Alien Pedagogy

My school just provided me with an interactive whiteboard and within a week I found that I’d unconsciously created IWB routines to manipulate student behavior and learning as well as to non-verbally communicate messages.

One of the most powerful tools is lighting. When I run the IWB, the lights are out and there’s only natural light in most of the classroom (this is also in line with our school’s determination to reduce energy consumption). When I ask students to do a focused reading, I turn on the lights again. The first three times I did this, I said “I’m going to turn on the lights to help you read.” Now I give a focus for active reading and turn on the lights.

The flipchart is also powerful. For one thing, if you want to move on to the next topic you can communicate this by going to a new slide.

I’ve begun listing my objectives on my first slide and then use the flip chart to guide students through the activities and tasks of the class. At the end of the class, we start with the last thing that happened in class and then work our way back to the objectives, which I find a more effective lesson summary than unsupported oral discussion.

The whiteboard pen is like the conch in Lord of the Flies. Somehow, it’s stronger than handing a marker to a student, perhaps because there are many markers in a classroom but only one IWB pen.

In closing:

• There is much that teachers can do to express their expectations using IWBs.
• Teachers should remember that the “interactive” whiteboard should not be an excuse to return to overly heavy “sage on the stage” teaching.

I remember that whenever my teachers would ask me to behave especially well, I’d just take it as a sign of weakness and misbehave all the more.

My voice has been shot all week, but instead of asking for sympathy, I just started classes speaking in a quiet barking growl. Not unlike Bob Dylan’s live performances.

All of the students thought that I was mad at them. When they figured out that I’d been sick, they felt bad for me and behaved very well.

This was great because in addition to having no voice, I was exhausted every day this week.

The major assessment of our poetry unit is a presentation. The focus is on communicating analysis verbally rather than in writing. All students are required to use power point as a back up.

This year, every grade 9 group presented during one of the two classes that we’d assigned to presentations. All presentations were required to be emailed to me last Friday so that I could download them onto our class computer. Though some students missed the Friday deadline, over 90% had emailed their files by Monday morning. The rest were ready by the second class.

As mentioned before, I don’t dock marks for lateness, but I did clearly explain to students the schedule that I’d set up for them. I have been working on framing every class as part of a larger movement and I think / hope that the high number of punctual submissions reflects that students are buying into their learning.

Or maybe it’s just because midterms and report cards are coming up.

While there’s nothing wrong with energy and humor, my classes are dominated by males that rapidly become overstimulated unless they are given a very specific tunnel for that stimulation. Much of my personality is becoming a disruption in the classroom.

To solve this, I’ve begun starting my classes in a very calm and soothing tone. I only release my enthusiasm for teaching at very specific moments. Ex/ I often end the class with a lot of humor and because that’s when students seem to run through their learning cycle, that humor seems to stick, just as the sincerity that I use to open the class seems to stick.

These moments are not the only ones that build my reputation amongst the student body, but they do have an impact.

I can never get over the things that students will say about their teachers while they’re away.

• “We never learn anything in this class.”
• “S/he is so easy.”
• “Too strict!”
• “S/he doesn’t care about us.”

Rapport is a constant work-in-progress, so I refuse to validate these statements (or condemn those teachers) when students make them.

Yet I can’t help wondering what my students say about me. Some might say that it doesn’t matter what students think about their courses, but I expect my students to recognize the work I put into their lessons. I have told them that.

What do you think students say about you? What would you have them say?