- Omar Shaath :
Reading Vella provides me with ideas in making the learning environment more effective for the students. I have been reading about safe environment, relationships, teamwork, and engagement.
Safe environment helps the students open up and relax in the session. To achieve this, I try to be friendly and welcoming as much as possible. Last Monday, it happened to be my birthday. Therefore, I decided to bring a cake to class and celebrate with the students. It also helped in establishing a good relationship with the students, a relation that goes beyond a teacher-student relationship. I’m also thinking of keeping in touch with them out of class through facebook.com. I talked to the students about Internet access. They told me that they are provided with Wi-Fi only, but fortunately, they all have laptops. However, I need to coordinate with my teammate and come with a decision or a plan in implementing this.
In addition, we have been making activities that foster teamwork and individual engagement. On one hand, we had group activities. In one activity, we distributed 3 pictures for each group. Then, we asked them to write sentences about these pictures. In second activity, we asked a question for each group, and if the group answers correctly get the point. Eventually, the group with the most number of points wins. On the other hand, we provided activities that engage individuals since some students are more active than others. For example, we introduced a story, and we asked each student to read a line. Another example, in exchanging information, each student had to get up and interview his classmates. Finally, we asked each student to introduce to the class one of his interviewees. Besides the academic games, we have non-academic games for the students. So far, we have implemented one in class. We asked a student to stay outside of class, then we choose a leader who makes gestures and the rest of the class has to imitate the leader. The student who left the classroom is then allowed to comes in and start guessing who’s the leader.
Students seemed to enjoy activities much. Therefore, I decided to try as much as possible to provide an activity each class. For next class, I will make them watch a movie. Details to follow in the next reflection. I also decided to make them play Jeopardy in the last class. I’m sure they will love because it causes rival competition, fun, and learning as well. Furthermore, Tasneem came up with a game. The game is group-based; each group has to come up with words as much as possible in five minutes provided that it should start with a specific letter. This game allows them to practice vocabulary as well as spelling. Nevertheless, we are keeping it in our resource bag for now.
Finally, I feel attached to my students. I want them to learn and get as much as possible out of this class. I’m just afraid that I push them too much, or violate sequence of material. However, I’m glad that I memorized all the names of the students by second class only even though some of them have long and hard names. They also seemed to be happy with my professor’s visit to class. I guess they feel important in this class unlike their work environment. I was also happy that Joel; one of my students, wanted to stay in touch with me even after the course is over. They also asked some personal questions such as what I’m planning to do after graduation. I answered them “I might work for UDC” and smiled. Another student, who is a quiet one, started telling me the different types of vehicles that he drives. I look forward to seeing them next Monday.
- Jummana Kahlout about her second week :
Jane Vella in chapter 6 of her book, “Learning to listen, Learning to teach” defines a principle of sound relationships. She says that this phrase “implies that there is friendship but no dependency, fun without trivializing learning, dialogue between adult men and women who feel themselves peers.” This sentence appealed to me when I started teaching the class two weeks ago because I felt that such a relationship between the teachers and adult learners is important in order to make the lessons worthwhile. However, noting the current migrant workers social status situation in Qatar, I did not actually feel this relationship and made it my mission to move towards it as classes proceed.
We have now taught two classes and I feel that the relationship between me as an instructor and our adult learners is improving in terms of Vella’s sound relationship principle. The first class we taught made me feel somewhat awkward in the sense that all the students are older than myself but insist on calling me madam. This seemed to contradict Vella’s ideas of making adult learners feel like our peers rather than our students in a classroom. In addition to calling me madam, the students would stand up every time Abdelrahman or I walk in to the room, ask them a question or when they need to ask us a question.
The student’s behavior can be explained by the “social status” given to them in Qatar. Most of our workers are expected to call their sponsors “Sir/Madam” and are asked to be respectful to basically anyone from Qatar or the Arab region. This should have been one of my expectations but I did not think it would also extend to students who are much younger than the workers. If anything, I felt that this needs to stop and that this treatment is somewhat inappropriate if I may say since some of the learners in our class are 40 years old. We knew from the start of the first class that to abide by what Vella says in her book we first needed to make sure we had a similar environment to the one she was describing.
To alter the general atmosphere in the room, Abdelrahman and I asked the workers to call us not only by our names but by our nicknames! He is now Abdul and I am Jumango. We then asked each of them to share his nickname with the rest of the class to break any ice in the room. In addition, we asked them to sit down every time they attempted to stand up out of respect to answer our questions. Of course we spent the entire first class trying to deal with these issues but there was still shyness on the side of the workers to move in the direction of no formalities between us.
By the end of the second we managed to have every student leave the class and say “Bye Abdelrahman, bye Jummana, see you next class.” This is a step closer to the environment that Vella talks about in her book and is a more appropriate relationship between ourselves and our adult learners. We hope to continue and improve this situation by bringing cupcakes and pizza next class and eating with our learners to create a friendship between us.
Vella also talks about teaching workers what they would like to learn and what they feel is necessary for them to learn, this is amongst our next steps in the class. Most of our students have not specified any interests in terms of the materials being offered in the class. We asked each individual about their learning preferences but they all said what we are teaching is useful. I would personally love to know more about the type of English they get stuck on in conversations with their sponsors and such and would love to help them learn enough English to converse comfortably about the subjects that relate to their jobs.
In conclusion, Vella makes some good points about the relationships between instructors and adult learners; the most important in my opinion is her principle of sound relationships. However, I feel that we first need to make sure the environment we are teaching in is similar to the one she describes in her book in order to apply her theories to our teaching. We are slowly and successfully trying to move towards a less formal class where the students view us as peers available to share information with them and teach them what they feel is necessary to learn. Once the formalities of the names and excessive respect end, we will be ready to compare our progress using Vella’s criteria on teaching adults.
- Amal Alamri about her second week :
On 22nd, October 2010 Assem and I went to the industrial area where we had the second teaching session in the ACTS Company. Before going there we had 1 week to reflect about what went well and what was bad in the first class that we were not aware of. We were trying to come up with a plan of how should we move on for the next classes. Our goal that we needed to reach is to improve our way of teaching according the students needs. However, this is the hard part where we should maintain balance between the students in our class because we have 2 students out of 7 who are advanced than the rest of the class. They can write, read and also they can express what it is in their mind. So this was tricky because the rest can’t read and write and we thought that those students are the ones who need this session to improve their skills. Finally we could come up with plan that can suit both sides (basic and advanced students).
Basically, our plan will goes as the following. After looking at the pre-test and dealing with those students from the first class. We figured out that we should focus on reading and writing which is something that is not covered in the materials we have. So we decided to make up our own teaching materials that would be designed and based according to their needs. By doing this, we will make sure that we teach them what they really want to learn (reading and writing). Since we have 2 hours of teaching. We decided to have the first 45 minutes as an oral practice where it is going to be based on the materials we have already. Each week, we will teach them some new questions and answers that they might need to use in their daily life. After the oral practice, we take 15 minutes break where me and Assem are preparing for the last part of the class, which is teaching the students alphabets for 1 hour. Since there are 26 letters we planned to teach them 8 letters a week as a start of teaching them reading and writing.
So in the first 45 minutes, we went over the materials of week 1,2,3 and 4 where we taught them how to ask questions and answer them in complete sentences. Week 1 was like a revision for them from what we did in the first class where we asked them how did they spend their weekend and we were teaching them some basics question such as “What is your name?” as an introduction and a reminder and also it will be helpful to move from the easy section to the harder part. Then, we taught them how to spell their first and last names and most of the students didn’t knew how to do the spelling but we tried our best to make them do it. After that we moved to ask them questions such as “how are you?” and we explained that by showing pictures of different feelings such as, happy –smiley face, sad with sad face …etc. – and sometimes we act the feeling in front of them such as sleepy and tired, it was really fun. I was trying to apply what Vella wrote in the book about providing safe environment, engagement, communication and friendship. Actually, from the second class I think the students and I get used of each other. I can see kind of trust happening on both sides, this strong bond had motivated me positively. Me and Assem are trying all the time to engage the students and engage them in the class by making them participate in the class and ask questions all the time.
So far I think I’m so attached to my students, everyone of them has different personality that distinguish them from each other where Ranjan and Radesh always have their smile on their faces and they make us laugh. V.J is helping the students if they don’t understand something. Mani is so shy and I believe even if he doesn’t participate a lot in the I think he understands everything. Me and Assem always trying to engage him into different activities and he is doing a good job. Shyam he is Mani’s brother where he is the opposite of his Mani where he is hard worker and shows interest in the class and seems to know more than his brother. Ahmed, he knows English but he doesn’t have the confident to express himself and we are encouraging him all the time so he can gain confident. Finally, Aulhen where he is showing advanced skills between his colleagues along with Ranjan and Ahmed.
In the second part of the class, which was for 1 hour as I said before, our goal was to teach them alphabet and teach them how they can link letters together and pronounce the words properly. We started with teaching them letters from A-H where we gave them examples of different words start with specific letter. After that, we give them a tracing exercise where they need to repeat the letters we learned for today couple of times so they can memorize them. While those high skills students we gave them an exercise from the booklet, which is based on what we learned from the first part of the class. After they got done we graded their work and we did one final activity where they should match a given capital letter with the correct small letter. This activity was like a re-cap of what we had done for the last hour. Finally we distributed the homework, which is tracing words so they can practice more of what we learned in class. In the second part, I can see teamwork and engagement, which are some of the principles that Vella talked about. I’m really glad to see my students feeling comfortable and engaging in the class without feeling shy of making mistakes. Moreover, when we have an exercise and one of them is lost and don’t know what to do. The rest are trying to help him and explaining to him what should be done.
I would like to answer some of the questions that you asked me last time. In my way to the industrial area I was so exited about the first day of teaching and at the same time worried about the different levels that we are going to have in the class. There were many questions in my mind. What if they are too advanced? What if there level is too basic? What if they were mixed of both? How am I going to manage this? As we first entered the ACTS Company, the students welcomed us and they took us to the class where we are going to have our first class in. At first, they seemed really quite and we started to introduce ourselves. I wasn’t nervous and I didn’t get tired at all but actually I was so excited. I really wanted to teach them something that they could use it later in their lives. So far I don’t really know what they think of me as a Qatari women teaching them in class so I can’t really say something. Although, they know my name but they are calling me “Mum” and when I ask them a question they tend to stand up in order to answer the question. It was good to feel that someone is respecting you and I’m sure that they feel the same way as well. I’m sure that they feel proud that a Qatari woman is committed to teach them an English class and I’m really glad to do that not because they are calling me “Mum” but I really want to make a change in their lives. Finally, I think teaching is still hard but when you do it with passion and put a goal in your mind you will feel that everything we do is for a purpose which is to change someone’s life. It is really a good feeling! And I’m so happy that I’m part of this!
- Abdulrahman Al Muftah :
Week after week, it never ceases to amaze me the excitement and enthusiasm that my students carry with them every session. Their eagerness to learn the material has only pushed my partner and I to be fully committed to making our lessons as interesting and easy as possible. During the first week of teaching, our students immediately created this invisible barrier between themselves and us (the instructors). Throughout the session, they felt uncomfortable telling us what they wanted to learn, what they were struggling with, and how we could help them. It seemed strange to them, that we, the instructors, who they saw as their “authorities” would come “down” to their level and ask them how they wanted to learn things, and if there was anything they wanted us to teach.
As mentioned above, this notion seemed bizarre, and everyone just went with the flow, suggesting little or no feedback in what they wanted to accomplish from this class. Luckily, this all changed. After the second and third class, our students began seeing that we really meant what we said, emphasizing it countless times. It is here, that some students broke this barrier and began expressing their true needs. We began to see a whole other side to our students, one that we had not previously seen before. At first, our students were extremely shy and only spoke when they were called upon. However, later everyone seemed to give his input regularly.
The once timid students we had, were now transforming into the complete opposite. Their change in attitudes made the class a more enjoyable experience for both themselves and us as the teachers. Why is it you may ask, did our students finally speak out and become their normal selves around us? According to Jane Vella, a notable author studying the teaching of adults has said “Adults, are in fact, decision makers in a large part of their lives…they themselves decide what occurs for them in a learning event.” We as instructors of adult students have recognized the importance of this and have definitely repeatedly emphasized this point to our students, asking them to decide for themselves what they wanted to learn, how they wanted to go about learning it, what they liked and didn’t like from our teachings, and how we could improve.
Once this point was loud and clear, we could see the students opening up to us about their wants and how they wished to be taught. One student even mentioned that he appreciated our efforts in making this class more about them than about us. During our third session, we began to see that all efforts to make our students open up to us, tell us what they felt, how they lived, and just speak truthfully about their lives here as migrant workers, finally paid off. It was here, that our students began to genuinely see us as their friends first, and teachers second.
Our lesson plan for this session was to talk about their lives here, their job, what they liked or disliked about their jobs. This session was meant for students not only to express their emotions, but also to say them in a grammatical and proper English way. As we went around the room asking students about their careers, what their jobs were like, whom and if they liked their co-workers, we received all kinds of information. Our two weakest students, Amar and Tul, rarely participated in class, because they did not know how to express themselves in the English language.
During the first session of teaching, we could tell that they were the ones struggling the most, as they barely knew how to read and write. Slowly however, we could see them trying to get involved, and lean as much as they could from our lessons. When it was their turn to speak about their jobs, it was as if they were entirely two different students than what they began as. My teaching partner and I could see that they had so much to say, and were struggling to say it in any way possible, using everything they learnt in our class. It was this moment that we felt our hard work and our constant efforts finally paid off.
At this point, we knew that we finally succeeded. At the end of the session, we wanted our students to strengthen their English by listening to music, watching English shows, etc. These activities were definitely ones that had strengthened my understanding of English and ability to use the language in an effective manner. To introduce music, we began singing simple yet important songs that would allow our students to understand what we were saying. Although a very childish and simple song, we began to sing, “If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands.”
The whole point of this song was to see if they understood what we were saying, and to clap or stomp their foot at the right moment. This, told us that they knew the words we were saying, and act upon words they might have never been exposed to before, like “stomp.” Changing up our lesson plans, having some variety, has the students more become more excited about the topic, always keep them excited, and never have them bored, because in the end, it is all about them and not about us.
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