As much as it can seem trite (as another commenter stated) – Great Post.

I read it awhile back but the blog carnival (and a little leisure) has given me time to revisit and comment. I’d add two thoughts.

1. Making a personal connection. I think this can mean many things. It doesn’t have to be touchy/feely warm and heavily personal. I think of many teachers I connected with that were quite colder/formal. But we connected and I think it was how they “gracefully” created rapport. Their look, their manner, their attention to us students. But I think we should look at this in a broad way.

2. I’d add to your list – giving each and every student a feeling of achievement and success. Maybe not every lesson but overall. I find too often in classes, so many “bewildered” students, turned off from learning because they don’t get positive feedback and a sense they ARE learning. This might fall under your point of motivation but I’ve found it becoming so so so important in my own teaching. Not dumbing it down but making sure through repetition, formative assessment, open ended and leveled planning – that each student sees themselves as being successful at communicating with others through English….

Hope you are also enjoy a little break. Cheers,
David

I wasn’t trying to be as much diplomatic as I was trying to recognize that, just like for our learners, what works for me may not work for you.

I strongly believe that if you and I have reasons, reasonably well thought out reasons, for doing what we do, then we’ll be much more successful than many of our counterparts who consciously or unconsciously may be running on auto-pilot or a false set of assumptions with no underlying theoretical or practical basis for their classroom practice.

(If that’s actually a sentence, it may be my longest ever, at 57 words!!)

Cheers,

Steven

I’m rushed off my feet this week but I didn’t want you to think that I didn’t see this.

I think your ideas regarding thinking big are completely, culturally out of order – in fact, have been muttering about to myself about this issue since reading it as I truly find it to show no cultural understanding and even, on your part, culturally arrogant to suggest to your students that thinking big should include “your” ideas of what being big means.

I do very much appreciate that you took the time to write and I am so sorry that I can’t be more explicit – am allowing myself a 10 minute break before back to working ’til midnight and have very long days this week.

However basically, if you really want for your students to think big I suggest that you ask them what being “big” means to them and let them tell you if they want to be “big.”

We can’t send people to the stars: they must long to reach them by themselves.

…marry a foreigner… move to Canada… mutter, mutter.

K

This post was mentioned on Twitter by barbsaka: I’ll show you mine if you show me yours! (teaching jr sr high in Japan by @StevenHerder) http://bit.ly/ENBGP #efl #younglearners…

I’ll try to address your concerns and put my “Think BIG” poster into context. I hope you’ll try to see it in the, “One never knows where the future will take us” sense that it is meant to be.

Twenty years ago, when I arrived in Japan, English was cool, exciting and the dream of many young people wanting to explore the world beyond this little island nation that we live on.

Somewhere along the way, that coolness has worn off. There are probably many articles out there dealing with this subject, but in my little world, I noticed two things specifically in my classroom:

1) The built-in Japanese sense of patience or perseverance, called “gaman” has almost completely disappeared among young people – at least the students who I see these days, and consequently, they don’t make enough effort in all of their studies, and

2) There is no shame in giving up on English before even getting started. Every student has countless relatives who have failed at English. Therefore, too many students have no expectation at all about learning English. They simply throw up their hands and say, “I give up.” I can’t accept that from 12 or 13 year olds and so I began to try to introduce a theme for each grade, designed to address the psychological stage of their development.

Right from the opening class, I want to raise their expectations, motivate them, inspire them and offer them possibilities that are not even on their radar. I spend the next 6 years telling them stories – success stories – about their seniors who have graduated and are using English, about famous Japanese who can use English, and about Japanese friends who are using English even though they could never have imagined doing so.

For my students, the two examples that I gave in the article are based on real stories of students who are living in Canada (my country) or in international marriages. I also tell stories about students who:

- have become English teachers
- have become flight attendants
- have become translators and patent writers
- have done working holidays abroad
- have studied abroad for 1-4 years
- have written graduate dissertations in English
- have become TV personalities and used English

However, in the first class, I have to choose things that I can simply communicate and things that they can grasp on to. I would much prefer to say, “Dare to dream” or “Imagine the possibilities” but again, “Thing BIG” works for me and for them.

Lastly, I may not quite understand your comment, “reminded me of some rather dubious cultural incompatible issues we see in text books.” However, I would be interested to know what you mean if you choose to respond. If my message to my students is in some way damaging, I’d certainly re-think it.

Thank you for having taken the time to share your feelings rather than just dismissing my article altogether.

Cheers for now and see you in the twittersphere,

Steven

Here’s my feeble attempt to keep up with you:

1) Can you be a good teacher without making these connections?

Sure. I believe you can. I had good teachers who didn’t connect with me, but were still good teachers. There are many ways to get to the goal of having our students learn. For me, however, and particularly within my JSHS context, making emotional connections is very important.

2) The need for input to predominate over output at this level. I was always keen to encourage output as much as possible. Was this inadvisable? Was I pushing students too far, too early?

I think there is too much pushing, pulling, tugging, demanding, threatening, etc as far as speaking output is concerned. I have had a much better relationship with more students since I learned to be more sensitive to those who showed visible discomfort with being asked to speak. If I offer them a choice between speaking or writing, both equivalent forms of output in my book these days, I get better results. BUT THAT’S JUST ME AGAIN.

3) Shouldn’t all classrooms look this stimulating? Or should they?

Well, some days the JHS girls can’t take their eyes off the boys plastered around the room, but I still prefer it to the typical gray walls.

4) Why is pair work and group work seen as such a quantum leap by the majority of teachers in Japan?

No idea. I dare readers to try both, watch the results, survey the students, and then decide.

5) When you say that students are behaving more ‘normally’ now do you mean that students are behaving in a freer (more Western?) way that you see as healthier? Were things ‘abnormal’ before? Has this new-found freedom been beneficial to students’ language learning or have standards slipped?

I felt pretty spoiled even at the time when students did everything we asked without actually deciding if they were interested or not. Everything is different these days, but I’m learning that different doesn’t have to mean good or bad – it’s just different. There are a whole new set of pos & negs to be dealt with.

6) How about your colleagues? Have you had the opportunity to influence the way that they see language teaching?

As most people might agree, it is probably most difficult to affect change in your own school where the dynamics are complicated by any number of other factors. I have exchanged ideas with a large number of JTEs who were interested and ready to share. I try to always stay accessible and approachable for other teachers.

7) Your article describes a lot of activities where students talk about themselves, their own lives and their classmates. Is this ‘expanding horizons’ progression from me to the wider world effective? Shouldn’t there be a balance at all levels between the skills required to talk about one’s own life and the skills required to talk about wider situations?

Yes, I can see your point. For me, however, learning about oneself and one’s classmates is the most important FIRST STEP, bar none. Again, the context is what I always fall back on.

Thank you, Patrick. Your comments and questions are excellent. I hope we stay connected for a while from now.

Next stop, on to Karenne’s post.