Whole Brain Teaching - Guff or Great?

In my constant quest for classroom management techniques, I stumbled across Whole Brain Teaching. WBT is a structured classroom management approach which has had great results.

Immediate pros of WBT:

• Structured - The drilling of routines and commands is hugely helpful to students, particularly those in my area of specialisation (pre-school to Grade 3).
• Energetic - the gestures and sillyness of it keep students engaged, which is very difficult to do
• Free - The materials (videos, articles and ebooks) are all free. They aren't trying to make money from educators. I was able to legally read their primary manual this weekend.
• Easy to understand - By this, I mean that the many Youtube videos demonstrating WBT in the classroom are hugely helpful in seeing the techniques work in practice. Their techniques are not complicated and I feel any class I go to could use them.
• Flexible - WBT seems as if it could work on students of many age groups, the founder of WBT uses his techniques on college-age students.

Immediate cons of WBT:

• Their explanations of 'why' their techniques work feel very pseudo-sciency. The fact that it is named Whole Brain Teaching, to start with, makes many student teachers I talk to skeptical. I don't need to buy into their 'reason' for why tightly-executed, entertaining classroom management works, but still. I don't feel completely comfortable with using a system that may be based on pseudoscience- see Brain Gym.
• By watching all of those WBT videos, I saw that often the students seem robotic/hypnotised. The Youtube comments tend to agree with me, though they are definitely not a source of real insight. You see students who are watching the teacher, following and matching her actions and even voice patterns correctly. It looks eerie, at times, from the outside. 

I've thought a lot about using WBT as the method of improving my classroom management during my next placement at a school, which is happening in about a month or so.

Obstacles to using WBT in my placement

The biggest one would be my host teacher. They might be fine with the idea of me using WBT, but not willing to use it themselves. The inconsistency might not let WBT work, it needs to be used daily. Alternatively, they might hate the idea entirely and not let me use it- which is totally their right as the head honcho.

Another is that I wanted to incorporate WBT into my research project, which I have to frame around, "How can I...?". My idea was to phrase it as, "How can I use WBT techniques to improve my classroom management". The concern is, though, that is WBT hasn't got many specific academic studies which were done on it (I've found one so far, and it was published in a WBT manual so might not even count). If it fails I may not have much of a research project. On the upside, perhaps it could make it a very interesting topic to present!

Gaming and Learning

Now, gaming and learning is a huge topic for me. I'm an educator (to be), and an avid gamer. In addition to the stigma that gaming receives from the 'mainstream' community, I am also a woman. Female gamers receive additional stigma from the 'mainstream' gaming community, which is ridiculous. Despite this vicious cycle, I still consider myself a proud gamer- no matter what anyone else thinks about it.

While researching for my essay on behaviourism as motivation, I went back to the topic of gamification. Gamification is the use of game design techniques or mechanics to enhance non-gaming contexts- such as school. There are a lot of naysayers about 'turning education into a game' and how students already spend enough time gaming at home. The truth is, elementary schools already use forms of gamification in their classrooms. Do all of your work? You get a sticker. Fill up your chart? You get a certificate. These response-reward pairings are basic behaviourism, so why not develop it further and take it beyond simple psychology? There is a reason why 400 million people play online social games with only virtual rewards. Gamification can satisfy human needs, such as rewards, status, achievement, self-expression, competition and altruism. It can become a valuable tool for developing intrinsic motivation in students, by using extrinsic motivation to start them off.

A good book on the subject is The Multiplayer Classroom: Designing Coursework as a Game by Lee Sheldon. He discusses using games as frameworks for delivering the content to students. Instead of "writing an essay" you can "explore". Instead of taking a test you can "complete a quest". The hope is that using the same kind of strategies which make games compelling can also cause the classroom to become even more compelling. 

Gabe Zichermann at TEDxKids discussing gamification.

John Hunter at TED 2011 discussing the World Peace Game.

I came across another fascinating project while on the hunt for gamification strategies- WoW in School. They are a group of educators who have created an after-school programme around World of Warcraft. Aimed at middle school students, it uses the medium of MMORPG as well as Tolkien's The Hobbit to improve language arts- all while following their national guidelines. I think it's brilliant, especially since I'm main healer for our guild's second raid team...Their guidebook is here if you're interested.

While my future little kidlets will most likely be between the ages of 6-9, I think that gamification concepts can still apply- even at that age. I was always a fervent gamer, even at that age (and younger!). It is the exact age-group which already uses behaviourist motivational techniques already, so I think that a motivated teacher could make a gamified Foundation Phase class thrive- see Gamification, your first grade teacher was onto something.

My Month at Sandlot

So, tomorrow is my last day at Sandlot School. I've bought a lollypop for each of my kids and some cake for the staffroom to mark the occasion. Various teachers have been bringing all sorts of yummy treats for break to share with us because of their birthdays, so I felt like I should participate in some way.

I'm going to miss it terribly. I have my moments why I wonder why I picked such an exhausting career option, but it also feels good to be good at something. My host teacher was ill for two days this week so I had the students all to myself- it was rather hectic but good to get a picture of what goes on when you're on your own. 

Some of the things I loved about my placement at Sandlot School:

• Bonding with the students, being able to help them when they were upset and celebrate with them when they were happy. Listening to their crazy, funny and heart-breaking stories of their lives (real and imagined).
• Teaching! Explaining interesting things to my class. Encouraging them to work better. So much that they do in Grade 1 is fun, and I feel so happy when a student understands something new.
• Having the privilege of working with such wonderful teachers and staff. They really made me feel included in the faculty, which meant more than they may have realised.
• Being able to watch my host teacher and share her classroom. She's such an amazing teacher, the students respect her and she uses that opportunity to teach them valuable things.
• The camaraderie with my two fellow student teachers, sharing the many gripes about the PGCE and school experiences with them. 
• Introducing the behaviour clip chart and seeing the students actually respond to it. 

The kids are what really fascinate me about teaching at the moment. They also exhaust me! It's worth it, though, to hear about what they dreamed about last night or helping them build a superhero costume out of paper (I had an Iron Man and Dragonfly in my class, to name but two).

I've got a file due at the Education Department tomorrow afternoon, detailing my experiences. I'm not asked to write a reflective piece or anything though, so my many anecdotes will have to wait for Monday when I can share them with my other PGCE-ers.

Week 2 at Sandlot School

Since May 7th, I've been working as a student teacher at Sandlot School (not it's real name). I'm assigned there for four weeks, in a Grade 1 class. My host teacher is really great, she's been teaching for many years and I'm learning lots from her. During this time, I don't attend regular lectures or seminars on campus, I follow normal 'teacher hours' at Sandlot and follow their lead about how I spend my time there. 99% of the time, I'm in the class, either teaching or assisting. The rest of the time, I'm making photocopies: this is really not a lot of time, but photocopying is an important job as grade 1's go through so many handouts!

The school I'm at is quite small, it reminds me of the school I was at for matric/grade 12. It only takes a certain number of grades and there is no uniform. I have 23 in my class, with a slightly higher number of girls than boys. There is a very large isiXhosa home-language group in the class, but all of them speak very good English (it's an English-medium school) and I can make myself understood to all of them. I find classroom management the hardest thing to crack, but try to remind myself that it is not my class. My teacher has trained them well, they listen to her requests (most of the time!) but my voice will often be ignored. The class doesn't have a set behaviour system, my HT prefers not to use one- she just praises/discourages as she feels. This makes it more difficult to step into her shoes, but she has presented me so well to the students and for the most part they try their best.

Right now, my only main complaint is that I feel that I'm constantly juggling. I have lesson prep to do for teaching every day, assignments and essays for my PGCE work, and resources to create for my PGCE coursework. On top of that, I'm supposed to keep a special record of everything I do on teaching practice, keep track of 4 students in my class specifically, save all the work I teach, etc. I get overwhelmed a lot, and when I get home from school I am sometimes so exhausted that I can't do anything except nap and zone out for a while- I then feel guilty for this later. Every time I relax or have fun (or do something that isn't work), I feel bad because I feel that I should be working instead.

I feel that I can't be as good as a student teacher as I can be because of this heavy load of work constantly weighing on me. Many of our essays I feel are unnecessary and just busy-work to prove we've been to lectures, which I have been. The teaching practice file is not too much work, but the fact that it's being checked twice during this 1-month period is stressful and I find that I'm having to make time just to make printouts of things and put them into this file, so that they can be checked on.

Something they never mentioned about this course is how much money you will spend on printing, building resources, and laminating. There is so much printing I've had to do so far, and so much more to come. All of my resources need laminated, which isn't cheap. I also have no printer at home and no colour-printer at school, so it is a mission to get this done. Trekking 25 minutes on foot to print something does not make me feel more fondly towards it having to exist in the first place.

/rant

On the upside, I love being in a class with students. I find them generally delightful, and I'm going to miss them terribly at the end of my month at their school. I've (nearly) learned all of their names after the first week, and they've been drawing me pictures and wanting to know more about me. Generally, they are a sweet bunch. Due to the teaching practice portfolio, I have to track four of them, but I'm interested to see how they all develop over this month.

Observations at Dexter School

What a busy time in my life! I had to make time specifically just to write up this blog post. PGCE is a hectic, hectic time- when I was told how busy I'd be I didn't really believe it would be like this. This year, I'm in a class of about 25 Foundation Phase student teachers at Rhodes. There are about 25 more students in Intermediate Phase (Grades 4-7, ages 10-14) and 50-ish in FET (High School). Every day, I'm in lectures from 8:30 until 4pm with a tea break and lunch break. I feel like the assignments are piling up, but I'm satisfied with the few marks I've received so far. I only hope that the work does not overwhelm me, the assignments we have been given are not so much difficult as just time-consuming. The PGCE course is hard work but rewarding, and occasionally I still get the feeling of "Wow, I'm actually discussing topics that interest me during a lecture and on purpose!".

Last week, I did my first ever teaching observation at a local school, Dexter School (not it's real name). It was the first time I've ever been in a classroom ever since my final year of high school! I attended the school, which is in the Grahamstown township, for three days, and their language of instruction is isiXhosa. As part of my PGCE, I have to take a conversational isiXhosa credit, but my actual grasp on the language is non-existent. Here's a breakdown of my experience. 

I was in a Grade 1 class on Monday along with a fellow student teacher, where I observed their school day. It was difficult understanding what was going on at times, due to the language difference, but I managed. I did sharpen about 30 pencils and, rather shockingly, had blisters from doing this! I've been pampered by typing all of these years... On Tuesday and Wednesday, however, I was in a Grade 3 class. For large portions of both days, my host teacher was out of class, attending workshops and meetings. This left me having to be an impromptu teacher! During our briefing, they told us that we wouldn't be doing any actual teaching, but just observing with maybe a few 'small steps' towards teaching- such as reading to the class. Instead, I did the following:

On Tuesday morning, halfway through the numeracy lesson, I was suddenly left alone with the class- I was given no notice. I marked their numeracy work that was done and then, at a bit of a loss, lead a rhythm game of clapping hands and clicking fingers- the children took a while to understand what I wanted (for them to copy me) but they seemed to enjoy the game. I had desperately hoped that it would help me take control of the class, and in hindsight I think it did. I then managed to continue with a numeracy lesson on the board, writing up simple bonds and asking the children to come up and fill in the answer. When the energy seemed to go out of the room, I started rewarding correct answers (or guesses, as many children came up to the board and wrote wildly wrong attempts) with a blue sticker on their hand. That worked better than I expected, every child wanted a sticker, and when the lesson was over I gave the rest of the children a sticker as a reward for participating. I consider it an okay lesson, considering the learners spoke no English and I spoke no isiXhosa! Upon returning from break-time, the children automatically started rote-reading from an isiXhosa reader, clearly they had read it many times before and one child was even 'reading' with his eyes closed. During this activity, the teacher came back and I gratefully returned to only observing.

On Wednesday, the teacher asked me to take the English lesson- with no preparation time! It was the first English lesson that my class had experienced, 3 months after the start of the school year. The teacher's union in the Eastern Cape has declared a go-slow in protest over the government not renewing the contracts of many teachers. Due to this, my host teacher, part of the union, decided not to bother teaching English: she pointed out that she had labelled the door, wall, board and her table in English and she felt that was sufficient. From next year, these students are going to be expected to use English as their primary language in school, all the way until they graduate, and it made me sad to see that they were not being taught any English at all in this class. I feel that if I was not observing the class, no English would have been taught at all.

On to my last-minute English lesson. I attempted to be confident and took the class through a few renditions of Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes, and then quizzed the whole class on which body parts were which. After that, I hastily drew a bus on the board and performed a careful narrative of the Wheels on the Bus, complete with actions. The children did not understand my explanations in between verses ("Here is a mother and a little baby! *mimes rocking a baby* What noise does a baby make?" - Silence, then one brave boy puts up his hand and does a the noise and action of a bus swooshing past instead: he had thought I had asked about a bus, not a baby), but the whole class enjoyed reciting the song and doing the actions. Their teacher actually wrote down the different verses, really I hope that she will do the song again with them.

After break-time, I continued with the English lesson. During the break, I drew a head/shoulders/knees/toes and eyes/ears/mouth/nose on the board, clearly labelled. I asked the students to draw and label the drawings in their workbooks, but their teacher had to use code-switching- she repeated the instructions in isiXhosa in order for them to understand. I then marked their work, corrected their spelling, and gave each child a sticker in their books. This section was encouraging in a way, as some children had personalised their drawing, instead drawing wonderfully creative boy/girl figures. It was also very helpful to have the host teacher actually in the class (doing administrative work), as she could repeat the instructions in isiXhosa if a student did not understand. On the downside, some children could not understand the simple task of copying the words and drawings from the board. One particular boy came back to me three times, requesting I mark his work, when he had just drawn a boy and not put any labels on- despite being told to do so in his home language. By the third time, my host teacher just instructed me to "leave him, he is in Group 4". This meant that he was in the lowest academic group and she did not expect him to ever understand that basic task, so I mustn't waste time continuing to work with him. I worried greatly about the boy, but signed his work and gave him a sticker for effort- he gave me a big smile.

What I felt negative about at Dexter School:

• The huge range of academic ability in an individual class
• The fact that drastically lower-performing children were just left to their own devices, no attempt was made to give them individual help
• A handful of children, often the low-performing ones, were also very underdeveloped physically for their age- presumably due to malnutrition
• I found out after my observation that the children were physically beaten with a pipe as punishment when they misbehaved- I did not see this happen though each class had a length of pipe they were using as a 'pointer'
• I did not like the way my host teacher shouted at children if they misunderstood or did not listen to her instructions
• The class was not at all performing to the educational standards in numeracy or English
• My host teacher did not use any lesson plan or even follow a timetable

What I found positive about this school:

• The students are very eager to learn, they were jumping out of their seats (literally) to be called on to answer a question, even if they didn't not actually know the answer
• The school is well-resourced by various educational projects, they have beautiful new textbooks provided to them
• A nutrition programme is in place, nearly all of the children have lunch provided free by the government, a huge benefit due to the poverty of the area
• Some effort is made at having a print-rich environment in the classroom
• The staff and principal were very welcoming to me, and asked me to return there for my teaching practice if possible

The language barrier was the greatest challenge I had to face. On day 2, I had written out a 'cheat-sheet' with phrases such as "I am learning isiXhosa", "I speak English" and "I am pleased to meet you" on it in isiXhosa, and read them out to my Grade 3 class when I was left alone with them, but I don't know if it made any impact at all- none of the children reacted to my statements so I don't even know if I pronounced them correctly! I did not pick up any new words or phrases, but I could probably recognise the phrase the students used for "I'd like to leave the room", since they asked that one a lot. I did become more comfortable with using "Molweni/Molo" (Hello) and "Enkosi" (Thank you), but I was frustrated that I could not express myself in any other way. A lot of children in South Africa struggle with having to use a language in school which is not their own (such as my class having to transition into only speaking English in school from next year), and I really experienced the flip-side of that last week. I will continue to try with my isiXhosa lessons, but I feel that only having one lesson and one tutorial per week is not enough and I hope that I stay motivated: I do not have conversational proficiency in any language except English and it would be greatly beneficial to know enough isiXhosa to have a conversation.

Many schools that my fellow student teachers visited were also township schools. They all struggled with similar problems that I experienced. A handful of students were placed at far more privileged schools, either private schools or ex-Model C schools, and experienced far more positive observations. The vast difference between the schools with 16 in a class compared to those with 83 in a class were pretty shocking. One township school has not had running water since last year June, and so their students went to the toilet on the school field. One student teacher was not assigned a host teacher: instead she got a classroom full of rowdy children, with no curriculum, plan or worksheets, and was told to just deal with them.  One of the private schools has a remedial programme where the children who are struggling are given extra help, another has a pilates center and indoor swimming pool. All in all, it's hard to not feel discouraged because so many of the students in our town are in these failing schools while the students in the wealthier schools tend to have a much better, enriching experience.

I did manage to enjoy myself on my observation, despite all of the problems. If I hadn't been placed in such a disadvantaged school, I may not have had the teaching experience I now have. From a personal point of view, I've now been into the townships and seen one of their schools- growing up in the suburbs, I had previously no experience or reference point for the townships and now I do. I greatly underestimated what resources the school would have, and was quite pleased to see so many dedicated students and staff there. What teaching I did do, I really enjoyed- though the language problem was a real problem for me. I hope that I get placed in an English medium school for my actual teaching practices, a member of the Department indicated that would be the case.

There is so much more I can write, the course is so interesting and I'd love to spend time documenting each method and subject I have- but sadly, that will have to wait until another time: hopefully before my first teaching practice in June!

Resources: "PGCE Survival Guide" and "Move Me On"

I've just come across two fantastic 'crowd-sourced' books, both of which are available for free download.

#pgcetips - The PGCE Survival Guide, the Essential guide to your teacher training
#movemeon - Tips, ideas and suggestions for all teachers from the Twitter community

This, from the creator of the PGCE Survival Guide, really hit home for me:

Why was the book written?

Tim decided to try to put together the PGCE Survival Guide as he remembered the anxiety waiting for his PGCE to start and how much he wished he could find lots of first hand experience and tips from people who had ‘been there and done that' and how useful these tips could have been throughout his PGCE year. This book is his attempt at answering this wish for trainee teachers and also to give something back to the education community!

 I am exactly in that position now, scouring the internet and looking for advice from teachers on how to do this PGCE thing. Whenever I stumble across someone else in my situation, it's rather comforting but also not exactly helpful! Finding people who have blogged about the PGCE process, and then this goldmine of a Survival Guide, gives me hope. I've shared it with the handful of people in the Rhodes PGCE Facebook group, hopefully others will find it useful.

Move Me On came before PGCE Survival Guide, but since the Guide is far more relevant to me at the moment, I'm going to begin with that.

Thank goodness for the digital age.

To 2012 and Beyond

Welcome to 2012, everyone! I hope that you didn't party too hard. The new year slipped by me without even a thought spared for those Resolutions that everyone is so fond of. If I was to have any, they might include:

• Succeed at the PGCE course, receiving my certificate and managing to find a teaching position for 2013 in Cape Town. My family are there and my best case scenario would be for me and my boyfriend to both find a job somewhere in the city.

• Get into better shape and become more comfortable with my body. This is going to be a combination of making better eating choices, forcing myself to exercise and deciding to dress in a way that is more appropriate to my own style while taking my physical features into consideration. I'm very self-conscious about my appearance, and I'd like to work to overcome that. Better fitness will hopefully help my self-image and I'd like a stronger body!

• Improve at socialising. This includes going out more with my friends when they offer, with or without my other half. This may be my last year in this university town and I should make the most of it. I have good friends, and the potential to make many new ones within Gamesoc and HvZ. Many of the people I know are also introverted, and they are happy with that, but far too often I don't go to an outing or event and feel self-loathing at missing out on the fun. The times I went to things last year, I had a blast, so I need to push myself to try harder.

I finally received some information from the Education Department about my course. Our first day is Monday 6 February! We are going out on a class trip to a place which is wonderfully named Hobbiton-on-Hogsback, presumably for group bonding and team building, also in February. I know two other girls who have been accepted into the course, so it should be fun.

In Foundation Phase, which is teaching grades 1-3, we take Languages (Home Language and First Additional Language), Mathematics and Life Skills Methods. In South Africa we have 11 official languages, so having additional languages at an early age is important. I must admit, I have little-to-no knowledge of any other language apart from English, but since they will only be instructing me in the level appropriate for children as a second language, I'm hoping that I'll do alright.

We also have three teaching practice opportunities throughout the year, with the first one in March. I have been informed that we spend between 10 to 12 weeks as full-time members of staff in schools- this is exciting and scary! The course, excluding breaks and holidays, is 27 solid weeks of instruction, and then that's it- after that I may get to be called a teacher. There are no details yet on which schools we shall be placed at, I am sure there will be a variety so that we experience the huge differences between schools in this country.