IT in the Classroom: Looking Backward and Forward

Four years ago I discussed the IT forthcoming innovations in our school and expressed my worries about some of these changes. In hindsight it is interesting that I was mainly wrong on the issue.

The school has tried different digital work environments but the ‘perfect’ tool is yet to be found and we do not use the one we have as much as we should have done when the new scheme was announced.

On the positive side, we fill in online term reports for each student, can read what colleagues have written and I now have a computer in my room.

Yet the digital school attendance system does not work, which is a shame since I could now do it at the beginning of each period from the classroom computer.

I have created and provided the dreaded email address. Contrary to what I had anticipated, I have received no email from angry parents – and none from ecstatic ones I am sorry to add! However a pupil sent a Thank You email after the latest Swedish exchange.

What I had not foreseen is that for my pupils email is the new snail mail; in other words, some of them have no email addresses and use their parents’ to write to me. Others have an email address but hardly use it, which means that if I write back the email is not read.

However what I had feared concerning constant connectivity is still a problem. Even if I use a different email address for work, it is difficult not to have a look at what fills this email inbox during my free time.

I now ask the pupils to record themselves and send me oral homework (or task) – the latest was an oral presentation where the year 11s were supposed to convince an audience that they were the best candidate for the TV show of their choice.

The next challenge is to make myself understood when I explain the technical side of the task. In other words, I need them to remember that mp3 is the only format that I can easily listen to on any of the device I use. This may sound pretty simple to you but, believe me, it is not that straightforward for all teenagers; only this morning I received an audio file in 3ga!

So if you have any tip, please share and you will make my day!

Fear vs Autonomous Choice

My frequent visits to Swedish schools with our language exchange have allowed to glimpse into the Nordic school system and to observe how different it is from the Latin approach.

In short it seems that the Nordic approach trusts the students to make responsible choices while the Latin method instills fear in the students hoping that this will prevent them from making wrong choices.

Let me illuminate you with a few examples:

Time: When we visit places with the exchange I have noticed that our attitude towards schedules and times vary. Fo instance my French colleagues announce meeting times and try to frighten the students with all the things that will happen to them (things that sometimes happen) while our Swedish counterparts will just explain the daily schedule.

Computers: My school has computers of course but in rooms that are locked unless a teacher is present. If our students use computers during a lesson, we are supposed to make sure they don’t listen to music or visit websites that will distract them from their work.

In addition a lot of my colleagues are still wary of computers and wish they did not have to use them every day. I even know a few who refuse to have a computer at home.

When we first visited Sweden, computers were at the students’ disposal in open spaces. In the school we now have the exchange with, each new comer is given a Macbook Pro for the length of her/his/ stay in the school by the local authorities. When their students are on their computers Swedish teachers trust that they are working and will rather discuss what they are doing and how than behave like policemen.

I have never heard a teacher moan about having to use the computer.

Internet access: My school has no wifi connection and a lot of websites are banned (YouTube, Facebook, email providers, etc). It seems our local authorities fear the students will either access inappropriate sites or not use the Internet wisely. Similarly I have heard colleagues say the weirdest and silliest things about Facebook, to the extent that I wonder if some of them even know what it is.

In most Swedish school, students can access the Internet via wifi from their computers or smart phones. Sure enough I have seen students on Facebook in class but it usually took place before the lessons got started. Once the students were made to work actively they forgot about Facebook.

While neither approach is perfect – and I hope I am not too naive as regards the Nordic system – I tend to believe that fear is likely to produce immature and neurotic grown-ups rather than healthy, well-adjusted adults.

For those interested in education in general – and you don’t need to be a teacher to appreciate this – I recommend Seth Godin’s latest book Stop Stealing Dreams. It is free for everybody to download.

Finding and Settings Limits

These past few weeks I have been very busy and stressed as a result. I am not quite sure what burn out exactly implies but I think I was nearing the danger zone.

School and the way we teach have evolved. There are lots of bright and positive aspects to the situation but also some more frightening and negatives ones.

Because my students do not work enough on their own, I have multiplied group work but also feel that everything that is produced needs marking. This means that for some classes I spend at least 50% more time grading papers and projects.

I am also available 24/7 via emails even if I do not check them on Saturdays. For instance at present, some of my students are away doing internships but they still send me work and reports to read and correct.

Thus although I have been on holiday since Friday I have marked about 100 papers in five or six days. I have also been busy writing school reports online. Today I decided to stop for a few days and step back but this is not as easy as it may sound and I keep thinking of all the things that I should/could/can do for work.

I find it very hard to set myself limits and stick to them. I do not want to appear lazy but this often means that I end up working too much for my own good. Dear readers, how do you set yourself limits and does it work?

This Year’s Heroes

If you enjoyed last year’s post about my students’ heroes, you may wish to see who their heroes are this year.

– Coluche, he was a French comedian and actor. He is remembered for the Restos du Cœur – the charitable organisation he created – whose main activity is to distribute food packages and hot meals to the needy. (5 students)
– Martin Luther King Jr (4 students)
– Christopher Columbus
– Albert Einstein
– Michael Jackson
– Kelly Slater
– Two soccer players: Zinedine Zidane and Lionel Messi
– Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
– Barack Obama
– Neil Armstrong
– Frederik de Klerk
– Winston Churchill
– Nelson Mandela
– Charlie Chaplin
– Lady Diana
– Rosa Parks
– Emmeline Pankhurst

Training a Trainee II

I was quite awed last year about having a trainee for a full year – I needn’t have been: my trainee was competent, conscientious and also very pleasant.

When September came this year, I was confident that I would probably have a similar experience and be responsible for a youngster who was eager to learn and share teaching enthusiasms and doubts. I didn’t worry – I should have!

This year my trainee is 56. When he was younger he had no desire to teach and he went to college to study economics and management. Later he specialized in IT and worked in this sector for over a decade.

At some point in his professional life, he decided to switch to teaching and because he had lived in Britain for a number of years, teaching English must have looked like a good idea. Like all potential teachers in France, he took, and passed, the very difficult exam that allows candidates to become qualified teachers – provided their training is a success.

Unfortunately the last part did not happen and he is now repeating his training period, with me as his tutor. His weakest point is class management. This man shuns conflicts and thus implicitly allows the students to test his limits. Therefore the noise level in his classes often reaches an intolerable level as the students are busy talking rather than working.

Advising trainees on class management is far from easy. The way you manage a class has to do with who you are as a person. What works for me – apart from common sense – might not work as well for another teacher. In addition my task is all the harder as this person is older than me and not always ready to acknowledge his failings and shortcomings. It does not help that he is also not very brave and will use the same lessons and tests with very different classes.

Because of this reluctance, each of my visits is followed by a short exchange and then an email where I try and clarify what went well, what went wrong and how he could improve. So far however I have seen very little change and I am not sure how I can help him in a positive and efficient way.

Seven Weeks in a Few Lines

Our first secular vacation is round the corner; we are getting a ten-day break as from Friday. All in all it has been a very pleasant period: a successful exchange, a meaningful Yom Kippur followed by an unexpected meal in a Sukkah and lots of sunny and dry weather.

The most surprising feature of these seven weeks however has been my students. Those who read my blog regularly may remember that I have complained at lengths about the pupils’ behavior in my school and the administration’s passivity.

This year things seem quite different. Most of my students are quite agreeable and teaching them is much more pleasant than last year.

My favorite group is a class of 27 ninth-graders. They are full of enthusiasm. They arrive in the classroom and greet me and each other in English. The oral participation is dynamic, relevant and they like to use the vocabulary they learned in previous lessons. Even the weaker ones seem to enjoy the lessons and are eager to show they can say something, even if it is not much.

I am grateful that I have such satisfying students and savor every minute of it. This blissful atmosphere reminds me of why I wanted to go into teaching and makes me feel useful again.

Not Less Weary

Those of you who read this blog regularly know that this year has been particularly difficult in our school. The seeds had been planted for troubles and we were not disappointed; troubles we got.

We tried to overcome some of them by creating a committee, we got rid of a few students (which is not as easy in real life as it may look in writing) and we had a useless meeting with the chief school administrator. Finally last week one of his collaborators came to see how the school works and advise us on “how to do better with less”. I won’t go into this much as it was both frustrating and a total mockery of what our job is. To put it in a nutshell we were told that teaching is all about running a group and never about sharing knowledge. I ended up feeling even more disillusioned and helpless.

The last straw came on Friday evening. We had some friends over for Shabbat: the mother is a retired teacher and her daughter teaches French, History and Geography in a vocational school. Her school has an annual show run by the students with drama, songs and dances. It is a rather small school by French standards with only 300 students, a hundred of which are boarders. This year forty students were taking part but only six parents turned up, the audience consisted mainly of teachers and boarders.

Her story just made me sad about the society we have created. People who do not hesitate to call the school whenever we say something that their children do not like, people who often threaten and verbally abuse the teachers and administration but cannot drive a few kilometers when their kids are on stage.

I do no think that I can really analyze this incident but I know that I find it depressing. At a point in the school year when we are usually looking forward to the following year and trying to come up with wonderful ideas that we hope will inspire our students to learn more, I am not sure I even want to teach for the rest of my working life.

Disappointed

 

Tonight I am feeling a little dejected. The meeting with the chief school administrator was not successful. The whole set up was meant to impress us and show who was in charge: five men in three-piece suits and one woman who were sitting on one side of an oval table, people who believe they are so important they feel they can check their Iphones all the time – apparently the concept of a secretary who steps in when some kind of director is needed urgently is now alien to the local school board.

The chief school administrator had said that he would see no more than five people therefore there were three teachers from my school, a parent and a union member. We had rehearsed beforehand and each of us had arguments to put forward depending on what we would be told.

We had figures as well as more humane arguments. The chief school administrator and his advisors refuted some points, agreed on others but basically we were repeatedly told that, even if they understood and shared our worries, they did not have the budget to keep three deans.

I am not sure what I had expected but I hoped things would be more open: I was probably too naive. Now I clearly need time to digest the failure and am glad we are going to Paris tomorrow.

Busy Busy

 

I would have liked to post more in the past few days, including one post on what it is like to teach about Jews in Medieval England, but this has proved to be impossible owing to recent developments on the work front.

At present our school has three deans – people who are in charge of student discipline. Two of them work full time and the other one works part time. There are 1,200 students in our high school and we have some boarders.

Due to cuts in education, we are losing one dean. We got the news only a few days ago and immediately decided to send a petition to the local school authorities. As this did not work, we were on strike on Monday, contacted the parents’ representatives for support and the press for publicity.

We got a few articles in the local newspapers and there was a short announcement in a radio bulletin. We have the full support of the parents who have sent letters to the school board explaining why it would be fatal for the school to lose a dean.

The chief school administrator has accepted to receive a small delegation this afternoon to hear what we have to say and I have been asked to be part of the group. This is both an honor and a daunting responsibility: the running of the school and a job are at stake. We need to find powerful arguments while showing that we are responsible and reliable educators who are acting for the benefits of the school.

On Thursday we we are going to Paris to the Jewish museum (the MAHJ) and the Shoah Memorial. This is part of our project on Jews in Medieval Europe in France, Germany and England. In the morning we will walk round the old Jewish district and visit a synagogue. In the afternoon, one group will visit the Jewish museum with an emphasis on the Middle-Ages while the other group will have a workshop on blood libels in Medieval France.

Some posts will probably follow on both topics.

Judaism in a Nutshell – Part II

 

We started the new lesson last Friday. First I explained to my students that in History, German and English they would deal with Jews in Medieval Europe, culminating with a visit to Paris where we would visit Le Marais, the Paris district where Jews had settled in the Middle Ages, as well as the Jewish Museum, which is situated in the same district. They seemed to like the idea.

I then handed out the worksheet with the matching exercise and I was actually pleasantly surprised to see that they knew more terms than I would have credited them for.

Everybody was able to match Israel and Jerusalem with their definitions. Bar mitzvah was another term that most of them knew because of the film The Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob.

The other best-known words were: ghetto, synagogue, Holocaust, rabbi and Torah. Some of those who knew bar mitzvah understood what bat mitzvah meant. More difficult ones were: diaspora, antisemitism (because of the way I had worded the definition), kippah and Torah scrolls. There were a few left which they will have to identify for homework.

The biggest surprise came when a student matched Shabbat with its definition. I then asked if they knew what day Shabbat was. Quite a number of students did and a boy added that it started the day before. I am still wondering ho whe knew this.

This was one of the most satisfying lessons I had had with this particular class. They were interested and put in more work than they usually do. Besides it was nice to see that some who are not very good at English were able to share a different type of knowledge; something which seemed to be proud of.

The next step will be an extract from The Physician, since it is set in Medieval England at the beginning and at the end.