When I took bridge lessons many years ago, our teacher asked us to go home and practice bidding. “Just look in the mirror,” he instructed us, “And say, ‘I pass.’ That is the bid that you’ll make most often. And that is the bid that will keep you out of trouble as a beginner.”
We don’t play bridge in my literacy or ABE classes, but I do teach people to say the magic phrase, “I pass.” My second classroom rule is “You can pass if you want to.” Continue reading
I like this graphic because it reminds me that things are changing in adult education and literacy, and that they can change. It is so clear that adults who have been through the school system without success, and who have come back to make another attempt at learning the same skills and content, cannot be taught by the same methods that failed them in the first place.
The graphic is by Matt Taylor, who is a job developer/educator at CareerworksNova in Truro, Nova Scotia. The NSSAL he refers to in the bottom section is the Nova Scotia School of Adult Learning, the province-wide organization for the delivery of adult literacy and adult basic education.
Thanks, Matt, for permission to use your graphic here.
“Read a book a week” is the assignment I finally came to for all my literacy and ABE classes. It was Debbie who got me there. I don’t know about you, but when I started teaching, I used the same ways of doing things that my teachers had used. I had watched teachers for 12 years in school, and then for four years at university. Talk about on-the-job training! A year in the Faculty of Education did very little to dull the impressions made by watching teachers teach, year-in, year-out. Continue reading
When I help students see and articulate what they do know, they may notice areas where they have trouble. For example, someone may say, “I make most of my mistakes when the denominators are different,” or “I get mixed up because I don’t know when to double the letter if I’m adding ‘ing.’”
When a student notices where he makes errors, that is a big step, a huge leap forward in learning. But it is quite different from me telling him where he needs help. When he analyzes his work and notices the patterns of errors he makes, it is a sign that he is fully engaged in the process, and has taken control of his learning.
When I analyze his work and point out the pattern of his errors to him, it is a sign that I am fully engaged in the process, but he may or may not be paying attention. (from Marking for Confidence)
The first time I failed at school I was over 30. Don’t get me wrong. I have failed at many things–relationships, do-it-yourself projects, exercise programs, baking–but I finished school and university with good marks, without doing much work.
So when I found myself in a new city (Vancouver) with no job and few prospects, going back to school seemed like a good idea. I enrolled in a community college program to become a court reporter, and started to fail almost immediately. Continue reading
Two people commented on my last post, about how working with Bernice got me started on marking for confidence.
First, Evelyn said that she thought many teachers would have seen Bernice as “resistant or difficult or careless or smartass.” I think most of those judgements are accurate.
She was resistant–she did not want me to “go over” her work with her; she wanted to keep herself out of a situation she had doubtless been in many times before, where a teacher pointed out where she had gone wrong and expected her to fix her errors. Continue reading
I remember the moment that I began to mark for confidence. It was Bernice who got me started.
The class was finishing up their writing, and putting it into the envelope that went upstairs to the secretary to be typed so that everyone could have a copy of everyone else’s stories. I tried to catch people as they finished up their work, to do a final proofread with them.
On that day, Bernice strode purposefully up to the envelope hanging behind me. Continue reading
Evelyn brought me up sharply with her comment on my last post. She wrote, “…Talk about intimidating! I’ve read it a number of times now and still have to work my way through it to get the meaning! What do you like about it?”
I don’t mind being brought up sharply. It makes me think—and write. Still, after two recent posts people have asked for clarification. Maybe I should learn something from this… Continue reading
I’ve had this poster up on my wall (and engraved in my mind) for years. (Click here for a pdf.) It has inspired me and guided my teaching.
The words are from an article called “A brief summary of the best practices in teaching intended to challenge the professional development of all teachers,” by T. Drummond. The design is mine.
English: A bored person (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Both Jenny and Evelyn commented on my last post, “Refuse to Be Bored” to the effect that the rule is easier to describe than to implement. I agree, because I know I found it difficult to learn to do.I’m writing this blog with the benefit of hindsight; and the rule about refusing to be bored, as I set it out in my post last week, did not come easy to me, nor did it fall into place all at once. I know that at first when students had the temerity to suggest that they didn’t want to do something, I got, as Jenny said, defensive. Continue reading
Working in Adult Literacy 