Teacher's Prayer

Phew! This has been quite a Summer! I've spent part of my holidays busy with my report that I handed out today, just in time for the beginning of a new school year.
All this time though I just couldn't help thinking... how do I measure success / my own success on a daily basis? How do YOU measure it? In a world that demands instant success and "evidence", how do we, educators, measure it? I can tell when my students are motivated, when they start asking questions and making associations but, unlike other professions, I guess we have to wait years, even decades to know if we are successful, if we managed to pass on the knowledge we were supposed to and if they can appropriately apply it; if we managed to make a difference in the lives of our students, instill hope for their dreams, support and care for them. So much, Gosh! Surely every teacher in Portugal is now overworked and underpaid but we still strive each day to deal with challenging students, the pressure of higher test scores and curricular mandates and still can't be sure if we are successful...

Anyway, enough digression and time to cheer up... let's pray and bear together for another school year :)

Allan Ahlberg in The Puffin Book of Utterly Brilliant Poetry edited by Brian Patten

All the best for 2011 / 2012!

Back to School - Breaking the Ice

Image Credit: Marcel Germain
via Flickr

Another school year starts soon – very soon – and even though I’ve been teaching for about 20 years, I always get a bit anxious about the best way either to break the ice with a new class or simply to loosen (former) students’ rusty tongues.Therefore, an easy task, a familiar topic but still with a different approach.

After some browsing, a suggestion for the beginning of this school year is as follows.
Knowing beforehand that our first lesson is usually in our mother tongue and filling in some forms, a simple question designed to make introductions easier and spark ideas:

AnswerGarden: What word(s) best describe your last summer holidays?...: AnswerGarden: What word(s) best describe your last summer holidays?... AnswerGarden: What word(s) best describe your last summer holidays?...: AnswerGarden: What word(s) best describe your last summer holidays?...
YOU, go ahead, try!
Now, this can be used as homework once you embed this onto your blog / website / wiki (in this case, ask them to type their initials so that you might know who wrote what) or, done in class, if you prefer to have an instant overview of the results, make sure they really DO it and have a computer with internet connection. Obvious!
At http://answergarden.ch/ there's no need to sign in, we can quickly and very easily collect our sts' feedback and their contributions are necessarily short (20 characters); TIP: tick the "Multiple answers per id per day" ;)

2nd step: Why? Elicit reasons to explain their choice of vocabulary.

3rd step: To further brainstorm ideas and start preparing a written activity, consider using
http://www.bubbl.us/  a free web application that, as they put it, allows you to

• Create colorful mind maps online
• Share and work with friends
• Email and print your mind map
• Save your mind map as an image

For you to have an idea...

With the usual questions: Where / When / How Long / With Whom...

Or with the sts' names and we write down their data - one by one.

4th step: After oral eliciting and topic form registration, sts can be asked to write down their own essays. However, depending on the level / age group / … we can introduce a model, ask them to write down their essays for homework or in class and then take them home to correct. It’s up to each one of us to decide what will suit best, right?
Hope this might be useful - if not now, for some other time.

Image Credit: http://safetykitsplus.wordpress.com/

Why don’t you leave here your suggestions as well? I’d love to hear your thoughts, your comments, your suggestions.

Anyway, a great school year for all! May we keep the passion and energy to engage our students :))