Pedablogue, by Harvest Bird
teaching beyond tips and techniques
Culture Shock
28 June 2004, 3:04 pm
Each year, as part of their early training in critical thinking, we ask New Zealand Studies students to write about their experience of culture shock.Once the surprise that what they are experiencing is an actual condition passes, the accounts that students prepare are always wry and moving.
There is something both dignified and plaintive about students' cautious assertions that local food is rather flavourless, that lunchtime meals are too small and that the intergenerational informality is unsettling, as is being greeted on the street by strangers.
Within their accounts one can see the efforts of local people to be friendly and welcoming, but at the same time there are less flattering lights thrown on the local culture, as in the comment by one student that if he and his friends talk loudly in a public place, passers-by look offended.
Ihi/Wehi
25 June 2004, 11:23 am
When I began working in this job a few years ago, the programme was lightly-structured, roles were fluid and the work of reflecting on what it was we were about (other than getting students to pass) hadn't taken place. There wasn't a team of scholars so much as a loose conglomeration of disaffected professionals.There was a lot of conflict, of both the aggressive and passive-aggressive variety, and I lurched from class to class in a state of under-resourced stress.
These days, things are rather better, thanks in large part to my immediate colleagues' considerable efforts in developing curricula and resources based on my earlier guerrilla efforts (I say "guerrilla" on account of a former colleague's refusal to teach anything that didn't conform to his particular preferences for vocabulary and punctuation; he took such diversity as a personal affront, meaning what materials I developed, I developed in secret). Coming out of the classroom now, I feel a cautious optimism rather than relief that the lesson is over and apprehension about what's to be done next.
A current series of TV advertisements promoting study for young Maori screens with the slogan "te ihi, te wehi, te mana". While I don't consider mana (culturally specifc worth and prestige) mine to comment on, it is a relief and pleasure to feel that the unsettling fear and awe of te wehi is balanced these days by the more positive, and more inspiring awe and anticipation of te ihi.
My dictionary tells me also that "ihi me te wehi" means dignity and worth. That's something I have in my job now, thanks to support, reflection, collaboration and like-minded people, and the fact that it wasn't always thus makes it that much sweeter today.
Tangent
24 June 2004, 2:49 pm
One thing that becomes familiar after only a few sessions of marking, and continues throughout a teacher's career, is the experience of having your words and ideas rendered back to you in ways you didn't expect. Sometimes they're remade innovatively, and sometimes erroneously.But the exam script which calls Allen Curnow a "playground bully" makes me wonder just what kind of subtext I may have let loose in my lectures on the dead man's critical writing!
Shadow
24 June 2004, 1:06 pm
Allen Curnow, though deceased, casts a long shadow as a critic. Next to the highlighted marginal aside, "not really there to be marked, just a statement", a student comments that "in writing this essay I'm scared he[']s watching me".Had Curnow not come to atheism young, who knows what dire threats he might have made to haunt those who now contend against him?
Early
24 June 2004, 11:00 am
It's early days yet with my new international students' writing, a fact shown by the frequency with which I write "not sure what you mean by this" on their written expression.Grammar and idiom are engines that require a long period of hand-cranking in order that they eventually run.
HardTimes
23 June 2004, 10:20 pm
Someone else who is grappling with the physical and emotional drain lectures create on the teacher, especially one doing a lot in a short amount of time, is hungryghost, the story of whose summer school blues can be found in these entries: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.Changes
23 June 2004, 10:06 pm
Already I am in the third week of the June intake of Foundation Studies students, and lectures seem like a distant memory.Now that my schedule revolves around classroom teaching, not lectures, my days feel quite different. Being in a classroom with second-language speakers, even ones such as my students who are engaged in academic work, is a much more intensive and busy process than giving a lecture. By definition, classroom work is more interactive, but different in nature from a tutorial, since students need things they can do before they can proceed to discussion. There needs to be lots of variety, meaning several short activities, to keep students' attention and focus on the ideas at hand. Working in a foreign language slows the learning process right down in the early days.
The flipside of this is that, outside of classroom time, the day is quite relaxed, whereas when I was preparing and giving three lectures a week, I found that the lecture hour itself was the quiet time and the rest of the day an exercise in reflecting, or fretting, about what was coming next. In the much less interactive teaching environment of the lecture theatre, the sense of being responsible for students' learning felt much greater, since it was up to me to engage the group's attention with lecture material and presentation. In a Foundation Studies classroom, more responsibility falls on the students, who are learning how to learn in a new environment as much as they are learning course content.
Lecturing in my own field to interested students from the same culture as me was really emotionally satisfying, and it's strange and a little empty to feel much more detached from the material I'm teaching at the moment. But it's also great to have some headspace when I'm not in the classroom, and not be thinking about content as I fall asleep at night. On the other hand, one thing that's enabling me to take up my classroom teaching again with a certain zeal is the knowledge that next semester I'll have the chance to give lectures again.