Tag Archives: teacher

S.Korea schools get [racist] robot English teachers (via @daylemajor )

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Do I find this implementation racist and insulting to non-Caucasian teachers, hell yes! They are taking a teacher from the Philippines and putting a white women’s face on them. This could have been done a lot more realistically with true videoconferencing without having to add a layer of animation, which will end up deadening much of the facial cues leaving the animation nearly useless in this regard.

One defense of this could be that they want to maintain consistency in the appearance of the teacher even when using a variety of staff on the back-end. However, that still doesn’t explain the white-washing.

With that said, this is the first implementation of robot teachers (robot-assisted language learning–RALL) I’ve heard about that make some sense. This is basically videoconferencing with a mobile monitor (with some ability for arm and leg movements). This is much better than the stuff presented before that is basically a rolling tape player with some ridiculous voice recognition. Having a skilled teacher behind the robot is key and, at least for the foreseeable future, the only way to provide an optimal educational experience.

As I saw in a presentation by KICE a few months ago, the biggest problem with using videoconfernced teachers in classrooms is having a trained (and motivated) teacher/facilitator physically in the classroom with the videoconferenced teacher. Local teachers tend to sit back and watch or, worse yet, just leave the classroom during the videoconferencing time. In addition, there is little planning time afforded local teachers, thus they tend not to plan classes with their videoconferenced co-teachers. This finding is nothing new to native English-speaking co-teachers in Korean public schools. The same complaints have been heard for years. They were hired as co-teachers, but end up planning and conducting classes alone as a result of both teacher apathy and poor oversight and training.

With all this in mind, I’d say where is the time and money for training local staff? Without it, these high-tech innovations make for great publicity, but lousy education.

Corporal Punishment Ban Undermining School Discipline – should read, lack of training undermining…

Around 12:30 p.m. Oct. 15 in a middle school classroom in Suncheon, South Jeolla Province, a teacher approached a female student and asked her what she was writing in her notebook.

When the teacher tried to take the notebook, the student protested. The teacher hit her on the head and the student revolted, saying, “Is it right for a teacher to hit a student? Just teach!”

The student tried to leave the classroom but the teacher grabbed her neck and hair to force her to sit down. The student then grabbed the teacher’s hair.

An official at the education office said, “What teachers want most is alternatives to corporal punishment,” adding, “We will encourage implementing alternatives next week at the earliest.”

Aside from the fact that these problems occurred before the ban and stories are plentiful of large students beating their smaller teachers, this is a natural process of adjustment. There is a culture of violence in classrooms that relied on a mixture of affection and abuse to “control” students. New bans on corporal punishment are, thus, causing great consternation for teachers who relied on this method.

Schools need to provide better training and options for handling difficult students. One idea that some schools have implemented are “reflection rooms”. A mix of positive and negative engagement is probably best. The best way to improve student behavior is to engage them as individuals. Give them choice in their studies, projects, and interactions in the classroom. Respect their contributions. Of course, there are always going to be those who will not respond to this treatment (and teachers who are unable to do so for reasons of skill or simply oppressive teaching conditions and requirements). For those, more punitive measures may be more (at least immediately) effective. Detention, suspension, expulsion, labor (cleaning, volunteering), extra homework, seclusion, and removing of freedoms/opportunities discussed above are all possibilities.

Above was my measured response, and this is my emotional response. If you hit your student, you should not be a teacher. In fact, you should be arrested and charged with child abuse. Teachers who cling to these outdated, brutal classroom management techniques would be comfortable as prison camp guards, as their approaches are more akin to this profession than education. Those who cry that they cannot control their classroom without this brutality should ask themselves whether it is worth it? Is it worth torturing your students to help them? I hope that sounds as silly to you as it does to me.

Arizona Grades Teachers on Fluency

PHOENIX—As the academic year winds down, Creighton School Principal Rosemary Agneessens faces a wrenching decision: what to do with veteran teachers whom the state education department says don’t speak English well enough.

The Arizona Department of Education recently began telling school districts that teachers whose spoken English it deems to be heavily accented or ungrammatical must be removed from classes for students still learning English.

State education officials say the move is intended to ensure that students with limited English have teachers who speak the language flawlessly. But some school principals and administrators say the department is imposing arbitrary fluency standards that could undermine students by thinning the ranks of experienced educators.

Really, they are not grading on fluency. At least in this article, fluency is not really addressed. They are really looking at some sort of target accent and grammar use measures. I’m really wondering if the WSJ just didn’t report this with enough accuracy. I can’t imagine that they (the Arizona DoE) would be that messy in proposing evaluation measures.

Honestly, I don’t know what to think of this. The racist scumbags are out in force if you take a look at the comments section, and this is enough to make anyone thing this is a bad idea. However, it is much more than an issue of race or even language identity. This is the ongoing, knock-down, drag out fight on the issue of NESTs (native English-speaking teachers) and NNESTs (non-native English-speaking teachers) in ESL classrooms.

This debate has been hot in TESOL for many years. The growth of interest/belief in World Englishes has kept it at the forefront of criticism, theory, and practice discussions in recent years.

Ordinarily, I fall on the side of the NNESTs on this argument, but my opinion differs depending on the context and the goals of the organization. The policy, at first glance seems reasonable. Teachers with an accent or grammar that impedes communication, should be removed from the classroom (Arizona is only proposing that they are removed from ESL classrooms). This is completely reasonable, BUT….

Oops, we now have the problem of rating these teachers. Should all teachers be accessed by this measure? That would only make sense. There are plenty of native English-speaking teachers out there with terrible grammar and writing skills (also referred to in the article). We should get rid of them to. Or, should the people evaluated just have to be as good as the worse of the native English-speaking teachers? That would set a low bar, wouldn’t it?

What about a teacher with a heavy Scottish accent? I mean, have you ever seen Trainspotting? It may be English, but it’s pretty tough to understand for most Americans. I’d even venture to guess that most Americans understand English with a heavily influenced Spanish accent better. Really, we hear it much more often. So, the Scottish are out. While we are at it, the English, Australians, New Zealanders, and South Africans should be out, too. If they don’t speak American they shouldn’t be teaching our fragile children. Oh wait. Canadians. They’re out too. What’s up with that “aboot” thing. That ain’t American, ya know? They’re gone.

OK, so I lapse into a good deal of sarcasm. The question is left unanswered, though. What is the target? This is the slipperiest of slopes in a country where there is no standard. No matter where you live, everyone will insist that their English is standard. That doesn’t mean it won’t impede comprehension when interacting with students from other regions. If we have this much variability at home, what is the standard that we shoot for?

I don’t outright disagree with the Arizona policy; however, I am doubtful that they can come up with a fair assessment of these abilities that take into account the many factors that make a good teacher of English.

In Defense of Public School Teachers in a Time of Crisis

In Defense of Public School Teachers in a Time of Crisis

by: Henry A. Giroux, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

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(Image: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: Jose Kevo, emurray)

There has been a long, though declining, tradition in the United States in which public school teaching was embraced as an important public service. It was assumed that teachers provided a crucial foundation for educating young people in the values, skills and knowledge that enabled them to be critical citizens capable of shaping and expanding democratic institutions. Since the 1980s, teachers have been under an unprecedented attack by those forces that view schools less as a public good than as a private right. Seldom accorded the status of intellectuals that they deserved, they remain the most important component in the learning process for students, while serving as a moral compass to gauge how seriously a society invests in its youth and in the future. Yet, teachers are being deskilled, unceremoniously removed from the process of school governance, largely reduced to technicians or subordinated to the authority of security guards. Underlying these transformations are a number of forces eager to privatize schools, substitute vocational training for education and reduce teaching and learning to reductive modes of testing and evaluation.

I love teachers and teaching. That has to be put up front, especially since I am often quick to criticize education policy, administration, and even some groups of teachers. While I reserve the right to criticize the actions or in-actions of some, I really do respect teachers and the profession (yes, profession) of teaching.

Read the article to better understand why I worry about the profession and the teachers who make up the profession.

Teacher Average Salary Income – International Comparison

Check out this website I found at worldsalaries.org

http://www.worldsalaries.org/teacher.shtml# – Check out this site. Fun to look around and make comparisons.

This data really surprised me. I’m surprised that the average salary for American teachers is so high, particularly compared with the rest of the world. I would really like to see the range of salaries and regional disaggregation. If the average teacher is making $60,000/yr gross, I have a lot less sympathy for complaints about pay and workload.

The same database lists averages for many professions. Teachers rank up near the top. Professors average about $9,000 more per year. I don’t know if that makes me hopeful or not :-/

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