Articles 01
Section outline
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Introduction 08 Jan 2012 Hits: 7753When a thought enters your head it does not mean you have to act on it. Choose wisely.
Utilising your imagination is one of the most effective ways to learn. It stops the student being a passive receiver of information and makes them interact with the knowledge to become an active learner.
This website is a teaching resource to assist foreign teachers at Sa-nguan Ying School.
My favourite quotesNever follow best practice. Be the best practice for others to follow.
When you only look at the bad things you will always miss the good things.
Beware the artisan who boasts 20 years experience when they have only had one years experience 20 times. (unknown)
There is no such thing as a bad idea! It is what you do with the idea that is either good or bad. (Brett Wilkin 1982)A few words that can be applied to education.
Discuss, สนทนา [ สน-ทะ-นา ] sŏn-tá-naa
ถก thohkL Evaluate, ประเมินผล bpraL meernM phohnR Compare, เปรียบเทียบ bpriiapL thiiapF Assimilate, ผสมกลมกลืน phaL sohmR glohmM gleuunM Depth of study, ความลึกซึ้ง khwaamM leukH seungH Analyse, วิเคราะห์ wiH khrawH Data, สถิติ saL thiL dtiL Justify, เรื่องอะไร reuuangF aL raiM Relate, เชื่อมโยง cheuuamF yo:hngM Evidences, ข้อพิสูจน์ khaawF phiH suutL Critical thinking, ชั่งใจ changF jaiM Synthesize, วิเคราะห์ wiH khrawH Application, พลิกแพลง phlikH phlaaengMStudent asks questions.นักเรียนถามคำถาม nakH riianM thaamR khamM thaamR
Training words: Mimic, Copy, Conditioning, Likeness, Replicate, Rote, Obey, Student answers, etc.A Comment: After teaching and observing for 40 years the best educational gains come from skilled positive reinforcements,never from the negative reinforcements of belittling, blaming and sarcasm, yet the negative is still often seen in the classroom when a student makes a mistake while trying to learn.Another comment: What used to be is gone, making tomorrow better is everything.Social Networking exposes us to people’s stupidity and mediocrity as well as their wisdom. The challenge for Educators is to teach students how to tell the difference between the good the bad and the mediocre knowledge.
There are many ways to validate information from the internet, these vary from sophisticated software that checks submitted school work for plagiarism down to simply checking the sources where the information came from. It all starts with the simplest of checks. copy your information you are concerned about and paste it back into a google search. The search results will show how many other people are saying something similar and the results will also indicate if it is also used on university, government, industry or other reputable web sites. Remember much information used on web sites is often copied from other webs so be sure it is being used in at least 3 reputable sites. Lastly do a quick search and find what is said about the topic on independent forums.
My Idle thoughts.
When I design a unit of work I am very conscious of my advanced students as well as the one struggling. I discuss the big picture with the students so they can see different futures and possibilities with the project. This gives the high performing students avenues in which to explore beyond my basic requirements that are achievable by all in the class. I find the students will understand better if they understand where we are traveling and they will often help me go there.
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Published: 31 Jul 2012 Hits: 5147
Anecdotes from a teaching life.
I went to University at the age of 30 in 1982 and started my teaching career in 1985. Before this, I had become a qualified Fitter and Turner (using the original terminology). I progressed from the jobbing shop (engineering) to installation and maintenance of lifts and escalators and then moved on to driving concrete trucks and underwater bridge construction and maintenance. I even had the opportunity to do some underwater survey work on ships. I moved on to running my own wood turning business and eventually ended up at University.
I did some practicum teaching in other schools to the one I started at as a teacher.
As a first year out teacher, my first placement was at one of the least desired schools at the time. I was thankful, as it was not one of the isolated schools.
I was given the subjects of Woodwork, Metalwork Technology and Drawing (engineering and architectural)
Technology at that time was nothing to do with computers it was all about design education and working in materials like leather, plastics, casting pewter and silver smith work using copper and brass. We used to do a lot of work with copper chasing which was fun. In later years when I was the main teacher in the area I also introduced scrimshaw using large beef bones. The local butcher used to donate the bones and I would cook them up at school with a little bleach to help whiten them. Nobody liked the smell so I had to do it when there were no people about. The kids loved doing the scrimshaw and they used to scratch patterns into the surface of their bone jewelry and I would squeeze a few drops of ink out of a biro to rub into their patterns and then polish the surface with a cloth buffing machine.
In later years I wanted to increase the female participation rate in this then male dominated area so I started a jewelry and small project class. One day 5 of the girls said they couldn’t be bothered working so I said ok, what about playing with some paint so I grabbed some colours and some paper and they played with some art affects of marbling and modern art styles. They had a great time so they lay their works of art out on the benches for all to see. ‘Gee! they have come up well but they really need some picture frames to hang them on the wall’. I had timber ready to go already with a groove for the picture inset so we talked about mitered corners and for the second part of the double lesson block the girls that were too tired to work made up 3 or 4 picture frames each. Every teacher has stories they can tell, but few people other than teachers can appreciate them.
Many of our staff were complaining about the amount of difficult students we had in the school. We all attended a staff meeting with a specially qualified social worker and child physiologist in attendance. Ok they said give us an idea which 3 or 5 kids do you think are troublesome and what is the troublesome behavior. Several staff started mentioning students and their issues and the list rapidly grew past 4 or 5 up to about 24 students. The conversation continued and my colleague teaching woodwork turned around and said to me ‘that’s my woodwork class Brett so it must your metalwork class’. We laughed every hard-core student in the school we had with sharp tools in the one room.
A student came up to me in metalwork one day and said Mr. Wilkin I have chopped the end off my finger. I thought he was joking until I looked and indeed, he had. I went home that evening and started to tell my wife about the stress of having an injured student with its possible ramifications and she immediately sidetracked the conversation to her workday and how someone could not type and spell properly. I never tried again.
One year was a reasonably difficult year and if I had not broken up a skirmish between two students during the week it was going to happen in my Friday class. One Friday a student started to annoy another while he was working in the grinding bay so the annoyed student spun around and pushed the other away. The problem was the angle grinder was still going and got caught in the annoying students clothes and dragged the grinder into his shoulder. The result was a cauterized cut that required 15 or more stitches.
They were interesting days but the kids were great even if they were sometimes difficult. I screwed a piece of square pipe (RHS) high up the wall and set a little square of clear plastic into the bottom of the pipe. Inside I cut up (with tin snips) a small piece of old computer mother board and told the students it was my new video monitor. Realising it was a dummy took most students 2 years. Behavior improved dramatically.
One day a student lit a fire in the classroom adjoining the woodworking shop. Another student raised the alarm and I raced into the room, dragged the waste bin away from the wall, and smothered the fire with a board over the bin. Another 30 seconds and it would have been a disaster. I grabbed a ream of paper from my office and told all students to sit on the closest bench to where they currently were. They students then positioned themselves on a map of the room when the fire was started. Extra they drew one other person on the map and confirmed they were in that position. After analyzing where everyone was there was only one student who could not be positioned accurately on the map. I reported this but the student had a protected status and I could not prove it was he that lit the fire. I was not far wrong though as he is currently serving a life sentence.
Another time I had a group that wanted to sit around the desk in the end classroom so I got all the other students working and went back to the social group. There was two ways I could deal with them, one way was to be very verbal and the corresponding reaction would have been sullen students that would have moved into the workshop and still not done any work. The other way that I elected was to jog into the room and jump on to their table, and said to them, ‘you have two choices you can go into the workshop and start work or you can sit and listen to me practice my singing’. I then broke into a corny song. The kids all shook their heads and said ‘aww Wilky’ and moved into the workshop in a happy mood and worked hard.
I rarely ever yelled at a kid as I believe if you raise your voice more than twice a year you are not using your brains and educational psychology. I will qualify that in that if I did yell at a kid they never came back for a second dose.
The students seemed to respect me and were always selecting me to support them when the school had the behaviour panel in operation. When students were accused of bad behaviour they had to go before a panel of senior staff to justify their behavior and discuss their future, during this intensive interview the students were allowed to have a teacher to support them. This also extended to doing the same at the local police station.
The 20 or so difficult students that parents always said we were picking on had no benchmark to assess their own children, they also had no definition as to what constituted bad behaviour.
With this in mind at one stage I created an excel database and a big chart for the staff room. Each student was on the chart with 5 boxes under their name. The category boxes were, ‘avoids trouble’, ‘completes homework’, ‘listens in class’ and ‘arrives on time’. These were all positive comments as nearly all students in the school could do these things well so they automatically received good reports as they rarely lost points.
The staff then came into the staff room and ticked the appropriate category that removed points from the particular students score.
The most important box was ‘avoids trouble’ that meant the good students learnt rapidly to move away from trouble areas which in turn isolated the students always at the centre of any issues. The good student may lose one point but the consistent offender started to lose points every time they were at the centre of disturbances.
It quickly became obvious exactly who the problems students were that were disrupting most of the classes.
Each week 20 to 30 students would have points taken from their score and a whole school graph was printed off (names only on personal reports). Any student below a certain number had their reports mailed home every week.
It was interesting to note how accurately the charts predicted a student starting to use illegal substances (although this could not be stated) as the first outward sign was their behavior in school.
The other point of note was how the staff would come into the classroom complaining about a student disrupting everything they did in class and they took their time and immense pleasure at ticking the box. The tick (only one per lesson allowed) was enough to relieve their stress and leave their emotions at the chart to go back into the classroom with a very professional attitude. It was a marvelous pressure release valve and the teacher could be seen to visibly relax on the ticking of the chart.
After several parent teacher interviews with the parent and child the parents could see how their child was out of step with the average and many students made strong attempts to change their behaviour. Sadly a new principle could not see the benefits and wanted to make their own mark without understanding the philosophy as to why the charts were there so the students patterns of behavior dropped for several years until something else could be developed to take its place
I spent many years doing martial arts and used to train with the Phys Ed teacher in the gym 3 times a week. We had the gym to ourselves but many students used to peep in through the air vents. The stories and imagination that developed was far better than reality.
A student was being difficult in metalwork one day and one of the tougher students looked at the difficult kid and and told him to get on with his work because if Wilky doesn’t spin kick your head off I will. The student just quietly walked away and worked well and I did not have to say anything.
Years later I have had a beer with most of many of my ex students and am proud to be able to call them friends.
In those years all the teachers were part of an efficient team and we developed programs and procedures to deal with difficult students. One of the main things was always pick on the behavior not the student. Our procedures worked so well that Bill Rogers the behavior guru at the time came down and studied what we did and included it in his Behaviour Management book.
Another person who did very valuable research was Ruby Payne. Her research into poverty. Middle class and wealth made teaching much easier as I related to all of these students in different ways and I find now in Thailand most of what she says is still relevant even though the cultures are very different.
We were, and the school still is, an inclusive school so we took on all students with behaviour and disabilities problems of any description. Including the most severely autistic student in mainstream school (I think in Australia).
I was very fortunate to be one of the main persons working with these students as for many years I was the main support teacher to assist other teacher with curriculum and teaching practice in the classroom.
I took on many roles in the school including teaching every subject in the school including Driver Education and Physical Education. As I could teach any subject and got on well with my students I was given the role of student support through special funding. I kept a teaching role and every student that had some issues was sent to me. The expectation was; ‘fix this student they are broken’. Hmm.
One of these I was expected to fix was a student with a brain tumor that aggravated an already aggressive temperament. Keeping her calm and focused on something she enjoyed was very difficult. She always worked well for me when she came to school but sadly she could not function outside of an institution so later in life every time she got out of incarceration she did something to ensure she went straight back.
During these years I was exposed to the results of the worst type of person the child molester. The results of their actions is devastating to young teenagers and creates lifelong issues. I have had to deal with suicide attempts in the school as a result of students being molested and have since formed the opinion that molesters only have one good place in society and that is as practice for martial arts training.
One of the things that did come out of dealing with all the students having problems with personal, emotional and learning was that the students without exception disliked teachers who used blame or sarcasm in the classroom. After 30 years of teaching across two cultures I consider both blame and sarcasm have no place in education. Negativity and put downs do not inspire other to do better and has never worked better than positive directions and positive comments that build others up. The same psychology has never worked for management either, anyone who thinks it does has not learnt the positive ways of dealing with issues and therefore is not getting the best from their workers or students.
One students boyfriend was stabbed and he died in her arms. She was distraught and turned up at my house as my partner and myself were the only people she could talk to. It was a very sad time.
We did standardized testing at the school and the two grade 8 teachers had a competition to do with the mathematics testing. One teacher was a middle school teacher; she was trained more as primary school rather than high school teacher. The other teacher was a Mathematics Science specialist teacher who mainly focused on upper senior classes. The competition was to see who could get the highest gains in mathematics according to the next lot of standardized testing. The middle school teacher taught to the students not to the Maths. She had 4 different levels of work for her class and all the work was at the students level of ability. She had very short sessions of didactic teaching in the class and the students mainly had project work. She would tell you she had very poor mathematics skills.
The other Mathematics teacher taught to the content and did less project and more teaching style of work and did not cater for the different levels of ability. The next lot of testing showed that the highest gains were by far with the female teacher teaching to the students not the mathematics content. I think this teacher was one of the best teacher I have ever worked with.
I believe that being an expert teacher is far more important than being an expert at a subject and have seen this born out continuously.
During these years I also taught Computing, Health and Physical Education. I purposefully moved away from the Manual Arts Technology area and tended to focus more on student specialist support and middle school involvement and about this time was asked to set up a Vocational Education and Training (VET) program in the school.
The VET program was federally funded so there were lots of new regulation to work within starting with remodeling the premises. We started with 20 students and 3 subjects and a belief from myself that the teachers involved should have as much control over their areas as possible and there would be total transparency of funding. The Psychology being that if I could not justify the emergency money kept to fund contingencies than I should not be doing the job. Contingencies money went back to the departments at the end to fund the setting up of the next years curriculum. We also bought equipment that could be shared with the whole school so everyone benefited without us contravening any federal regulations. Our program ran very efficiently and our enrollment went from 20 + to about 140 in the space of 4 years. For the betterment of the whole school we relinquished two full time teachers to work in the mainstream area as we were running very efficiently in our area and all VET staff were happy. For 3 years in a row we were responsible for getting 40 long term unemployed into full time employment. We trained 60 people in our best year to full certification with 40 or more part certificates. I had 8 staff delivering the packages of Computing, Office, Safe food Handling, Aged Care and Disability, OHS, Tourism and Horticulture, and Workplace skills, as well as Maths and English for all our students.
We had an induction process that was subject to audit procedures, that involved assessing for learning styles and we also included brain dominance's. This took most of a day and had mature aged students doing many different activities It was interesting to note that nearly all of these students failed at school the first time around and now were extremely nervous at coming back to school. Our job was to work through this nervousness and make them understand that school now was very different. These students after testing were nearly exclusively kinesthetic and visual learners and they all with almost no exceptions were the failed products of didactic teaching methods from teachers with a logic brain dominance. Some of the illiterate students when exposed to student centered classrooms and visual teaching techniques became literate over the ensuing 18mths to the stage of writing young children novels on computers that some had burst into tears through fear of failure when they sat in front of the computer for the first time.
Every time we expanded the program from our original 3 subjects we had to go through an audit extra to our annual audit. The annual audit involved Community involvement in the program, management style and techniques, student satisfaction, staff satisfaction, organizational procedures, record keeping, and show evidence of adherence to a rigorous set of VET standards. The key points of course were showing evidence and what constituted as evidence. These were all separate to the monitory audits.
The subject audit required showing evidence that we were running a quality programme and that we had the qualifications to provide the new course. I was proud to say that I had kept appropriate evidences and as a team we passed all our audits, 8 in all, over 4 years plus another 3 or 4 monitory audits.
It was interesting to note that the whole feel of the school and community perception changed over these years. We had many adults moving through the school, talking about and being involved with education at many levels. The school created a community better informed about education and classroom techniques. As a local resident, the locals stopped running down the school and started building it up. Nothing else had changed but the teachers they were running down the year before now could do no wrong.
I was often criticized for not transferring and experiencing more than the one school, but my feeling was the school changed so much around me with mobile staff and principals that staying gave me the chance to study the different affects staff and principals management styles had on the school. I had always been interested management and its effects on the workforce as well as students and to this end kept 25 years of anecdotal notes about management decisions and the affects they had on the staff and students. I compared these notes to many books I studied on management and decided that a manager should never change something until they understood the philosophy that created that procedure or situation in the first place. When this does not happen, so much good stuff disappears and nothing is created to replace the issue so the school, students, education and teachers suffer needlessly. Sometimes this down swing will go for many years before the original philosophy and what it created is re-initiated under a different umbrella, for the new principal to say look at what I did. Everyone goes round patting themselves on the back forgetting about the years of suffering in between. I am not saying don’t change as change is very important in fact policies and procedures should be revisited with the new staff every 12 months so the new staff can have some ownership and full knowledge of how the program is running. What I am saying is that the philosophy that created a situation should be understood fully before changing evolving or scraping. This would stop those negative years where the quality of the school is diminished.
The fourth year into the VET program we took out the top award as the best program in the state and I was awarded the Education Ministers Award for Services to Education. At the time, I was very stressed as the new principal was trying to dismantle the VET program and take all the funding away. Much of this funding was due to federal grants as opposed to state and my name was on some of those documents and she would have put me in breach of Federal regulations. At this stage, not one person asked what the philosophy was behind the decision-making processes in the program. The whole feel of the school started to diminish and after one discussion, I told the assistant principal I was to be moved back into the mainstream school and in be given a middle school class. Over the next few years, numbers in VET dropped and the community started commenting more on negative aspects of teachers and the school.
I was in a position to open the door as a form of politeness for the new principal one day as I was to the front while we were walking into the school; she walked through and started to berate me for opening the door for a female insinuating I was a male chauvinist. I informed her that I was not opening the door for her I was opening to make myself feel better and I would have opened the door for anyone regardless of gender. It appears being a polite person was not as desired an attribute as being an aggressive rude person. It is a sad world we find ourselves in sometimes.
Middle school was wonderful and the students were the youngest I had taught I was also acting AST1 and did yard duty in the primary school and got to know the younger students. I did some team teaching with an extremely competent middle school teacher while rooms were being sorted and then moved back into another single room. I bought two old computers and set them up with spelling programs and put an old computer in the back of the room with some tools for students to pull apart and wreck. The boys loved it and 10 years later have commented about how they enjoyed it and how much they learnt. The boys started getting bits and asking me what they were and how they worked. The bench was a mess with bits and pieces of bent computer everywhere but the boys had a wonderful learning experience.
I then decided to try to gain some international experience in communicating across cultures so moved to Thailand to a job in an English Program (EP). Everything turns about as the school has data projectors in every EP classroom and all the students have to have a laptop to enroll. The big thing I have noticed is that educational psychology still remains the same in that the students respond much better to positive reinforcement than blame or negativity. They have trouble understanding the concept of a student centered classroom as being an active learner is very foreign to everyone including students. Once they start to get the idea of having to ask questions and be an active part of their own education then the students can come up with surprising results.
So far, in Thailand I have set up and managed a full network server and taught many subjects and best of all gained a Thai teaching license so now I am licensed in two countries to teach
The six years in Thailand have meant a complete rethink about communication and how to communicate with students in such a way that no one is left behind. This is a challenge to which I am using LMS (learning management systems) to help with keeping all my students on task and up to date. One challenge closes and another opens.
Sorry about the disjointedness of this but one of these days I will re-edit. While writing this I kept remembering other anecdotes that may be included in the next update.
Brett Wilkin 2012
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Category: General Information Published: Monday, 03 December 2012 15:57 Hits: 3368
Teaching 43 years. 21 years in Australia and 22 years in Thailand
Currently a registered teacher in Australia and Thailand.
20 years teaching ESL, EFL with a focus on English, Computing, Science, Health, and Independent Studies (new for Thai Gov Schools).
Taught ages from 6 to 75 years old.
Taught every secondary school subject (excluding cooking and Indonesian) in an Australian school.
Specialising in optimizing student performance through technology and Learning Management Systems.
Currently Foreign Teacher Coordinator and Teacher at Sa-nguan Ying School Suphanburi and assisting older Thai students studying in Australia with grammar writing and research skills up to a Masters level.
I love what I do.
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Thai Police Clearance Checks.
If you have taught in Thailand for 12 months and are intending to teach back in Australia and in some cases other countries you may need to get a Thai Police Check. Education Authorities in some countries will need confirmation of your good character.
You will need
Your Passport
Work permit may be needed (not confirmed at this stage)
You will need to go to building 24 in the main Bangkok police station almost opposite Siam Square Complex. Opposite the end of World Centre shopping complex. It is walking distance on the same street as MBK.
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- Published: 17 Mar 2013 Hits: 1619
These links will give you a map of the school and a map of the central area of Suphanburi.
The minivan to Bangkok leaves from the main big bus station and stops in Bangkok at the MO Chit BTS (Sky train)
Links to maps language and food cards in 2 and 3 languages.
http://brettwilkin.com/index.php/teachersupport/travelandfood
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- Category: Teaching at Sa-nguan Ying School.
- Published: Sunday, 17 March 2013 16:17
- Hits: 1636
To get a work permit you will need
•copies of your qualifications
•copies of your Passport and Visa stamps
•Copies of your arrival card attached to your passport, this is the same as your departure card with the same numbers and is appropriate.
•And get about 6 passport photos.
You will need most of the photos between visa extensions and work permits and it pays to have a few spares on the rare occasions something goes wrong and you need a repeat.
The work permit is all organised by the EP department and is completed in Suphanburi after which you can get the 12mth extension on your visa.
Carry your work permit with you when playing the role of tourist as many parks and tourist venues have a foreigners price and a Thai price. If you show your work permit you generally get the Thai price.
Finally; when you leave hand your work permit back in to the office and they will return it to the appropriate department. This is also stated in the back of the Work Permit Book. There is a substantial fine which EP has to pay for not handing in the work permit book .
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- Category: Your Thai Experience.
- Published: Saturday, 03 August 2013 22:03
- Hits: 20585
Your Thailand Experience in Suphanburi
What to Expect.
The Unexpected
So why am I writing this?
Every one’s experience is different. Many of us have traveled widely, including to Thailand but for some it is the first time. We are working here, so this means that we see people and places from a different perspective. In part, we become adopted as we adapt to our new home.
Kylie, a colleague when I first arrived in 2006, wanted the last word so here it is first ‘and then before you know it you’ll be going home. Enjoy every moment of the experience; don’t let homesickness get you down. Just think to yourself that the people back home are doing the same old routine, people back home are doing the same old routine where as you are doing something so different. Live by the mantra “Corpe Dieu” and go and seize the Thai experience’.
Many thanks to those whose experiences and knowledge have been incorporated into this which is a constant work in progress. We have come from many places, US, Australia, China, Finland and the UK. Also thanks to our Thai colleagues and friends for allowing us to be here and who shared their views as well.
Festivals
Don Chedi Festival
This is a food extravaganza for about a fortnight in late January to early February. There is spectacular show with battling elephants acting out a very important part of Thai history. You may like to attend the performance (separately from the school) and if so ask the staff in the EP office for guidance as to how to arrange transport and buy the tickets. The school canteen will be closed for a month and students and staff are expected to spend time at the festival to help with the food stalls. We were not asked to help but it is good to be involved. If you are here at the time try and be involved, it is a special event.
Chinese New Year.
This occurs around the 16 February depending on the Moon. The pagodas are lit up and the Chinese temples are decorated. You will be woken early in the morning with very loud firecrackers. So get the day started with a bang and go to the food festivals near the market in the afternoon. You may like to check out the Dragon Descendents environ as well whenever you like.
Sonkran Festival.
This is a mid-April celebration for the Thai new year. It is a water festival starting with a ceremony at the school at about 9 am. This starts the festivities for the teachers.
At about 2 pm there is a spectacular parade through the streets of Suphanburi. All the participants have containers of water and a white clay powder. They go up to strangers and friends alike and tip some water on your shoulders and wipe a little of the powder (now a paste) on to the cheeks of the lucky person. Have fun, buy the biggest water pistol you can While doing this you are wished a happy new year or a happy Songkran with much Choc Dee (good luck). This degenerates into a good natured water fight with parties, singing in the streets and some roads are blocked with people.
Have fun, buy the biggest water pistol you can, hitch a ride in a ute, and be prepared to be wet for three days. Oh, buy a bright patterned shirt, you will fit right in.
Lent Day
This is a Buddhist festival held in early July each year.
It involves candles and the belief in what candles do in Buddhism. In Suphanburi and elsewhere, organisations and groups construct floats and with costumes and traditional dress drive in a parade around Suphanburi.
All I can say is find a good location and bring your camera.
Loi Krathong
This Buddhist celebration (usually in November) involves the creative creation of small floats that are lit and cast adrift on the river at night.
At school you will see them constructed and flotation tested on every water pond that the students can find. You can watch on television the spectacular versions (with fireworks) being launched in Bangkok by important people or the millions constructed by the industrious people everywhere.
This festival is held at the same as time as Yi Peng in Northern Thailand. In this festival, candle lanterns are launched into the air.
Good Manners.
The Thai Wave.
Thai's have a particular gesture (wave) for attracting (stopping) taxis and sontaews etc. Stick your hand out away from your body with your palm down and angled toward your body and wave your hand back and forth beckoning with your fingers as well. Similar to many Western gestures except that the hand is palm down. This is a polite gesture.
Without clothes on
Thai's are generally conservative, so brief clothes can offend them (especially tops) and certainly walking around without a top on in very public places can be offensive to many. Even men in a public place are being offensive without tops and women are expected to cover shoulders and have a limited amount of skin showing.
Public buildings, police stations, museums and palaces all require shoulders to be covered, so for females no bare legs and wear semi covered-in shoes as opposed to flip flops or in Australia thongs (same as flip flops). Many of the tourist places will supply a sarong for both males and females to wear if they are visiting.
Laundry.
As we are taking about not wearing clothes so here is some extra comment about what to do with them after use. There are many small businesses that do the laundry. They will do it for you including the ironing (extra of course). As Thais are conservative there is on occasions a reluctance to do your underwear. Some laundries have coin based machines for public use and are cheaper than having the laundry people physically do it. Some people do theirs in a hand basin in their home.
The Wai.
A casual Wai (pronounced like Thai) is reserved for equals and casual meetings and for this the hands do not have to come far up the body. As a guide try and equal the height and length of time you hold the Wai to your equals. Tips of the fingers may reach the chin line. Always accompany this with a sa-wat-dee krub/ka. You will notice that some will do a high Wai and hold it longer, they are paying you a lot of respect but it does not hold that a person giving you a brief Wai is not giving you respect.
A Wai to the monks is with the thumbs about level and almost touching the tip of the nose and a Wai to Buddha is to the bridge of the nose.
When in schools etc do not overdo the Wai to students,do not overdo the Wai to students they will find it amusing and not tell you that the highly emphasized Wai is reserved for Royalty, Buddha and Monks.
You will notice that most buildings will have a shrine outside. Homes will also have a shrine inside on a shelf or in an alcove. Some trees are considered to be ‘spirit trees’. You may also realise that there are Thais who are ‘once a year Buddhists’ (as told to me by a Thai) and those who believe in daily devotion and ritual.
Loss of face.
This is a serious matter for any Thai, especially if dealing with a foreigner. All I can suggest is to be aware and polite. However, there may be situations where you do not want to lose face either.
Comment made by Thais about other foreigners.
The negative comments do exist and sometimes you will be advised because that Thai person wants you to be aware of what other foreigners are doing. They hold you in high regard and want to warn you. It may be that they want your assistance to contact that person and so are the ’go-between’ to give advice (a friendly hint) to that person.
A viewpoint has been expressed to a colleague that most of the problems happen when people are not aware of Thai social conduct. A Brazilian female teacher from another school was using a hula-hoop for exercise next to the shrine of the Yee Dee Mee Suk apartments (2009). This activity, as well as clothing worn (as little as it was), was observed and mentioned by Thais – the information filters through Thai society.
Go with the flow.
It is necessary to go with the flow but I have seen some of the ‘Westerners’ were having problems with this approach to lifestyle. Many people like to have an idea as to what to expect and what might be needed but they often lack the flexibility to fit in without knowing what is happening. Hence these few pages. You will still need to be flexible. Many things will happen on the spur of the moment and you will have no control over it. The school was notified about one long weekend late on the Thursday night. We did not have to be at school on the Friday. It is certainly no-one’s fault, we need to become used to this. So we get over it and enjoy the day. If you are truly adaptable you will have a few resorts or back packers accommodation on standby and simply see a bit more of Thailand.
Mai pen rai.
This is the official motto of Thailand. Well, maybe not official but certainly very common. It means ‘it’s ok’, ‘you’re welcome’, ‘don’t worry’, ‘take it easy’ and ‘it doesn’t matter’. The possibilities are endless. The Thais believe in having a very relaxed attitude to life, they don’t get stressed or uptight like many ‘Westerners’. Whenever something happens in Thailand that if it was happening at home would blow your top, just take a deep breath and say ‘mai pen rai’ and let it go. You’ll be amazed at how quickly you learn that you shouldn’t stress over the little things.
So why do I say ‘Westerner’
Mainly because that our Chinese colleagues over the years have not (so far as I know) exhibited the same stress patterns as the proverbial ‘Westerner’. One of my colleagues had an interesting discussion with Thai colleagues about what is a ‘Westerner’. According to Hofstedes research Chinese accept the status quo better than Westerners who often stress about not being in control or part of the action.
Communication
Language.
How many Thai's can read Thai?
Most Thais can read but don’t rely on that happening all the time.
There are regional language differences between north, central, south and the north-east (known as Issan). Please be aware that these areas of Thailand have a slightly different language, therefore if you are traveling you may have some difficulties with some words. As the Thai language has 5 tones, you can say something and the Thai person you are addressing will have no idea what you are saying. Keep repeating it and try different tones, eventually they will understand and repeat what you’ve said in such a slightly different way, it’s hard to pick up. However, this can be dangerous as some slight tonal differences can generate a word with a significantly different meaning (oops!!).
Do Thai's speak English?
A good question, what do you think? Generally, I would say never be surprised if their understanding is higher than they let on. Sometimes, people are reluctant to try out their English as they may consider it to be a loss of face if you heard poor English from them. However, businesses may gain an advantage if you do not know how much they can understand of you and you not of them.
As was told to a colleague by a Swedish man who ran a restaurant that use to exist opposite Yee Mee Mee Suk, ‘the shop assistant in a hardware shop (in Suphanburi) spoke perfect Swedish (she had been an exchange student in Sweden) and knew the technical terms for the items that he wanted’. Just think of our students and their abilities.
Electronic Communication.
Phone.
This is probably the most common method of using a telephone in Thailand. You can buy a mobile from many shops and you can recharge it from many more. If you want to use your foreign phone, check that it is unlocked (or that can be done at some shops for a fee). Choose the company whose sim card that you want to use, such as DTAC, True etc. You will note that you do not have to fill in a form to buy a sim card or phone. Most companies can trim sim cards to fit iPhones.
Using the internet.
It is very easy to do and is at all the usual places such as the many Internet shops in Suphanburi that offer high speed Internet connections. They have MSN, AIM etc. It costs roughly 15 baht per hour. Timing is everything though; do not go after school as they are always packed out with kids gaming. It’s best to go after 7pm. Most of them stay open until 10pm.
Travel.
Entry into
National Parks,
Monuments and Museums.Make sure you have your work permit; as there are Thai prices and foreigner prices for many things. Many, maybe most but not all, government run parks, museums etc have two prices.
Often you will see the Thai price in Thai only and the foreign price in English only. Although many Thai officials will gladly and happily give you Thai prices with your Work Permit, there are those that are reluctant to do so. There are some places that have a ‘compulsory’ two price system.
Multi-pricing at other places.
Even international companies have a two price system based on perceived racial differences (not nationality). A Chinese and an Australian colleague went to Madam Tussauds in Bangkok (2011). The Chinese was charged the Thai price and the Australian the foreign price. A ‘discussion’ followed and when the details of the work permits and passports were shown both were allowed in with a discount on the Thai price. Others have described in the Australian media this happening at the same place with the company owners claiming that it does not occur (2012).
Similarly, the double pricing occurs with tuk-tuks in Chiang Mai. The Thai price is 20 Baht and the foreign price is 40 Baht for a single trip anywhere in the old city. The same colleagues received the correct lower price after a short ‘discussion’ (2012).
Pay attention to what you hear in the markets if you inquire about items that are not priced marked. The prices can increase amazingly if you don’t look ‘Asian’ prices can increase amazingly if you don’t look ‘Asian’ and show interest. If buying produce in the market, such as fruit, always asked for it to be weighted as you usually buy by weight. Although it is not known if the scales are certified as accurate. Another Chinese colleague asked for a weight check which showed over charging and received an adjustment of some 20% more (2012).
Checking into hotels.
As in many parts of the world you will need your passport which will be photocopied and the details of your visa recorded. A deposit is commonly required. As is elsewhere in the world be careful about leaving cash in your bag in your locked room. A Chinese colleague (mentioned above) lost most of her holiday money this way in a guesthouse. An argument followed and the owner of the guesthouse threatened our colleague (2013).
The forms that you fill out are forwarded to the police so that they know where all the foreigners are.
Backs of Utes
If you get asked to go somewhere you might like to check if you are in the back of a standard Ute. It is normal to travel hundreds of kilometres in the back but you may be uncomfortable. Put some sunburn cream on and take a pillow.
I am informed it is the fun way to travel. On a recent trip to a distant town 6 girls got ferried everywhere for free by kind Thai people, you do get knocked around a bit but hey, its free and fun
Maps - GPS.
Many smartphones have GPS. These give you a good perspective of where you are going even when on the bus. However, you may need to check if you phone is in ‘data roaming’ mode which can be expensive.
Smartnav. Igo and Speednavi worked for me on a PDA and Smart phone but even google maps has become very good although I would not use Google for driving through Bangkok with the freeways etc..
On the Roads.
Licence.
There are two licences Thai’s need, one for driving a car and one for riding a motorbike. If you are staying long term it is strongly suggested that you go through the process of getting a licence.
If you are coming for a long holiday or for working get an International Licence before leaving your country of origin. Most importantly check your travel insurance to insure you are covered either riding or driving. Many insurance companies will insure your travel if you are driving or riding a vehicle legally.
If you are not legal and you have an accident you may find your travel insurance will not cover you and it could be extremely expensive.
Road Laws.
The road laws are similar to Australia, NZ, UK, Japan etc, that is they drive mostly on the left hand side of the road. In the Suphanburi area (at least) you can do a left turn against the red light. You must wear seat belts (definitely in the front of all vehicles). All motor bike drivers and their passengers must wear helmets. There have been major police initiatives in many Thai cities on this matter. This has been observed in Suphanburi and elsewhere. I did say ‘mostly on the left’, why?
However, motor cycle taxis will often not give you a helmet until they see the police. Colleagues have observed that even illegally parked cars in Bangkok being wheel clamped.
Other drivers.
No room for road rage, as you would have to fight the world, so get used to it and if you have a tendency to getting upset with other drivers, don’t drive or ride. Everybody else is relaxed (or used to it) and you cannot afford to be upset. Expect everyone to do a u-turn in front of you, or cut you off because you have allowed an appropriate gap in front of you and the next vehicle.
Be aware that very few look to the right when they merge on to the road, they just expect you to miss them because they are going slow. Many people will drive the wrong way in the left hand lane so they don’t have to go kilometres down the road to do a u-turn. Be careful when you are using the left hand lanes, the bike lanes or even the footpath where motorbikes are concerned.
Trucks, buses and cars coming toward you will see you and then overtake because you are smaller if you are on a bike. It is expected that you will go over to the bike lane at 100 kph and let them pass. This can lead to some hair-raising moment especially as you are braking as someone pulls out of a drive way without looking. If there is a gap a car will fill it or ten bikes will merge in front a car will fill it or ten bikes will merge in front. The technique at intersections is to drive up past the cars till you join all the bikes at the lights. Everyone takes off and all the cars you just passed then go past again till the next lights.
At night if you see a dull light approaching you from ahead in your lane, it is probably a motor scooter coming towards you. Many Thais put their helmets in the basket in the front of the headlight. The headlight serves to indicate that the helmet is still in the basket.
If you want to practise counting in Thai, how many people, dogs and shopping can you have on a scooter? If it rains, hold your umbrella in one hand and adjust the throttle for the other is used for making that important phone call or sending a text, which by the way it is illegal under Thai law to use a mobile phone while in control of a vehicle.
Safer driving.
Remember if you are prone to road rage don’t use the roads. Be patient but above all stay switched on and practice defensive driving techniques. The death toll on the roads is horrific. If you are considering driving or owning a vehicle in Thailand, find out and understand the Thai requirements for accident reporting, licenses, registration and insurance for your vehicle and your medical insurance. You will note that the many cameras carried by Thais become very useful.
Remember if you are not Thai do not do as the Thai's in that the law states only 2 persons to a motorcycle, all persons on a motorcycle must wear a helmet. Adhere to speed limits even if they are hard to define. DO NOT DRINK AND DRIVE, it is against the law and as a foreigner if you have and accident it will be expensive and your travel insurance most likely will not cover you as you have broken Thai laws.
Walking.
If you are walking through towns on foot and want to cross the roads – be warned. Drivers do not pause for pedestrians as they seem to be thinking pedestrians are a target rich environment (until they face the problem of the accident). Walk when there is a chance or you’ll be waiting all day and beware of zebra crossing they are only there to indicate that there might be more targets (I mean people). Crossings with lights are not necessarily to be obeyed either as cars will not wait for pedestrians so beware.
Always look both ways when crossing the road especially in one way streets as motorbikes often go the wrong way as do the occasional car going to a nearby driveway, and buses often have a special lane that goes the opposite direction to the one way traffic
Police Checks.
Carry your work permit and licence in case they ask for it. Mostly they have checked the rode worthiness of my bike for lights etc and helmets. If it wasn’t there is a 500 Baht fine. The work permit will have your job as a teacher written in Thai and there is a lot of respect for teachers so you will most likely be treated very fairly. Just because most Thais don’t wear helmets don’t assume you will get away with it. It is illegal and you will be fined. See the comment above.
Don’t try and bribe a policeman. It is illegal and as a foreigner it will most likely back fire and get you into strife. My dealings have always been very pleasant and friendly, always Wai and be polite. When you Wai the police are supposed to salute if they have a helmet on and Wai if no helmet.
Carrying ID.
Thai law requires that everyone carry an identity document. Thais carry their national ID card and foreigners will need their passport. In the school you should have your Work Permit as the appropriate government department can check at any time and you need to have it with you. So as far as we know, this has not happened.
Taxi’s.
There are no motor car taxis in Suphanburi unless they have been driven from Bangkok or similar with a fare. There are only sontaews, tuk-tuks and motor cycle taxis.
Bangkok transport.
In Bangkok always ask for a meter but after 9 pm most taxis quote. 200 Baht should get you a long way in the city, even to the airport. Tuk-tuks are expensive and generally double to thrice the cost of a taxi and you get stuck in the exhaust fumes without air conditioning (2013.)
The Sky train (BTS) is the above ground railway system for Bangkok city and suburban areas. A ticket can be bought at each station or you get buy passes for longer durations. There is a person/s in the glass cubicle to get change for the ticket machine. The BTS is divided into zones with the price dependent on distance. The price starts from 10 Baht (2013) for one stop. It’s a cool way to travel and the carriages are clean It’s a cool way to travel and the carriages are clean. The signage is very good and the whole system works well. Just put your card in the slot and walk through the gate, be ready to walk before inserting the card as the gates don’t give much time to go through and tend to close on you or your luggage. There is a gate for luggage and often the staff will insist that you use it. Visit their website for maps etc.
The Airport Link is the train between the Suvarnabumi airport and Piathai. The Airport Link Piathai station is connected to the BTS station at Piathai with a walkway. It train is quick, convenient, smooth, air conditioned, frequent and cheap but it does end late at night. The taxi at the airport is organised with a receipt system and so you only pay a tip to the driver.
To and from Bangkok.
Terminal Mo-chit.
If you are travelling Bangkok to Suphanburi you get tickets from one of the counters that have Suphanburi written in English on the window. They will then direct you to the terminal number for the bus, close to the counter.
If you catch a Sky Train to the bus station you go to the Mo-chit BTS station and then catch a taxi to the Mo-chit bus station, about 110 Baht. Or you can just hop on the bus and pay there.
Ask for route bus by Suphanburi you can try saying tee-nai ka/krub? (Where is) and someone will direct you. I think the zone for Suphanburi is a 70 series number. Be warned that most buses do not have toilets and it’s a 2 ½ hour bus ride (2009).
Southern Terminal.
If you want to go further south you will need to get a taxi, bus BTS etc from Mo-chit to the Southern bus terminal at Central Pin-klao. Further research is needed on this topic.
Minivan from Suphanburi to Bangkok Victory Monument (in Bangkok).
The minivan that goes from Suphanburi to Victory Monument leaves from the main large Suphanburi Bus station opposite the Nasa Mall shopping mall. It is a fixed price of about 100 Baht and just ask for Krung Threp. The van stops at the MoChit BTS. It takes about 2 hours and there may be a refuel stop (they use CNG) or to drop off a passenger or a parcel at a pre-determined location. This results in slightly different routes at different times. If the van is full before the departure time they depart or may even leave early if the driver feels like it.
Buses run about every half hour from about 4.30am till about 7.30pm
Luggage on the minivan (Suphanburi).
Space is at a premium as they for passengers. A large rucksack on your lap is generally ok with anything larger being problematic (depending on how many passengers are travelling). You may be asked to buy a seat for the bag although there may be a little space behind the back seat.
Hiring a van (Suphanburi).
Thai staff or others can organise this with a phone call and will cost about 1 500 Baht a day plus you pay for fuel. The driver fills up at the end of the day and you pay the fuel bill at the bowsers. A former colleague from the US and another from Australia hired a van for the weekend to explore Thailand. They also funded appropriate accommodation and meals for the driver (2010).
Sontaew (Suphanburi).
These are the ute with a canopy and seats you see driving around Suphanburi. They run regularly up till about 7 pm and after that you would be lucky to get one. All you do is flag one down and swing on to the back.
When you want to get off push the button and they will stop almost straight away. When you get off walk to the cab and pay the driver the 8 Baht a person (2013). I usually give 10 Baht as the price has increased (from 7 Baht in 2009) – correct change is always given.
They all go to the market and after you get used to them you can travel all of Suphanburi only paying when you get off. Their destination is written in the windscreen of the cabin in Thai so you will need to become familiar with the shape of the letters (as in learn the language) so you can determine your destination. Although there are routes that they follow, no information has yet been found for Suphanburi songtaews. The songtaews that goes to the school leaves outside the optometrist shop on the main street of the market.
Tuk-Tuk’s (Suphanburi).
Generally there are a lot of these about, sometimes called tricycles. 40 Baht would get you just about anywhere in Suphanburi, for example from Lotus to Yee Dee Mee Suk apartments.
The price includes as many people or goods that fit in it although be reasonable overloading is silly and the driver is well within his rights to charge more.
Motor cycle taxis (Suphanburi).
These are becoming more common in Suphanburi. As for tuk-tuks, negotiate the price before the trip.
Transport to and from the airport in Chiang Mai.
The taxi receipt system is similar to that at Suvarnabumi airport.
Transport to and from the airport in Sukothai.
This airport is privately owned by Bangkok Airways. They have a van to take people to any point in and around that city. However, you may consider it expensive and may like to consider other options.
Health.
Heat.
Drink plenty of fluids and be careful you don’t over exert yourself until your body adapts to the temperatures.
Drinking Water.
This comes down to a personal viewpoint on how safe is the tap water. There is also the issue of changes to water quality during the seasons. Although many consider tap water safe there are many water dispensers which contain filters (according to the instructions they should be changed at least every fortnight) at a cost of 1 Baht a litre. You can buy bottled water (of very high purity) from several manufactures in many shops for about ten Baht a litre. The water in Suphanburi does contain an amount of dissolved salts, but it is treated. Some Thai's fill a bowl with tap water and leave it in the sun so the chlorine leaches out with the sunlight. They then use this as their drinking water.
Sports drinks and vitamins.
Water does not absorb readily into the body at the same rates as you can sweat so you will often be very lethargic or get a headache. Add a little fruit juice or sport drink to the water so it absorbs quicker. One opinion is to only have the sports drinks when they are watered down by adding the small bottle of sport drink to a medium sized bottle of water adding the small bottle of sport drink to a medium sized bottle of water, and then no more than two a day as they are very sugary and have salts in them. Most people after they start doing this with their drinks notice an almost instant change in how they feel. A second opinion is that you may prefer vitamin tablets dissolved into bottled water. A third opinion is to use a rehydrate solution added to bottled water.
Drinking yoghurt.
Many people may find this useful. Drinking Yoghurt (for example Yakult) can be bought most places such as 7/11 stores and often in small corner stores. Due to the amount of fluids you will start to drink from the heat you will be washing your system clean of good bacteria (acidophilus). The result of this is you will feel a little sick or ‘off-colour’. ‘Yakult’ (or other drinking yoghurts)this can be like a miraculous cure as you feel better as it goes down.
Food.
I have even eaten the beetles that come from the rice fields and are very similar to large cockroaches. The whisky helped but I had no ill effects from the bugs. This does not mean you will not get stomach problems. We generally avoid raw seafood but eat just about everything else. We even eat kebabs from the street sellers and some of the dried fish. Thailand is a taste sensation Thailand is a taste sensation and we have had very few stomach problems in our time here. In case you are wondering, Thais do get sick on occasions too.
A former colleague always chopped up his rice with a folk. Why? To look for those very small stones that regretfully survives the harvesting and milling processes. In other words always be careful about biting a piece of food, regretfully or though rarely there can be surprises.
One important thing is that Thais use a lot of MSG (monosodium glutamates) in their cooking. If you have an allergy, saying ‘mai MSG’ (meaning no MSG) sometimes works or get a Thai teacher to write down in Thai ‘No MSG please’. Try saying ‘Mai Sai Choo Rot Ka/krub’. Back To Index
Hospital.
Health checks at the hospital.
These are carried out at the government hospital in the city next to the river. It is a busy place and the checks can take nearly the whole day. They keep the x-rays etc on your file and give you an identifing card for future reference. The medical staff speak and understand English well. The shops outside are good for cold drinks and ice cream etc. There are vendors in the streets for lunch (after all this is Thailand).
Private hospital.
The hospital next to NASA Mall shows the difference between it and the government one. Similarly, the staff understand English well and will also issue you with a card for future reference. It does not take long but make sure that you take your work permit and passport. We have found the hospital and doctor system to be excellent with very little or no wait.
Sickness and injuries.
Once again just have your card and you can pay with cash or credit / debit card etc. There is a dispensary at the hospital. Check you medical insurance so you know what to do, such as claims etc.
You may have to make your own way by getting someone to take you. If you ring for an ambulance the chances are you will not be able to get them to understand what the problems is or where you are.
Pharmacy.
There are several major pharmacy chains in Thailand, for example Boots, Watsons. These can be found in malls (for example, NASA) or department stores that have their own brand (such as in Lotus). The staff speak English and are often trained in English speaking countries. The range of medicines etc are to the same standard and often the same products. You will note that prescriptions are not required but you should know what you want. Similarly, many pharmacists can advise you if you have an ailment.
You will notice that there are small shops that sell medicines. A colleague bought a well recognised propriety cough medicine from one near the school but was not convinced that the ingredients were as stated.
Homesickness
This will depend on your personality and experience in living in a different overseas environment. This is what a colleague found.
In the first three weeks expect to be very tired. The heat, the food, everything is different. At 4 to 5 weeks and you are wondering if this was worthwhile, you can’t have a normal conversation and your brain never stops trying to decipher the Thai language into something that makes sense to you. This deciphering makes you very tired and even asking for a meal can make you short tempered. By 6 weeks you want to go home and you miss everything you consider normal. Getting a meal is wearing you out and some food you may not like but don’t know how to order something you do like. Your language for food is getting better but you are sick of fried rice. 8 weeks things are starting to seem normal 8 weeks things are starting to seem normal. Food language is getting a little better and you are starting to form some routines. 10 weeks you start to surprise yourself by not noticing things as different, in fact they are starting to look normal. 12 weeks you are settled enough and enjoying yourself. As you have routines and everything is settled you can recuperate your strength by staying in some weekends but you do start to notice the extraordinary. 14 weeks you are enjoying the difference that is Thailand, you can get a good feed, saying hello and doing a Wai has become automatic to the extent you don’t even know you have done it. You don’t ring home as much as you are out exploring and having fun.
At Temples.
Monks.
Some seem to talk to females but apparently many are not allowed to. Never face the soles of your feet toward Buddha, a monk or other persons as it is an insult. If they make eye contact just Wai but make your Wai high and a Sawat dee Krub/ka never hurts. If you are running or walking I think you should stop to do the Wai and then continue on. If you have some food you can always donate something for the monk’s day, especially if you see them early in the morning. Real monks do not beg or ask for money.
Making merit.
Make a donation of about 20 Baht and get some incense, a candle and a lotus flower with a little gold leaf. Light your candle and incense in the oil burner and place the candle on the rack provided. Drip some wax to help it stick. Then kneel in the appropriate place in front of a Buddha, making sure your feet are pointing away from the Buddha. Either kneel or adopt the ‘mermaid pose’ with feet and legs beside and turned behind you. Make sure your hands are in the Wai position with your thumbs about the bridge of your nose. The incense and lotus will be between your hands. Make your blessing or offering to Buddha and place your lotus flower in the nearby container and your incense in the sand box. You then one of the Buddha statues and press your gold leaf on to the statue go to one of the Buddha statues and press your gold leaf on to the statue. Make sure you don’t touch the gold leaf as it sticks to you and doesn’t come off easy. Use the paper the leaf comes in to hold and transfer to the statue. Where you place the gold on the statue means different things, the head is knowledge, heart courage and stomach wealth. Sometimes a spray bottle of water is there to help the gold leaf stick. If you are only making a prayer to Buddha kneel in front of the statue with your hands in a high Wai position about level with the nose and bow three times with your hands leaving your nose area to touch flat on the floor and as you straighten return to the high Wai position.
Hearing a loud noise like an explosion.
Each time a person is cremated large firecrackers are let off. All the festivals are accompanied with firecrackers from early morning. It gets you going early in the day with a bang.
When someone dies.
Males wear a black shirt and dark trousers, women wear dark clothes. Take some money in an envelope to offer the grieved persons. I have attended several and I think this helps with the funeral costs and donations to the temple. The ceremony lasts for about a week with guests on the last day to walk past the closed coffin and pray briefly for the departed soul. Be warned though as some funerals have open coffins, be prepared and act respectfully. If in doubt watch what others are doing.
Tipping Photos Schools
.
Tipping
Not normally required in Thai society, you will often see charity containers to donate change and I often leave the change only selecting the notes. If you feel you must 20 Baht is ok.
Taking photographs.
Department stores.
In most it appears to be a no-no.
In temples.
Seems to be ok except in some rarer places or areas such museums and special buildings. You will generally see a sign stating if it is not allowed, sometimes fines apply. If you ignore it deliberately you will be told.
School.
At School.
Go for it as the kids love having their pictures taken. Be prepared for unusual poses, they like to imitate movie stars.
The Kings Birthday.
There is a holiday for the King’s Birthday. The proper day is the 5 December. To be accepted in our school and most of Thailand wear a yellow shirt often, not just for the King’s birthday. Yellow is the King’s colour and never treat his name, picture or anything he does with anything other than with the utmost respect.
You can also buy yellow king bands from any 7/11 store and many markets for about 100 Baht. If your yellow shirt is in the wash, wearing this is another way of showing respect. There is no humour in the Thai culture about the Royal Family and this why I have devoted a whole section to His Majesty.
Monday is the main yellow day as it is the King’s day of birth. You will note that many Thais will wear a uniform on this day.
General Living.
Living issues
Sensitive matters.
Please learn what is considered to be good manners If in doubt ask for clarification from someone at school.
Buying food.
When in doubt, ‘cow pad gai’ said toward the back of the throat instead of the front will generally get you fried rice with chicken pieces. Build up from there with your food repertoire.
‘Café rorn’ will get you a hot coffee with coffee whitener. Sprite will get you lemonade, Nam will get you water and for White coffee ‘sai nom’. We even eat food from the street sellers and have had very little stomach problems. Most Thai food is not as exotic as you may have been led to believe with the exception it can be spicy (as in ‘chilly –hot’). If you can’t stand much chilly ask for ‘mai pet’ (‘mai’ means ‘no’ and ‘pet’ is ‘chilly’ or ‘spicy’).
You can buy food from the supermarket of which there is 3 main ones in Suphanburi or from the market. Many Thai’s get up very early and get fresh food each day. The food does not keep very well unless refrigerated (which also keeps ants at bay).
Ants, cockroaches, mosquitoes and geckoes.
Mosquitoes.
These can be a hassle but are quite manageable. The drains are sprayed with a chemical once a month and you will see a person walking around the streets with a machine that looks like a blower over their shoulder. It makes a noise and blows out a big cloud of chemicals. The operator directs this down the drains to kill mossies and cockroaches. If you see or hear it coming shut your windows. Remember not every mozzie is a malaria carrier or dengue fever carrier not every mozzie is a malaria carrier or dengue fever carrier but a rare one might be so try to avoid them. Some areas are worse than others but Suphanburi seems to have fewer problems with these diseases.
You can buy mozzie repellent and apply if you are going outside in the evening. The locals tell me the day time mozzies are the ones to be careful of. A good mozzie repellent is Soffell and it comes in three varieties, all in white bottles and contains 13% DEET. The pink lids are floral, orange lids are orange, and green lids are citronella. A former colleague bought jungle strength mozzie repellent from home and still got bitten. But since using this stuff she had no a problems. Trust us you will need it. Why not buy yourself an electronic badminton racket and have fun zapping mozzies. It can be an entertaining pastime.
Cockroaches.
Depending where you live cockroaches can be a problem. We buy cockroach bait in the form of a 60mm round red plastic container about 10mm high. I replace these about every two months or when I start to see live cockroaches about in the morning. Check your shoes as I squashed a few when putting my shoes on of a morning.
Ants.
There are ant baits that work well with the larger ants but there are very tiny brown ants that move very quickly. I use a white chalk anti-ant crayon (with gloves of course) and trap a few in a chalk circle and let them go. It appears to wipe the nest out quickly until another group finds its way into our kitchen again.
Geckoes.
You will see many geckoes in Suphanburi especially at night when they are out hunting for insects. If you live in Yee Dee Mee Suk you will probably have your own room geckoe. An Australian colleague even saw a metre-plus long monitor lizard run into the canal in the middle of town during the afternoon (2012). Remember, Thailand is in the tropics.
Finding something to read.
The two major English language papers (Bangkok Post and The Nation) are available as paper or free on-line. You may like to consider e-books from various suppliers.
Swimming pools.
The Suphan Hotel nearly opposite the Sa-nguan Ying School has a pool. The back of the hotel faces the street that the school is on. Roll up with your towel and bathers (swimmers) and go to the front desk and ask for the use of the pool. The person behind the desk will charge you about 50 Baht each and a little extra if you want the hotel’s towel. You have unlimited time in a 15 metre pool. We have nearly always been the only ones in the pool.
The Chalermphatara Rachinee Park contains the Baharn-Jamsai Tower, gardens and a water park. It has slides and pools for children and adults. Great fun give it a go, the dark (black or blue) slide is quick and fun. The gardens are spectacular as is the musical fountain The gardens are spectacular as is the musical fountain.
The sports University has an Olympic sized pool which will cost you between free or 20 Baht. You can catch a sontaew from the market and ask for ‘by wit-ti-a-lai pa la ka/krub’. Yee Dee Mee Suk apartment has a pool as well. You can join the gym as well and several teachers (Thai, Australian and Chinese) have done this.
The market.
A great place to explore, it is near the Tower. The whole area is good to visit and there is a very wide range of merchandise. These are a good option to the larger shops and malls.
- Dept. Stores & Gov. Offices.
- Major malls, department stores and smaller chains
TESCO Lotus.
Known locally as Lotus. A large department store with food halls and a large range of goods inside and outside.
NASA Mall.
A wide range of shops including restaurants, clothing, electronics and sporting goods. There is a TOPS supermarket in the basement and a bowling alley up top. Karoke rooms also exist next to the genuine Thai massage.
Robinsons.
This is a large department store selling a large range of international foods and goods. There is also a TOPS supermarket and many restaurants as well as a cinema.
7/11.
These are everywhere; you will never be more than walking distance from a ‘seven eleven’ in Thailand. Locally they are known as ‘seven’. These stores are useful for phone recharge, ice cream, even a place to cool off as they are all air conditioned. Alcohol is available within the appropriate hours (but they use their clock which may not agree with anybody’s else).
CJ’s.
A small supermarket with a more domestic range of goods than the 7/11.
Macro.
A bulk-buy style of warehouse and you can buy single items as well.
The Big
A slightly more pricy ‘white goods’ stop than Lotus with a different range. A place for those more upmarket and harder to fine models.
Homepro.
As its name implies, everything for the home. It even has a restaurant – surprised?
Big C.
Being built as I write. I think it may be large.
Government offices that you will visit.
Post Office.
The Thai Post Office is an efficiently run organisation to send all the usual postal articles anywhere. Registration and insurance is recommended for all items leaving the country and is most strongly recommended if sending things to China etc. This enables you to track the item. Some staff speak English and the forms are in Thai and English. It is located opposite an entrance to the Tower.
Tax Office.
You will get to know this place and with help from a Thai colleague it is easy.
Labour Office.
We go there with a Thai colleague to obtain our work permits. It is just on the northern fringes of town.
Immigration Office.
Currently it is in Ayutthita. We go there with a Thai colleague for our required 90 day immigration checks and for re-entry permits as required.
Cost of Living.
This has been discussed at length amongst some of the teachers. The exchange rate does not relate very well to what you can buy with your money in comparison to our home countries. A consensus appears to be about 1/5 overall, For example 1000baht relates to about 100$ in Australia in relation to what it buys. It is important to note that the relationship between the items is very different from our home countries. For example, fuel costs about the same, electronics and airfares about 10% less. A monthly rent at about 10% of the gross salary is significantly less. Food is as you eat, Thai or imported.
Costs in 2012/13 for a single bedroom / bed sit apartment (Yee Dee Mee Suk) The running costs of the building appear to be included within each component of the monthly invoice. Note that most apartments do not have hot water. The costs are an approximate monthly expectation based on the experience of several teachers between 2009 to 2013.
Electricity.
The air conditioner is the main cost. A couple of hours a day will cost about 2 000 Baht a month.
Rent
3 000 Baht a month.
Water.
About 50 Baht but about 100 Baht if you like to wash the balcony more than once or twice in the month.
Telephone.
Everyone appears to use their mobiles and so there is zero cost.
Internet.
This is included in the cost and you will be issued with the access code. No information about load limits has been advised although connections have at times been poor.
Laundry.
It is a private business and charge about 20 Baht for the use of a washing machine. They will do you shirts, trousers, jeans, dresses, t- shirts, uniforms etc at about 10 Baht a short sleeve shirt. More for larger items. See the comment above about conservative and underwear. You may find the laundries elsewhere in town cheaper but you have to walk there.
Shop.
This is run by the apartment staff. The stock range is a miniaturised range of CJ’s. There is also a microwave and kettle.
Security.
Biometric (fingerprint) and swipe cards (electronic) are used. There does not appear to be a deposit for them and the cost of losing one is not known.
Banks
At least two of the banks will transfer money to Australia without too much of an issue. Several of us have used the one near the clock tower. Up the stairs, through the doors but collect a ticket first (right hand side just inside of the doors) and wait your turn – just watch for the number on the screen and the announcement in Thai. Have your account numbers, BSB and the address of your bank in Australia. Instructions written in thai are a bonus although many staff speak some English. The Thai equivalent of BSB is the Swift code that you will see on the paper work. You have to justify sending money out of the country but I just said it was to make house and tax payments in Australia. These are valid and accepted reasons.
You can open an account in a similar manner. You will need your passport and the work permit makes it quick as it shows a source of income. An account also gives you an ATM card, life insurance etc. Closing an account is also easy and cut up your card as well.
If you are working at the school you will have to open an account with the school bank which is the Krung Thai Bank as the allowances are made by direct deposit.
Safety.
.
Bars everywhere.
The Thais tell me they lock everything so they can sleep without worry. Although there is crime this isn’t an indication of a crime wave and I don’t think it is any worse than anywhere else in the world. In saying that be sensible about walking along dark streets by yourself late at night. A necessary precaution if you are travelling anywhere in the world. A former female colleague from England tells me ‘as a female, I feel very safe, in most cases Thai people hold westerners in very high regard, so wouldn’t try anything unless you were flashing the cash’.
Although most female colleagues consider the city to be safe there have been occasional matters of concern. Keep this in perspective the EP department alone has had over 40 foreign teachers over the last 7 years and the language department of the school has had another 30 (approx.) and there has only been 2 major instances for female teachers. In 2010 a female colleague was assaulted in town and it was a very frightening experience for her it was a very frightening experience for her. A year later another was assaulted more verbally than physically and this frightened her. All of these have occurred at night when the person was walking or jogging in an area with few people and poor lighting on sections of a walkway. The trauma from one case was such that the colleague returned to her home country. Suphanburi would be as safe as any town in the world of a similar socio economic climate. Treat the town the same as you would any other town in the world and regardless of the differences in culture practice safe and sensible habits
Some of us are also aware of burglaries against Thai premises (houses and businesses) when unoccupied during the day and night, but the rate would be about the same as in any city in the world under similar circumstances.
Motor bikes.
Don't drink and think you are a budding Evel Knievel stunt performer, one of our staff had a very nasty bike accident and had to be sent home.
Dogs.
This has been an issue for a number of people at different times. Anecdotal evidence has been that about 40 Chinese teachers in Thailand were bitten in one year (2010/11) requiring repatriation. This could have been their attitude to dogs, as it has never been that bad in Suphanburi. Two colleague teachers have reported being surrounded by dogs when going to the Suphanburi railway station (2010) and another colleague in 2013 was set on by one dog. Dog packs have run out of houses and bailed up a colleague near Yee Dee Mee Suk one lunch time (2010). Small packs of dogs have been seen on the streets at night and also in Yee Dee Mee Suk car park (2012). Spraying water from a water bottle towards the dogs appears to discourage them. Apparently, the dogs can count and more of you than them will work as well. Be sensible do not pat any dogs even when they are quiet and come to you sniffing for food or curiosity. The dogs are not used to this type of attention so consider a pat as an attack to defend themselves from so consider a pat as an attack to defend themselves from. So far only two people have been bitten in Suphanburi where only one went to the hospital for inoculations (no rabies in Suphanburi) as a precaution. In seven years of living here the author has only had one incident when out running and a pack of dogs were aggressive. I sprayed water from my water bottle at them and ran at the most aggressive dog yelling at it. The dogs all thought I had rabies and lost interest in me.
Toilets.
If using the traditional ‘squatter’, face the back wall as I am told this is the easiest way to navigate the perils of a squatter. Plan ahead and take some toilet paper where ever you go. Hand sanitiser is good to carry as some places do not have water to wash your hands.
Disposing of paper, tampons and pads
Mostly the paper is supposed to be placed in a bin beside the toilet and tampons or pads are not to be flushed in the toilet. Carry a small plastic disposal bag if you are concerned.
Paying for entry.
If you don’t have to pay for paper you will most likely have to pay for entry so keep some Baht for emergencies in your pocket. Don’t be surprised if the cleaners walk through while you are occupied. The quality of the toilets vary with the location, some even have nice rural views without doors to interrupt the view.
At the School.
Manners.
If you look at a student you can expect them to Wai to you but generally you only dip your head and acknowledge them. You can Wai if you like but it is very overkill and students will find the overkill amusing (not necessarily bad).
Teacher dress code
and sitting posture.These are important points so please check if in doubt. It is very easy to cause offence. You will note that the head of the student cannot be equal or higher than that of a teacher. Take care where and how you sit. Consider the conservative matters mentioned above and this includes wearing covered in shoes across the school grounds and in public places.
Staff meetings,
Chaht runs a staff meeting with the Thai staff and then a few days later runs a meeting in English. There have been planning meetings and welcomes / orientations for new staff at the start of term. Sometimes the school is closed for a staff meeting for all the Thai staff. As we can’t understand the Thai sometimes we are given the day off. Don’t take for granted but you may be lucky.
Visitors.
There are many visitors to the school. They can be other teachers seeing what you are doing, ‘pop stars’ to entertain the students and high ranking officials. Usually, you will be briefed beforehand.
Teachers Day (Wai Krue).
All classes are suspended and students give a presentation of specially arranged flowers to the teachers. The teachers sit on the stage and the students chant their appreciation for the work teachers do for them. They also pray and then make the presentations. After the student presentation the teachers present the students with certificates for academic excellence. Nothing needs to be done but take a camera on the day as it is a very moving experience.
Mothers’ Day,
All the women teachers and mothers sit in a seat in front of a child and the children give thanks to the mother for bringing them into the world and nurturing them. Many of the children get emotional which brings the mother unstuck quickly. No mother should miss this moving experience, of having flowers presented to her by the children.
Long weekends,
There are many long weekends, sometimes it is the Friday sometimes it is the Monday. There are some occasions where the school is not notified until the day before the holiday, others you can plan for. Be prepared to go and holiday at a moment’s notice. This can play havoc with your curriculum so be prepared for this type of interruption. I set a lot of homework to cover this problem and had the students email assignments to me. I also answered questions on MSN so my curriculum could continue.
Computers - viruses and malware.
If you have your own computer make sure it has an up-to-date anti-virus software that can be updated. I suggest the following combination of free products to reduce grief: Anti-virus - Microsoft Security Essentials (from Microsoft) Registry checker – Ccleaner (from Piriform) Anti-malware – Spybot (from Safer Networking) The combination is the key and various IT professionals suggest them and they are easy to use.
Exams.
Students have to get 75% as a pass mark. To achieve this you need to give the students some pre-tests or practice tests to be sure they understand the language used. During the exams you may not be with your class, so brief the teacher taking your class on your expectations.
If the student does not get a 75% pass then they are to have a re-sit. These are a pain so be prepared for them. If the student has trouble understanding the questions they will need some more teaching. A student cannot get more than a pass regardless of the score from a re-sit.
Be very aware of the language you use in your exams. As a general rule what would take you ½ hour will take about 1 ½ hours due to the language. Make your exams easy as the language automatically makes them hard for the Thai students.
Practice exams.
Be sure the students understand the language of your exam by giving plenty of practice tests.
Re-sits.
See above the section in Exams. Be ready for these, you only ‘think’ that the students understand the language in your exam.
Entry exams.
Students have to sit for exams to become part of the school. They take place all over the school and happen about the first week of March. We have to test the students applying for entry into the EP Program and may even do this over a Saturday and a Sunday. All the staff are involved and it is a government requirement so there are certain requirements. The times are given to us and the tests are dictated by the government. Due to this there is not a lot of flexibility. Papers have to stay in the school so you cannot take any home to mark. We can be at the school from about 8.30 till 3.00 Saturday and the Sunday. This was a long weekend for us so we headed out of town afterwards.
Thai exams.
You will be expected to help supervise Thai exams during exam weeks with a Thai teacher.
Sports Carnival.
Students prepare for the event over a period of about 5 weeks. Quite often the students will be out of class practicing. The whole event is organised by the Mattaysomsuksa 6 and is their leaving presentation to the school. Each day there is a different cheer leader / rock eisteddfod presentation. These are extravaganzas of music drums chanting and costumes. After the cheer leader morning, the sports take place, such as volleyball, netball, basketball etc. Nothing needs to be done other than enjoy the show which is spectacular, just be prepared for disruptions to curriculum and class routine.
Study habits.
Be sure to fill in the homework boards in the class rooms. Students are generally good with homework. The Thai teachers set a lot so I always shuffled my expectations so the students had a manageable work load. Sometimes in insisted that my work had priority and it got done. Don’t forget many of these students have weekend classes as well so there is not much personal time for them; even so they seem to cope well. Even taking into account of the above, the students are still teenagers and will not do work if they feel it is not important or they can get away with it.
Student misdemeanours.
You need to, as the teacher, decide what to do etc. Having a plan of your expectations and responses is a really good idea. A discussion with other foreign staff can be helpful. If you need, check first with the Thai staff in EP. Manners are not normally a problem but on the rare occasion talk to a Thai teacher, don’t accept bad manners as nobody else will. Remember, the Thai staff handle all disciplinary matters not the foreigners.
Monks at school.
Once a month the monks are at school and many students go to make merit in the morning. Two or three times a year everyone takes in a basket of food and the monks parade past the 3 000 students and collect food in their Alms bowls. This happens before class starts.
Students as monks.
Some of the boys will leave school for a period of about 1 week to live with the monks.
Buddhist camp.
The students will at some time during the year attend a Buddhist camp. This may be for a few days or even a week and sometimes you will be advised on short notice.
Camps.
At least two depending on which area you are working in. These will go over the weekend but are a great way to see a bit more of Thailand. There are very few teacher responsibilities to worry about and the staff briefing before you leave will give you an idea of what you need to bring. The camps are organised by the people at the places we visit and we just tagged along to talk to the students and enjoy the whole event.
Exchange student lessons.
Towards the end of the school year in late January into February there are extra courses at about 3 pm or 4 pm for the students going on the exchange to Tasmania. Someone has to take these and the topics are survival English covering things like food, money, manners, humour, general conversation, how to ask for something and transport.
Prathom 6 courses.
This is to prepare students for the exams they have to pass to get into the EP Program. Most of the program can be taken from the book called Get Real Starter. We tried to adapt the activities to give the students more hands on activities to make them practice their language.
The courses are evenings and go for about 10 weeks, depending on holidays in between. Courses are 5.30 pm till 7 pm and in the year we were there, we shared the 3 nights a week, The works is mainly introductions, talking about yourself and ordering food, very basic work. The process drags on a bit but it is no real stress and part of the expectations of working in the EP program. We are paid for this and also receive a takeaway meal. Once a month the monks are at school and many students go to make merit in the morning. Two or three times a year everyone takes in a basket of food and the monks parade past the 3 000 students and collect food in their Alms bowls. This happens before class starts.
Displays.
Through the year there could be a few displays. Sometimes, EP is involved but mostly only a few students will be missing from class setting up Science or Maths displays. If you display work in the class during the year these posters and examples of work can be used for the displays. .
Critical thinking, Learning styles and evidence of understanding I think are important.
Parent meetings.
These consist of parents being addressed by Chaht and then the English speaking teachers addressing the parents. I just talked about some of the things I do in class and why I do them.
I consider that Critical thinking, Learning styles and evidence of understanding are important. You speak for a few sentences and Chaht or another teacher translates and then you continue on for a few more sentences. You will notice many of the parents nodding at things said and you will realise many of these parents can understand most of what you say but may not be able to reply in English. The parents pay a lot to have their students in this program so they want a bit of feedback.
Student uniform and hair.
The tops of the socks have to be regulation with regulation folds on the top. Shirts tucked in and hair below Mattaysomsuksa 4 must be no longer than the ear lobe for girls and almost shaved for the boys. Mattaysomsuksa 4 and up can have long hair and a different shirt (blouse). Not your problems, as the Thai teachers on duty at the gate every morning check for discrepancies. It can be amusing on an inspection day (also known as hair check day) with students all racing around with scissors cutting each other’s hair.
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- Published: 01 Aug 2012 Hits: 5282
My philosophy for Behaviour Management is to show my emotions and never fear the class will be out of your control if you relax. If there is a fear, you have started to lose the class already. Show your full range of emotions, but be very careful and frugal with the anger ones they must be used very rarely especially when working across cultures and with young students. When you are relaxed the students are relaxed and in a better frame of mind to learn. Above all with behaviour management be consistent, keeping the students confused and stressed only makes behaviour worse and generally inhibits higher levels of thinking.
Add to this the theories of Ruby Payne’s research and a smattering of BillRogers and you should have something that works. Many years ago, I had the good fortune to work with Bill Rogers when he visited our school to study the Behaviour Management Card System we had developed.
Preliminary
Create an atmosphere of rewards and consequences and show appropriate emotions such as happy and sad and disappointment etc. These emotions should be easy for the student to read.
Remember a reward is only a reward if the student sees it as being a reward. For example they might not see a candy as being as much of a reward as being able to leave class before the others or in extreme cases we have tallied positive rewards up in hours and then with parent and government permission allowed the student a half day holiday a month.
Every reward has to be achievable.has to be achievable Setting the bar too high simply makes students give up. Read Ruby Paynes research to try to understand your students and the things that are important to them. I had the opportunity to go to several of her seminars and found them invaluable.
I was at a behavior management seminar and the subject of rewards was causing some dissension amongst the group. The speaker continued the discussion and then said he wanted some volunteers. He went on speaking for another 5 minutes and then called for his volunteers. Nobody moved or offered assistance. He asked again still no one moved then he added, but there is a bottle of wine and some chocolates to give away. Ten volunteers stood up and moved to the stage. The ten lined up in the front of the room and he added yes rewards can be contentious and students should do as they are asked but sometimes they need a little incentive.
My point is if you are going to have consequences, you also need rewards. If you only consider the intrinsic reward of being a good student to be a reward then change your thinking. This is only a valuable reward to the teacher and a very small group of students. Also a class should not run on fear so fear of consequence should not be a prime management control method. Some teachers will want to put pressure on the students by appearing angry all the time but this has a detrimental effect on learning.
Arnsten, Mazure & Sinha, (2012) informs us that research into the brain shows 'stress, in fact, can cripple our most advanced mental faculties, the areas of the brain most developed in primates.' This has big implications for the classroom as well as the workplace'. There are several problems and that is when the teacher or boss is in control of the stress by their actions the stress is hard to manage for the student or the worker therefore specific management and teaching methods are needed to allow students and workers to impose their own stress as Amy et.al also tells us that even under 'everyday stresses, the prefrontal cortex can shut down, allowing the amygdala, a locus for regulating emotional activity, to take over, inducing mental paralysis and panic'. Think of the things that create stress, it is different for everyone and it becomes obvious that a positive attitude and environment where workers and students are relaxed and engaged is a far more productive environment to be working in. Fear may be good for war but not for thinking. Happy students learn much better than scared or unhappy students.
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Environment
Check the room to see if it is conducive to education. Does it smell? If you have been in the room for a long time get another teacher to check as you can become used to the smell but new students coming into your room will not be. Is the seating reasonably comfortable and appropriate and has the 6ft student got room to stretch their legs. Have the kids been sitting in the room for a double lesson without any exercise. (I often send or take the kids outside to walk around the school before starting again).
Is the lighting good enough for the tasks you are expecting the students to do?
What time of the day is it. Late afternoon on a Friday trying to do academic instruction will be fraught with difficulties. Try changing the lesson to a hands-on art or craft based task. If it is mathematics save that lesson for doing maths games and maths trails.
What is bad behaviour
Do all the students understand what bad behavior is? Sadly this is not always so. Every family and every child is bought up differently. For some families it is bad if the child is not home before 11pm and for others it is 6pm to do your homework. Some students get hit with a stick or belted with an open hand so in the school anything less than that is not seen by the student as punishment or they think the teacher is not serious as they have not belted them. The teachers then have to find intrinsic rewards find intrinsic rewards and things that have meaning for that student to use correct behavior. Other students can do anything thing they like at home and the parents look at them with a stupid look on their face and say things like isn’t he cute or he always does that. When the teacher growls at them in class for inappropriate behavior, they say what behavior. All of these incidences require a consistent approach and should be considered a teaching moment (as frustrating as it is just don't let the anger take over as it is mostly counter productive).
Classroom rules.
Everyone is different so the teacher should do that age-old thing of classroom rules. The problem is too often the teacher simply resurrects last year’s list and says to the students here you are these are your rules. These are not the students rules they are the teachers rules and the students have no ownership of them. Each year the teacher has to try and get the students to do activities about rights and responsibilities so the students discuss behavior and the things they like and dislike in a classroom. To this end the students will make up their list of rights and responsibilities and they will have ownership of them. It is boring and frustrating for the teacher that such basic things have to be taught over and over but it is not about teaching it is about ensuring the students have ownership of their actions in the class.
Teacher body language.
As a teacher, you should now start looking at your own body language. This can be very difficult for many, as they need to act out all their emotions in front of a mirror to be sure they are actually expressing their emotions in their face and body language. Remember being a teacher is being an actor. The most important act of all is looking as if you are angry well before you are angry. Many times, this author has expressed displeasure at a student and turned around to wink at one of the better students who have never caused any disruption. The look of relief on one of the better student’s faces can be quite surprising.
Video yourself.
I have always recommended to new teachers to video themselves in front of a classroom, watch the video so they know what the content is like and then sit down with a colleague teacher to talk about their video. Managers have a tendency to jump on this and destroy the whole idea by being over critical and expressing what they do. They forget that we all have to find our own feet and what works for one does not work for all under all circumstances. The teacher has to feel their classroom experience again by watching the video so they can start programming their body and mind to different reactions in front of the class.
What to look for
Things to look for are:
- turning your back on the class while using the board,
- not moving around the classroom enough,
- asking questions of a variety of students not just the capable ones,
- not giving students enough time to answer,
- answering the students questions yourself (to be avoided as no one will answer if the teacher does it for them),
- doing annoying things like scratching your bum when stressed,
- ignoring an area of the room,
- failing to give some positive reinforcement with good work,
- watching out the corner of your eye for possible issues,
- using blame as a teaching tool (I cannot teach you because you never listen),
- using negativity as a teaching tool (you always do this wrong).
Often new teachers will be classroom blind while they are trying to deliver the lesson they have assiduously prepared. When the teacher is watching the video look for students whose understanding is disappearing with their eyes glazing over or their attention span dropping. Consider is there too much teacher talking or are the increments of the lesson too big for the student to understand, often these things can be seen on a video when there is a quiet time to reflect on the lesson.
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Be aware.
Now the techniques to use in the room can differ for every teacher and for every class. The teacher has to find the things that work best for them. Check the room as you enter if there are students already in the classroom.
Every time I walked into a room I scanned the students to see what they were up to or planning to do. One day I saw a student furtively glance at another as I walked in and hold their arm as if there was something in their hand. I did not say anything but went to the board and started writing, I waited 10 seconds and as I was writing, I said ‘Tom! Don’t throw that, get your book out’.
Every student started whispering how did he see that. It became a mystery that lasted a long time and certainly lifted my credibility with that group so much so that in later years it was still spoken about. A teacher has to be observant as it is the small mannerism that gives the student away and once a teacher starts to notice this, behavior management becomes much easier.Basic skills.
There are many tricks that teachers can use, eye contact being one of the strongest. Other techniques are
- aping the silly behavior,
- tap the desk of someone who is not listening,
- walking around the room and teaching from many different places.
- Walk up to a student who is not listening and asking what was the last thing I said.
- Write noisy students name on the board with a 3 minute penalty they have to work off with positive work.
There are many of these and a quick Google search will get the teacher many possible tools. The important thing is to find a variety of techniques that work for you the individual, and use them consistently.
Not all students should suffer
Do not forget mostly it is one or two students with behavior issues not all the class, so try not to punish everyone by consistently keeping the class in. This only antagonizes the other students and they will eventually stop working for you or dislike your class so your teaching and credibility has far less impact.
And always pick on the behavior never on the student. When bad behaviour is an issue then give the students options such as, you can either stop the offending behaviour or you can move to another seat, or, you can stop the offending behaviour or you can be exited from the class. The flip side is you have elected to continue your behaviour so you must move. This means the onus for all the actions are on the student not on the teacher so theoretically the teacher is maintaining their working relationship with the student unless there are other underlying issues.
As most students want to learn don’t make them suffer by stopping your delivery flow when using management techniques. Try to use eye contact, hand gestures, body position (stand beside or close), pointing to manage the students not listening or with a potential for problems. Where possible keep your presentation going for the benefit of the rest of the students.
Imagination and psychology keeps your management alive and dynamic.
Use your imagination and intelligence. I had a student who I liked but kept interrupting my class when I was talking. I kept him back after a class to negotiate and chat to him. The conversation went like this.
‘I am saying your name all the time and I can see it starting to annoy you as much as I, but I still have to do my job as a teacher’.
He agreed and made a few points and I went on to say
‘what about I give you a few seconds of time to say something funny and when I am ready to talk I touch the lobe of my ear like this’.
I also added
‘I find what you are saying funny and I have to contain myself to stop myself from laughing’.
He was happy as it gave him some leeway as well.
The result was a relaxed atmosphere where everyone had a laugh and at the appropriate time, I could continue to teach without disruption to my teaching. Interestingly the student reacted to the earlobe for a few weeks and by then he had learnt a more appropriate behavior manner where we all worked together and I did not have to touch my ear again.
Another time there was a group of student that would not move from the theory class to the workshop. I concentrated on the rest of the students getting them working and then went back into the theory room, ran across the room and jumped on their desk (large octagonal set up) and said; ‘you have two options, sit and listen to me sing or move into the workshop’. At that, I broke into a corny song. The students stood up, said ‘awww Wilky’, went, and worked with a smile on their face. It would have been easy to yell at the students to stop being lazy but then they would have gone with a sullen face, not worked and most likely caused problems.
Yelling can be overused and has limited value.
If you feel like losing your temper or yelling do not do it more than once a term/year as the students will set you up to see you perform, regardless of how scary you think you are. If you really are scary then the students are most likely not reaching their educational potential, as scared students do not learn as well as happy students.
Not working, then what.
What happens when it is not working? This is the bottom line and you should never go into a classroom without having this worked out. Remember the better prepared you are the less you need it as you will go in with a relaxed confidence and the students will pick up on this very quickly.
First step is to warn the student that their behavior is not appropriate and their behavior is stopping you from teaching, please stop that type of behaviour (it is always the behaviour you do not like, not the student) If you continue then I will have to shift you.
Second step is to say to the student, you are still doing the behaviours that are stopping me from teaching and doing my job, move to the new seat.
Step three. You are still doing the behaviours that are stopping all the students from learning so you have to go to another class for a cool down period. (Another student escorts the troublesome student or takes a card to get assistance). It is important to note this is a cool down time for the student. On some occasions that I have had to exit students with a green card (we had a green, orange and red card system to help determine response importance) I found upon talking to the student later that they had a major family disruption before they came to school and were slowly falling apart.
Step four in the other class the student sits in a prepared seat quietly with no expectation of working. But there is an expectations of making up the time and doing the work in an after school or lunchtime detention. Any failure to comply would have another student going for a senior staff member to remove the student. Try not to short cut the procedure at any stage regardless of how you feel as we as teachers are there to teach behavior that is socially acceptable for our culture and environment.
This process requires the school and many teachers to cooperate, but from experience it does work well.
A card system
The card system mentioned above was, a reliable student escorted the student with behaviour issues and presented a green card to the receiving teacher.
An orange card went to a senior staff member and had a higher level of importance
A red card went to a senior staff member used to dealing with major problems or to the principal and required immediate intervention.
Planning and good curriculum that is achievable by all students.
Do not forget there is no substitute for a good well-structured curriculum that has achievable goals for all students in the class. This can solve issues before they start.
The above works, the staff at our school was complaining about the students so the principal invited the social workers to our staff meeting to get some ideas on dealing with the non compliant students. About 70 staff were sitting around the room and the social workers starting asking for names of students and what they did that was inappropriate. The list slowly grew to about 25 hard core misfits and my Woodwork teaching colleague looked across at me and laughed. That must be your Metalwork class list as it is my woodwork class list. We were the only two teachers that had all the students in the one room at the one time and rarely had issues with them even though we did several theory units and technical drawing with them. I also had several of them in Health classes.
Don't wait for the small things to become big issues. Talk to students, understand them discuss the small issues while it is easy and the big ones do not come about as often.
Reference
Arnsten, Amy. Mazure, Carolyn, M. Sinha, Rajita. (2012) This Is Your Brain in Meltdown, Neural circuits responsible for conscious self-control are highly vulnerable to even mild stress. When they shut down, primal impulses go unchecked and mental paralysis sets in. 48 Scientific American, April 2012 neuroscience. [accessed 18/03/2013] http://medicine.yale.edu/whr/232_126326_Scientific%20American%20Article%20-%20April%202012.pdf
Rogers, Bill (2007). Cracking the Challenging Class. Sage publications [accessed 01/08/2012]
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- Published: 20 Jun 2012 Hits: 3541
There are many ways to approach creative thinking including the use of De Bono's hats. All teachers should find a method that suits them and extends their students. The two methods below are simple and easy to implement in the classroom and have been used extensively over the last 20 years. A google search will find more.
To start with, the ubiquitous mind-map is always a favourite. Here is an animation used to assist students in learning how to create in depth mind-maps. That is with more than one level with many branches. The students have to create mind-maps that are about 4 - 5 levels for a small project and about 15 or more for extensive projects.
To start, the students all get a sheet of paper. If the mind-map is part of group work a large sheet of paper can be used and the small group all sitting around the sheet can add to the mind-map.
The students should not be researching yet as they need to utilize what they already know, to make sure their learning is being applied across all disciplines. On the pretext that some of the best ideas come from the most innocuous things, the students are not allowed to use erasers and their mind-map is not to be beautiful. In my classes I try to get the students to keep the pencil moving at all times even if it is to doodle on the paper while their brain is ticking over (I watch this closely so the doodle does not become the main focus of the mind-map). It is not hard to get all the 3 main learning styles of auditory, kineasthetic and visual, in use at the same time and the students generally love the activity.
{ads1}If the students ideas start to wind down too quickly make them swap maps with another student and add ideas to the new map. If the teacher stops the students from asking questions about the new map they will have to use their own imagination and will often generate new and creative ideas.
There can be much made of the comment "There is no such thing as a bad idea; It is what you do with the idea that is good or bad".
Another simple design and ideas process htat can be used is for the students to get a book or dictionary in their hands.
- The student closes their eyes, opens the book and puts their finger on the page.
- The word from under the finger goes in the top left of a sheet of paper.
- The desired goal is placed in the bottom right of the paper.
Starting from the top left and in small increments or drawings (stick figures are ok as it is not an art exercise) try and arrive at your goal.
In the picture it can be seen that 4 usable ideas that have a certain amount of originality would satisfy the goal at the bottom.Using paper for generating ideas is often better than the computer as the ideas tend to be generated quicker and the action makes better use of Kinesthetic learning styles. After the students have a good and extensive collection of ideas they can do more planning on the computer using any number of mind-mapping or 'organising ideas' software.
Another choice is to start a journal / diary where the students can order their thoughts and start their research. This style has the benefit of the teacher being able to look at the document and offer guiding questions to help the students understand their topics. The offering of guiding questions such as 'how are you showing evidence of this'? and the students giving their ideas maintains a student centred classroom.
The teacher should be aware that when they tell the student what to do they often move into a teacher centred environment and can get training and education very confused.
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- Published: 14 Jan 2012 Hits: 2865
What is education these days?
30 years ago education was about knowledge. Read, remember, test, forget (sorry that was the cynical part of my nature).
Like most educational trends they swing in big arcs and throw out the good bits with the bad (throw out the baby with the bath water). About 30 years ago, the big swing was to design education and then to teaching for understanding, which after teaching in many different systems I still think teaching for understanding is the best concept but not to throw out all the knowledge as students have to have enough knowledge to know there is a question to ask.
The issue has always been how much knowledge is required as a lead into the process of understanding the process of understanding. There has to be enough knowledge to know there is a question that needs to be asked. From that point on Google takes over in the knowledge stakes and frees the teacher to concentrate on the questions the students are asking and the levels of understanding they are reaching. If the teacher can inspire the student to ask the question then the students mind is ready and primed for the information as opposed to when the teacher is talking too much. When the teacher is talking too much, the student’s brain is invariably thinking about the latest thing their friend has written in Facebook. So the basis of teaching could be considered to be, the teacher talking less and the students asking more. Back to the questions that students ask, are they good ones? More time needs to be spent in the class room teaching students how to ask good questions and most importantly asking a good question of Google.
The students form a question for the search engines and if their question is a good one, they will get the knowledge they are searching for in the first page. If they don’t get a good answer they must ask a better question of the search engine.
If the students are learning how to ask questions the role of the teacher changes dramatically to one who sets the problems for the students, and to ask questions about what the student is trying to achieve. The teachers role can be to assist the students by helping them to clarify their thoughts, often on a one to one basis to help develop their understanding.
The teachers place in the classroom goes from the front of the room to being with the student fostering their understanding and assisting with the questions they are asking of Google. The full circle comes back to how much knowledge do the students need, the answer is very little especially if we look at Sugata Mitra's (2010) thoughts on child-driven education but students still need lots of guidance by using questions to assist students for both clarifying their understanding and maximising the speed at which they learn.
As a basic principle the less said in the classroom and the more guidance and re-questioning done with individual students the quicker the student learns and they do so with greater understanding. The teacher also has to remember they are not there to show off how much they know, they are there to illicit questions and teach the students how to learn. Showing off goes straight back to a teacher centered classroom, not a good approach if researched styles of good teaching psychology are to be believed.
As a side note the students still need to be taught how to verify information from the Internet and be shown how the teacher checks their work to see if they have copied directly from the nternet. They also need help with interpreting and assimilating information to the higher levels of Blooms Taxonomy.i
Reference
Mitra, Sugata. (2010) Child-driven education. TED Global 2010 [viewed 20/03/2013]. http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_the_child_driven_education.html
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- Published: 08 Jul 2012 Hits: 6753
Independent studies a working document (Brett Wilkin 2012)
Theory of Independent Studies.
Independent studies can be operated at many different levels from Prathom 3 or 4 up to University level. The strength of these studies is in their ability to extend students and make them think.
Traditional classrooms didactic teaching style is known to dampen a student’s desire to learn where as activities such as Independent Studies have been shown to enhance a student’s desire to learn and the students become more involved with their own education at a thinking level.Independent studies also teach students how to learn without the needs for teachers later on in life (life long learning). Students can make big steps to becoming an autonomous learner through Independent studies. Correctly run students get the feeling that studies are for everything and to find out about things is fun. When the topic is stipulated or guided, students get the feeling that all study is just work.
The web site teaching expertise has this to say about the importance of what an Independent Study can do for the student. Independent learning skills promote pupils' ability in reviewing, recording and reflecting on their learning. They also encourage independence in problem-solving, decision-making and organization. However, they take time to establish and, for many pupils, require deliberate teaching and modeling.Any doubts as to why Independent Studies should be an integral part of Education.
Watch the video.
The Essence of an Independent Study.
The essence of an Independent study is, it is the students study not the teachers the students study not the teachers. The decision-making processes are the students and the teacher has to stop teaching and act as a facilitator. The essential goals are the teachers but it is important to give the students as much ownership of these goals as possible so they also have to own the responsibility (To learn responsibility you have to be given responsibility).
The best Independent studies do not need to concentrate on a topic. The topic can be of a student’s personal interest. It is the quality, style and type of presentation at the end that is the most important. To put it another way it is the process rather than the topic that is important. The learning the students can gain is also amplified by letting them have control over the topic. There are many issues for learning here, one is to have some control over your destiny (in this case some control of their life in the classroom) and the concept of anything is worthy of research and learning, even the things a students sees as fun not school work.
Guided Learning.
Guided Learning is the prime role of the teacher in conducting Independent Studies. The teacher has to ask guiding questions to make the students develop the solutions to their own problems. (Guided learning is not giving direct instruction).
The student’s role.
The students’ role is to establish goals and how they are going to show evidence of their understanding of the topic/s. The topics could be an hypothesis Big Idea or skill (e.g. genres in writing). The problem for the student is what is evidence and how do they show evidence of understanding.
Objective Big Idea or Hypothesis.
First of all the aims and objectives have to be established, traditionally these relate to the Governments aims for education and then the established school curriculum.
To put it another way, why are you doing the independent study and what do you intend to get out of it. It may be the government has stated students are to understand Thai culture and history, or you are trying to teach the students the importance of reading skills. Don;t forget the more stipulated the topic is the less of an Independent study it is and the more a research project it becomes.The Independent study can be topic orientated or skill orientated. The skill orientation method is for the results or evidences to show understanding of specific skills. For example, the student has to understand the place of literature in peoples lives. The assessment could involve evidences of different Genres. The topic can then have a focus on something the student is interested in such as comic books adn in the assessment the student can be assessed on their understanding of different genres.
Giving the students a lesson on the rivers of Thailand is not conducive to Independent study. However, having the students Brain Storming or mind mapping a project based on the rivers of Thailand past present and future and their importance to Thai culture, could be a good Independent Study. Within the guidelines for assessment the students may have to present evidences of different writing genres combined with auditory and visual evidences. The students would become active learners as opposed to passive recipients of knowledge that will be forgotten in the next week after the exam. The main issue for the teacher is not to become too restrictive in the guidelines so the initiatives are taken away from the students to simply form another teacher centered classroom.
Implementation.
The teacher introduces the Study and explains to the students that the independent study is a requirement of the curriculum, not a requirement of the teacher. In this way any angst the students who are having problems with the study will be directed as more against the governments requirements and the teacher will maintain a much more affective working relationship with the students. The students will see the teacher in the role of someone actively helping them so they can show results to some other more important body. This working relationship is very important to capitalize on as it extends the teachers effectiveness.
The teacher should not state, give me a project on dance in Thai culture.
As an example the students should get something like, show me evidence of how Thai culture has affected and will affect Thai’s, What is the result of that now and what is the future of Thai culture.Evidences of understanding.
Consider: The past was, the present is, and the future could be.
How to show evidence.
To show evidence of understanding the student would need to present their information in several different formats and each format should be supporting each other in evolving demonstration of understanding.
For example when teaching writing styles. The independent study has to show understanding of several different genres. One of the presentations could be a play using a script; another could be a critic of the play. Another presentation could be a movie of the play and yet another could be a lecture about the implications of the play with lecture notes.
THE STUDENT SHOULD ARRIVE AT THESE WITH GUIDED QUESTIONING AND THEY MAY THINK OF MANY BETTER WAYS OF SHOWING EVIDENCE OF THEIR UNDERSTANDING.Introduction.
When the teacher introduces the study, it is in terms of questions based on the students initial and developing planning.
'How are you going to show evidence of this’?
‘How are you going to show understanding of this'?
‘What can you do to show me you understand'?
Structure your goals (Mind mapping is good here).
Structure the goals so there is a relationship to all 4 Hermann Brain Dominance this should mean the student is training the whole brain and also relate the final product back to Learning styles of, aural, kinesthetic and visual presentations.All of this would be tailored to suit the age group as this is predominately for older students.
To link to Brain Dominance, assessment will typically include the concepts of Organisation and structure (green dominance) and relationship to people and humanities (red dominance). For the blue and yellow dominance's, assessment would be related to specific goals (blue dominance) and art, culture and global issues for the yellow dominance. Economics global warming Thai health your relationship to the bigger picture are all typical yellow brain thinking. This can be part of the process of the study so that all students get to work in their preferred Brain Dominance and Learning styles. This becomes an affective tool if the I.S. is a group project with a group focus. Once again this wuuld tend to be for older groups.
http://67.20.69.206/index.php/teachingtheory/brain-dominance-1
The teacher will need to lay some ground work as to what is evidence, evidence will be things such as the theory and practice, what does it look like, what will it look like. Some of the best evidence comes from future concepts such as what can it do for us in the future. Where else can it be used? Are there any other ways it can be utilized? A good hypothesis helps here as well if it is not to limiting to the students thoughts.Implementation Rules of Engagement.
Goals established and rules of engagement established then process needs to stated.
Introduction- Your study is to show evidence of.........skills in.......about .....and.....
- No two evidences are to be the same.......plagiarism checked..............
- Submit an application for the study.........must contain a time line of the students making.......................
- All work is automatically checked for plagiarism (copied work).
Reference all work.
Assessments can be a combination that includes peer assessment as this helps develop critical evaluation and thinking skills. The planning can be in groups of 3 but all evidences submitted can be individual work if individuality is required. The groups are good for helping each other and discussing ideas.
Ideas.
Brainstorm ideas of based on topics and how to show evidences of understanding. This can be in groups of 3 (optional) ... social learning is a very powerful learning tool.Note: Application to study. In the class of the Learning Management example for this website the students were required to produce an application to study. For these older students it was their first I.S. and they thought it was free time
. To ensure there that the sense of direction for study was appropriate the application to study was a planning document for the teacher to get a sense of the students ideas.
The students will produce a document as an application to study. Upload the document to the eLearn course for approval and feedback. Extensive use is made of a LMS (learning management system) as this helps simplify the extensive feedback and redirection needed to assist students doing Independent studies for the first time. This process also facilitates the negotiations with the teacher in English in an EFL environment.
Teacher will approve/not approve study and ask guiding questions as to how the student proposal shows evidence of understanding. Teacher will ask questions as to how the student intends to present their study. (Keep in mind Brain Dominance's and Learning Styles). Working.
Students will now start developing their arguments and evidences.Methodology in the classroom.
It is very important the teacher does not slip into telling the student as this immediately slips from a ‘Student Centred Classroom’ to a ‘teacher Centred classroom’. It also creates the problem of the student doing what they think the teacher wants to see as opposed to solving the question of how to show evidence.
Important: Guiding questions.
Guiding questions should show the student the way, not teacher statements as to expectations.
Expectations should have been clearly established at the beginning when the guidelines were established, or altered the next time the Independent study is given. The guiding questions could be like 'what were our original goals we established? Which goal relates to your question?
Presentation of evidences. In the case of use in this Learning Management activity.
Students will have at least
- • One visual presentation (Acting, movie etc). Peer assessment.
- • One spoken presentation (Lecture, poetry, reading of story ie original work), Teacher assessment via rubric.
- • One written presentation (A study on ?? for the class to read and assess.) Self assessment with critic.
- • One graphic presentation. (Poster, in depth visual timeline with graphs etc. A cartoon story about topic. A newspaper article that illustrates your evidences. Peer assessment,
- • A presentation to the community.
Community assessment.
Assessments will involve.
- How your project relates to people and community.
- How the structure and order of your evidences in the presentations demonstrates understanding.
- Whether understanding is achieved through the goals or original hypothesis.
- Understanding being reached by relating to the bigger issues such as environment health national education etc.
Roles
Students = develop goals and objectives for evidence with references
Teacher = facilitator and helper.Supporting comments.
http://www.teachingexpertise.com/articles/developing-independent-learning-skills-719
This article looks at increasing the first of these attributes, namely developing increasing pupil independence in learning. Independent learning skills are an essential preparation for life and for transition to, and success in, vocational, college or HE courses. Independent learning skills promote pupils' ability in reviewing, recording and reflecting on their learning. They also encourage independence in problem-solving, decision-making and organisation. However, they take time to establish and, for many pupils, require deliberate teaching and modelling. Therefore if pupils are to become actively involved in increasing their independence in their own learning, they need firstly to acquire the ability to learn how to learn.The role of the teacher
Teachers need to set and clarify learning objectives, expectations and boundaries and to share these with pupils. They need to assist students to acquire the knowledge, skills and understanding and plan structured opportunities in which to demonstrate, practise and apply these skills and to reflect and build on their learning. This may require consideration of strategies and procedures to increase flexibility so that the curriculum:
- • is delivered through a varied but balanced range of teaching methods (e.g. didactic, active and experiential)
- • meets the needs of all learning styles (e.g. visual, aesthetic, kinaesthetic, reflective, theoretical, pragmatic and active)
- • helps pupil to make connections with other learning by breaking large tasks into manageable steps and demonstrating the relevance of what is being learnt, now and in the future
- • encourages pupils to participate by ensuring they understand outcomes and have opportunities to review, record and reflect on their progress
- • supports assessment for learning through teacher, peer or self-assessment.
Conclusion
Learning to learn demands a solution-focused approach to classroom tasks and determination to overcome obstacles. It requires pupils to be empowered to influence the way in which they approach and complete their learning. This suggests trust between teacher and student and a sharing of identified targets that are negotiated and agreed. Learning to learn increases the responsibility upon the pupil to accept their role in directing their learning; and for pupils who are familiar to more didactic schooling, this may appear unstructured. However, it can lead to greater engagement with learning, reduce disaffection and support skills for learning throughout life.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_study
For elementary and junior high, it is sometimes a GATE study where the student receives a packet and must research their topic and formulate and answer questions. At the end, they develop and present a product, although not all GATE systems participate in this action. (GATE = Gifted and Talented Education{BW})
http://www.cde.ca.gov/sp/eo/is/
School districts cannot force students into independent study programs; students and parents choose this type of study on their own. Independent study programs are designed to help students who have health problems, are parents, are gifted, are working, or who find that regular classroom settings do not meet their needs.
Teaching Gifted Students Through Independent Study
by Susan K. Johnsen and Krystal K. Goree ‘Most students might define an independent study in the same way as this 3rd grader, but it is much more than reading books and writing papers. Independent studies may be used for solving community problems; uncovering new questions; writing histories; and, most importantly, helping a student create a lifelong love affair with learning’.Any doubts about why Independent Studies should be an integral part of education, watch the video again.
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- Published: 09 Jan 2012 Hits: 3955
Around the ragged rock the ragged rascal ran.
Alliterations are simply small pieces of poetry, generally nonsensical that sound funny to say. As a teaching tool they force the muscles in the mouth and tongue to practice the movements needed to speak a different language. The way the mouth forms the sounds is crucial for good language and the term used is how we enunciate our words. Many years ago one of my students was stressed due to a speech lisp she had.
She had the speech impediment for many years but some of her friends had started to tease her. I listened to her speech and felt if she gave the muscles of the mouth and tongue specific exercise it would help her problem. Four weeks later
after practicing her sheets of alliterations twice a day her lisp had disappeared. I have noticed a rapid improvement in Thai students with the difficult "L" and "R" sounds. If I can get them to practice the alliterations, their enunciation of the "L" and "R" sounds, improves dramatically.
e·nun·ci·ate
[ih-nuhn-see-eyt] verb, -at·ed, -at·ing.verb (used with object)1.to utter or pronounce (words, sentences, etc.),especially in an articulate or a particular manner: He enunciates his words distinctly.
There are thousands of illiterations on the internet for students to practice, here are just a few to get you started."Surely Sylvia swims!""Surely Sylvia swims!" shrieked Sammy, surprised.
"Someone should show Sylvia some strokes
so she shall not sink."Wow, race winnersWow, race winners really want red wine right away!Which witchWhich witch wished which wicked wish?These six sheepThese six sheep shouldn't sleep in a shack;
sheep should sleep in a shed.The two-twenty-two trainThe two-twenty-two train tore through the tunnel.The great Greek grape growersThe great Greek grape growers grow great Greek grapes.The big black bugThe big black bug bit the big black bear,
but the big black bear bit the big black bug back!Learning Alliterations 2
Ruby Rugby's brotherRuby Rugby's brother bought and brought her back
some rubber baby-buggy bumpers.Round the rugged rockRound the rugged rock, the ragged rascal ran.Rory the warriorRory the warrior and Roger the worrier
were reared wrongly in a rural brewery.Rhys watched RossRhys watched Ross switch his Irish wristwatch for a Swiss wristwatch.Peter Piper
Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.
Did Peter Piper pick a peck of pickled peppers?
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
where's the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?ListenListen to the local yokel yodel.Lily ladlesLily ladles little Letty's lentil soup.If you stick a stock of liquorIf you stick a stock of liquor in your locker,
It's slick to stick a lock upon your stock,
Or some stickler who is slicker
Will stick you of your liquor
If you fail to lock your liquor
With a lock!
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- Published: 07 Jul 2012 Hits: 4623
Making links in the brain.
Traditional teaching was typically taught as topic based and subject based and amazingly much teaching is still done this way. This author is not advocating that the topic or subject is not important, it is, but what is more important is what can be done with the topic or subject and how it relates to the world.
When the topic or subject becomes the most important piece of the learning, the brain tends to compartmentalize learning and the links to other learning is very tenuous. When new learning enters the brain, often it will be a new compartment so has to be learnt in its fullness as a new topic, which can be hard work for the learner. Links between learning will eventually happen and when they occur, it is like a flash of understanding or inspiration and for some it can instigate a feeling of elation. The biggest problem with compartmentalized learning is it can sometimes delay the flash of understanding for many years, and there is no guarantee that it will ever happen.
Some teaching practices can help create these links in the brain but why worry about creating links. Firstly, we need to worry about links as making them facilitates learning by giving the students something to compare the learning with. This comparison assist students to expand their awareness of what they are learning and helps them to remember as they only have to remember a small piece of information or concepts instead of large pieces of remembering where totally new knowledge is concerned. Not only does it facilitate learning but also it increases the speed at which students learn while making the learning easier. Instead of only having a subjects narrow scope to hang new learning on, the student who can make links in their brain have their whole brain capacity to link new learning too.
One process that can be used is to set a project with a focus. In the example being used here, the study is done in computing. HOWEVER, the computer is neither the topic or the focus, it is merely a tool to be considered at the end. (Secretly the students have to use multiple software packages to present a topic) At this stage, the computer must not be the controlling factor. The students thinking must be the controlling factor. To this end the students must be kept thinking about the Mini Project they are to complete with a focus rather than any conversations about computers..
Step one for this example was to talk about how making links in the brain and how it helps make learning easier The students are then asked to do a mind map of possible project ideas.At this stage ‘there is no such thing as a bad idea, it is what you do with the idea that is either good or bad’ This author has been using this saying for 28 years in teaching practices and lateral thinking teaching.
In this example 3 whiteboard marker were used and they were given to the students to do a mind map bubble on the board. As each student added to the white board mind map they passed the marker to another student. The mind map grew rapidly and the ideas become more consolidated.
When the mind map was finished, the students started to plan what they might do with their ideas for a project and at this time the idea of a focus was added to the project. The students were asked how they could link these project ideas to a focus of several subjects. The questions they were asked to solve were, ‘where is the science in this topic, where is the art in this topic, where is the English in this topic where is the maths in this topic. The students became interested in where the links where between the subjects and then how to give their project different focuses.Now the project is expanding from original concepts or topics that interest the students and has a focus on making links between subject matter. The students’ ideas are still the prime concern at this stage as is the concept that ‘there is no such thing as a bad idea’.
It should be noted at this stage that the computers and software have not been mentioned, yet this is one of the secret goals of the teacher.
The students now start to put their ideas into a more substantial form and should now start to discuss how are they going to present their projects. In this example, the teacher wanted the students to use multiple software to present the projects subject matter. After looking through the students’ notes and their study outline, it is easy to link several different software programs to different parts of their project. Some parts were best for sound editing with Garage Band or Audacity and Hydrogen, some parts were best for making posters with Photoshop or Gimp. Other parts were best to have small animations or movies made to present work. Certainly, at the end it is not hard to guide the students into thinking that the best ways to present the different parts of the project as poster another part as movie or animation another part as audio and another as PowerPoint style presentation.
The software is left to the end as we want the students mind and ideas to be in control of the Mini Project not preconceived notions about what a computer does. If we start talking about software first then the preconceived notions about what the computer can do will affect the outcomes of the students thinking. It can even mean the student stops thinking and does a variation of a poster they have often seen or even to alter slightly something they find on the internet. If this happens they have a product with no or very little thinking and no exercising of their creative and analytical capacity.
Of course there are many ways to do this. A similar concept is Independent Studies and the hero of creative thinking Edward De Bono hero of creative thinking Edward De Bono and his hats. There are many persons that have developed analytical and thinking tools and many of these can be taught at very young ages. The value of these can never be under rated as the world our children are growing up in is changing exponentially.
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- Published: 04 Aug 2012 Hits: 7337
Peer assessment has been in use for many years. It started for the author 25 years ago when students would bring their Technology project or wood metal project to me for assessment.
Three or four students would crowd around the job and they would be asked to describe the best thing about the project and the worst thing about the project. From this, there would be a teacher-guided discussion ending with the students giving a value out of 20 to the project.
Some students would give themselves an inflated mark so they would be asked about different parts of the project and how their project was created,
The discussion would go like. ’is this perfect? Let’s ask what the others think. Often the reaction will be to fail themselves so the group (with teacher guided questions) conversation would develop to, but this has worked well, or your ideas are sound and worth some points. Eventually the discussion would lead to an assessed value but with the student having a clear idea as to what is value and what is not. This teaches the student to be critical of themselves for the correct reasons. Rarely could students give a constructive and objective view of their own work. Most would start by putting themselves down and giving their work no value or they would have no idea how to be critical of their own work and give themselves top marks. This is where the teacher guided discussion is important and the teacher has to keep remembering the reason they are doing this process is to teach the students by getting them involved in the process.
It does not take long for the students to grasp the idea of being critical and the next time the process is used the students are far more objective.
The good part about learning to assess their own work and understanding the concept of quality concept of quality is that students eventually do not need teachers as they can self teach and assess the quality of their own work. The belief is, if a person does not understand quality or has not been taught about quality, their personal learning can be very haphazard and the concept of lifelong learning is not as affective.
Assessment with whole classes can be very time consuming due to the collating of a huge amount of data. This can be done using excel databases and formulas to put the data in order so it can be used for assessments but the collating can be very boring and time consuming. A class of 25 can generate about 6oo bits of data and more with extra questions.
If the projects come in at different times the assessment can be completed over staggered times in small groups.
Current trends for Peer assessments, obviously have not changed, obviously, because all the same issues are still issues, such as students being naive assessors that Dr Langan and Dr Wheater (2003) mention. The issues can be tackled the same as anything different that is introduced to the students, that is, teach them some skills to use, even going as far as mind-mapping different desirable and undesirable aspects of the project. In some cases, part of this teaching will be the difference between assessing a student’s output or product and assessing the student how they feel about the project and why. This is the difference between Objective and Subjective assessments. One other subject to be careful with is to get the feedback to be couched in positive terms. An example could be. ‘It would be good to see more of the green themes’, not to make comments like, ‘why did you use yellow it is horrible’. Couching everything in positive terms is very important, as negativity has never been a good teaching or management model.
It can be noted that if students have been exposed to good assessment rubrics the peer group assessment becomes easier. A Learning Management System (in this case Moodle ) can make the process of peer group assessment with large classes exceptionally easy. Before Moodle students would assess each others presentations on a slip of paper and all the data would be put into an excel database and formulas used to find a score for each student.
Now with Moodle, a feedback activity module is packed with the software but has to be activated in the site administration. A feedback activity is put in the unit of work for the class and the students can log into their Moodle account and leave an assessment for each student after the student has finished their presentation.
References.
Langan, Dr A. Mark and Wheater, Dr C. Philip (2003) Learning and Teaching in Action Learning Teaching Unit Manchester Metropolitan University. http://www.celt.mmu.ac.uk/ltia/issue4/langanwheater.shtml [accessed 04/08/2012]
More information can be found at the following sites.
http://staff.mq.edu.au/teaching/evaluation/resources_evaluation/developing_unit/assess_achievement/
http://www.reading.ac.uk/engageinassessment/peer-and-self-assessment/peer-assessment/eia-peer-assessment- troubleshooting.aspx
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- Published: 08 Apr 2013 Hits: 7502
Where does Ruby Payne fit into teaching.
Introduction.
I had the opportunity to listen to Ruby Payne’s seminars twice while living and teaching in Tasmania. Her analysis of classroom actions was, for me, like having a light turn on. There have also been discussion groups of her research in relation to teaching some of the more difficult students.
As stated elsewhere in this website, some of my students have been interesting and difficult at different times. This teacher has rarely had a problem with students when many other teachers were tearing their hair out and even some quitting teaching altogether. Was this luck or something else?I have the view that patience was a major factor but when the patience ran out the reaction from me was explosive. However, one hour later while driving down town after school I would wave to the problem student as if nothing had happened. I always attributed this to getting over the angst very quickly and never holding a grudge. As my patience developed again it was often time to talk to the student and explain that we are all human and so suffer from emotional stress. I found that by admitting that the problem could have been handled better on my part a grudging respect from the student would ensue.
Many times a student would mention casually that they were hungry so they would be asked about their lunch and did they have breakfast? If the answer was no they were taken straight to the school canteen and the canteen staff (usually a lady) was asked to feed the student and it be billed to my account.
It was years later when reading Ruby Payne’s research that it occurred to me why I had so little trouble with many of the students when so many teachers had ongoing issues.
Ruby Payne
Ruby Payne categorised society into lower, middle class and upper class but not based solely on money. There are wealthy people in lower class societies and there are poor people in wealthy societies. Her research is strongly about the hidden language of lower, middle and upper groups of people and where people put themselves in these groups and the hidden language they use. Certainly in most schools there is a range of students but often the predominance are the middle and lower class groups. The use of lower class in this case is not meant to be derogatory it is how Payne classified them in the seminars that I attended and as mentioned some people in this group are wealthy from a monetary perspective.
Her research is also about how people learn to survive with the resources that are available to them or that they are willing to use. Certainly, the minimal resources associated with poverty pushes people into a particular lifestyle and one of the most important resource available to them is relationships with family and friends. Therefore, to foster and cultivate these relationships is viewed by this group as an important activity.
Relationships.
As lower socioeconomic groups consider relationships to be very important, a teacher chastising a student can find themselves facing the students and their friends.
Ruby Payne described the concept of relationships and the differences in this way. A lower socio-economic person will borrow money from a ‘loan shark’ to pay bail to get their son out of a week’s goal time due to a misdemeanor. A middle class person will leave their child in goal for the week to contemplate what they should have done and to think about correcting their ways. The upper socio-economic group simply gets the family lawyer in and the son does no goal time.
In the class room, if a teacher can find some common ground with a student and create a working relationship, the lower socioeconomic students will work hard to foster the relationship, in turn giving the teacher an easier time and more credibility. After all when the teacher lacks credibility in the eyes of the student, everything the teacher says is up for debate.
In one of my classes, a student was being difficult (‘a bit silly’) and one of the other students quietly informed him to stop being a jerk because if ‘Wilky’ doesn’t spin kick your head off I will. The student was well behaved for the rest of the lesson and I did not say a thing other than help him with his work. Fostering working relationships can change the makeup of a class dramatically.
Teachers who have worked with difficult students will agree that one of the most powerful things a teacher can do for a student is to give them choices so they don’t have to leave their own culture behind. Teaching the hidden class languages of emotional, physical, manners, food, relationships and presentation empowers the student to make the choices that can allow them to succeed.
In another of my classes, a student refused to attend school. However, I arranged for the student return to school on a one to one basis in my classroom and have individual classes. During these classes the student did not fall behind with the main stream lesson content as this was what we studied but there were many discussions about the problems he was dealing with in normal classes and we discussed different ways of dealing with those issues. integrated himself full time We also discussed the different languages that are used in a school and how we have to get used to using one language for home another with our friends and another in school. In this case, after about 5 weeks the student was put back into some classes and found things were much easier with his new understanding. A week later he had integrated himself full time back into the class. After going back into the class full time he went from a lower level student to a higher level just due to a greater understanding of the content and people.
Some teachers were critical in saying he was using the situation to be lazy but in reality he certainly did not try and take advantage of the situation and neither did any other student who needed the extra support. Many of these students in later years after leaving school, commented on how it was the only thing that kept them at school and enabled them to succeed. This of course is anecdotal. Yet here is no avoiding the fact that teachers must develop working relationships with their students and to do this they must understand how the different levels of society works.
This needs to be qualified a little, in that teachers are not there to be their friend but to be a significant adult that the student can respect and rely on. Above all teachers need to put their preconceived notions about different levels of society away and concentrate on building working relationships with an understanding of their students.
A Hungry Student.
A very important part of Payne’s research was food. The school that I taught in occasionally ran breakfast clubs to ensure that no students went hungry. From a personal perspective no student of mine need go without food and most of them knew this.
Yet within that school there was the issue of who was responsible for the food. When the students knew they could get food from a teacher if they were very hungry they used this ‘get breakfast at school’ sparingly and tended to accept their own responsibility to eat at home. However, when the breakfast clubs were run the parents had a tendency to say ‘get breakfast at school’. As soon as the school took on the responsibility, in many cases the parents were happy to relinquish their responsibility.
Hungry students are either antsy, lack concentration or are tired. Either way it is not appropriate for learning or for good classroom management. Often the issue has to be resolved if teaching is to continue. The simple reaction is to exit the student from the class or send them home but that can be a negative action that rarely solves the problem. There are more subtle methods of ensuring a student can get food from a ‘friend’ or significant adult.
The way I did it was to have an understanding with the canteen ladies where I would write a note and the student would put some food against my account. In the 25 years of teaching not one student forgot to reimburse me although sometimes it would take a couple of weeks. During that time I never asked the student for money as it was their responsibility.
Presentation.
The presentation of food has a different meaning for different socioeconomic groups. Using Payne’s definition, for lower class groups it is quantity, for middle class it is quality and for upper class it is presentation.
This concept can work across many things as well as food, for example, clothing. Where presentation is perceived to be the equal of quality, schools need to add something in the curriculum so students understand that presentation is not related to quality at all.
I digress a little in that I bought some clothes as a birthday present for my first wife many years ago and thought I was buying quality from an up market shop. My wife looked at them and said ‘you bought them where’ and promptly took them back to the shop for a refund. The material and workmanship was good but the price was well in excess of the overall quality of the products. What would your guess be, lower middle or upper class? Obviously, some understanding of language was missing.
Generational Unemployment.
How often has a teacher, without an understanding of poverty, said to a student ‘that you will not amount to anything if you don’t study this’ or ‘you will never be any good if you don’t settle down’. In many cases they are saying it to a student who has a family life where they have their computer video players and motor bike, the understanding of other choicesfamily has a car and they have a roof over their head yet the father and his grandfather have never had work for more than a month at a time. The student will often think the teacher is stupid for working so hard when they need not work at all. The only thing the teacher can offer the student is an understanding of other choices and where they might lead. They can also offer students examples of a different life experience. All to often teachers start their teaching at what is good for themselves.
To achieve this, teachers need to gain experience in many different areas so they can relate to students on many levels using tools similar to Payne’s hidden class languages. Learn what the generational unemployed are thinking and offer something that the student sees as worthwhile so they approach learning more actively.
Language.
Although the idea of students living in language poverty is not new and much has been written about it, yet we still have to relate to them and teach them. Nowhere is this more obvious than working in an environment of English as a Foreign Language (EFL).
Here it is not money being the issue it is poverty of exposure to the foreign language.
For some students in poverty they are simply not exposed to enough language so their vocabulary is very limited. Not only is their vocabulary limited, so is the manner in which they understand the language. Just learning the words is only half the answer, understanding the hidden language that the words convey is just as important, especially when relating to others.
A little understanding of language and how it is interpreted in the different levels of society can go a long way to facilitating the teaching of a large range of students in the one class.
Another writer in this field is Lisa Delpit (1995). She writes about different easily lose credibilityclass groups and minority groups and their use of language. She quotes an observation of how a teacher can so easily lose credibility.
• TEACHER: Good morning, Tony, how are you?
• TONY: I be’s fine.
• TEACHER: Tony, I said, How are you?
• TONY: (with raised voice) I be’s fine.
• TEACHER: No, Tony, I said how are you?
• TONY: (angrily) I done told you I be’s fine and I ain’t telling you no more!
The student now thinks the teacher is stupid and has to have things explained to them many times so that they understand. The trick here is for the teacher to read the situation better and learn when to relax and when to correct. Certainly, correcting in this example had a negative impact instead of a positive one. This does not mean we don’t teach in as many possible language dialects as we can to maximize the students learning potential. Teachers have to be a little more in tune with our students and teach at optimal times.
Both Delpit and Payne write strongly about understanding our students and their language if we are going to teach them.
Delpit (1995) ran an experiment with pre-service teachers where she forced them to use a dialect to explain why they were taking up teaching. ‘During a follow up discussion, all students invariably speak of the impossibility of attempting to apply rules while trying to formulate and express a thought. Forcing speakers to monitor their language for rules while speaking, typically produces silence.’ In another similar experiment not only did the teachers go silent but many started playing up exactly the same as poorly behaved students. It certainly proves how difficult it is to think and converse in a different dialect and how much stress is on a student whose language is a different dialect to the normal middle class school values. In the EFL situation teachers should have considerable patience and be totally non judgmental when it is not only a dialect but a whole new language.
Manners.
Here is another issue that can be difficult to deal with. What are good manners in one level of society can be insulting in other levels. Tell a person from a lower class group some inane piece of information in an upper class language and see what reaction you get. Of course, the opposite is relevant in that using lower class automatically sets up a barrierlanguage to an upper class student will not enhance the teacher’s credibility regardless that the communication, content and context are all the same. The incorrect language automatically sets up a barrier to the speaker. Based on the speed with which we make judgements of others, these barriers are to the detriment of work and our society as they may or may not be accurate. These initial judgements, according to my quick scan of the internet, happen in about seven seconds. Although surprisingly accurate, they are not allowing us a clear perception of the critical thinking competence in specific skills or the ability to work under stress in different environments. The use of the incorrect language can cost in different situations. We need to teach the students the different ways of communicating and making them aware of the hidden languages of a class society.
Mobility across societal levels.
The research tells us that it is hard to move from one level to another but to move two levels is almost impossible. The hidden language can become a barrier to teaching and the teacher’s credibility with their students. It is imperative for the teacher to learn the hidden language to maintain their credibility with all of their students.
This lack of social mobility and understanding across two levels of society makes a mockery of the wealthy politicians who continually say ‘I understand what you are saying and will work to fix your problems’. If the politician is trying to cross two social layers it is highly probable they are going to insult the lower class and alienate them, as for understanding the lower classes, for most politicians it is the same as living on two different planets.
Why Bother.
As society has, in general become more mobile, the students and their families can be seen shifting their allegiances depending on their friends’ families and other socioeconomic circumstances. It is not uncommon for teachers to find themselves teaching students from a large range of socio-economic situations. The teacher may not be aware of this diverse range. The research, such as Payne’s and Delpit, will make them far more aware of their students and the language they need to be using. This suggestion is to be more understanding of what the students are going through if they have to move to another societal level with their language.
If we consider Bartlets (2008) comment from Feuerstein’s ‘active modification approach, the past is seen as merely a starting point for improvements in the future’.
Payne raising of the teachers’ awareness of class structure helps teachers to be more aware of more relevant starting points to get many students into relevant education and learning practices.
Payne quotes Feuerstein (1980) work as an example of the abilities of different students.
• If an individual cannot predict, he or she cannot identify cause and effect.
• If an individual cannot identify cause and effect, he or she cannot identify consequence.
• If an individual cannot identify consequence, he or she cannot control impulsivity.
• If an individual cannot control impulsivity, he or she has an inclination to criminal behavior.
If a student cannot plan then that is their starting point for learning regardless of how good other students in the class are at planning and predicting.
After a close look at this list many readers will notice some of these aspects are actually missing from some education systems.
Criticisms of Ruby Payne.
There are several people not in favour of Payne’s research and maybe for good reason at an academic level. Redeaux (2011) writes about lack of peer assessment on Payne’s work as being a major issue but goes on in a vein about Payne making money out of her publishing. This all may be correct, but it appears like possible jealousies about Payne’s good fortune.
Payne’s research uses skin colour when writing and talking of poverty where as in the classroom teachers have to deal with the concept of poverty in relation to educational experiences rather than colour. Poverty covers all colors and races. There has to be extreme care that preconceived notions of colour or race do not come into our teaching practices and for that matter preconceived notions about anything should not be where we start our teaching from.
For the teacher they need to understand and learn how best to communicate with the diverse range of students we work with. Once a teacher can put aside their own preconceived notions put aside their own preconceived notionsof culture manners and education they should be able to start constructing teaching experiences that are of value to all students. Those students categorised as poverty by Payne need to be understood so they can be educated to the maximum of their potential the same as any student in any classroom.
Many of the problems teachers have is they wear their middle class values and language like a badge of honour thus not reaching many of the poverty students. The teacher needs to be the flexible one and not blame all the problems on the student. An understanding of a working relationship needs to evolve and so education becomes more relevant for the student. Ruby Payne’s comments in many cases work well at the grass roots of teaching, so can be given a certain amount of credibility while they continue to work. We can let the academics argue out the pros and cons in the ether, away from the people trying to make education work.
Summing Up.
How does this relate to the active learner?
Often teachers will say the student did …. I growled at the student and then they did that, so I chucked them out of the class. The education has now effectively stopped for that student regardless of their abilities.
It is up to the teacher to ensure the opportunities are there for the student to become an active learner. If we don’t bother to understand our students we will quickly alienate them and stop their desire to learn or even to be part of our normal society. Without this understanding and the teaching to understand the dialects languages and cultures that make up our society, we relegate many students to be fringe dwellers without the knowledge to make choices. The choices are the social area they would like to dwell within and the ability to take advantage of all that society has to offer.
On many occasions there are not enough options or time available to the teacher to follow through with good strategies to deal with this problem. Although a great deal can be done with the classroom presentation and grades curriculum but many teachers do not bother to understand why the student is not an active learner and should learn some basic strategies to help the student.
References
Bartlett, S quoting Feuerstein’s (2008) Unlocking Cognitive Potential. Mentis Final PDF.pdf. [accessed 26/03/2013] http://www.sagepub.com/upm-data/24974_Mentis_Chapter_1.pdf
Delpit, Lisa. (1995). Other Peoples Children – Cultural Conflict in the Classroom. The New Press. [accessed 08-04-2013]. http://www.d.umn.edu/~hrallis/courses/1100sp04/readings/1100pdfs/Delpit%20-Lang%20in%20Clsmr.pdf
Feuerstein, Reuven, et al. (1980). Instrumental Enrichment: An Intervention Program for Cognitive Modifiability. Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman and Co.. [accessed 30/03/2013] http://www.michigan.gov/documents/mde/Understanding_and_Working_with_Students_and_Adults_from_Poverty_360998_7.pdf
Redeaux, Monique. (2011) The Culture of Poverty Reloaded. The Monthly Review. 2011, Volume 63, Issue 03 (July-August) / [accessed 30/03/2013]. http://monthlyreview.org/2011/07/01/the-culture-of-poverty-reloaded
Brett Wilkin 08-04-2013
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- Published: 09 Jan 2012 Hits: 4020
The obsolete teacher
For a teacher to become obsolete in the classroom is an idealistic goal to strive for. If achieved this means the students have the ability to constructively criticise and assess their own work. Constructively means they can analyse and build on what they have learnt as opposed to destructively where very little learning takes place. When the student can constructively criticise their own work they can also determine what extra research or effort needs to be done to bring their work to a fruition they can be proud of.
The best learning relies on students asking questions of themselves and arriving at sensible constructive answers. The ability to ask questions would be one of the most important aspects of education. People only get good answers to questions that are insightful and searching. Just think, with some question asked of Google often it takes many times to get the appropriate answers, In today’s education learning to ask good questions takes on new meaning and is also extremely important as this can often be an indicator that the person is ready to learn something specific. “In time learning” is very powerful and is often the learning that is remembered with the most clarity. Research also shows that the sooner the question is answered the better the retention of the knowledge. (The first thing we learn is the hardest to unlearn so students must get the correct answer as quick as possible). In times gone by, the correct answer could take days to find while teachers were waiting for the correct text to be sent from the library or the teacher was relied upon for the knowledge that was sometimes erroneous.
Questions the students ask are very important at any level, as understanding is formed by the questions students ask of themselves and 'Google' This interaction generated by questioning and discussion of the answers is what creates understanding. For this we don't need teachers to 'teach' but we need people to facilitate learning. When the teacher is involved they should not give the answer too quickly as this shortcuts the learning interaction but they can illicit more questions from the student as very often students know the answers to their own questions, if they don't Google most likely does. In many cases the student simply did not think hard enough as they wanted to be spoon fed the answer. Spoon feeding is a recognised problem in education. Teachers should be letting the students find the solutions and give them the confidence to discuss and guide each other to affective problem solving solutions, not to try and set themselves up as the font of all knowledge. The teacher’s role is changing to that of a facilitator and confidence builder to help the students move forward with an understanding of all the knowledge the internet can give them.
When the teacher has become obsolete it means the student is asking the questions to solve their problems and have started to become an autonomous learner and hopefully a lifelong learner. A very desirable state to achieve as later in life, very rarely is there going to be a teacher waiting on them to answer all their questions. Curriculum design is also a very important aspect in learning in that so many curriculums are based on the models of 30 years ago and new curriculum design should be facilitating the process that eventually makes the teacher obsolete and the student ready for jobs that don't yet exist. A student centred classroom is one of the most important tools to move toward ideal education where the teacher becomes the facilitator but so many teachers walk into their so called student centred classroom and start instructing for long periods of time. Often this is more to try and give themselves a feeling of importance and of being needed rather than being educators.
Finally what is the teachers job then? Do what the boss says. This is often the answer a teacher will give but for professionals involved with teaching many would say their job is to set problems for the students to solve and help them learn the skills to solve the problems not solve the problems for the student.
We must not forget the hierarchy for designing what we put into our curriculum.
- What are the government requirements (remember they pay us)
- What are the school requirements (these should be aligned but are not always)
- What are the department requirements (these also should be aligned but are not always)
- Teacher designs a classroom unit around what is left after the above request are fulfilled.
Some of the effective ways of incorporating the educational research into this area is to start by setting a problem for the students to answer.
An aside here is that, there is a common misconception that all learning should be fun. Working on this precept we should be watching movies and playing Facebook and Warcraft instead of Quadratic Equations. The concept we use should not be the concept of fun but that of engaging.
Another important aspect is the same for students and adults. They all like to have some control over their destiny and the most powerful method of setting up classroom pedagogy is to involve the students in the process so they have considerable ownership over their learning process. When this is done the government directives simply become part of a problem to solve. Student Centred classrooms also rely on some student responsibility towards learning and many teachers when faced with this problem simply drop back to teacher centred activities where many don’t feel obsolete. Teachers must remember to teach responsibility you have to also give responsibility and the very nature of many young people will be to let you down but with perseverance and consistency in the approach to the learning process students will nearly always live up to that responsibility.
The teacher may start with;
- This term we have to learn about “Indian culture”, has anybody any ideas on how they would like to do this.
- With guidance this would lead the teacher into brainstorming and creating mind maps of what the end goal is and the different way to arrive at this point.
- Planning in this way gives ownership of the whole process to the students but still within the guidelines specifically stated by the teacher ie This term we have to learn ........ With guided learning the teacher would also try and guide the process to solving problems by doing projects and the students would also start talking about what specific skills they need to learn to complete the project.
The important part of this for the teacher is to have as little input as possible as the process needs to be owned by the students, and not turned around to become the teacher’s project. As hard as it is for some teachers they should be talking less and creating situations that require the student to ask questions, find answers and above all interact with the knowledge they are expecting to learn at many different levels.
When teachers want the students to critically analyse, they simply asks questions as to how are we going to do? Is it still in line with what we have to learn? How much time do we have? What can we do in the time? If you finish early what other exciting things would be good to try? The students should be starting to ask questions of the teacher but mainly of each other and supplying their own answers as much as possible. When a mind-map is used it should be growing to many levels.
Where possible the answers should be the students not the teachers but with carefulnon judgemental questioning the students will own the process and end up where the teacher needs them to be as in fulfilling the above government and school requirements and more importantly the students becoming active learners.
So is the teacher obsolete? Certainly the traditional idea of teaching is not appropriate for today’s rapidly changing society and the traditional teacher does not prepare students for jobs that don't yet exist. The traditional teacher competes against the internet, multimedia, interactive games, and frivolous art activities, where as the modern teaching facilitator is all about processes of learning and understanding in a Student Centred classroom. The modern facilitator uses the tools of multimedia, internet, interactivity and frivolous art activities etc to actively stimulate the whole brain and prepare students abilities to be adaptable to a rapidly ever-changing society, and, talks less in the classroom.
There is only one thing students need to be taught before they leave school on their path through life and that is a desire and love of learning. Sadly our traditional education system with top heavy bureaucratic requirements and testing with teacher centred classroom all too often destroys rather than enhances that desire to learn.
Remember. All comments in a classroom should be positive as opposed to negative. Constructive criticism facilitates learning, if a teacher wants to offer destructive criticism they should become a film critic. Brett Wilkin 2008
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- Category: Teaching Observations
- Published: Sunday, 11 November 2012 12:31
- Hits: 4278
For about 5 years, I had the role of Managing And Retaining Secondary School Students in the education system.
This entailed finding students at risk of dropping out of school and trying to assist them to have a successful school experience. It also entailed the integration of students with disabilities into the classroom. Of the students with disabilities integrated into the school system there were,
Sight impaired, Hearing impaired, Cerebral Palsy, Motor Neuron issues, Muscular Degenerative issues, Autism, Asperger’s Syndrome, Dysfunctional students and students eligible for funding due to a very low IQ.
Tointegrate all students into the normal school system was The Education Departments policy. There are lots of pros and cons with this policy, when there is a good support network within a school it can be highly successful and of a great educational advantage for all students and teachers involved. To this end, a severely autistic student was to be included into the school so the MARSSS coordinator was responsible for making it work. The procedure used in this case was a little different and appeared to work effectively. Certainly, at the time the parent of the child was very happy.
There are many inherent problems with integrating a severely autistic student into the classroom; this is partly due to the manner in which they process information and their lack of ability to filter sounds according to importance. For example, a teacher can be talking to the autistic student and another student will be talking quietly to another student in the room. The Autistic students mind will give the same importance to the student talking as is being given to the teacher talking. the student therefore, will have trouble deciphering the high input of information. The result of this can be high levels of frustration and extreme tiredness.
At the time this took place there was very little information about integrating autistic students into mainstream education so several meeting were arranged with social workers and experts in the field. There was a lot of university information but very little of a practical nature to help the classroom teacher. The topic had to be researched to determine the main issues the student was likely to face in this environment. Contact was therefore made with a forum set up by high performing autistic adults. Some were very helpful and could now articulate the likely problems our student would face.
From this information it was found that careful monitoring was needed during break times so that other students did not set the autistic student up to do things that were inappropriate. Students can learn rapidly that a severely autistic student can be set up to do things that they should not normally do. If a suggestion is made to the student to do something they would not like it can be like programming and the autistic student will carry out the action. In most cases, they realize they are doing something wrong or embarrassing but cannot stop themselves from doing it.
As they tend to know what is happening to them and how they are being teased they will become extremely frustrated and will sometimes lash out at any one close to them. The student being discussed had this tendency. Several reliable students were tagged with a responsibility to observe the child and get help if needed from a teacher or the autistic child’s minder. All teachers doing yard duty were asked to keep a sharp eye out to ensure no problems started. If the boy was showing any sign of stress, he was allowed to stay in a room for the breaks with his teacher aide. He often chose to do the normal things as he perceived them and be outside although as he got older he stayed inside more often.
Note here that although he had a teacher aide to be with him most of the time the goal of the school was integration as much as possible and the middle school class room teacher at this time had very good skills at maintaining a well organized classroom and wanted to see the autistic student have a high degree of success. The yard was the easy part, the hard part was integrating into the classroom so that the autistic student did not become frustrated but still felt (for want of a better word) like they were part of the normal school population.
Autistic students do not deal with change very well and need to be informed of possible changes very early so they can prepare their thinking to accept the change. Any excursion or activities being undertaken by the school that the autistic student was to be included in was planned well in advance, This was generally not a problem in a Tasmanian school and to inform the student there was a fortnightly time table taped to his desk.
The teacher at this time was exceptionally good at maintaining a timetable for the class so every day the class knew what they were doing and when. Of course there was flexibility within what happened for the other students especially when they left the room for specialist subjects, but for the autistic student there was a feeling (once again for want of a better word) of normality the whole time. As many teachers know even a moderately autistic students has a preoccupation with time and if the class is kept late on a lesson or for chastisement the student will refuse to have lunch as it is not lunch time. This can be the reaction even if the time is only 1 minute late.
Changes of this nature are to be avoided and in the case of the student being integrated, an egg timer was included into the classroom environment so when the teacher said we will work for one hour on this topic the egg timer was set so the times in the class were adhered to for the autistic student. As an aside, it was found the rest of the class loved the definite times and when they were given mathematics for an hour they worked very hard as they knew there was a specific period when they could stop this work. The students general comment at the time was, when we are quiet and working hard the teacher thinks we are enjoying the work so they make us work for longer, so the students loved the timer. This was a grade 8 class but the timer was used in some grade 7 and 9 classes with the same results.
For the integration side of the classroom teaching the autistic student had subject content that was a simplified parallel of what the rest of the students were doing and when he found he could do somthing like show a picture or answer a question with a picture he acted very excited if he could particpate. For some lessons, clearly shown on his timetable, the student went for special subjects on safety and what we called life skills.
As mentioned before an autistic student has problems filtering information so tends to give the same priority in their minds to insignificant sounds as to important sounds. This huge amount of unprioritised input can leave them very tired so a bean-bag was placed in a corner of the room and the student could use this as place to reset his mind by taking a short rest. Like all teenagers he would often prefer to do nothing and just sleep in the bean-bag so a procedure was set up to deal with this. When the student looked a little stressed or indicated the bean-bag, the teacher would say ‘[name] go and have a rest for ten (or fifteen) minutes and when the timer rings you come back for more study’. The student would go happily to the rest area and when the timer rang would happily come back to the desk to continue working.
Curriculum.
When the severely autistic student learns they can not conceptualize, imply, or cross-reference. As an example, our student was to be taught safety crossing the road. For an average students simply teaching look right, look left, look right again and if clear cross the road quickly. (driving right side of road). The issues for the average child would be to make them stop at the side of the road and not be impetuous and running ahead without due care.
Using the same words for a severely autistic child the child would stop at the side of the road providing the side of the road was definable and taught previously (e.g. curbing and guttering, gravel, concrete, bitumen). The word clear and the concept of clear would be difficult, as the severely autistic student would tend to see something two kilometers away and not deem the road clear so would not cross. Even if there was another person crossing the road 200 metres away. The same issue comes when the child is being taught and the teacher sees a car approaching so teaches ‘we cannot cross yet as there is a car approaching’. The autistic student sees a white car so will wait for all white cars but a red one is not dangerous so can be stepped in front of.
Another issue for the autistic student is if something has been taught as a specific piece of knowledge and it clashes with something they have already learnt as a similar piece of knowledge, for example the teacher has meant one of the pieces of knowledge to be a general concept for example traffic and they have used a picture of a bus as an example. The autistic student has learnt bus as a traffic so can not understand the use car as being traffic. This could cause frustration and the autistic student would not be able to verbalize this. This would then tend to be an information overload for the student. The off shoot of all this is they have to be taught all aspects of a topic as separate bits of information.
Severely autistic students have problems with social interaction and emotions; the whole idea of emotions is very hard for them so they have to be taught to use the correct facial expressions and voice tones with the words they are trying to use. All the emotions such as happy, sad, envy, jealous etc. tend to be bundled into frustration / angry with no or very little facial expression or no expressions although I have seen this student excited and doing fast mannerisms. If the student is frustrated or angry and is about to lash out there is no warning through facial expressions.
Measuring performance As stated earlier the student was diagnosed as ‘severely autistic’ and one of the characteristics of this diagnosis is often aggressive behaviour. The aggression tends to occur due to frustration as mentioned before. Many things cause the frustration and due to the manner in which they cannot prioritize the input they are receiving it can be very difficult to determine what causes the frustration and aggression if it occurs. The integration of our student was not without issues and he sometime slashed out at anyone close to him. When this happened, he was isolated in another room to give him quiet time to allow the overload of information, time to settle.
His grade 8 year was deemed successful as there were very few physical outburst and he was fully integrated into a classroom where the makeup of students would be considered an average cross section of a school society.
The curriculum for this child was very structured and knowledge based as anything that involved thinking cross-referencing, analyzing, hypothesizing or just basic common sense was a waste of time. If he learnt enough basic knowledge he could learn to select the piece of knowledge that was the best reaction to a problem and appear to other to be cross referencing information. The problem for the teacher is to be able to teach all of the appropriate pieces of knowledge to give the student life skills. In this child’s instance he was given a lot of picture sequences and physical practice.
The last I heard about this child he was in grade11 doing special life skills courses with the goal of him eventually living in a community home with a certain amount of autonomy. If this was achieved I do not know.
It is interesting to compare the high performing and low performing autistic students as now I have a high performing student who has an incredible memory in some areas.
Judging from the chat discussions had with older autistic adults there can be considerable progress in integrating into society at various levels and this also borne out by more modern research in this area.
The extract from the website bright tots described the above child very well.
More Common Traits in Low Functioning / Severe Autism
- Hand-wringing.
- Appearance of poorly coordinated manner of walking / stepping.
- Severely impaired expressive and receptive language development.
- Lack of or infrequent initiation.
- Lack of usual nonverbal gestures (i.e., pointing, head shake, nod).
- Unable to control improper behavior.
- Avoids or uses eye contact in odd ways.
- Prefers to be alone.
- Inability to imitate (body movement, vocal, motor).
- Engages in rhythmic body movements such as rocking, pacing, hand flapping, toe walking, spinning.
- Over- and under-sensitivity to sound, smell, touch, visual stimulus and pain.
- May not be seek physical comfort from parents/caregiver.
- Unusual display of emotion, for example, giggling or weeping for no apparent reason.
- Impulsive.
- Unwillingness.
- Aggressive behavior.
Self-injurious behavior Education for Low Functioning Autism Limited grammar and an impulsive sensitivity to stimulus are often thought to be typical of low-functioning autism, as is a strong visual processing preference. When designing educational programs for students with autism labeled as severely disabled, professionals and family members are advised to consider that programs for a particular student is to be specifically determined through the individualized education program (IEP) process. There is no IEP for people who are low-functioning versus people who are high-functioning. There are only IEPs for each individual student. Individualized programs must explain approaches for providing the student with acceptable and understandable ways of communication, teaching situation-appropriate social behaviors, and providing experiences that satisfy sensory needs by promoting desensitization or reducing sensory overload in specific settings and situations.
If a child with severe autism has greater difficulty learning, then the crucial school years should be spent teaching him/her to participate in beneficial activities. A functional living curriculum is various activities the person will need in order to live, work, and participate in his/her community. Life skills such as balancing a check book, recreating at the neighborhood YMCA, eating at a restaurant, maintaining a job, and shopping are vital goals. Parents of those children who are perceived as low functioning autism must advocate the need for such living activities in the child’s IEP. Many children with autism are grouped in programs relating on the level of functioning and disabilities instead of their abilities. There is no set label or curriculum which fits all students with autism; no precise placement. What children learn in school should express their diversity of preferences.
http://www.brighttots.com/Autism/Low_Functioning_Autism.html
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- Published: 09 Jan 2012 Hits: 4466
These are just random observations of a computing teacher, teaching English as a second language in a Thai school.
I work in an office with Thai, Australian, American and Chinese teachers. I have often wondered why understanding the Chinese staff with lesser English skills is easier than understanding some of the Thai staff. There is also occasionally a lack of understanding due to accent and language use between the Americans and the Australians, but this is an obvious issue.
Language use. Concepts v/s specifics.
Some people tend to speak in big picture ideas and conceptualizations within their speech.
Others tend do speak more on the specific details and individual steps.
To accommodate these differences people just have to be aware of the differences in the beginning and ask themselves what is the normal style in which this person communicates.
----- Implications.
Persons who tend to speak in concepts are often talking more about big picture ideas and how they all mesh with the specifics. People who talk in specifics tend to not understand a conceptualizing speaker unless they know them or can be made aware that this is their normal mode of conversation. People who talk in concepts as their first impulse at communication, need to try and talk in specifics more if they want others to understand them. The exception is when they are talking about topics such as overall management structure and community (group) type conversations and how specifics all fit together in concepts. One of the most intelligent Doctors in Language I have known spoke in concepts all the time.'Communication - different culture - different language - different understanding
Some cultures communicate by only giving the information that they think the recipient needs to know. This self-censoring raises issues for the recipient particulary if the recipient has a different language and cultural expectations. My experience in living and working in one of these cultures for an extended time is that the context is generally missing. The context makes the communication understandable and it often forms from a discussion. However, other cultures can take the opposite approach and actively involve group discussions so that all members of the group understand.----- Implications
When learning English it is important to teach students to communicate effectively. This means that the context of the communication must be clearly communicated so that it is understood .
Example
I have compared the differences in how my Thai and Chinese colleagues communicate in English with native-English speakers. The Chinese create a context when they communicate as their language is used and structured in a similar way to English as compared to Thai. This explains my observations that Chinese staff (with poorer English skills than the Thais) generally communicate more clearly with the native-English speakers'.
Language use. Grammar.
Grammar from some languages is the reverse of others. For example the subject and predicate are reversed in English when compared to Thai. Most language teachers will know this but many fail to allow for it when communicating with students. Often the students will understand the words in a sentence but then leave them in the order they would understand them as if they were Thai grammar. This often leaves the students slow to respond or in some cases doing the opposite of what is expected.
----- Implications.
For teaching this means the teacher needs to give the students time to understand. The teacher can get relevant feedback by asking the students to put their hand up if they have opened their books (done a task). Then say to the students, 'put your hand up if you have not opened your book (not done the same task). The responses indicate how much the student is understanding and often if they are mixing the order of a sentence by confusing the grammar.Eg. Words in common use, in different countries, with slightly different meanings.
The different words in common use can often lead to confusion. A simple example example of this is when I was talking to an American colleague and they started talking about 'bangs'. I had to ask her what she was talking about. In Australia the common word is fringe not bangs when talking about hair. I am not saying that Aussies don't know what bangs are, just that this is not the common word to use when referring to a fringe and in some circles the word can have a degenerate meaning. Thong is another good example in that Australians wear them on their feet as a sandal and in America they are very brief underwear or swimsuit.
----- Implications.
For teaching this is not normally a major issue for students, all they need to be made aware of is that misunderstanding can happen due to word use. This becomes irrelevant if the context of the conversation is made clear. The listener can 'cloze' the words when the context is clearly understood.
To "cloze" a word means to make an educated guess at the meaning and if the context of the conversation is clearly implied clozing the word is a common method of understanding words that are not necessarily known.Brett Wilkin Jan 2008
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- Category: Teaching Observations
- Published: Sunday, 08 January 2012 23:20
- Hits: 2240
As a teacher for 30 years one tends to make many observations. In the last few years I have noticed many things with teaching English as a Second Language (ESL). While assisting a student overseas recently I needed to try and justify making sure ESL students were exposed to many different accents.
Often students will feel overwhelmed as they will just start getting used to one foreign teacher and they feel they have to go through it all again, almost like learning a new language for some students. There are many ways to expose students to different language accents some of the easier ones being you tube videos, movies and just having a chat with another foreigner.
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- Published: 27 Jan 2013 Hits: 18495
Most of us have been spoon fed at some stage and this can be likened to teaching as in feeding the students knowledge. Young children being spoon fed sit and wait for the next spoon full and while they are waiting their brain is in neutral ready to accept the wisdom of the ancients from their parent or teacher. The problem here is the brain is doing very little while waiting for the next piece of knowledge and it is in this time the students should be thinking and analyzing.
When we spoon feed our knowledge to the students they start to expect the next morsel after a certain amount of waiting. The students often do not understand the knowledge they are spoon fed and can lose the thirst for knowledge if they are waiting too long, during this time they can also start to become bored and the brain can wander on to other more interesting topics as they are not interacting with the morsel of knowledge they are simply expecting to be fed.
So far this is nothing new to most experienced teachers but the issue lies when is spoon feeding not spoon feeding, at what stage can it be considered that we are over teaching.
Over teaching or spoon feeding is a recognised problem especially at the university level where the results of spoon feeding are most obvious.
Dr Ovens' research, which was discussed at a conference at Nottingham Trent University. The discussion was titled
‘Learning How to Learn in Higher Education, and suggests that a growing proportion of students are "puzzled" by the idea of independent learning. This is because they have often been led through their schooling by their teachers, who he said were focused on "meeting targets and Ofsted requirements".
Dr Ovens added that the current generation of students had been assessed "more than any other", and that the problem of dealing with students unused to independent learning was not unique to the UK: "When we talk to colleagues worldwide, they have very similar problems, and they agree that the problems are getting progressively worse year on year."Cunnane. Sarah. (2011).To help students start their tasks quicker, teachers need to make the effort to give students the necessary and sufficient information in the minimum time.
This maximises the time available maximises the time available for the students to attempt to solve the problems themselves before they request the information.
If not, the teacher runs the risks of:
.- giving too much information (or knowledge) at the beginning – ‘just in case’,
.- taking too long to map out the activity – ‘students’ minds become dull and bored’.
The objectives include for the students to attempt to solve their own questions first.
Then the information can be given or proposed to the students – ‘just in time’, in a different style or format which has the added advantage of diversity in presentation that is catering to the different learning styles.
This utilises the concept that the things that you learn when you need it, are remembered longest rather than forgotten just after an exam.
{ads1}Many teachers will spend a lot of time on presenting the knowledge to the students and give them lots of examples. An hour later the students are starting to get involved with their tasks and most will start asking for answers that they have already been given. The whole explanation has to be given again at staggered intervals. One could assume that most of the presentation at the start was immediately forgotten as it had no immediate relevance to the student.
Assessment is another compounding issue in that when teachers have very strict testing and exam systems to follow they have to teach to the exam content leaving out context and concepts involved with the subject matter as this takes longer to teach. Also when a curriculum is too full of 'just in case' content teachers will fall back to this just in case style of teaching so they can say 'I have taught it'. Assessment is a double edged sword in that it is very easy to overdo and waste good classroom teaching time with revision, testing and followup with resits, but there is another side to assessment that many overlook in that in some environments it can become a good teaching tool. The small test/quiz situation can set students up to ask questions where they get just in time information about a topic or concept. Of course if overused it becomes just another boring time where the students could be better off interacting with the concept and context of the subject matter.
Often teachers will complain “I told them all they need to know and they just don’t listen”, Yes well so what else is new? This is an aspect of students that has not changed in thousands of years according to some of the earlier philosophers. Socrates was believed to have pointed out that Plato, years before said similar things about students more than 2000 years ago. It is certainly easy for parents and teachers to forget how much they learn with age and experience and it never ceases to amaze that adults expect students to be at the same level of experience and understanding as themselves.
Listening and concentrating has a lot to do with the speed the brain processes the spoken word, If the student is not given anything to do other than listen. The brain according to Yahoo.com’s 'Ask' pages states that the average persons brain can process between 500 words per minute and 800 wpm. According to further research from many years ago it was determined that the brain jumps ahead with its processing and after several words stops processing and goes into rest mode (for want of a better term). After a few bursts of processing it is not long before the students have to apply conscious effort to listening. If students can not deal with their brain rest modes, their consciousness shuts down to miss several bursts of what should be processing of language. The upshot of this is the student ability to focus on the spoken word and retain the information for long periods of time is very limited. As is the many staff members who have fallen asleep during staff meetings.
When we spoon feed we get students that wait for knowledge to happen and when they feel they have not learnt something they blame the teacher for not teaching them. The teacher blames the student for not learning or listening. Educational psychology would indicate that maybe there is a better way to tackle the issues. Get the students working on the basic need to know information/knowledge and then add to the information they need to have as they start to need it.
This tends to be the authors style and recently some students complained saying they had not been taught (they were expecting a didactic presentation of knowledge). Questions were then leveled at the students.
Teacher: “Did you know how to do this task 2 weeks ago”?
Student: “No.”
Teacher: “Did you know anything about the topic before you started the activity”?
Student: “No.”
Teacher: “Could you explain anything about the topic to anyone 3 weeks ago?”
Student: “No.”
Teacher: Could you now explain all about the topic to another teacher?
Student: “Yes.”
Teacher: “Did you finish the activity successfully?”
Student: “Yes.”
Teacher: “What has happened in between starting and finishing the activity?”
Student: “I don’t know but you did not teach us.”
TeacherThe students have a strong feeling of having taught themselves while the teacher has quietly guided the student in a direction to a successful ending.
This of course is all very typical of the student centered classroom and the research shows this is a very successful way to run a class but be aware you may get accused of not teaching the students especially if the student’s environment has always been typically a didactic knowledge based learning environment. Many teachers when incorporating this style of teaching, have issues with feeling like they have not been working or 'teaching enough' as they are not the focus of the classes attention and they are not presenting full time, this feeling is very strong especially if they have been a didactic teacher in a teacher centered classroom all their career.
Back to the original point when do we stop spoon feeding the students information? Some general guides could be. (a little cynicism may have crept in here)
- When the students eyes start to glaze over.
- When they start to become fidgety.
- When they have all gone quiet (the term is ‘the lights are on but no one is home’.) the students have stopped absorbing information and have quietly let their brains go to sleep. This can bring up the other issue of how quickly the brain processes information.
- The teacher cannot think of a question to ask the students to keep them awake.
- The teacher has been talking didactically for more than 8 minutes. (Older students may hold on longer but it is not necessarily good use of time as mostly they have shut down by then.)
- The teacher keeps thinking they need to know this stuff so pushes on regardless.
- The students have all started to strike up their own conversations or play with their phones.
- A sound system has to be used to overpower the background noise.
What do we get when we spoon feed students.
- Students that blame the teacher if they do not know something.
- Students that cram information for tests with no understanding of content.
- Students that do not learn the context of what they are being taught.
- Students that happily sit doing nothing while waiting for the teacher to feed them.
- Students that don’t learn initiative.
- Students that do not become active learners.
- Older students that believe they cannot learn as they don’t currently have a teacher.
- Students that do not actively pursue knowledge or answers to questions.
- Students that often have problems with Blooms Taxonomy of higher level thinking
Oxbridge University has determined the problem of spoon feeding is a real issue
Rachel Spedding(2011) the managing director of Oxbridge Applicationshas had to change their applications process to get a better quality of graduate. In part this is blamed on the tendency of schools and teachers to spoon feed the students on their way to university.
Now ‘the process is not focused on knowledge, but on the application of knowledge and is a chance to demonstrate intellectual curiosity and the use of logic.’ These being more apt skills for a university graduate. Rachel goes on to say, ‘Something has gone badly wrong in the education system, now that we have ended up with so many students glaring at admissions tutors for asking a question they are not expecting; unable to deal with its unpredictability.’ The students cannot deal with change or think creatively which makes them poor graduates. She also says ‘What we need to work towards is an education system that gives students the skills to solve problems creatively and with structure, rather than depend on a set of rules.’
The ultimate goal of all this is to not spoon feed students, but to teach them to ask questions, and to convey a concept that the most intelligent students always knows there is a question that needs to be asked and asks it, the average students asks questions when they find one and the slower students never ask questions. (Some might not ask as they know it all
The next step is to give them all the opportunity to ask questions by setting up problematic situations or problems the student has to solve using all the resources available to them. As A. Karim (2011) tells us ‘teachers should change their mindset from “more is better” to the “less is more” approach to classroom teaching.’
In the end it will be the individual teachers call as to determine when they are spoon feeding and when they are not. It is a fine line between spoon feeding and not spoon feeding and ultimately it is only a problem if the teacher only knows one style of teaching and that is to spoon feed the students their meals all the time.
Some follow up reading for those interested.Asian students studying in Australian universities have had follow up research done to try and better cope with the cultural differences.
This is a recommended reading as it is also useful for western teachers starting to teach Asian students.
Download the document from the link.
http://www.brettwilkin.com/index.php/ep-documentspdf/culturalawarenessOr the University of South Australia
International Education Journal Vol 4, No 4, 2004
Educational Research Conference 2003 Special Issue
http://iej.cjb.net
Are the Learning Styles of Asian International Students Culturally or Contextually Based?
Dr Law. David. (2006 )’The study by Oxford University's educational studies department and the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service, interviewed academics from 250 universities. It says that today's students, even those with top grades at leading institutions, are likely to "lack independent thought",’
A follow up comment from Karim‘I posted a question about this issue in my e-learning portal (title: Spoon-feeding: Are you being pampered?) and asked the students to give their response. Here is one of the responses (verbatim): “Here is my two cents' worth. Honestly, it is not only me that has been spoon-fed, in fact "all" of us will have to raise up our hands and own up! (Please don't sue me for defamation because I think that this is true) Ha ha.... From young, we have been fed with a silver spoon by our biological parents and in school, the same goes with our dedicated "second-parents". The spoon feeding practice is part of our Malaysian education culture which has long built its warm nest and is still very much alive and breathing. That is why we turn out to be pampered passive learners...” (Chan Lai Ean).’References
Cunnane. Sarah. (2011). To spoon-feed is not to nurture. TSL Education Ltd
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=418217 [Last accessed 26/01/2013]
Spedding, Rachel. (2011). Are school students becoming spoon-fed exam machines? The Independent.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/schools/are-school-students-becoming-spoonfed-exam-machines-2217089.html [Last accessed 26/01/2013]Dr. Law, David. (2006) 'Spoon-fed' pupils can't cope at college (centered upon falling educational standards), http://www.seered.co.uk/newlib_spoonfed.htm [26/01/2013]
Yahoo.coms (2009) Ask pages. Yahoo.com. http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080929170503AADNLoS [26/01/2013]
Karim. A. A. (2011) Do you over teach your students? One Stop Learning http://onestoplearning.blogspot.com/2011/02/do-you-over-teach-your-students.html [Last accessed 26/01/2013]
