The purpose of education, in particular higher education, is to teach creative, intelligent, thoughtful, capable people  the skills needed to go into the world  and do amazing things.

The purpose of a college level Spanish Conversation class, it follows, is to give students the tools and the language skills and confidence they need to use the Spanish language in the world. My job as a teacher of that class is to try and get them there.

There are moments when I think that my classroom, that is the physical space where I meet my class, inhibits our learning more than it helps us. And yet I also know that some students crave structure, order and the security of a specific seat to the left of the board to make their learning happen.

But sometimes we have to mix it up a bit.

A few weeks ago I had to miss class because I was going to a conference. Rather than canceling class altogether, I came up with a plan. Our college has a small but mighty bowling alley that is not usually open when my class meets… but maybe, just maybe, they would consider opening for us on that Friday? It was worth a call. And they said yes.

So I know what you are thinking: What? Instead of canceling class you sent them to a bowling alley? Where is the learning in that? Well, I am glad you asked….

In my class each student does a project that would require conversations in Spanish about a topic of their choice. Each student also establishes goals/outcomes for the project and also, at the midterm point and at the end of the class, is asked to assess their progress towards those goals.

Invariably I will have students create lists and lists and lists of vocabulary words. Why? Because that is how they have been taught in the past. You need to make lists, you need to know words. Yes, that is true, but isolated lists of words are less than useful without being used in a specific context and used with other people.

Enter bowling.

I announced to my students that they would have the opportunity to go bowling, but “the catch” they had to do it entirely in Spanish. (They were thrilled) I explained that it would be the class’ responsibility to find the words, phrases, terms used in bowling and teach themselves those words as well as use them in context. They could ask friends, native speakers, the internet for help, but it was their job to both find as well as teach each other those words.

Within three days, this google doc was created by at least half of the class.

Led by two of my former students, the class went to the bowling alley (“la bolera”).    One of my former students brought along a camera to film what happened.

About a week later I got the “bill” from the bowling alley.  It was 1/3 of what I expected (which was good because I only got a 1/3 of the donations from the student that I had expected, but oh well).  Fearing a book-keeping mistake, an inquiry was made.  No, the bowling alley said, we didn’t charge you for the full hour because they spent 2/3 of the time talking in Spanish and reviewing vocabulary and  practicing the terms.

HISP 205…bowling from Barbara Sawhill on Vimeo.

(Used with the students’ permission)

Sometimes the most important thing to know as a teacher is when to get the heck out of the way.  The students’ response  to the event was great: we need to do more of this.  We need to get out of the classroom.  We need to make meaning out of what we are learning.

This Friday I have to go to Ann Arbor for a meeting. So, the students are planning their own mini classes and their own topics to discuss.  The requirements are:

1) you have to speak Spanish for 45 minutes with someone and about something you care about

2) you have to have a goal, an outcome  for what you want to get done in those 50 minutes

3) you cannot be in a formal classroom.

Here’s what they have planned: (click to make larger)

They will report back later about their learning and this adventure.  And with their permission, I will report that here.

@sfern If you can find one of dancing Yaz, I can git-r-dun

— Barbara Sawhill (@BSawhill) March 29, 2013

So thanks to Ryan, I was gifted (heh) a lovely animated image of Carl Yastrzemski doing (something close to a) dance.  Add to the mix a lovely foto of the Green Monster from Wikipedia, the dancing (?) Jim Groom image from this ds106-inspired assignment, a lot of patience, a lot of swearing …. and here you have it.

Taa-daa.

Okay now I -really- have to do my homework….oh, wait, right after the Red Sox/Yankees game that is being streamed live on ESPN right now.

Welcome to the 2013 MLB Season!

Opening Day at Fenway Park is almost here!  Even the Bava is dancing with joy!

Here is a link to  John Johnston’s ds106 assignment that I followed.  While I should have been commenting on my students’ blogs,  ever the procrastinatrix, I spent an hour or so with Ryan‘s encouragement via Google Hangout  (read: “Be patient!” “No, don’t click there…click THERE!!!  ) making this happen.

I used Gimp and somehow did it wrong but it still came out okay.

Instructions to follow.  Ironically, I have to leave now to take my kid to his baseball practice.

A few hours later…

Here is a link to the instructions I followed (more or less) using GIMP.

After posting the above image, via Twitter I had this exchange:

Hmm… a challenge.  I like challenges.

Not sure if there is a gif out there of Yaz dancing.  I remain hopeful.  But in the interim, here is an image taken FROM the Green Monster towards one of the icons of the Boston skyline — the CITGO  sign– and what’s-his-name doing the Fenway Shuffle on top.

This one took me 5 minutes to make, on my own, and with a beer in one hand. Boom.

Indeed, it is the stupid stuff that engages us.

Okay, maybe tomorrow I will get my homework done….

The MOOCs are coming. Be very afraid. And did you hear them say  that they are coming to take over language teaching???…. OH THE HORROR!

<Yawn.>

As language teachers we have been here many times.  And as I have said before, (over three years ago!) if our teaching practices are such that they could be replaced by a machine or an online bot or a talking head, then maybe they should.  Because what really matters in the language classroom are the social interactions, the cues, the human dynamics and how language is tightly woven into those interactions, not isolated and set apart from them.

The last time I went  down this path it was when Joshua Kim from Inside Higher Ed started talking about how Language Labs were dead.  Language  Center directors went bezerk! Chaos! Indigination.  And here was part of my response to the yelling:

Ask yourself, please, language center director: What are you doing, in your center, at your school, to prove him and others wrong? What are you going to do today, and tomorrow and the next day to make your center relevant to the teaching of languages and cultures and the academic mission of your school?

Instead of bashing him, we should be thankful for the shot across the bow that Mr Kim just lobbed our way. Like it or not, it is how our centers are perceived by many, and something we need to work very hard to counteract.

Every. Single. Day.

We are back here again, all agitated and concerned, terrified that MOOCs are gonna eat us alive.  And I, for one, am delighted that we are being slapped awake. Teachers are feeling challenged, scared, unsettled.  Well good. It’s about damn time.

Be very afraid.  Or something.

Language teachers have been using online tools for years. The idea of online resources functioning like an “electronic workbook” or a way to reinforce content outside of the class has been around for a couple of decades.   Over the years  the amount of resources has grown exponentially.  First teachers were creating their own exercises (anyone remember SuperMacLang?)   and then textbook companies joined in.  Now we find ourselves in the era of “The Supersite” and are  awash in materials.   Assessment reared its ugly head, so more exercises were needed.  Somewhere along the line we lost our ability to discern which materials are useful and which ones were just tripe. We felt guilty that our students are being charged $$$ to use this stuff  so we  felt compelled to use it more.  Oooh, and it has automatic grading? Instant gratification! Sure! What a great feature!  And down the rabbit hole we slid.

MOOCs are forcing us to stop, yet again, and take stock not only of our teaching practices but the tools we use to support them.  They are also asking us to define what “open” means to us as teachers and whether our definition of open is reflected in the tools we use.   These are all really important conversations  that we should have been having all along, but often in the Academy it takes a crisis to get people talking (and listening to each other) about important stuff.   That’s good. Let’s talk.

I just came back from InnovateOSU2013  in Columbus, Ohio.  While I admit that I went primarily to collect that finder’s fee from the featured keynote speaker,  it was interesting to hear, during one panel,  about the effort and the time that faculty were putting into planning, devising, planning and launching a MOOC. There’s something to be said about  faculty coming together to talk about content creation and scaffolding of materials for 2 hours every Wednesday for 6 or so months, for example.  Another talked about how MOOCs offer data driven feedback that they hope will improve  their teaching.  Another teacher pondered…MOOCs will undoubtedly improve as a tool…but will the University?

What’s not so  great  is the talking head lecture format that seems to be the signature of many MOOCs. One professor talked about how she craved having students present when she recorded  her lectures, and a real classroom setting, because talking into the camera in a studio was too isolating.  Another talked about wanting to meet other Coursera teachers, to get tips and tricks, to get support, because she was the only person MOOCing her subject on her campus.  Hmmm… are MOOCs  making us feel isolated and creating  (yet another) teaching silo?

Rather than isolating us even more, let’s use MOOCs as a catalyst to talk about open-ness and teaching and technology and how to make  the face-to-face experience in the classroom, as wel as the online connections outside of the classroom,  relevant and effective.  Let’s talk about what innovation means — what it is, what it isn’t, what it could be — at our schools.   Let’s think about a place in our teaching for experimentation and exploration (vs pouring everything into a template and a prescribed format, or assgning another supersite).

MOOC madness is making perfectly sensible people babble and scream and fear for the worst.  Let’s use MOOC madness as an opportunity to think creatively, teach passionately, use technology effectively, and challenge the assumptions being made about the value and the importance of what what happens in the classroom.

Say MOOC again!  Say MOOC again!  And then …   make what happens in your classroom matter.

We spent the weekend doing some housecleaning here at LLU…  a coat of fresh paint, moved some furniture around, opened some windows, changed a couple lightbulbs here and there.   And yes, the dog helped.

Please let us know what you think !

One of the reasons I love to teach is that I get to learn. Be it from my students or the people who come to our class… every semester I acquire new knowledge, ideas, and perspectives thanks to what happens in the classroom.

As often as I can, I model the risks one needs to take to converse in a second language. Outside of class, my students are expected to make contact with Spanish speakers based upon their own interests and linguistic goals. In class, my role is to ask for/suggest topics that we can discuss, and/or invite Spanish speakers who are on campus to talk with the class whenever possible.

These visits are planned, to be sure, but they are never scripted. My responsibility as an educator is to help conversations flourish, and also to avoid using my privilege as “the leader” of the classroom to shut them down.  I keep my class and the syllabus open-ended so that everyone has the freedom to take the conversation wherever it needs to go.

Where I teach, we are constantly wrestling with the ideas and the importance of difference: different ideas, different perspectives, different choices. Central to all of these conversations is the notion that while I might not totally understand or agree with someone else’s politics, point of view, or opinion, I can still listen and ask thoughtful, respectful questions without attacking the other person.

I can do that in English fairly well (okay, some days are better than others, I do admit). But in Spanish? Talking about difference, expressing difference, making room for different thoughts and ideas and perspectives in a language that is not your first language is hard. I want to make room for conversations in my classroom for topics like gender, sexuality, race, inclusion, exclusion, and privilege (all topics that have been part of many conversations on campus during the past few weeks).  I worry about how to do this without making students feel uncomfortable, and how to do this without making the people or communities we are discussing seem unnecessarily academic or, worse, like “the other,” some weird thing that we have observe from a distance like scientists.

So, when in doubt?   Dive in.

This past week, in light of some of the conversations that we have had on campus, and due to my own interest in learning more, I invited two speakers to come to our class.

Our first guest was the LGBTQ community coordinator for the Multicultural Resource Center of our college, Lore Espinoza, who is also Venezuelan.  Lore talked with the students about how their work with the Spanish speaking LGBTQ community is limited by what the Spanish language can express effectively. There are words in English that simply do not exist in Spanish (e.g. queer). Yet when you use the English word, or even a literal translation of the word from English into Spanish, you realize that the language is not just limiting, but also imposing an English-centric bias on the conversation. The conversation then turned to the question that many textbooks try (and fail) to address: if a language only has masculine and feminine pronouns, does that mean it is sexist? Is it the language that is sexist, or is it the context in which the language is spoken that imposes sexism upon the meaning of words?

My hope for the conversation was not to make my students even more uncomfortable with speaking Spanish. Rather, it was to point out that even hispanoparlantes find Spanish limiting in their own work, and to give examples about how they work around that in their daily practice.

And speaking of queer….

The very same week, our campus was hosting (as part of the Year of the Queer series) a talk and a visit by Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes from the University of Michigan, author of  Queer Ricans: Cultures and Sexualities in the Diaspora. Far from being just another boring academic, Prof La Fountain-Stokes also shared with us some of the work he is doing for a new book covering “Puerto Rican and diasporic theater, performance, and activism since the 1960s, and [...] the links between cross-dressing, sex/gender modification, and physical displacement in a geographic zone marked by frequent migrations.”

original image here: http://thisisindexed.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/card27451.jpg

Prof. La Fountain-Stokes took the conversation we had started about the limits of the language and pushed us even further.  We talked about the etymology of words that refer to gender and sexual minorities. Words that he felt the students needed to know existed, but they shouldn’t ever use (an interesting concept… usually you learn words in a second language in order to use them…immediately, as in, a quiz!)

At one point the whiteboard was a blur of words (English, Spanish, Latin…).  It seemed overwhelming and I could feel my own anxiety growing as I realized that in the wrong context the word ladybug or duck in Spanish could be perceived as an insult. The students were feeling it too.

“El idioma es una cosa viva,” said el Profe, “que se transforma con el tiempo.”  Language is a living thing that transforms itself over time…. and I would add, evolves based upon the culture and the context in which it is spoken.

Which is how we got to Cooking with Drag Queens. As part of Prof La Fountain-Stokes’ research, he collaborated on a series of YouTube videos (“Cooking with Drag Queens”) in which his persona, Lola von Miramar, makes Puerto Rican delicacies, talks about Ricky Martin, paints her nails blue, and dresses fabulously. Code switching between Spanish and English as well as gender roles, Lola embodied all of the intersections of language, gender, inclusion, acceptance, serious research, and humor we had been transversing recently all into one faaaabulous persona.  And she made us giggle too.

So what did I learn? I learned that modelling and engaging in uncomfortable conversations and unknown terrains is hard, but if you set the right tone, and approach it with a sense of respect, humility, wonder, and even a little bit of humor, it can be done. It would have been different, I think, if I had talked about Lola or the limits of the Spanish language for the LGBTQ community on my own with the class. That, to me, would have felt like “othering.” But to have Lola present herself to the class, giggle with us, and remind us that camp is camp whether in English or in Spanish … that made the topic all the more accessible and the conversations all the more possible.

The more I teach, the more I learn, and the more I realize that the world is not just black and white. And the world would be utterly boring if that were the case. Instead, I am grateful for the many shades of gray that the world has to offer, and I appreciate the challenge of including those shades of gray in my teaching (and in my world) as often as I can.

I have two jobs at my institution: I am a language center director and I am language teacher.  Both roles, in fact, involve a certain amount of teaching.  The type of teaching I do in the classroom mirrors  the way I work with my staff:  They come to this class or this job with a series of skills that make them eminently capable to do the work.  My job as a  teacher and a co-worker, I believe, is to push  and prod and ask hard questions and help identify the “somethings” that would allow this person to grow.  To identify the areas they  would like to take on, explore, create, break (and then fix, please).  But the bottom line in both the office as well as the classroom is this: what does this class or this job need to provide you so you can grow and flourish and move on?  If you can tell me that, then I am here to help you launch.

For the past fifteen years, in the classroom and in the workplace,  this practice seems  to have worked.

In the classroom, through  a combination of  their own gumption as well as the freedom this pedagogy provides,  magical things have happened. Some of the students I have had the honor to teach have used their projects to create the underpinnings for an eventual fellowship application  to  the  Fulbrights or  the Comptons or the Watsons of the world.    Others have gone on to further schooling, taking their project ideas with them and weaving them into their graduate school applications and even their career paths.  Like I said: magical.

In the workplace, I have worked alongside  some amazing young people, each of them gifted in different ways, each of them using our shop to hone their talents not only the benefit of the people we support, but also for their own personal growth. They, like the students, eventually acquire the skills and the experience  needed to get from here to bigger, better environments.

The college classroom and the entry level tech job are similar in that they both are about developing the necessary skills to move up and on and out of that space… to infinity and oh-so-beyond.

I am proud of the work I get to do in both parts of my job.  The results, both in terms of my students learning outcomes as well as my former colleagues’ professional accomplishments, have been remarkable.

But after 15 years of mentoring others in the classroom and in the workplace I have to admit: I am drained.  It’s hard, damn hard, to teach and to mentor over and over again.  It would be soooooo much easier to dictate, demand, and insist as a boss;  to teach from the textbook and to fill in the blanks as a teacher.  As enticing as that might sound, I know that the learning in both places would suffer if I took the easy route.

It is also hard and exquisitely exhausting  to feel as if you are constantly standing still while everyone with whom you have worked is moving on.  They go away and do great things. I’m still here, standing at the launchpad, over and over again.

This is where you, the readership of LLU,  come in: We created this blog many moons ago as a place where  people who have one foot in (language) teaching and another in technology could share and support one another.   Your comments have helped me shape what I do in my daily practice before, so now I am going to ask  for your ideas once again.

As I watched  this conversation unfold  (with a certain amount of envy I do admit because yes a former co worker  just launched and will soon land at this remarkable workplace), I began to think, if there were a paid leave option offered  that would  allow one to re-energize as a teacher, technologist  and  a mentor:  Where would you go? What would you do?

Caveat: I personally believe community is hugely important, and I for one need people to do for me as I do for my students (read: poke, prod, question, etc) Aside from conferences (which as was said here before, can be done better), where does one go????

Or to put it in the language of animated gifs:

How does one move from this:

To this:

Without ending up like this?

I welcome your comments.

Congratulations  to Ryan  – on landing the job of his dreams —  from all of us in a certain unconventional  language center  located in a small, quirky,  liberal arts college. It was here  where Ryan studied, worked and first discovered …a bit too well…. how to break technology when it gets in the way of letting  learning happen.

Air kisses and  tea and shortbread from the  jauntily-clad, fabulously coiffed,  doyenne of LLU as well.

It’s heartwarming to know that sometimes, if you really, truly, absolooootely want something to happen in your life, it can really happen.  And it just did.  Ka-boom.

And Ryan, on his blog over here,  is clearly excited, wouldn’t you say?

Congratulations to UMW and to the DTLT bullpen.  You now, officially, have absolutely the best Ed Tech batting line up in the Liberal Arts League. Game over.

Finally, a message to  Ryan’s new boss,  Jim Groom :  Yeah, yeah, yeah…we  get it.  Srsly, could ya please try to contain your glee,   :-)  ?

I live in Northeast Ohio.  Northeast Ohio looks a lot like this for most of the months between November and March April.  Shovelling is a part of my life, and never has that been moreso than this year  (thank you Winter Storm Nemo)

My house is on a corner which means we have two sidewalks we need to maintain. Them’s the rules in our fair city.

Don’t tell anyone (all secrets are safe on the internet, right?) but I actually enjoy  shoveling.   Yeah, I know it’s crazy, especially when we sometimes get pounded with heavy wet stuff .  But I find myself enjoying this if only for the fact that it is one of the few things I get to do that, even if it is for a brief sunny afternoon, it can be completed.  FInished. Done. Sit down.  Have a beer.

I love teaching. I love playing with technology and making it bend so it helps people think and share and connect.  But both with teaching as well as bashing on  the tools, sometimes you feel like you aren’t getting anywhere.  And then there are the emails and the voicemail messages you ignored while you were teaching or bashing.  It all seems endless.

Some days I just crave being able to say “I did that. That. Right. There. And –if only for a moment?– it is done.”  And to satisfy that craving: I shovel.

Since I took this picture it has snowed, rained, frozen, melted and snowed again.  And I have shoveled several more times.  And each time I felt like I got something accomplished. Hooray.

Which is a heckuvalot more than I can say about what  the top of my desk in my office looks like right now…

Not my office, to be true, but it could be…

Spring and spring break will be here in 3 weeks.  I, for one, am oh so ready.

The first week of the second semester is done and over… I could tell because I was face down on the couch at about  6 p.m.last night  wondering if it really was too soon to go to bed (the answer: no).

I am starting this term a bit off kilter.  Our Educational Technology Specialist left for a better paying job in the big(ger) city, just after our Administrative Assistant found a full-time job in her true area of expertise, library science.  Above is the sign that greets me every morning when I enter the building:  the learning center, three positions…and me.

My language center is a happy, bright space with music quietly playing in the background while birds, yes birds, twitter and  whistle and occasionally park themselves on someone’s head.  We pride ourselves on being open, collaborative, noisy, disruptive and constantly striving  to find creative, learning-centric  ways to do the work we do.

There has always been a  we in there… I find that I need the help and support (and the occasional smack down) of  others to be creative, to bounce ideas around, to make sure I am not chasing tools for the sake of just having more tools.   Without those things, and those people, I find myself going round and round in circles.  And totally exhausted at the end of the day.

 Yeah. It’s kinda like that.

It is going to be  at least 6 months, maybe more, until we hire someone for the professional position on my staff. Part of the reason for the delay is that we have been given the okay to think about renovating our current space, which is GREAT! NEWS!  but it might change the responsibilities of what this position will have to do.

Nature abhors a vacuum… but no more than I do.   I need to find like-minded troublemakers to fill this void and  to help my center and our work keep moving forward.

So this is a call for any and all language  compañer@s:  folks who teach outside of  locked-down Course Management Tools and Textbook Supersites, people who believe that doing stuff out in the open is not only good for our language students’ learning, but also good for keeping ourselves honest and open to seeing new possibilities by doing things differently.

This semester my HISP 205 students and I are already playing with Tumblr and SoundCloud and VoiceThread and maybe we will end up being total tree-hugging wackos and do some guerrilla radio with our own ds106-inspired radio show.  You never know.

If you are interested in playing along, please leave a comment below.   If you are interested in leading the charge, please leave a comment below.  I don’t need more work (FSM knows that I have more than enough of that right now) but what I am looking for are meaningful challenges, conversations, ideas, and people to learn from and with.

Hippies welcome