Lesson Planning

Lesson Planning. What a crucial and yet excruciating topic. For some odd reason, I feel like I have already read and/or blogged about this chapter....but oh well.

First of all, can I say, I love the quote at the beginning at the chapter. It so rings true in lesson planning and makes me think a lot about backwards design in lesson planning, where you come up with your desired results from the lesson first and then plan your lesson from there.

I think that lesson planning can be a teacher's best friend but yet worst enemy. For a (somewhat) organized person like myself, I was very drawn to the idea of having a plan for what you want to achieve in your class period or unit, what have you, but the implementation always made me very nervous due to its organized fashion--I always feel as though if I deviate from the lesson plan or something goes wrong, I'd get all flustered and lose it completely. Maybe that's just me or maybe I wasn't taught lesson planning in a good way. I know that it gets more natural the longer you do it, but yeah, lesson planning isn't my favorite topic because it's so individualized and dependent upon your setting and many other factors.

Assessment: Non-Traditional and Alternative

I like that this section brought up alternative assessment because we talked about alternative assessment briefly in our ESL Testing class last week.  Normally I think of alternative assessment as a way to differentiate methods and allow the students' knowledge to be measured in ways other than multiple choice tests that can hinder them and not extract their true knowledge in a way that is meaningful for them. Chapter 33 echoes my idea: "Alternative assessment is different from  traditional testing in that it actually asks students to show what they can do" (339). I know that many of my greatest learning experiences in high school and college were when I was given a choice of different ways of completing a project. I am naturally a very good writer and test-taker, but differentiated methods were very much appreciated. I think it is also important for teachers to implement alternative assessment because it keeps the class engaged and eager to learn. How much more fun does acting out a play or having a group discussion seem as a basis for an assessment rather than sitting down for an hour and silently taking a test? However, as the chapter notes, the reliability and validity of these alternative assessments are still necessary.

So, how can we got about deciding which forms of alternative or non-traditional assessment will be appropriate and useful for the classroom? Obviously, we have to consider the classroom setting and participants, but chapter 34 provides three issues that need to be considered in assessment: philosophical issues, public issues, and implementation issues. Although the text presents these three idea in order of importance, I would argue that implementation issues are the most important characteristic to be considered because it refers to how the particular form of assessment can be implemented daily in the classroom, which is a huge part of how successful the classroom is.

Cultural stereotypes & consciousness

It sadly comes as no surprise to me that even a profession that is so mindful and aware of cultural differences is not free from cultural stereotypes. Kuma's article, "Problematizing Cultural Stereotypes in TESOL" addresses in particular the stereotypes that are associates with students from Asia and debunks them using sound research. An interesting point that Kuma makes is that "nearly 3 billion people belonging to cultures and contrasting and conflicting as the Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, and many others" are grouped into the same cultured identity of 'Asian.' there is a stark difference between not only all of these cultures, but Indian and Chinese--to group these two extremely different cultures into one group is absolutely ludicrous.

What first struck me about this article was the mention of the first stereotype that is attributed to students from Asia: their obedience to authority. Surely is is a stereotype that we have all heard and believed, not interpreting it in an offensive way but  nonetheless perpetuating something that Kuma showcases as being false. My mind went back to an article that we read in this very class: "Potential cultural resistance to pedagogical imports: The case of communicative language teaching in China." In this article, Hu explains the problems that teachers/classrooms trying to incorporate CLT may face. Here is an exceprt of what I said in my blog entry about the article:
"Finally, Chinese culture and customs play a big role in their unwillingness to use a communicative approach in the classroom. A communicative method, by definition, is opposed to teacher dominance--and education culture in China is not like that--they teachers are viewed as the supreme educator. "Students are expected to respect and not to challenge their teachers" (Hu 98)."

I find it interesting that in this class we were asked to read this article when we would later read another article that seems to blatantly negate and spurn the claims made. However, I do not think it so horrible: as Kuma mentions at the end of his article, "We as TESOL professionals largely deal with the unknown and unmanageable. In our attempt to deal with the complexity of our task, we fall for simple, sometimes simplistic, solutions" (Kuma 716). I do not find it hugely problematic that we have read conflicting research because it is important for us not only as TESOL professionals but as scholars of any kind to realize that there are conflicting views and research and be critical of each side.

(To be continued...)