Workshop

Last week, I shared some classroom management ideas from Adina. This week, I'd like to describe a writing workshop which I observed in Suzanne's writing class. What was most striking to me was the initiative which the students displayed throughout this process. They had obviously internalized the rules and terminology and were accustomed to running workshop with little overt orchestration from Suzanne.

Each workshop focused on a piece by a student author, which the students had all read and critiqued in advance; the author sat quietly throughout the first part of the workshop, listening and taking notes. Suzanne also took notes quietly throughout.

During this phase, a student presenter took responsibility for facilitating the discussion; he or she had carefully reviewed the work under consideration and prepared a set of questions. The rest of the class weighed in with their own questions, reactions and impressions.

The presenter was adept at guiding the discussion and moved the conversation forward with prompts such as: "How did you think the dialogue established the main character?" "Did anyone have reactions about Richard?" "Does anyone else wonder about the oddly light tone?" If the conversation lagged (which was seldom), the presenter was practiced at asking questions such as: "Does anyone else have questions?" and finally, "Should we open it up to the author?"

This was a pivotal moment. Quite a lot of interest had built up as the students shared their impressions. When the presenter finally turned the conversation over, the readers got the rare chance to have their questions answered--and the author got to weigh in to the feedback which had been offered.

One by one, the author answered questions. On the day I observed, the author stood by some of her choices and seemed to be in the process of re-considering others. It was a fascinating shared experience of decoding and discovery and everyone in the room seemed aware of the privilege which this process conveyed upon readers and author alike. This is a rare feeling to achieve in a classroom...and Suzanne has clearly shown her students how to get there.

Student Roles in the Classroom

As you know, a lot of recent thought in education has gone into shifting emphasis away from teachers in the classroom and towards the students. Not surprisingly, it turns out that giving the students an active role helps them learn. If students are given some responsibility in the classroom, the information they process while on task tends to sink in.

Adina has been assigning her students jobs in the classroom for quite a while now. This enables her to step away from the center of attention and the students are able to step up.

The various roles are as follows: Facilitator, Recorder and Researcher and they are fairly self-explanatory.

The Facilitator takes responsibility for leading the discussion. He or she comes to class prepared with open-ended questions or structured activities designed to highlight key ideas and keep a conversation moving.

The Researcher takes responsibility for tracking questions that come up during class and does some quick research at home to find the answers. (For example, you might find yourself needing to know: who was the US Ambassador to the USSR during the Moscow Show Trials?)

The Recorder takes notes during the discussion. There are a couple of ways you can develop this role. It's most effective if you leave time at the end of the class for the Recorder to summarize out loud the main points of the conversation. This provides an opportunity to reinforce certain ideas...or to bring out ideas which didn't emerge. If you want to go Totally Crazy, you can also ask the Recorder to type up a quick summary which you can upload on your Teacher Page. This not only offers the students an opportunity to make a measurable contribution to the class, but also creates a written record of the discussion, useful for test review and perhaps for students beginning an analytic essay.

Adina is so organized that she has this all sorted out at the beginning of the quint. This way, students know what to expect and the rotation of roles is built in.

Date	Discussion topic	Facilitator	Recorder	Researcher
9/17	Agam. to 121	Austen K	Quinn F	Alex R
9/18	Agam. to 141	Will O.	Ann	Hanah
9/19	Agam. To 158	Wren	Hannah	Ranleigh
9/22	Agam. Done	Lulu	William	Brisa

Whoa!

(By the way, from 1936-1938, the US ambassador to the USSR was Joseph Davies, whom Historian Tim Tzouliadis has taken to task for his "glittering obliviousness.")

Retreat Wrap-up

We just had our annual department retreat and I thought it would be useful to post the results so that we can keep these ideas in mind as we move forward with our planning.

One of the goals of the retreat was to identify qualities of a Successful Integration Experience. It was an interesting review.

Folks confessed to a certain amount of fatigue with the amount of planning which goes into each activity; a consensus seemed to emerge that intermittent single or double-period activities may not deliver much value proportionate to the preparation they require. Support seemed to grow for more sustained projects that bring groups of students together for longer periods of time (at least 3 days). These longer projects have the virtue of being deeply woven into the curriculum instead of just tucked in the corners. This is important in terms of making the activities feel authentic and relevant and not just "tacked on." Because more sustained projects bring the same students together for several days, they offer more opportunities for students to get used to each other and for the teacher to assess and improve the model. Best of all, these projects may not require much more team-planning time than activities which only last one period.

There was also some discomfort expressed with student groups which are organized wholly according to teacher criteria. Might it increase student investment if their interests factored into the way the groups were organized? Would international students participate more actively if there were more of them in each group--and only one or two regular program kids? This would mean that some groups would be domestic-students only, but it might lead to international students taking the lead in the groups where they found themselves in the majority.

In general, some of the commonalities of integration projects which felt successful were:

• These are substantial projects which unfold over a period of days
  


• They are highly structured.
  


• Each student plays a specific role, which they have to prepare on their own.


• Each student is evaluated for their own contribution.

In addition, we also clarified our priorities in terms of the kinds of integration experiences we want to offer in Humanities and in terms of the skills we feel it makes sense to emphasize for English Language Learners in our department. We all acknowledged that it is somewhat artificial to separate these skills. As Adina and John observed, ideally, we would be creating a shared background for our students by offering all of these experiences and skills in concert.

However, I pushed folks to prioritize what is most important to emphasize, given the limits on our time and given that Humanities, while important, is not the only opportunity international students have to arrive at these outcomes.

Overwhelmingly, it seems, the department would like to see skills be our first priority, then content understanding and finally a shared experience.

In terms of skills, many commented on the inter-connection between reading and writing, listening and speaking. However, it was interesting that reading and writing were the clear top priorities, with reading coming in first according to all voters, except one. Speaking came in third and listening was in last place in terms of how the Humanities program should focus its efforts when working with international students.