After taking some time – complete with long, potentially awkward moments of silence – to share Post-School Tour epiphanies (thanks to Monica for getting the ball rolling on this one), we played with the idea of effective communication can enhance teacher presence in the classroom.  Before that, however, I made an exciting announcement.  Here it is:

LLED 320 Timetable Change

I will be your instructor for the LLED 320: Curriculum & Instruction in Language Education course in Term 2 this year.   Seeing as I teach at Hillcrest Middle School on Fridays, I will be unable to teach you LLED on that day of the week.  As such, I have changed to the timetable to… are you sitting down?… give you Friday morning off!  Yes, in exchange for an extra hour on both Tuesday and Thursday, you can sleep in on Friday morning (LLED 320 class was originally scheduled for 10:00 am to NOON on Friday)

In the end, LLED will run as follows:

• Tuesdays = 1:30 to 4:30 in SCARFE 1328
• Thursdays = 1:30 to 4:30 in SCARFE 204A

If you have a conflict or a concern with this revised timetable, please let me know by Wednesday, 14 October 2009.

The good news doesn’t stop there.  I’ve had the opportunity to select my preferred textbook for LLED 320 this year and I’ve chosen a book that I found exceptionally useful both in the course and in my own classroom.  The text is Student Diversity by Brownlie, Feniak, and Schnellert.  Here’s the cover:

and here are the authors, Leyton Schnellert (left), Faye Brownlie (middle), and Catherine Feniak (right):

Now, are you still sitting down?   Honestly, please sit down! In addition to being available to purchase at the bookstore for a reasonable price, the entire text is also posted on the publisher’s website.  Honest to goodness! You can’t print out the PDF files but you can read them online.  I’m not sure how long the files will remain up but they’ve been there for over a year so keep your fingers crossed.  Here’s a link to the Stenhouse website where the PDFs are posted (You can also click on the book’s title above, if you prefer).

Oh ya, we did some communications stuff, too.  Here’s the scoop:

Teacher Introductions

Now that you’ve seen real middle school teachers in a real middle school setting, we wanted you to think about how you might introduce yourself when you start teaching on prac.  We don’t recommend the approach modeled in this “Sister Mary Elephant” YouTube clip from Cheech and Chong:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhG__-Ql8_I[/youtube]

After considering:

• What name you prefer to be called
• How you would say it, both verbally and non-verbally

each TC had to come to the front of the class and deliver an introduction that included:

• Name
• Course you were teaching
• A pleasantry

Everyone had a chance to present and there were many attention grabbing intros.  Afterwards, Shep emphasized two things:

1. Your introduction need not be flashy. What’s most important is that you come across as confident and competent; the flash can come later in your lessons.
2. Be firm on what name you prefer to use in the classroom. If you want to be called Mr. R, insist on it.  Uncertainty at the introductory stage could be interpreted as a sign of indecisiveness and could lead to problems down the road, particularly with classroom management.

Choosing Voice – CREDIBLE vs. APPROACHABLE

As per the Credible vs Approachable Voice handout from materials created by Bruce Wellman,:

“our tone, pace, rhythm and other elements form important para-language [the non-verbal elements of communication used to modify meaning and convey emotion] elements that are often stronger than the words we use.”

We played with 2 voices – CREDIBLE and APPROACHABLE – to discover what they are and how they could be used to good effect in the classroom.  After s short introduction, partnerships role played classroom situations to demonstrate how voice could be used effectively and, for the sake of comparison… and humour! – ineffectively.

Choose Voice is one of 5 nonverbal patterns that can be used to enhance your classroom learning envrionment as identified by Kendall Zoller in his paper “Nonverbal Communicative Intelligence for Classroom Management“. By the way, the other 4 behaviours are:

• Pause
• Frozen Hand Gesture
• Incomplete Sentence
• Freeze Body

That’s all for now.  Enjoy your Thanksgiving weekend and we’ll see you on Tuesday.

– Lawrence