Tag: ESOL

136/365 It’s Gamified Learning (and I think I like it)

It’s entirely possible that I’m learning Spanish.

A week or two ago, I was listening to the Good Life Project podcast and the episode focused on the idea of expertise. If you’ve read any book with the word “expertise” in it in the last few years, you have the now-common knowledge of being able to become an expert at anything with 10,000 hours of practice (or so the research has been portrayed.

The episode’s focus wasn’t on how you can rack up the 10,000 hours, but how you can get really good at something in 20 hours. You can listen for the details.

For me, the experience played out like this:

Brain: Hey, Zac, didn’t we want to learn another language?

 

Me: We sure did, Brain.

 

Brain: Maybe we should commit to 20 hours of learning another language and see how things go.

 

Me: That’s a good idea, Brain.

My formal training in ASOL (anything as a second language) consists of Spanish for two years in high school and three semester of Latin in college. Neither really stuck.

I started looking at Rosetta Stone because it’s omnipresent in any conversation I’ve heard around learning a new language without actually interacting with another human. I asked some friends, and they agreed it was worth a shot (though expensive). The price tag hadn’t escaped my gaze.

Abby also suggested I try out Duolingo. I told her I had, but was looking for something a little more robust. Then, that night, I returned to Duolingo. Before I was going to put a few hundred dollars in Rosetta, I wanted to make sure I’d covered my bases.

I’d interacted with Duolingo while they were in beta, and I liked the environment. I was also a grad student at the time, and taking on a self-directed, beta, online language program didn’t seem like the best of ideas.

Now, though, the site has gotten its act together. I’ve been logging in for almost a week now and my Spanish knowledge is re-awakening and strengthening. Plus, I’m having fun.

I’m not sure if, from a second language acquisition standpoint, I’m developing along what might be a traditional academic path, but that’s not really my interest.

I didn’t know Spanish and now I know a little more. Tomorrow, I’ll know a little more. It won’t be the complete cultural immersion I’ll likely head to eventually, but it’s a great primer so far that’s helping me navigate grammar, vocabulary and syntax.

The thing that’s funny to me is the worry about whether or not teachers would approve of what I’m doing. At the end of each level or set on Duolingo, it asks if I’d like to share my achievement on social networks. Thus far, I’ve declined. The thing is, it’s not because I don’t feel as though I’m learning in the course. Moreover, I worry that what I’m doing will appear as thought I’m doing the kiddy version of learning. To be sure, Duolingo is gamified, and I have to admit kind of liking it. A little green cartoon owl weeps when I have to begin a level again.

Because of my own skepticism of the gamification of learning, though, I’m assuming who sees on twitter or facebook that I’ve just earned a new level on Duolingo will also view my learning with skepticism. This worry exists side-by-side with my knowledge that I am actually learning, and the tension is alarming.

Perhaps the middle ground and safe space for me is the fact that I’ve chosen this game. I’m seeking out this learning and this platform. I’m here because I want to learn Spanish, not because I want to play the game, and it just happens to be trying to teach me Spanish.

This leaves open and complex for me the question of what happens in kids’ minds when we show them the game first and hope the learning will sneak in after.

Things I Know 310 of 365: I’ve got two ideas for improving teacher preparation (so far)

The stakes in student teaching are high. Student teaching will color teachers’ perceptions of students’ capacity to learn, shape their expectations for their own performance and help determine the type of school in which they will choose to teach.

– National Council on Teacher Quality

The quality of teacher preparation programs came up over and over again throughout my courses this semester. Common complaints:

  • The standards for teacher education programs are myriad across colleges and universities.
  • As teacher preparation programs account for large portions of college and university enrollment, they frequently lower enrollment standards as they have become reliant on the funding delivered by these students’ tuition.
  • Teacher preparation programs struggle to find an appropriate balance between theoretical and practical instruction.

My own preparation experience at Illinois State University was a strong one. I was required to spend over 120 hours observing and delivering drop-in lessons at partner schools near campus including the University’s own laboratory schools. While I never had any practice teaching my peers as they pretended to be students, I had plenty of opportunities to teach students as they acted like themselves.

Each outing in another teacher’s classroom was followed up by written reflection, conversation with the teacher, and class discussion with my fellow pre-service teachers and our professor.

It wasn’t a perfect experience. My peers and I started to see the cracks in the program the closer we got to graduation and thereby knowing everything. We wished our professors had more experience in classrooms to balance their well-meaning theories with the realities we found each time we ventured to the head of a classroom. We knew we wanted to see Individual Education Plans and 504s before we were on our own and faced with the task of informing their drafting. Most of all, we wanted to know what each other was doing and how we could best begin the time-tested practice of teacher stealing.

I’m not in disagreement with many of my classmates’ complaints from undergrad or grad school. I’ve started thinking about what I would do were I in charge of reforming or revamping a school of education based on these complaints. So far, I’ve two suggestions.

-1-

Require each teacher seeking certification to also complete certification requirements in special education or English for speakers of other languages instruction. Not completing either of these certifications when I was in college has always been a regret. What I learned in both areas I had to learn amid the process of learning to teach. It would have increased my program requirements, but it would have been worth it.

I’ve got a hunch it wouldn’t have been worth it for those people in my program who weren’t too keen on actually becoming classroom teachers after graduation. Requiring special ed and/or ESOL certification from all graduates would help cut down on program applicants as well. Those looking at teaching as a fall-back position would be less likely to do so if it meant more work. Those who apply and complete the program would enter the classroom better prepared to meet the needs of their students and speak the teacher-ese that makes up much of the learning curve as new teachers start out.

Such a requirement might also lead programs to rejigger their schedules of coursework to keep the requirements manageable and have the added benefit of more cross-curricular work.

-2-

Require every student teacher to blog. Require that blogging to be shared amongst the other student teachers in their program. Require every cooperating and supervising teacher to comment on every post written by any student teacher in his or her charge.

When I was going through my program, ISU had the sixth-highest rate of teacher graduates in the country. Dozens of people were completing their student teaching in small towns and cities across the state at the same time as me.

Aside from one friend with whom I carpooled to school, I had contact with none of them until the whole experience was over. I should have. I should have also been required to reflect on my practice at least once a week and those stories should have been archived for the classes that came after me.

When I became a student teacher, I might as well have been the first man on the moon for as much institutional knowledge as I took with me into the experience.

Requiring all student teachers to blog about their practice in concert with their peers in similar situations can create a culture of interaction and reflection that’s so easy to forget amid all that is clamoring for attention during those weeks. The comments they receive can help them refine their practice and feel part of community. For those who follow, the records of reflection can act as case studies and what-if scenarios leading up to student teaching.

Building these habits of transparency, reflection, and collaboration while their teaching identities are in the most nascent stages will help increase the likelihood those habits will carry over into their professional practice.

—

These are two beginning thoughts on how education can improve how it prepares its next generations. I’ll keep thinking.