ESLetter article

May 2006

Bophany Huot

     Lately, there has been a lot of talk on the ESL listserve about retention and recruitment. There were lots of good ideas on how to keep students in the classroom. It seemed as though we were ready to provide all kinds of services to students just to keep them coming to our classes. We all know that there are factors in students’ lives that we have very little control over such as the economy, new immigration laws, the rising cost of living in the Bay Area, and more, and these affect all of us, not just students.

I like Rick Kappra’s comment, which was “let’s take this opportunity to make our department even stronger.” We mustn’t lose heart. If teachers lose heart, we will lose the very identity and integrity which defines who we are and what we do. This is not to say that we should just stick to the teaching and not take into consideration all the other forces that affect students’ lives. While there was much talk on student services, curriculum, classroom management, student to student and teacher to student relationships, there was little talk on what we as a community of teachers can do for ourselves so that we can be even stronger as a department. Providing more services to students and re-evaluating the curriculum would solve some of the problems we have been talking about. But would it make our department stronger? And just what does making “our department stronger” really mean?

     I have always been impressed with ESL teachers’ ability to empathize and their desire to help. I know this not only because I am an ESL teacher; but also because many years ago, I was an ESL learner. If we are to make our department stronger, we must revisit the questions of what it is that we ESL teachers do, and why is it that our students come to us? And last, how can we meet the needs of these students?  I believe the answer to Rick’s comment lies in the answers to these three questions. As many of you know, I am a big advocate for teachers’ circles such as our Reflective Teaching Project. As one of the founders of this project, I had the opportunity to sit in many teachers’ circles within our non-credit and credit ESL Department. And although what I observed over the years was no great discovery, what I experienced was very powerful for me and for the other teachers involved. We all know how isolating the teaching profession can be. Yet, there is little that we as a group, a department, a school, a college, and a society have tried to do to amend this problem. And now our enrollment is down and we are desperately looking at our students trying to give them more and more, hoping that this will keep them coming to our classes.

    To me, making the department stronger means providing the kind of ESL instruction that will enable our students to succeed at work, in their community, and in the society as a whole. The question remains. How do we do this? The effectiveness of a classroom instruction lies in part on how much support we teachers get from our peers and from our institution. As language evolves and society changes, so must our teaching. But how many of us have actually challenged ourselves and had our values and beliefs about teaching and learning challenged by our peers? It’s scary to put oneself in this position. Often times something like this can have negative repercussions on our job. But imagine for a second that there aren’t any negative repercussions, that you actually come out of it having learned something new about yourself and about those you work with (students and colleagues). Imagine what it would be like if within the structure of our work, there is time set aside for teachers to engage in a non-threatening and supportive dialogue about what goes on in the classroom. How would the atmosphere and the environment within which you work be different if we had such a structure? What would our teaching practice look like if we had a supportive forum to express our challenges and vulnerabilities? And last, how would our relationship with our students be like if we had a better relationship with our colleagues and a greater awareness of what goes on in our colleagues’ classrooms?

     Many studies have shown (see list of bibliography at the end of this article) that this kind of dialogue is one of the most sustainable and least expensive ways to keep teachers interested, excited, connected, and more open to sharing and exploring ideas and practices with their colleagues. One way I have seen this accomplished effectively is in the teacher circles groups, The Reflective Teaching Project (RTP). What makes RTP different from other staff development is that it helps us to identify the assumptions and values that we bring to the class, including our capacity for tolerance, patience, respect for differences, and willingness to listen (Burbules and Rice, 1991, p. 411). What makes this project beneficial is not just the collective ideas and possible solutions to these issues, but that the participants gain new insight to their classroom actions and reactions.  Thus, knowing a few new techniques or “tricks” is nice, but understanding both the overt causes (what we can observe: students are illiterate in L1, students’ inability to decode, life’s obstacles such as working two jobs, etc.) and the covert causes (our level of tolerance, patience, beliefs about how one learns, prejudices, etc.) to why there was a challenge in the first place is the key.

     It is my hope that in the process of making our department stronger, we make a commitment to giving teachers time to learn more about learning and consequently about teaching, and that this practice will become a part of what we do to provide the kind of services that best serve our students.

1.  Brookfield, Stephen D. Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1995.

2.  Burbules, N. C. and Rice, S. “Dialogue Across Differences: Continuing the Conversation.” Harvard Educational Review, 1991, 264-271.

3.  Palmer, P.  “Good Talk About Teaching: Improving Teaching Through Conversation and Community.” Change, 1993, 8-13.