What I Learned in Middle School
by Carl Falsgraf (Center For Applied Japanese Language Studies, University of Oregon)
One of the most spectacular failures in the history of applied science occurred because of ignorance of context. NASA scientists designed O-rings to connect booster rocket sections on the Space Shuttle. The materials passed every test in the lab and met all government specifications. Unfortunately, nobody thought about how cold nights are on the launch pad. So the O-rings were hard and brittle for an early-morning launch in 1986, leading to the tragic explosion of the Challenger spacecraft. If the engineers had spent the night with the spacecraft, they would have noticed the cold and averted disaster.
Applied linguists have made similar errors. The consequences of failure are less spectacular, but no less important than those of NASA engineers. Every generation of Americans that grows up monolingual represents another lost chance to connect with worlds our immigrant ancestors left behind. Those of us who suffered through the worst of the Audio-Lingual Method could have been spared hours of substitution drills if "experts" had taken time to consider the differences between rodent and human learning. Perhaps if they had visited--or, better yet, taught--high school language classes, the glazed eyes and limited proficiency of students would have told them that what worked beautifully in the lab did not necessarily succeed in the real world.
I am an applied linguist. Among other things, I design assessments, curriculum, and professional development programs for K-12 teachers. But I had never taught in an American public school. I wondered if the programs I develop, though based on the latest research and pedagogical techniques, might explode a few minutes after blastoff. So, for the sake of my own professional development and for the sake of teachers and students who might benefit or suffer from my work, I looked for a chance to teach at the K-12 level.
MY LIFE AS A MIDDLE SCHOOL TEACHER
I got my chance when Clarice Loo, Japanese teacher at Cal Young Middle School in Eugene, OR, prepared to go on maternity leave. I volunteered to take over for the four months she would be gone, got my substitute's license, and prepared to teach first- and second-year Japanese to seventh and eighth graders. I use the term "prepared" loosely. I visited the class once and talked briefly with Clarice about her expectations for the class. We promised to get together again, but then her baby came early and, ready or not, I was a middle school teacher.
Cal Young Middle School is located in a middle-class neighborhood in a mid-sized town. Its students score well (but not spectacularly) on state tests. Cal Young is not the sort of place that gets mentioned in many police reports, nor does it get held up as the model of educational excellence. It is a typical school.
But I was not a typical teacher. I had never taught at the K-12 level, had no orientation, no curriculum. I had another full-time job, and I was a substitute teacher. I had a class of 34 first-year students and 11 second-year students. They were devoted to their regular teacher, Clarice, and were accustomed to her teaching style. In short, I was set up for failure. All I had in my favor was a command of my subject (Japanese language), a good knowledge of pedagogy, and a set of clear performance standards for the students. Thankfully, this is what got me through. While I certainly wasn't nominated for any "Teacher of the Year" awards, both my students and I enjoyed the experience and the students learned a lot of Japanese.
Since there was no textbook or curriculum, I had to develop my own materials, units, and curriculum outline. This required many late nights, but I have experience and training in these areas, so it was just hard work. In fact, I was amazed that the kinds of activities I gave to college students worked just as well with middle school students. The big difference was setting up those activities. On my third day, I had the students do a simple interview task with partners. My instructions were to find a partner and use your Japanese to find out what foods he or she likes. For the next ten minutes, I helped lost kids find a partner and, in one case, comforted a girl who was in tears because her friend wanted to pair up with somebody else. I would never ask them to find their own partners again.
The challenge with middle school students is that they are biologically driven to socialize. However, they do not yet have the social skills to do so appropriately, so "socializing" often means screaming, wrestling, or giggling. In an attempt to intimidate the students into behaving, I wore a necktie every day and reminded them that I was from the University. This worked for about two weeks. At that point I found myself fighting hard every day to maintain order. I was losing control.
I remembered a workshop given years ago by Jo Sanders, a German teacher from Alaska. She had classes of 40 kids, which she broke up into "families": permanent groups of kids each with a designated role. I divided my class into groups of four or five students, being careful to mix boys and girls, rich kids and poor kids, good students and bad students, talkers and shy ones. They got to choose their group names, and each group had a "sekininsha" (responsible person) who had special duties. For example, when taking attendance, I just said the group name and the sekininsha would say "Minna imasu" (Everyone here) or "X-san wa yasumi" (X is absent). When collecting homework, I would just have the sekininsha bring it up, so I had seven students, instead of 37, out of their seats. And I had no more problems with kids forming pairs or groups, since they sat in ready-made groups already.
The calming effect of this strategy was not the most important outcome, however. Placing students in permanent "families" brought together students who might not have otherwise interacted with each other. Because I purposely mixed groups according to ability level and social style, students were making new friends and socializing. And most of the socializing was in Japanese. I had a sign in the front of the room marked "English OK" on one side and "Nihongo" on the other to let them know which language to use. If they violated the policy, their group would have points taken away. In the same way, after each unit oral test, the group with the highest score got special recognition. This led to informal mentoring relationships developing within the groups as the high-achieving students helped their comrades in an effort to achieve the best group score. In this way, I managed to take middle schoolers' natural drive to socialize and turn it into an advantage.
While these management strategies were new to me, the activities and materials I developed differed only slightly from those I used at the college level. Regardless of whether a student is 13 years old or 30 years old, doing meaningful tasks is engaging and develops language skills. Staple activities included interview tasks, information gaps, input activities (such as "odd man out"), and pattern drills. These activities work with adults and they work with adolescents. Once I gained control of the class, the actual teaching did not differ that much from teaching college students.
What happened before and after class, however, was totally different. The non-instructional demands on public school teachers are tremendous. Filling out tardy slips and behavior referrals, writing reports on special-needs students, dealing with parent questions and complaints all take time and energy. As a substitute, I was excused from faculty meetings, lunch duty, and so forth. But still, the volume of work was overwhelming.
I could not have handled everything without lots of help. A total of six different volunteers helped at some point during the term. University of Oregon graduate student Chris Duke came four days a week and received practicum credit for his work. It always helps to have as many Japanese speakers in the room as possible, but having a regular teaching partner was especially helpful since he knew the students well and could help me with planning and handling discipline problems.
What really matters, of course, is whether the students learned Japanese. In Oregon, we are lucky to have agreed-upon standards of student performance called the Oregon Japanese Language Benchmarks. Clarice and I agreed that Benchmark I would be a reasonable goal for the first-year class and Benchmark II for the second-year class. Although Clarice and I didn't have much time to plan together, since I knew the final outcome that she wanted, I felt confident that I was doing the right thing if I developed a curriculum that focused on her Benchmark goals. At the end of my four months, an outside assessor interviewed all students using the Oregon Japanese Oral Performance Assessment. The good news is that 19 of 34 first-year students met Benchmark I and 4 of 11 second-year students met Benchmark II. Of course, I wish that all the students had met the Benchmark goals, but I was happy with this rate of progress over such a short period of time.
IMPLICATIONS FOR K-12 TEACHERS
After only four months, I am hardly in a position to give experienced teachers advice on classroom management, lesson planning, or program development. But I do have expertise in second language teaching and learning. Now that I have tried out what I know in a middle school classroom, I would like to share my observations with my K-12 colleagues. Here is what I have learned:
- Standards work;
- Proficiency is possible;
- Oral assessment is possible; and
- One size does not fit all.
Standards work
Without standards, I would have failed. Miserably. I am not a talented teacher. I don't know how to entertain kids. I am not particularly organized. I was able to keep students engaged for one reason: they knew I had high expectations and, eventually, came to share those expectations. They felt pride that they and their group members were meeting the Benchmarks. Accomplishing a challenging goal gives adolescents a great sense of pride and self-esteem.
Without the Benchmarks, I would have been lost. Clarice did not use a textbook, so I had to plan everything almost from scratch. But as soon as we agreed on Benchmark levels for the students, I knew which topics and functions to focus on. I was able to develop four thematic units, including oral and written assessments, and supporting materials. The Benchmarks were a blueprint that allowed me the freedom to teach according to my particular situation, but still know that my students were progressing satisfactorily and would be ready when Clarice returned.
Proficiency is possible
I have heard teachers say that they think proficiency is great, but they can't really expect students to become proficient because classes are too big, students aren't motivated, and they need to teach reading and writing. Let me take these excuses one at a time.
Large classes are only a problem if the teacher is the center of attention. In that case, it is indeed harder to control 30 or 40 students than 20. But in a decentralized class where students are working on their own, the teacher no longer needs to attempt the impossible feat of keeping 34 adolescents focused and quiet. My classroom can best be described as "controlled chaos." Students had specific tasks to accomplish and were responsible for finishing. I had two strategies for keeping things under control during group work. First, I enforced the "Japanese Only" rule as strictly as possible. Students don't know enough to get themselves in trouble in Japanese because they have to concentrate so hard on the language. Secondly, I rarely addressed discipline problems to a student directly. If inappropriate behavior occurred, I would tell the group to settle down. Usually the other group members would chastise the guilty party since they did not want the teacher's attention focused on them. In this way, I avoided direct conflict and reinforced the importance of responsibility to the group. Proficiency is possible in a large class, but you can't do it yourself. You have to rely on teenagers' natural inclination to socialize.
Teenagers are not motivated to please adults. But with a few exceptions, they are motivated to learn, especially if what they are learning brings them social rewards and personal pride. By organizing the class around permanent groups, I ensured that students got social rewards for coming to class and participating. Because Japanese is challenging, and the Benchmarks are specific, most students felt a sense of pride at accomplishing something difficult. This may not be the case in schools with a higher population of at-risk children, but, in my case, students with learning disabilities and behavior problems participated in class. Even those who did not do well usually were not disruptive.
Reading and writing is part of proficiency. Rather than seeing reading and writing as something that takes time from developing proficiency, we should see it as an important component of overall proficiency. Teaching katakana, for example, may take time, but it then becomes easier to introduce "gairaigo" and build students' oral vocabulary. The problem occurs, I believe, when we give students difficult reading passages before they have oral proficiency, forcing them to decode rather than read. The process is frustrating and slow. If reading skills follow oral skills in a natural order, reading and writing do not need to slow students' development of oral skills.
Before I taught middle school, I was actually more sympathetic to teachers who said it was impossible to be proficiency-oriented at the K-12 level. Not all of my students developed satisfactory proficiency, of course, but my short experience as a novice teacher showed me it is possible to develop proficiency while maintaining control of a large class. Given my lack of experience and training, I believe that if I can do it, anybody can do it.
Oral assessment is possible
Lack of time to do oral assessment is one of the reasons given for not focusing on proficiency-based standards. I gave students at least five oral tests in 13 weeks. It was logistically difficult, but two strategies made frequent oral testing possible. First, I worked hard to recruit volunteers. Because of my university connections, most were graduate students, but one was a high school student doing community service. If these volunteers had not been available, I would have recruited community members. The volunteers can either be trained as assessors or help the rest of the class while the teacher administers assessments. Because I was teaching at the novice level, it was possible to have scripted interviews, making it fairly easy to train assessors. When volunteers were not available, I gave the class a high-stakes reading and writing test and pulled students out individually for oral interviews. This was not ideal, but it worked. I am sure that there are other strategies. The important thing is to make regular oral assessment a top priority and do whatever is necessary to make it an integral part of the class.
One size does not fit all
After my teaching assignment was done, I returned for a day to see the kids again. I stayed after class to talk with Clarice about how everybody was doing. Of course, the good kids were all doing well, and the low kids were still struggling. But a number of students who had done great with me were not doing so well. On the other hand, some who had a hard time with me were doing better with Clarice. In some cases, we could barely believe we were talking about the same kid. Each of us has our own style and preferences. I learned, however, that among 34 students, many will not share my way of learning.
In my case, I tend to be very verbal, so I do lots of verbal activities like information gaps and interview tasks. Because I can't draw, I shy away from visual activities. I enjoy creative, open-ended tasks myself, so gave lots of those to my students. But I am afraid that I did not serve the visually oriented or the rule-oriented students very well. When I reflect on my class, I tend to focus on the success stories. Because I did manage to control the class, unhappy kids were not acting out; they were silent. I was reminded how important it is to constantly recommit ourselves to reaching all students, not just the smart ones, the funny ones, or the ones who think like us.
It is also makes me humble. We all find activities, strategies and ideas that work. But work for whom? How do we know they are working for everyone? I think that if I teach middle school again, I will need to develop more flexibility and diversity of strategies so that every kid finds something every day that they relate to and learn from.
IMPLICATIONS FOR APPLIED LINGUISTS
I took this substitute teaching job in order to improve myself as an applied linguist. In this section, I will share some of the lessons I learned in hopes that they will be useful to my colleagues engaged in curriculum development, methodology training, and professional development.
Language Planning and Curriculum Development
Applied linguists are often asked to sit on committees that develop language policies and curricular guidelines for K-12 language teachers. They are right to ask us, and we have lots to offer. Most often, curricular guides, standards, assessment guidelines and so forth are paid great respect from all quarters. An exemplary teacher or two will usually testify that the grand scheme is wonderful. But the vast majority of teachers will ignore whatever we produce. As an overwhelmed new teacher, I ignored every piece of mail, every e-mail message, every note in my box that did not directly need my attention at that moment.
If we want our programs and ideas to actually be used by overburdened, we need to do a better job of marketing to this special audience we call classroom teachers. By marketing I mean the way in which new programs and concepts are presented. The introduction to the National Standards, for example, presents compelling theoretical and political arguments. Nowhere does it mention any advantage for classroom teachers, making it unlikely that busy teachers will feel compelled to attend to it.
If we applied linguists have a good idea, we need to start by saying to ourselves, "What is in it for the teachers?" In almost every case, this will also be what is best for students. For example, let's say that we want to promote content-based learning as a means of strengthening the Cultures and Connections components of language learning. Rather than reciting all the justifications for this, we should ask teachers what connections they already make with other disciplines and ask them how we can help them do that better. Then, we need to provide concrete tools as well as abstract concepts. For example, if a push to incorporate more content in Japanese classes were accompanied by units or on-line materials, teachers would have an instrumental motivation for trying this new idea.
We also need to rethink our engineering strategy. Just as NASA engineered O-rings that did not work in the real-world context of a rocket launch, applied linguists need to rethink the way we advise teachers. Learning to manage a class of 34 middle school students was as intellectually challenging as writing an academic paper. It required all of my background as a researcher and teacher to learn how to do this. And I relied heavily on the expertise of my middle school colleagues. If NASA engineers had worked a shift with the workers on the launch pad, they might have noticed how cold it got in the winter. Similarly, applied linguists need to make classroom visits a regular part of their professional lives. Make an arrangement with a local teacher for regular visits. If you attend a conference in a city where you have a K-12 colleague, stay an extra day and visit a class there. In most states, it is easy to get a substitute teacher license if you have a master's or doctoral degree. There are usually few qualified Japanese substitutes, so you will be helping the local teacher and helping yourself understand the challenges and joys of K-12 teaching.
Japanese engineers are considered the best in the world partly because they spend so much time in factories experiencing, first-hand, how products are made. As applied linguists, I believe that we, too, can improve ourselves by directly experiencing the context in which our work will be used.
Professional Development
I was a first-year teacher nearly as green as they come. Still, I bristled when I was handed a list of ten things I was supposed to do with a learning-disabled child. This student had been struggling but was making progress and was not causing any major problems. Why did the school district assume I was stupid? I knew the student and was having some success with him. I was already doing some of the things on the list. Others would have taken hours of extra preparation. Even if some of the ideas on the list were worthwhile, I was not open to them because the implicit message was, "What you are doing is wrong. Just do as we tell you, and everything will be fine." As an educated adult and professional teacher enjoying at least limited success, this message angered me. But how many times have I delivered the same message to teachers in workshops or methods classes?
Those of us with expertise in language acquisition, pedagogy, or assessment have declarative knowledge of these fields. Good teachers have performative mastery of teaching, but they may lack the vocabulary and training to express their expertise. The assumption that practicing teachers need "training," I believe, is wrong. With few exceptions, practicing teachers do most things right. These abilities need to be developed, not replaced by whatever new idea applied linguists might have. Rather than presenting a list of the "right" way to do things (e.g., follow standards, use the target language, don't follow the textbook blindly), we would be much more effective by asking teachers, for example, "What standards do you have in your classroom now?" "How often do you use Japanese in class?" or "Does your textbook have everything you need?" If we let teachers reflect on their own practice and identify areas they wish to change, our professional development efforts will be much more effective in the long run. If I am treated as a professional, I will act like professional and seek to improve myself.
CONCLUSION
My experience teaching middle school gave me great respect for the job my K-12 colleagues are doing. At the same time, it made me even less tolerant of teachers who say that they cannot focus on proficiency, cannot do oral assessment, or cannot change from a teacher-centered approach. If a novice like me can do it, surely a licensed, full-time professional teacher can do it.
I am also more skeptical of methods and policies developed by experts who have not spent time in classrooms. Teachers' first loyalty is, properly, to their students, not to the profession and certainly not to the latest pedagogic program from the university. Something that looks great, and is totally consistent with the research, could be a disaster in the classroom. I encourage all of my fellow applied linguists to spend time in K-12 classrooms, preferably as a teacher rather than an observer, before making any more recommendations. Personally, I will never again give a workshop in which I suggest a method or program unless I or somebody I know has tried it in a classroom context.
I encourage my research colleagues to at visit a K-12 classroom several times a year; not to evaluate or collect data, just to watch and help out. Get a substitute license and spend a few days a year in front of a classroom teaching Japanese to kids who have green hair, who burst into tears because one of the Backstreet Boys got married, or who are learning disabled. Even a few days a year will open your eyes to both the possibilities and the limitations of research.