Here are some options I’ve come up with:

1. Nothing. This is America. Nudity is everywhere. Students will have to get used to it sooner or later. 
2. Keep one hand hovering around my waist at all times to block unseemly flesh flashes and constantly tug my shirt back down. 
3. Invest in some tee-shirt extenders. These are usually marketed for pregnant women, but I suppose they would get the job done. 
4. Break the bank and immediately replace my wardrobe with tunics, overalls, jumpers, dresses, and seriously high-waisted pants. 
5. Safety pins, safety pins, and more safety pins. 
6. Never raise my arms again.

Do you have any suggestions? I’d love to hear them.