STORIES OF TEACHER AUTHENTICITY

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STORIES OF TEACHER AUTHENTICITY EDITED BY: ADELINA BINTE ASMAWI, GEORGE M JACOBS, GUO QINGLI AND WILLY A RENANDYA

PEACHEYPUBLICATIONS LTD 2023

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STORIES OF TEACHER AUTHENTICITY

Edited by • Adelina binte Asmawi - Universiti Malaya, Malaysia; [email protected] • George M Jacobs - Universiti Malaya, Malaysia; [email protected] • Guo Qingli - Universiti Malaya, Malaysia; [email protected] • Willy A Renandya - National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore; [email protected]

ISNB: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International

Published by PeacheyPublications Ltd Devon - United Kingdom 2023 i

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CONTENTS Foreword - Alan Maley Introduction - George M Jacobs - Kampung Senang Charity and Education Foundation 1. “I Don’t Know” 
 Guo Qingli - Universiti Malaya, Malaysia 2. Loving Learning
 Jessie Teh 3. Being Green
 Padmarani Srivatsan 4. Going Beyond The Classroom: Encouraging DIY Co-Learning
 Sean Burgoine - Kochi University, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences 5. Talking The Talk And Walking The Talk At A Boarding School
 Sonam Zangpo Sherpa - Tashidingkha Central School, Ministry of Education, Bhutan 6. Teachers As Students’ Reading Buddy
 Anita Kurniawati Hadiyanto - Universitas Kristen Satya Wacana, Indonesia 7. Learning Beyond The Classroom - Incorporating English Into Daily Life
 Marina Goto - Marina English School 8. Cleaning Our Classroom
 Elly S. Rachman - Temple University Japan, Graduate College of Education, Applied Linguistics 9. The Efate Novelists
 Brian Tomlinson - Anaheim University, University of Liverpool, MATSDA 10.My Experience As A Teacher Of Speaking And Writing With The 5Ws & 1H
 Youngyoon Cho; Meng Huat Chau - Jeonbuk National University, Republic of Korea; Universiti Malaya, Malaysia 11.Compassionate Feedback
 Jocelyn Wright - Mokpo National University, Republic of Korea 12.Sharing A Hobby
 Sally La Luzerne-Oi - Independent Teacher and Teacher Trainer, Wisconsin, U.S.A. 13.Teacher Reflectivity Is Teacher Authenticity
 Nimrod L. Delante - James Cook University Singapore ii

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14.Finding Our Passions
 Christina Lhaksmita Anandari - Sanata Dharma University, Indonesia 15.It’s Okay Not To Be Okay
 Anupriya Iyer 16.Listening To Students
 Sharoon Sunny - Azim Premji Foundation 17.The Power of Question-Answer Interactions: A Way to Nurture Confidence 
 Ian Nakamura - Okayama University, Japan 18.Taking Responsibility
 Jasper Roe - James Cook University Singapore 19.Every Answer Can Be A Reference Answer 
 Chenghao Zhu - Universiti Malaya, Malaysia 20.Promoting Sustainability With Young Learners In Western Japan
 Jesse Reidak 21.Being Grateful
 Mindy Neo - West Grove Primary School, Singapore 22.Teachers As Writers
 George M Jacobs - Kampung Senang Charity and Education Foundation Reflections - Guo Qingli - Universiti Malaya

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FOREWORD

It is sad to reflect that the vast majority of publications in the discourse of ELT focus exclusively on the technical aspects of our profession.  This focus on knowledge and pedagogic skills comes at the expense of the human qualities of the teacher, and the relationships she builds with learners.  Knowledge and skills are, of course, necessary – but they are not alone sufficient to bring about deep learning.  As Earl Stevick reminds us in Teaching Languages: A Way and Ways: “success depends less on materials, techniques, and linguistic analysis, and more on what goes on inside and between the people in the classroom,  … I have begun to suspect that the most important aspect of ‘what goes on’ is the presence or absence of harmony — it is the parts working with, or against, one another.” (Earl Stevick)  All too often, we forget the validity of our own learning history.  For most of us, what we remember most about our teachers is not their technical expertise but their human qualities.  “They don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care,” (Teddy Roosevelt). We neglect this human dimension at our peril. It is therefore heartening to see this new publication, which focusses on precisely those human qualities.  To be ‘authentic’ is to be vulnerable, to open ourselves to the unpredictability of the classroom, rather than taking refuge behind a wall of superior knowledge.  It is to take that necessary risk, in an effort to create a living, learning community.  It is to leave space for spontaneous response, to hold back from our inbred tendency to believe that correction will lead to perfection.  It is having faith in the human capacities of our learners. The very varied experiences expressed in these chapters do not offer a one-size-fits-all solution to the teaching conundrum.  But they do show how learning can thrive when teachers act authentically, as living, caring beings in a mutually-respectful relationship with their classes. Alan Maley

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INTRODUCTION

This book features success stories, but the origins of the book come from frustration and failure. For example, we, the editors, are often frustrated to observe people who talk about protecting the environment and reducing their carbon footprint; however, sadly, these same people seem to live the same lifestyle they did 10 years ago, before the climate crisis. They fly off for frequent holidays, drive cars instead of taking public transport, and eat large amounts of food from animals. Practicing What We Preach in Education Similarly, some people who advocate for good ideas in Education do not actually implement those ideas in their own teaching. For example, in their articles, books, webinars, and presentations, some noted academics sing the praises of student centered learning methods, such as cooperative learning, but in our observations, these academics’ teaching consists almost entirely of long lectures. They do not practice what they preach. More than a 100 years ago, Dewey (1916, pp. 43-44) bemoaned a similar lack of progress away from top-down teaching, despite the lip service already being paid to more democratic methods of learning: “Why is it, in spite of the fact that teaching by pouring in, learning by a passive absorption, are universally condemned, that they are still so entrenched in practice? That education is not an affair of “telling” and being told but an active and constructive process, is a principle almost as generally violated in practice as conceded in theory.”

We do appreciate the temptation for teachers or lecturers to talk, to enjoy the certainty of a well-prepared lecture, escaping the uncertainty of what might happen if they need to depend on their students’ input, on students’ willingness and ability to interact with their peers. So, in a way, this book was created to remind ourselves to practice what we preach.

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Students Cannot Read Our Minds Another kind of failure that motivated us to produce this book is shown in a study we heard about many years ago (apologies for not supplying the reference) in which after English language classes, the researchers asked first the teachers and then the students what had been the focus of the just-concluded lessons. The two groups’ responses differed. We have experienced that same gap; our students were not able to read our minds! We thought we were being student centered, for example, by trying to involve students in formulating the course syllabus, but instead, we were seen as lazy and unprepared. To lessen chances of such miscommunication, in this book, we advocate a three-part model in which teachers first Talk, i.e., we explain ideas that underlie our teaching. Second, we Walk the Talk, i.e., students see and hear us implementing the ideas that we talked about. In this way, students observe us being authentic. Third, we facilitate students Walking Together with us. In other words, students join us in behaviors similar to the ones they had observed us doing. Leaps of Faith Teaching itself involves many leaps of faith, faith that our students will remember what they appear to have learned with us, faith that they will be able to use that learning to help themselves and others, faith that they will pass on to others the kindnesses that we have bestowed upon them. An example of such a kindness, such a leap of faith, by a student not by a teacher, appears in the book Chicken Soup for the Sports Fan’s Soul and was highlighted in a 2022 podcast about professional basketball (https://overcast.fm/+d1tijdWmM). The author of the story, Ellen, was a school student who was never a good athlete. In Physical Education class, whenever the girls were going to play a game, the two best players in the class were chosen as captains, and the captains then took turns to choose their teammates. Ellen was always one of the last to be chosen, and this caused her shame. However, one morning, when the girls were to play softball, one of the captains, Joan, made Ellen her first choice. Joan’s second choice was another student not known for her athletic gifts. Unsurprisingly, Ellen and Joan’s team lost, according to the score, but perhaps in the end, they won.

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Joan went on to be a teacher, and several decades later, Ellen wrote the book chapter and sent a signed copy of the book to Joan to thank her. Joan’s leap of faith had been rewarded, as we trust many of your leaps will also be, even if you never find out. A Special Book The editors of this book took two leaps of faith. First, most books for educators are written by academics with doctorates, with university positions. We the editors fit that category or soon will. Nevertheless, we took a leap to encourage other educators at secondary, primary, and preschool levels to contribute to the book. To make this process less intimidating and time consuming, we asked for chapters of about 1000 words, without references and jargon. Second, another feature of most books for educators is that they are published by prestigious publishers who charge high prices even for short books. We have authored books with such publishers. However, publishing this way did not align with our belief about education being open to all. Thus, to try to make the stories in this book accessible to teachers who are not at well-funded universities, we chose to publish this book free online. Fortunately, PeacheyPublications agreed to take on this project. We had faith in this publisher because we had seen the excellent work they did on the free online book Integrating global issues into the creative English language classroom. Conclusion The editors want to thank all the exceptional teachers who are chapter authors. As you can see in their chapters, they make important contributions to the lives of their students and all those with whom their students interact. The authors were also patient with us editors, as we pushed them to make various rounds of changes. In conclusion, being 100% authentic in teaching as in life generally is probably impossible. All we can do is to try our best to occasionally reach the lofty goal of authenticity. Let us hope that the stories in this book inspire more teachers to Walk Their Talk and us, the editors, to continue trying to do so. Best wishes – Adelina, Willy, George, and Qingli

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"I DON'T KNOW"

知之为知之，不知为不知，是知也。—孔⼦ Zhī zhī wéi zhī zhī, bùzhī wéi bùzhī, shì zhì yě. — Confucius The well-known Chinese phrase above came from Confucius. It means, “The wise admit that they know some things and don’t know other things.” In other words, Confucius reminded everyone, including teachers, to be humble and not pretend to be know-it-alls. In my short experience as a Mandarin teacher in China, I taught these words to my own students and encouraged myself to practice this concept in my own life. However, this is not always an easy business, especially for us teachers.

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In the year before I graduated with a master’s degree, I taught in a high school in Beijing. Due in part to the top-quality educational resources the school provided, students’ language level was higher than that of students I had previously taught. These more proficient students felt like a challenge to me. I believed I needed to correctly and thoroughly answer all their questions in order to establish my credibility in their eyes. However, in spite of my best efforts, one day, I found myself in a bind while I was teaching a piece of ancient Chinese literature. A student asked, “Sorry, Miss, I have read the original version of the text. Why is the content in the textbook different from the original?” I was speechless; I hadn’t read the original text, but instead of admitting this, I gave a very vague answer to avoid appearing to be ignorant. Although the class ended as usual, that moment haunted me for several days, weakening my confidence. Fortunately, using Confucius’ ideas, I gained a better perspective on the incident. I had shown inconsistency between my words and my actions; I did not live by another phrase of Confucius: “Knowing is knowing, not knowing is not knowing.” After much soul-searching, I confessed my error to my students. Kindly, they forgave me, and we had an excellent discussion. Based on this discussion, the class and I decided that everyone needed to abandon the artificial division between teachers and students, and that all of us should be both. As a teacher, I realized that I had to abandon the hypocritical halo of all-knowing sage. It wasn’t easy, but I felt free when I, at first hesitatingly but then with confidence, told my students what are now my three favorite words: “I don’t know.” I felt free and so did my students. They felt free to take risks, to make mistakes, and even to point out mistakes made by me, their classmates, and themselves. In this new collegial spirit, my students and I decided to work together to find answers to the student’s question that had been haunting me. In class, a total of 10 students were curious about this question. These ten students divided themselves into two research groups. I would research too, and we decided to share what we learned the following week. Our discussion then would include three aspects: 1.

How the search was done;

2.

What was learned from the search;

3.

What still needs to be searched for.

Usually, students share first, but this time I went first: I told the students that I had searched the Internet for information on different versions of the text (How the search was done). I learned that our textbook had just picked one version of 9

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the text; so, it was not surprising that the student found that the content in the textbook was different from other editions he had read (What was learned from the search). I found that several versions of the piece of ancient Chinese literature are in circulation. However, I could not find the original text (What still needs to be searched for). Then, students from the first group shared: In the classical documents section of our school’s library, they photographed the contents of the different versions of the text (How the search was done). The students highlighted important similarities and differences between the version of the text we used in class and other versions (What was learned from the search). However, they did not know why the textbook chose one version over the others (What still needs to be searched for). Finally, the second group shared: This group talked with experienced literature teachers to gain their insights (How the search was done). They learned that textbook writers consider the students' knowledge level and select readings that will not be too difficult for most students. Furthermore, the version used in the textbook has more reference value than other versions. Therefore, it was chosen to be displayed in our textbook (What was learned from the search). The group expressed the hope that they can learn how to judge what materials and activities will not be too difficult for students (What still needs to be searched for). A vocabulary learning course was another instance in which I said my favorite three words, “I don’t know,” to my students, and we addressed the questions collaboratively. Before telling this story, I would like to share some basic information about Chinese characters. In our daily life, it is very common for people to pronounce particular Chinese characters incorrectly. For example, we usually read 勉强(miǎnqiǎng) as miánqiǎng, miǎnqiáng, or miánqiáng. However, as a Chinese teacher, I was thinking that such problems were very basic; so, I should be able to easily resolve all these seemingly simple problems for students. In one class, however, when a student asked me the pronunciation of the Chinese character“卡” in the word “卡壳”, I was not sure whether it should be pronounced as qiǎ or kǎ. At that moment, I was happy to Walk My Talk and to say, “I don’t know”. That was a difficult moment for me. Via this experience, I realized that though these questions are very basic, sometimes standard pronunciation can be difficult to remember due to the influence of usage habits. Fortunately, thanks to the perspective I had learned from Confucius, I saw this pronunciation issue not as an embarrassing difficulty but as an opportunity to learn together with my students. In a subsequent class, I explained that there are many polyphonic characters (characters that can make multiple different sounds). As a result, it is normal to be unable to 10

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distinguish pronunciations of Chinese characters. I suggested that we could try to overcome such problems together by each of us preparing a notebook to record the easily mispronounced Chinese characters encountered in our daily life and mark the correct pronunciation according to the dictionary. Every two weeks, we shared the polyphonic words we had found. Over time, we become more familiar with these tricky Chinese characters. Not only that, but such a learning together approach also happens among students. For example, once, when I was responding to the journal of the student who was class monitor in one of my classes, I found a story about “I don’t know.” As the class monitor, she felt she needed to show she was some kind of Mandarin SuperSpeaker. But, of course, no one knows even anywhere near everything about any language. Still, any ignorance on her part often bothered her, and she spent a lot of time pretending to know everything so that she could answer questions about Chinese from her classmates. Later, when she heard me saying “I don’t know” and seeing that my confession did not negatively impact my image in the minds of students, she also started to use this method. She did this by collecting classmates’ questions and posting them on the class display board. Other students would check the board and choose questions to answer for the rest of the class. This strategy not only made her feel more relaxed but also made her feel fulfilled, because she was helping classmates to “grow rice instead of giving them bowls of rice.” She no longer needed to try to maintain her “halo” as leader of a Chinese language course. Telling my students “I don’t know” helps us teachers become more relaxed and makes the classroom a livelier place by allowing students to play a more active role in their own education. Thereby, students become better able to be lifelong learners. This once again confirms the words of Confucius: “The wise admit that they know some things and don’t know other things.” Guo Qingli - Universiti Malaya, Malaysia [email protected]

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LOVING LEARNING

Here’s one area in which I strive to be authentic in my teaching: loving learning. Here’s a little history about my teaching. I started as an Early Childhood Educator, teaching English, Mathematics, and Science in Singapore. I then became a tutor, giving online and offline private lessons while also teaching in tuition centres for students ages 4 to 15. I am no longer a teacher, but the skills I learned during from my short but fulfilling teaching career have helped me in learning new things continuously in my next career. Getting students to love learning might sound too idealistic, but if students don’t want to learn, class is painful, for students and their teachers. That is why I encouraged my students to be more curious and see the value in the learning.

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Asking for Help (and not feeling bad about it) One sign that people love learning is their willingness to ask for help. Thus, one of the ways I showed my five-year-old students that I love learning is by letting them see me asking for help. For example, when I struggled with setting up the SmartBoard in my classroom, I asked one of my colleagues to come to my classroom to teach me. I did this in front of my students. I used words such as, “Do you have a moment? Can you please teach me how to set this up?”  I encouraged students to follow my example and ask for help, and when they did, I pointed this out to that student and their classmates. Another time, when teaching nine-year-olds, I noticed that students were shy to ask for help. To better understand why, I decided to ask for their help by asking them to take a quick survey, to help me better understand why they were reluctant to ask for help. In this way, I was once again showing my students that teachers don’t know everything; everyone, including teachers, sometimes needs to ask for help. On the survey, some common responses about their reluctance to seek help were that students: (a) are afraid of being negatively judged by others, (b) want to feel independent, and (c) do not want to cause trouble for others.  I wanted to show students that I took their ideas seriously; so I reviewed the survey results with them. I agreed that people, myself included, are afraid of being negatively judged by others because we care about how others perceive us. I also agreed that we want to feel independent because we want others to see us as capable. Plus, we do not want to cause trouble for others because we do not want people to dislike us. “I too feel this way, too”, I admitted to the students. “This means that we are all in the same boat. If everyone is sharing the same sentiment, there are no enemies. If there are no enemies, we are surrounded by people whom we can trust. This means we can be kinder to one another and resolve problems together. No one is alone.”  In class, we did brief games asking for help with the right questions. I guided students to use opening phrases, such as, “Can you please show me how to… ?” I also highlighted students who responded positively when peers asked for help. Students were also praised for offering help and for saying thanks to those who gave help. About a week after this discussion, our classroom atmosphere became a bit livelier, and students who used to feel uncomfortable asking for help gradually reached out to others.  The Growth Mindset Another way to foster a love of learning involves convincing students that they can indeed learn. This is called having a “growth mindset.” However, some teachers accidentally promote a “fixed mindset” about themselves These teachers perpetuate the myth that

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teachers already know everything. They feel embarrassed to admit their ignorance to students when they don’t know something or don’t know everything on a particular topic. To counter this view, I allowed myself to admit to students that I did not know everything. I told them that I wanted to learn new information, concepts, and skills along with them. When confronted in front of my students with a hole in my knowledge, I would happily proclaim, “This is an opportunity! Let’s do some research together!” doing my best to wear an enthusiastic smile. In a class of 14-year-olds, I had been demonstrating search strategies using Google, for example, starting the search with a question word, such as why, followed by the topic we were learning about. When one student asked, “Why is human blood red?” I admitted that I wasn’t sure of the answer and said I was keen to know the answer. So, the class decided to look it up at home. Note: in this class, students weren’t allowed to use Internet-enabled devices. In the subsequent lesson, each student presented their answers with three or more sources they had cross-referenced. By involving the students in the information research process, I was able to help them practise admitting the limits in their knowledge and taking action to stretch their limits. Creating Connections To Make Learning Fun I also displayed my love of learning by looking for ways to combine learning with humor. For example, in an English class with 12-year-olds, we were analysing a poster about a two-day learning camp. One of the skills the camp was going to teach was recalling lists of random items. We attempted the exercise together by describing each object in the funniest way possible. I started and soon, the students followed. Here are some of the items with humorous attributes brainstormed by the class: •

2 paper clips that can never be separated

•

A pair of scissors that cannot be opened

•

A box of crayons, all of them white

•

A photo of one’s great-great grandmother at age 12

•

A notebook with pages made from erasers.

Happily, the class was able to recall the list of items within the 5-minute limit (while laughing).  I also applied this “laugh & learn” method to more complex tasks. For instance, during a Science lesson for age 14 students, I challenged them to write a humorous role-playing game based on Energy Conversion. One group of students wrote that a skateboarder had to 14

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go home while carrying a bag loaded with yellow slimes. The class found this game idea ridiculously funny, yet it enabled them to recall the difficult concepts, making learning fun. Conclusion In conclusion, growing to love learning is a process that requires a lot of patience, as mindsets take time to change. By walking my talk about loving learning, not only do I hope I enhanced my students’ achievement now and in the future, I also made learning more enjoyable for everyone, no matter where we learn - in class, elsewhere in school, online, at home, and wherever else. Jessie Teh [email protected]

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BEING GREEN

I am Padmarani Srivatsan, and I have been a kindergarten teacher in India and Singapore for over 25 years. My journey as a kindergarten teacher started in Chennai, India way back in 1991. I chose to teach the little ones, since I feel that it is at this young age that we can best help kids develop the habits of mind, the values, and the skills that will serve them well and allow them to serve society well for the rest of their lives. Habits of mind include managing impulsivity, listening with understanding and empathy, and thinking and communicating with clarity and precision.

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While I have been my students’ teacher, most of the time, I have also felt that I was learning along with the kindergarten students. This joint learning continued and even increased when I moved to Singapore in 2007. In Singapore, I added to my teaching portfolio. I was not only a kindergarten teacher, I was also Environment Lead for the school. This new role fit me well, as I am an avid nature lover, and I believe children can learn so much from nature. The rest of this chapter shows some of the ways I practiced what I preached in regard to the environment in three areas: gardening, sustainable living generally, and family connections. Gardening Children enjoy watching plants grow, just as the children themselves are also growing. The children and I created a small garden patch where we grew vegetables, herbs, fruiting trees, and more. Teaching about the environment gave me many hands-on ways to show students and colleagues that I was practicing what I preached. I joined the students in taking care of the garden, as we did such activities as watering, planting, raking, weeding, composting, and, last but not least, harvesting. I also showed students photos of my home garden and sometimes shared with them some of the harvest from there. Sharing food from gardens gave me opportunities to talk about healthy diets loaded with a wide range of plant-based foods. Again, the students saw me walking (or perhaps I should say “eating”) my talk. Sustainable Living Growing our own food represents just one aspect of sustainable living. As a teacher, I seek to teach students the values that go with sustainable living. These values include waste reduction, respect for the entire circle of life, and understanding connections. My fellow teachers and I have so many ways that we can walk our talk when it comes to sustainable living. These include bringing our own reusable water bottles, lunch boxes, and cutlery. Additionally, the students and we teachers do recycling and reusing, in addition to the reduction we do by eschewing single-use products. Every little bit helps. At the end of each school day, it is a normal practice to pour out the left-over water in the water bottle before filling it with fresh water. Instead of pouring that water into the sink, I let students see me using the leftover water to nourish the plants in our garden. Again, not only do I model for students at school; but I also show and tell what I do outside school. For example, I show them my public transport card, the reusable bags my family and I use for shopping, and the Salvation Army donation points where we donate items that we no longer need. Plus, I show students photos of my family and I on some of Singapore’s many bicycle paths and hiking trails.

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Family Connections Family members are teachers’ greatest allies. They can do so much to promote the habits, values, and skills that we work on in school. For example, families can use various means to encourage reading in one or more languages, such as reading aloud to children, letting children see other family members reading, and bringing children to libraries and letting them select books. At the same time, perhaps the children can also teach their family about how to be green. Here’s an example of that. One evening about 9pm, I was surprised to receive a call from a parent of one of my students. She had taken her child to the supermarket to buy some groceries, but they had forgotten to bring along their own shopping bags. Now, after what I had modelled in class about not using disposable shopping bags, the child was refusing to let the mum buy the groceries since that would have meant using plastic bags to carry them home. Here was an opportunity for me to walk my talk about something else: about listening with understanding and empathy, one of the habits of mind mentioned at the beginning of this chapter. Thus, after listening to the mum, I spoke with my student, and he soon agreed that this one time, he and the mum would use plastic bags supplied by the supermarket, but in the future, they would be careful to remember to bring their own bags. Another way that we involved parents was for the students to collect E-waste from home, as well as family members collecting E-waste from their workplaces. I did the same at my home. Then, together we learned where to recycle E-waste. I made the arrangements, and took photos to share with the students. This was one of the activities that led the Singapore Environment Council to give our school their top school award. In conclusion, we have so many ways to walk our talk about protecting the environment and all the humans and other animals with whom we share our precious Planet Earth. Let’s hope that as we walk our talk with our students, whether it involves the environment or more standard elements of the school curriculum, students will develop the habit of being authentic, trustworthy people, regardless of what careers and other activities they pursue. Padmarani Srivatsan [email protected]

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GOING BEYOND THE CLASSROOM: ENCOURAGING DIY COLEARNING

Clay P. Bedford once famously said (to slightly paraphrase), “You can teach students lessons for a day; but if you can teach them to learn by creating curiosity, they will continue the learning process as long as they live.” This may be true, but creating curiosity could just as effectively be replaced by teaching themselves. Although not the result of an aversion to classrooms, I have throughout my life often found myself in situations that required me to take a “do it yourself” (DIY) approach to learning. As a teenager and an aspiring guitarist, I sought to learn guitar, yet guitar teachers in my vicinity all taught classical music, not Black Sabbath (a rock band), forcing me to resort to my own devices.

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Similarly, the nocturnal life surrounding my work culture after moving to Japan from Melbourne, Australia in the 1990s made regular daytime language classes for me to learn Japanese at a school impractical. By taking this self-taught approach to learning, I was also given insights into how to make this a part of my teaching. While I have some regrets that I never took a more orthodox approach to learning and would never advise my students to do away with classroom learning and teacher expertise altogether, my self-taught approach has not only influenced my teaching method but shown me ways to encourage students to further develop their language skills outside the classroom. Mirroring: The technique of the self-taught musician Growing up in Australia in the 1980s, I’m sure I was not the only teenage boy dreaming of a career in rock’n’roll. However, to learn the latest rock and pop songs there was no other way but to listen carefully, analyze the song by ear, and do my best to reproduce it. These were days prior to the Internet where a quick YouTube search will lead you to an online lesson for almost any popular song. This three-step process 1) listen carefully, 2) analyze the song and 3) reproduce it as accurately as possible, was very effective not only for learning the latest song but also for developing aural/listening skills, your musical ‘ear’, and the guitar techniques that were used in the song. As is natural in the creative process, many of these “techniques” then become a part of your own repertoire forming what becomes “a guitarist’s own style.” In a sense, you then “own” these techniques as they blend with your own. It was not until I encountered the technique of mirroring and began to use it in my classroom that I realized the strong similarities with how I had taught myself music. Meyers (2018) outlines a method of improving suprasegmental features of speech using mirroring. The technique involves first finding an appropriate subject to imitate; any kind of monologue is suitable whether it be a speech, a presentation, or part of an interview. After selecting the monologue, a small section is transcribed. Meyers suggests only about ten sentences for this. Using this transcription, students then mark in suprasegmental features such as intonation and stress after listening to a short lecture on these features and being shown an example transcript with added suprasegmentals.  Body language and even facial expressions are also included. After making a “cold version” or first draft on video using smartphones and getting feedback from both teacher and peers, the mirroring is ready to be performed. I took this use of mirroring one step further and introduced it into my Public Communication course at my university in Japan (Burgoine, 2021). The goal of the class is to improve English presentation skills. We follow the same steps. 1) First choose a subject, much like choosing the song you want to learn. 2) Transcribe the subject’s speech, as one would learn the notes or chords of a song. 3) Listen again carefully and analyze the speech, as one would listen carefully to identify guitar techniques 4) Finally, put everything together and perform the 20

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mirroring in front of the class. In this way students have taught themselves a ‘song’ (or short part of a presentation) in a mainly DIY independent learning process. Much of this can easily be done outside of class and can be continued as a form of independent learning and practice long after the course finishes. To really ensure that the presentation techniques of the chosen subjects have become a part of a student’s repertoire when presenting, however, it is important to finally have the students do their own presentation of original content, much like I progressed to writing my own original songs after learning the songs of others. During the semester, we do two mirroring projects with different subjects and finish off with an original presentation incorporating the techniques learnt from the first two projects. Students give a short (up to one minute) original presentation on the theme of ‘A Call to Action’, appealing to the audience for change in an area they are passionate about. In this way, students can then bridge what begins as mere imitation with production of these techniques when required in presentations in or out of the classroom. Students can continue the process they have learnt by always observing, imitating, and incorporating when they see an impressive public speaker. Extensive Reading: Teaching students to teach themselves As with the era in which I learnt guitar, 30 years ago, when I began learning Japanese, pre-Internet resources for learning were rather primitive. Digital graded readers in Japanese, like the ones I now use in my Extensive Reading classes, were non-existent. However, by applying my DIY philosophy and searching out books and manga that were aimed at children and young adults who, like myself, still had a rudimentary knowledge of kanji characters, it was possible to find enjoyable texts to read that developed my reading, vocabulary, and grammar skills. Unknown to myself at the time, I was following The Top Ten Principles for Teaching ER as outlined by Day and Bamford (2002) minus the last two principles about having a teacher as a role model and the teacher as a guide. I selected the reading material myself that was not too difficult and read it silently, quickly, on my own and for pleasure. I don’t assume that I am the first to have done this but when ER started to gain wider popularity, I realized that with the experience of unknowingly adhering to ER principles I was ideally situated to become an ER guide and role model as stipulated in principles 9 and 10. Principle 9 is that Teachers orient and guide their students. This is an important step in my ER classes and especially in Japan where much reading is intensive and centered around subsequent testing or translation. The greatest benefits from ER are gained by the sheer volume of reading; thus guidance in choosing graded readers that spark student interest or pleasure is vital. I work with students to constantly highlight that ER should not be a test of endurance but an exercise in enjoyment. I also share with them my experiences of reading as a language student (The Moomins novels, stories by Tove Jansson, and popular manga 21

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such as Jump) to highlight that not all reading has to be highly academic. The other important function I offer in the ER classroom is that of Principle 10 - role model. Ideally, most reading should be done outside the classroom; however, I like to spend 15-20 minutes of each class simply reading silently along with my learners. I read in Japanese to show that even after 30 years I am still a language learner and continue to read to improve my skills. Conclusion My experiences as a self-taught learner have benefitted me twofold. Firstly, it has shaped my entire approach in teaching English as a Foreign Language. When teaching presentation skills, the observe, imitate, and incorporate process that I followed as a self-taught musician has influenced how I introduced and adapted mirroring to encourage learning outside the classroom. Also, when teaching ER, my own experiences as a learner can be put into practice when stepping into the shoes of a teacher by reinforcing ER principles that highlight the role of a guide and a role model. Although being a regular reader is probably enough to be an ER role model, being a regular reader in one’s second language, as the students are, raises the level of teacher authenticity in the eyes of students. Secondly, approaches to teaching in the classroom provide strong hints for self-study and self-improvement outside the classroom for students who have the motivation. The observe, imitate, and incorporate process can continue to be used to polish presentation skills long after my class is finished. ER is also an ideal means, with initial guidance and observation of a role model, of encouraging students to further improve their language skills beyond the classroom. References Burgoine, S. (2021) Mirroring for English. Modern English Teacher, 30(3) 68-71. Day, R. R., & Bamford, J. (2002). Top ten principles for teaching extensive reading. Reading in a Foreign Language, 14(2), 136-141. http://hdl.handle.net/10125/66761 Tarone, E., & Meyers, C. (2018). The mirroring project: Improving suprasegmentals and intelligibility in ESL presentations. In R. Alonso Alonso (Ed.), Speaking in a second language (pp. 197-223), John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/aals.17.09tar Sean Burgoine - Kochi University, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences [email protected]

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TALKING THE TALK AND WALKING THE WALK AT A BOARDING SCHOOL

Kuzu Zangpo La (May you be in a good health) This is a great opportunity for a teacher from the tiny Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan to be able to share his story on teacher authenticity on a global platform. As a language teacher, I am particularly interested to share stories about my efforts to be an authentic teacher in teaching language skills viz. listening, speaking, reading, and writing to my students. This can also be a story of so many English teachers across Bhutan who are facing the same qualms and quandaries as I do. A backstory about myself and English Language Teaching in Bhutan is therefore essential to place my story in context.   

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Backstory Since the 1960s, English has been used as the medium of instruction in formal education, following the Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) framework. In this framework, at least in principle, all subjects are taught in English across all school grades as well as in the tertiary institutions. Specifically, English Language Teaching aims at student improvement in all four of the language strands:  listening, speaking, reading, and writing. The curriculum specifies standards, indicators, and competencies for each of these strands.  Although a lot of official correspondence is carried out in English, besides it being used as a medium of instruction in schools, Bhutan is still an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) society. The majority of school or university students do not necessarily communicate in English outside of their supposedly English-medium classrooms or schools. Instead, they use the dominant regional language.  I grew up and studied in this backdrop until I completed a Bachelor of Education with English and History majors. After I became a teacher, I had no choice but to at least speak in English to the students in the classroom. After teaching English for six years in a middle school, I completed my M.A. in TESOL from Thailand. Currently, I teach English to grade seven and twelve, at Tashidingkha Central School, a boarding school situated 15 kilometres away from the nearest town. Most of the teachers and staff reside within the campus. Since the four language skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing form the core strands around which the Bhutanese English curriculum is woven, adequate emphasis on the four skills is a mandate for any English teacher. In this vein, I reiterate to my learners that “practice makes perfect.” I emphasize that regular engagement in an activity or skill is the way to become proficient in it. I tell them, that if they want to become better at listening, speaking, reading, and writing in a language, they have to listen, speak, read, and write in that language. As an English teacher, who is looked upon as a model for all these skills, I cannot afford to preach and not practice what I preach. Therefore, this story presents snippets from a larger everyday story about how I practice what I preach and where I have succeeded and where I have failed.  Listening and Speaking - An abandoned lawn Listening and speaking are particularly hard skills to teach and practice in an EFL context. I consistently emphasize the value of extensive listening for language development. I urge students to listen to English songs, podcasts, audiobooks, and TED Talks and to watch English movies. However, just telling them to do this isn’t helping them. I model listening to TED Talks and podcasts as students see me jogging in the mornings and evenings around the campus. I also incorporate various multimedia materials into my lessons. But this is still

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very little. The barriers here are policy hindrances and resource gaps. As children’s access to the internet connectivity is limited to a small IT laboratory with 30 computers for 500 plus students, regulated on a tight schedule, children have limited exposure to authentic listening materials.  Therefore, in most cases, when they are in school, the only English they listen to comes from their teachers in the classroom. Usually, these discourses are punctuated with excessive code-switching. Therefore, the question becomes are we are displaying a good model of language use?  In my class, I repeatedly remind my students to speak in English. However, students, as they respond to teacher questions and engage in discussions, often plead to be allowed to use their first language. Regarding teacher modelling and building a culture of English speaking, initially in my career, I was too strict with language usage, and I remember communicating only in English during English classes. I strongly believed this to be the right way. It took me some time and some readings on translanguaging to gradually change my sense of plausibility. I later found out that, English-only classes increased students’ Foreign Language Anxiety (FLA). Maybe this was the reason that children were very hesitant to talk in my class. Some years ago, there was a Teaching Practice (TP) teacher attached to me, and my students shared with him that they are very anxious in my classes. They dreaded my English classes and had difficulty understanding my instructions. For instance, one student shared that during one of the English classes, I sent him to the staffroom to collect something for me. However, he didn’t completely understand my instructions, and he went there and stood near my desk for more than 15 minutes until a classmate I had sent arrived looking for him. Only then did I realize that the student in question could not ask for clarification because of language anxiety. Around this time, I read about translanguaging and how strategic use of L1 can help lower anxiety. Today though I model English speaking while facilitating my English lessons, I also make strategic use of students’ L1, and I welcome students to do as I do. I feel my learners communicate more openly now. Therefore, even our beliefs as language teachers should change in tune with learners’ needs.  A reading teacher for reading learners for a reading community  In this age of digital distraction, most people including students, consider reading a book a boring enterprise. Convincing them otherwise is a hard job, a job that requires teachers to be a touchstone of a well-read individual. Over the years, I have tried and tested an inventory of strategies to grow a reading community in my school. 

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In my English class, students and I collaboratively maintain a small area on the classroom wall entitled – “Books We are Reading and Talking About…”. All the students are designated a small space to display an A4-size sheet with the details such as the title of the book, the author, the genre, from-to reading dates, and the reader. This small information sheet, posted twice each month, serves as a springboard for organized book talks and informal discussions about the books. I have seen some students enjoy designing colourful and attractive entry sheets with sketches and pictures. The very process, I feel is like meditative dating with the book you are reading. However, some need constant reminders to put up the same. Students are also seen talking about the books and discussing around the entry sheets. This space creates an avenue for young minds to talk about books and ideas. I make it a point to read at least two books monthly. I make and post the entry sheet and briefly talk about the books I’ve read. I work hard to prove that I am a reading teacher. I believe this pushes the class to be reading students.  The curriculum requires students to read at least two English books of their choice in a month. They also have to maintain a reading portfolio, in which they write reviews of the books they have read. Not surprisingly, writing a book review for every book read made the activity monotonous. While book talks had been a great help to validate if children have read the materials, I practice what I preach by joining students in doing a variety of post-reading activities and tasks, which are, as suggested by Jacobs and Renandya (2014), intriguing and appealing. I have oriented students on numerous response-to-reading tasks such as poster advertisement, writing about lessons learned, front and back cover design, making bookmarks, concept mapping, mind mapping, storyboards, poems, prequels or sequels, and letters to character or authors. Students seem to enjoy the variety, as well as, engage meaningfully. Moreover, I also run a club called Reading Writing Connection Club, wherein every week, students and I dialog about books we are reading.  However, there is always another side of the story. I always encounter segments of students whose language proficiency lies below that of their peers. For them, I help select easier readers and abridged books from the library and monitor their reading closely. Conclusion Authentic teachers need to redefine their role from that of “sage on the stage” to “guide on the side.” This guru to guide transition entails demonstrating authenticity not just in teaching, but also in learning. If students are to adopt active learning and exhibit passion for learning, they have to see teachers as passionate active learners. Teachers have to come off the stage - their comfort zone, wherein they are supposedly always at their best. It's time now that teachers acknowledge and expose their vulnerability and fallibility. Teachers need to demonstrate and let the learners realize two things: first, in the process of learning, teachers

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too face difficulties, experience demotivation, and commit mistakes; and second, consistent practice, resilience, and grit move us toward greater mastery.  Na May Sa May Kadrinchey La (Thank you, beyond the sky and the earth) References Jacobs, G.M., Asmawi, A., & Renandya, W.A. (2022, in press). Teacher authenticity in language education. International Journal of Education, UPI Bandung. Jacobs, G. M., & Renandya, W. A. (2015). Making extensive reading even more student centred. Indonesian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 4, 102-112. Sonam Zangpo Sherpa - Tashidingkha Central School, Ministry of Education, Bhutan [email protected]

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TEACHERS AS STUDENTS’ READING BUDDY

I have been a reading teacher in Indonesia for eleven years. Like for many reading teachers, students' low reading motivation is my biggest challenge. At the beginning of a reading course, I usually ask my students how they feel about reading in English, and I get a similar answer every year: they don’t like English reading because it’s too difficult. Students encounter too many difficult words, in part because they lack familiarity with the topics of the reading materials. Like a good teacher, I keep reminding my students of the importance of reading for their academic life. However, it doesn’t seem to change their feeling toward reading.

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Students' negative views toward reading are, I think, mainly because reading activities are just one more form of schoolwork; for example, reading is followed by tasks, such as answering questions and/or analyzing texts. If we want to change this negative view, we need to change the classroom reading routines. This chapter will feature stories about how I try to introduce the joy of reading to my students by becoming their reading buddy. Myself as a Reading Teacher I started to evolve from reading teacher to reading buddy, when I read some articles about free voluntarily reading, which also appears in different names such as extensive reading and reading literacy circles. An article written by Applegate and Applegate (2004) inspired me. They explained that students' positive reading traits could be inherited from their teachers. Teachers need to demonstrate their reading passion. This was the missing ingredient I needed to put in my reading lessons. Knowing this, I asked myself whether I felt passion for reading in any language. Did I have enough reading experience to share with my student? Did I find that reading was enjoyable myself? Could I be my students' reading model? Modeling reading is not something easy to do. In cooking classes, chef teachers can easily demonstrate their cooking experiences. They can easily play with ingredients and cooking utensils and show their students excellent cooking techniques. Reading teachers don't have that luxury. We cannot simply demonstrate how we interact with the book we are reading. The process happens in our brain. Thus, only telling our reading journey may not be enough; we need to model our reading experience by becoming our students' reading buddies. Buddies Read Together Now that I am my students’ reading buddy, I start my reading class with reading circle time in which students spend 15-20 minutes reading their own book silently. People also use the terms “Uninterrupted silent reading” or “Drop everything and read”. While students are reading their books, this 15–20 minutes of quiet time tempts teachers, including me, to mark students’ papers. However, some students might observe our behaviors, leading them to silently question the purpose of the reading circle time. Why should they spend time reading their book when their teacher is busy doing something else? As I want to be my students’ reading buddy, I read with them. We have a class agreement to bring a book to our reading class; so, I bring mine. I read graded readers (books that are specially created or adapted for different student proficiency levels). Graded readers make it possible for students to find books at the right level of difficulty. Another reason I read graded readers is because I want my students to see their teacher reading the same books they do.

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Now, to open class, I show my graded reader to students. However, the first time I tried to be my students’ reading buddy, I used a book for native speakers, a Danielle Steel novel. This was less successful. When I talked about the story to my students, they were not as excited as I had expected. Perhaps, it was because my book was not sufficiently similar to theirs, and they could not find it in our library. Although reading graded books seems to be a piece of cake for me as a teacher, I want to show my students that it is okay to read easy materials as long as we can enjoy what we are reading. After showing my book, I tell my students a little about my experience reading the book. I say, for example, “This is the book I’m reading. I chose Brad Farrar from Oxford Bookworms, level 5, because after I read the blurb, I wanted to know more about the dangerous and criminal plan made by Brad Farrar and his friend. I started to read this yesterday and I found the story fascinating. I haven’t finished reading it yet, but I am already amazed by the main character.” I usually end my sharing with, “I hope that later, you’ll also share something with me and your classmates about the book you are reading.” Then, the silent reading session begins. Buddies Suggest Books Like friends who give suggestions of all kinds to each other, reading buddies can suggest books to each other. I often provide a list of books from different levels to my students either at the end of our reading literacy circle or at the end of the class meeting. I tell them why particular books can be interesting to read without spoiling the ending. When students ask questions, I leave some of their questions unanswered. I want them to find the book and read it themselves. I also ask them to recommend books to me and their classmates. They usually give me some titles, and we can go to our library to find the recommended books. Another day, I encourage sharing of what we thought about the books they recommended. I participate in this responding, too. When I first started following up on their recommendations, they seemed surprised. This initial student reaction was to be expected, as a relatively rigid relationship typically exists between teachers and students. Although present-day teachers can be more open, they are still the authority in the classroom. They instruct the students to do this and that, and students are supposed to follow these orders without questions. Considering the power relationship teachers and students have, students rarely give suggestions to their teachers. While it is common for teachers to tell students which books to read, allowing students to suggest what teachers should read and teachers accepting students’ book recommendations creates a sense that students are welcome to be involved in teachers’ reading experiences. To introduce the joy of reading, teachers can place themselves as a member of the community of class readers and thereby transform their role as teachers. By doing this, we can be our students’ reading buddies. 30

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Buddies Argue But Do Not Fight After the silent reading time, I usually invite students to share anything about the books they have read, including their opinions of what they are reading. We spend 10-15 minutes for this activity, as students still have other tasks to do after the reading circle time. Sometimes I choose a quotation from my book that I consider interesting and ask them to guess why I like the quote. Then, I ask them to find a quotation or excerpt from their book to share with me and their classmates. We’ll try to guess their reasons for their choice. Other times, I give some guidelines questions, and we discuss the questions together based on books we have read. We compare, for example, the characters in our books. We can share our opinions about the characters if we have read the same book. If we read a non-fiction book, such as a book about culture, we compare what we can learn from each book. Different opinions among students or between students and their teachers might exist. When this happens, as the students’ reading buddy, I will first attentively listen to them no matter how unreasonable their opinion might at first seem to me. I try to explore each of the thoughts and discuss the good and bad sides of each view. I won’t correct or say that it is unacceptable as long as their opinion is relevant to the book's content. For example, suppose a student says that they agree with Romeo committing suicide in Romeo and Juliet because he was so desperate when he found that his lover was no longer alive. In that case, I will not give my judgment and say something like committing suicide is against many religions. I still consider the student’s opinion to be relevant in the context of the story. However, suppose they say Romeo killed himself because he hated his family so much and wanted to show them his anger by killing himself. In that case, I will directly disagree with the student’s statement. I once told my students about one of my favorite stories, The Gift of The Magi, by O. Henry, and felt surprised by a student’s response. On one hand, most of students agreed that what Della and Jim did for each other was sweet and romantic. They were all touched when Della was willing to cut her beautiful long hair and sell it to buy a gold chain for Jim’s watch, and Jim to sell his precious watch to buy an expensive comb for Della. However, this student felt that their gifts were, “useless.” I was astonished, but I smiled at him and asked, “Why do you think the gifts were useless?” He explained that although Jim and Della had already sold the most precious thing they had, they could not use the presents they received. It was a sad answer, but I understood that he perceived this story differently from us. And his view could be true as well. So, I accepted his opinion. What was important here was his involvement as a member of the reading class community. I hoped that students would see I was modeling respect for others’ views. This activity is similar to what teachers usually do in reading class, checking students’ understanding of what they have read. The difference here is in the type of questions. Rather 31

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than right/wrong questions, I encourage questions that allow students to give their opinions freely. The key to a good answer are the reasons given. Students can enjoy this activity without burdening them too much with finding accurate answers. I think that is what a buddy will do in response to disagreements. Conclusion To change students’ negative views toward reading, we may need to change how we teach reading. To build students’ reading engagement, we need to introduce them to the joy of reading. This, however, doesn’t necessarily mean that we need to totally stop our typical ways of teaching reading. There are still some benefits that students can gain from that. What we will do here is to show them another side of reading. References Applegate, A.J., & Applegate, M.D. (2004). The peter effect: Reading habits and attitudes of preservice teachers. The Reading Teacher, 56(6), 554-563. Anita Kurniawati Hadiyanto - Universitas Kristen Satya Wacana, Indonesia

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LEARNING BEYOND THE CLASSROOM INCORPORATING ENGLISH INTO DAILY LIFE

I have been teaching English to young learners in Japan for more than 10 years. I set up a private English school at home, and more recently, I started providing individual and group lessons online. From my experience as an EFL learner and teacher, I believe that learning does not happen only within the walls of the classroom; on the contrary, meaningful learning often occurs outside the classroom when students take the initiative in their own learning. I was home-schooled in my early years, and lots of my knowledge came from observing, experimenting, and interacting with people and the environment. Thus, I strive to be authentic in my teaching when I urge students to incorporate English into their daily life.

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In Japan, English is learned as a foreign language (EFL), meaning students do not necessarily have to use English for everyday tasks. Therefore, many students do not have high motivation to use English. To increase their motivation, I emphasize the importance of exposure to English outside of the classroom. To walk my talk in my face-to-face classes, I allocate a section of my classroom to be a small library where students can borrow books to take home. I also choose books to bring home, and we share about those books. Sometimes we write notes or make book recommendation speeches. We also use a blog to introduce English songs, podcasts, movies, and books we enjoy. Students can visit the blog and choose what looks interesting to try at home. In this way, some students nurture good habits. However, providing this kind of freedom to the students and expecting them to work things out by themselves does not always work well; some students need more scaffolding. What turns out to be more engaging for those students is providing structured tasks for learning outside the classroom - through a flipped learning approach. Flipped Learning - Learning Beyond the Classroom “Flipped Learning is a pedagogical approach in which direct instruction moves from the group learning space to the individual learning space, and the resulting group space is transformed into a dynamic, interactive learning environment where the educator guides students as they apply concepts and engage creatively in the subject matter.” (Flipped Learning Network, 2014, p. 1). My encounter with flipped learning actually came from a student's complaint. One day, this 13-year-old girl told me that when she watched English videos at home, she felt alone; she said she wanted my presence and support at home. I took her voice seriously, and this prompted me to implement flipped learning. Here is one example of how I used videos to respond to her comment. Previously, I just shared my recommendations with my students to encourage them to watch any video at home, but for my flipped classroom, I use an online platform to embed quizzes inside the videos. I assign students to watch a specific video outside class. Students answer the quizzes before watching the video. Thus, the videos are interactive in the sense that students receive immediate feedback on their answers and can ask for my help by sending questions through the platform. At the end of the video, students have optional links to easy readings, available in both English and their native language. It is up to each individual to explore more about the topic by accessing these links if they wish. By designing structured, interactive, and multimodal targeted tasks, I provide students with guidance outside of the classroom without confining their freedom.

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After flipping my class, I witnessed that many students, especially the ones who were unsure about how to incorporate English into their daily life, became more confident and willing to work on tasks outside class. Because students have extra input at home, they can act as "knowledgeable others" (i.e., just like a teacher, they dispense knowledge to others), co-teaching what each has learned from the video. Students love being a teacher and look proud in this role. In this way, the lesson becomes more dynamic and student-centered. Coping With Failure - A Teacher as a User of English My authenticity shows students how to learn beyond the classroom, which necessitates them to be autonomous learners. However, this does not mean that they have to be perfect. Learning happens in a mistake-rich environment where students do not feel threatened or embarrassed about making mistakes. Equally important is being able to recognize mistakes and point out the mistakes of others in a polite, supportive manner. Traditionally, Japanese teachers have been assigned an authoritative role, providing students with knowledge and information, often one-sidedly. Because of this, some teachers feel uncomfortable admitting that they do not know something and even try to cover up their ignorance. However, I believe that EFL teachers can be a perfect model as "users of the target language," because they have experienced the challenges and struggles of learning a new language. Students can appreciate and relate to teachers when they share their struggles. Thus, I share episodes of my real-world experiences - having misunderstandings or arguments due to language gaps. One such example is what I call the "had better" incident. I was a student preparing for a test with my friend, who was a native speaker of English. We were quite stressed because the test was coming soon. My friend suggested that we take a break and go out to have fun. However, I responded, "You had better study the textbook …." He glared at me and said, "So, you think I'm not doing enough, huh?" This reaction sounded sudden and rude to me. I thought he was venting his frustration at me; so, I talked back, which turned into an argument. Looking back, I hadn’t realized that “had better” has a connotation of serious consequences if the advice is not followed and is even used as a threat. Thus, I must have sounded arrogant, even though I only meant to make a friendly suggestion. With higher level students in my writing class, I show a professor’s comments on an academic paper I wrote. The purpose of this is to demonstrate that teachers, too, are lifelong learners and that there is always room for improvement. My students often laugh at my stories but become more willing to experiment with the language.

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Conclusion In conclusion, I believe that teachers have a huge influence on how students learn and how they own their learning. If students are to incorporate English into daily life, teachers must first demonstrate concrete examples so that students can observe and imitate, which may be especially important for younger students. Creating a mistake-rich environment where students can explore their natural curiosity and interests is another key to learning that teachers should model. Helping students learning by teachers “walking their talk” does not mean that teachers must give up directing students. This is the “talk” feature of teachers “walking their talk.” I will continue to learn as an educator so that I can sow the seeds to support students expand their possibilities and become more autonomous learners. References F l i p p e d L e a r n i n g N e t w o r k ( F L N ) . ( 2 0 1 4 ) . W h a t i s fli p p e d l e a r n i n g ? https://flippedlearning.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/FLIP_handout_FNL_Web.pdf Marina Goto - Marina English School [email protected]

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CLEANING OUR CLASSROOM

I am Elly from Indonesia, an assistant English teacher for a public elementary school in a small city in northern Japan. I have worked in eight different schools during my 16 years of service. I would like to share the story of how a teacher orients students on an attitude toward life, students observe what the teacher does to manifest that attitude, students do their own version of the attitude, and together teachers and students may encourage each other. 

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Let’s start with a question often asked about Japan. Why Japan is so clean? One reason is that if there are no trash cans in the vicinity, people will bring their trash home. When babies and toddlers are cared for at a daycare center, families will take responsibility for children’s dirty diapers by bringing them home for disposal. In Japanese public elementary schools, after school lunch, we have a cleaning time. During that time, all students and teachers are assigned to clean a certain area in the school. In Indonesia, we have a rotating cleaning schedule for students, but in Japan, there is no rotation schedule; all students and teachers clean every day. Although cleaning is not included in my work contract, I happily participate. It’s an opportunity for me to get to know my students better and to teach the value of thoroughness, a value that they can apply in many aspects of learning and throughout everyone’s life. However, I have noticed that many students do not clean in a thorough manner; they do not pay attention to detail. They do not feel pride in their cleaning; cleaning is merely a task to finish. After noticing this, I was inspired by teaching thoroughness by the video of a university graduation speech I watched, which at the time of writing this chapter already had 16 million views (McRaven, 2014). The speaker urged these university graduates to start each day by doing a simple act well: making their beds well, just as I wanted my students to do the simple act of cleaning their classroom well. Here is an excerpt from that inspiring speech. The wisdom of this simple act [of making one’s bed] has been proven to me many times over. If you make your bed every morning, you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride, and it will encourage you to do another task and another and another. And by the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed. Making your bed will also reinforce the fact that the little things in life matter. If you can't do the little things right, you’ll never be able to do the big things right. And if by chance you have a miserable day, you will come home to a bed that is made, that you made, and a made bed gives you encouragement that tomorrow will be better. So, if you want to change the world, start off by making your bed. With the goal of encouraging thoroughness, I explained to students the value of cleaning their classrooms. This was my Talk. Fortunately, Japanese culture, as with many cultures, emphasizes the importance of cleanliness. In Shintoism, one of the principles is purity, both in terms of physical cleanliness and spiritual purity (Cartwright, 2017). Thus, cleaning is in part a spiritual exercise.

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Then, I Walked My Talk. I demonstrated how to do each cleaning task. As I did this, I said to the students, “Come and watch me.” For example, I showed them how to pick up dirt with a dustpan. For the blackboard cleaning, I demonstrated how to erase the blackboard from the top to the bottom. After doing a Talk and Walking My Talk, I addressed the students by their names and assigned them each a cleaning job. For example, “Tsunade, could you sweep the wooden floor? Sakuto, could you erase the blackboard and clean the chalk tray? Kumakura, you are in charge of arranging the chairs.” Then, they did their tasks while I helped. We were Walking Together. Lastly, we had a hanseikai (evaluation check sheet) after the cleaning time. One of the three students (Sts) was the cleaning leader (CL). In a loud voice, CL would ask these questions: CL: Jikan wo mamorimashitaka? (Did you abide by the time schedule?) Sts: Hai. (Yes)   CL: Kireini shimashitaka. (Did you clean well?) Sts: Hai. CL: Kichinto katazukemashitaka. (Did you tidy up the cleaning tools?)   Students: Hai. CL: Korede owari ni shimasu. Gokurosamadeshita.” (It is finished. Thanks for your hard work!).

Right after that, I said, “Thanks for cleaning thoroughly.” I use the same Talk, Walk My Talk, and Walk Together approach to inculcate thoroughness in learning. For example, I do this as students learn how to make lowercase and uppercase letters, as well as to do tasks involving more thinking, including tasks without right or wrong answers. Thoroughness is important in so many aspects of life from the mundane to the imaginative, the technological, and the intellectual. Peer feedback can be an important part of thoroughness. For instance, for writing, students use checklists to provide peer feedback prior to receiving feedback from me. With peer feedback, I emphasize that in the words of Joseph Joubert, a French philosopher, “To teach is to learn twice.” At the end of each lesson, students write self-evaluations. Areas to discuss include: • Did I listen to my teacher’s instructions? • Did I do my work thoroughly? 39

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• Did I cooperate with my classmates? • What did I learn today? Sometimes, students, even 2nd grade students, kindly point out areas in which I was not as thorough as I should have been. One example occurred when I left off a period in something I had written on the board. When students suggested an error I had made, I thanked them and emphasized that we all need help; we all need to have teammates if we are to succeed in learning and in life generally.    In conclusion, as a teacher, I have to be authentic; I have to practice what I preach. Students are careful observers who are quick to notice inauthenticity. They will honestly and bravely tell me if I do not Walk My Talk, and I appreciate that. I thank my students because they keep me alert, and when students Walk Together with me, they become my role models. Every school day, after I make my bed, I enthusiastically go to school, looking forward to the adventures I will have while Walking Together with students. References Cartwright, M. (2017). Shinto. World History Encyclopedia. Retrieved from https://www.worldhistory.org/Shinto/ McRaven, W. H. (2014). University of Texas at Austin commencement address. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxBQLFLei70&ab_channel=TexasExes  Elly S. Rachman - Temple University Japan, Graduate College of Education, Applied Linguistics

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THE EFATE NOVELISTS

It was a beautiful sunny morning on the island of Efate in Vanuatu. But in my classroom there all was shade and gloom. My class of domestic science teachers looked bored as usual at the prospect of another General English lesson. They looked resigned to another meaningless encounter with a coursebook irrelevant to their lives and needs. They were a pleasant group of mainly middle-aged ladies with children of their own and fairly comfortable lives in well-resourced villages. They were enthusiastic about teaching domestic science but reticent to use their English. They lacked confidence in their ability and lacked the motivation or need to improve.

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The situation was made worse by a coursebook which couldn’t be blamed for not being connected to the contented lives of Melanesians living in small villages on small islands but could be criticised for lacking excitement, humour and affective appeal. Suddenly I could take it no more. ‘Please stand up everybody,’ I said (or words to that effect). ‘Now pick up your coursebook and carry it with you to the window.’ The ladies looked bemused but complied with my request.  ‘Please stand in a line facing the window. Put the book in your right hand and hold it above your head. When I count to three throw your book out of the window.’ The ladies looked at each other and some of them smiled. When I counted, ‘One, two, three’, they threw their books out of the window, some reluctantly but many with relish. ‘Now, please go and sit down’, I said. And they did. ‘What are we going to do now?’ I asked. Nobody answered. ‘I know,’ I said, ‘you’re each going to write a novel.’ ‘What’s a novel?’ asked one of the more confident ladies on the front row. ‘It’s a long story,’ I said, ‘and you’re going to write one’. ‘OK everybody. Think of your village. See the houses in your mind. See the people. See the kids playing. See the animals. Now think of the most interesting person in your village. It could be an old person. It could be a young child. See that person in your mind. Have a look at their face, at their clothes, at what they are doing. Now write a sentence about this person.’ ‘You’re going to write a story. It’ll take place in your village but it doesn’t have to be true. First of all think of a title for your story. What are you going to call your story?’ ‘Now take out your exercise books’ (it was the beginning of a new term and each lady had an empty book). Write your title on the front of the book. Then write your name underneath the title.’ ‘Now write a short description of your village, Where is it? What does it look like? This is your first paragraph. Now start a new paragraph on the next line. In your second paragraph write a description of the most interesting person in your village (you can make use of the sentence you wrote earlier). Then write about what they did one day. It doesn’t have to be true. You can change your person a bit and make up what they did if you want.’

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‘When you’ve finished your second paragraph sit with a friend. Swap your stories and then read your friend’s story. Ask your friend questions about their village and about the person at the beginning of their story.’ ‘When you’ve finished questioning each other, get your exercise book back and then add more information to your story, about your village and about your main character.’ ‘When you’ve finished adding to your story, swap it with another friend and then help each other to improve the English you’ve used to write your story.’ ‘For homework tonight write a clean copy of the first two paragraphs of your novel.’ The words above might not be my exact words (it was a long time ago) but they capture the content and spirit of what I said. Obviously I didn’t say all this at once. I gave them plenty of time to carry out each instruction before giving them the next one. At the beginning of the next lesson I congratulated the ladies on what they’d achieved so far and told them that they were going to continue writing their novel in every lesson for the rest of the term. They looked quite pleased. I then told them that they could help each other at any time with ideas for the stories and with advice about their English, they could illustrate their novels with drawings and they could ask me for help at any time. In each lesson I sat at my desk with an empty chair waiting for ‘novelists’ to help. At first the chair remained empty for worryingly long periods and I had to resist the urge to wander around checking on the ladies. Soon though they gained confidence and became eager to show me what they had written and to seek my advice about grammar, about vocabulary and about pronunciation. I was able to reward them with praise, help them to clarify and elaborate and sometimes help them to learn with a little responsive teaching. Occasionally, if I noticed that many of them were struggling with the same problem, I responded with a brief whole-class teaching session (for example, on the conventions of direct speech). And sometimes I collected in a number of nascent novels and then gave brief written support and feedback. But most of the time I left them alone to write, to read aloud to each other, to share their creations and to ask for and provide help. It soon became apparent that most of the ladies were actually enjoying using English to write and talk about what was familiar and significant to them and that they were gaining more confidence, self-belief, self-esteem and ability every week. By the end of term every lady had completed a novel of at least sixty pages. Many of them were beautifully handwritten, bound and illustrated. All of them were carried with pride back to the villages which featured in them. I wonder where they are now and what the Efate novelists are doing. I think the project was a success. Looking back though I might have provided more responsive teaching as the ladies gained confidence and belief. I might have provided more 43

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help in editing the completed novels so that they were less vulnerable to criticism. And I would have made efforts to get some of the novels actually published (as I did in Zambia when one of my secondary school students had his Lozi novel published by Longman Zambia). None of the novels were masterpieces. Many were very interesting though and some were well-written. Others contained many errors and weren’t always easy to understand. But all of them represented a major achievement for learners of English who, at the beginning of term could hardly put two sentences together. I’m not advocating that teachers should try to solve the problems of lack of confidence, motivation and apparent ability by taking such extreme actions as getting students to defenestrate their coursebooks. But I am advocating that there is little point in continuing to follow a coursebook or a digital course which a class of learners don’t find to be meaningful, relevant or engaging. Some coursebooks can be humanised and brought to life by the teacher (and possibly by the students) making small changes to them (see Tomlinson, in press). For example, in a university in Oman I localised and humanised the coursebook by using the words of the language drills to tell bizarre stories, by subverting and performing the language practice activities and by changing the content of the texts (e.g. a horse race in Siena became a camel race in Oman). In Japan I got students to re-write the coursebook texts in bizarre and localised ways (e.g. one student re-wrote a text about the happiest man in England (a well-off commuter with a wife, two children, a dog and a garden in Surrey) so that it became about a house-husband in Japan married impossibly to a female Sumo wrestler. Other coursebooks needed supplementation or partial replacement. For example, in a college in the UK I got some students to discuss literary excerpts from world literature and then video their prepared performance of excerpts from them and other students to write and record their own soap opera in weekly instalments. In Indonesia one of my trainees got her students in groups to find engaging texts to replace the unengaging texts in the coursebook. And in Vanuatu one of my trainees got her primary school students to make puppets to represent characters in the coursebook and then to use them to perform the dialogues from the book. And another one cut out a ‘screen’ from a cardboard box which she had painted knobs on. She then rolled up an English translation of a local myth onto a rolling pin, inserted the rolling pin into the box so the title of the story was on the screen and invited her lined-up students to come and watch their new tv. She then sat them down in front of her box so that they could supplement the diminutive texts in their coursebook by reading the local myth as she rolled the rolling pin. The students were excited and helped each other to understand the text and even if I remember correctly to shout out unsolicited predictions of what was going to happen next.

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All of the above examples had a number of things in common. They all involved resourceful teachers encouraging learner agency, creativity and initiative in order to increase motivation, engagement and communicative ability. And they all encouraged learners to think about, write about and talk about what was meaningful to them. As I said above, some coursebooks can be used successfully if they are localised, personalised, humanised and made more meaningful. But the coursebook I was supposed to use with my class of domestic teachers in Efate was calling out for defenestration. It got what it deserved, not because it was badly written but because it was a global coursebook which was totally unconnected to the local learners and was written to be followed rather than made use of. Incidentally, no textbooks were harmed during the writing of the novels. Reference Tomlinson, B. (in press). Humanising the coursebook. In B. Tomlinson (Ed.), Developing materials for language teaching, (3rd edn.). London: Bloomsbury. Reprinted with the kind permission of Humanising Language Teaching, a free online magazine: https://www.hltmag.co.uk/ Brian Tomlinson - Anaheim University, University of Liverpool, MATSDA [email protected]

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MY EXPERIENCE AS A TEACHER OF SPEAKING AND WRITING WITH THE 5WS & 1H

I (the first author) was born and raised in South Korea. In 2020, I started teaching English to students aged from 13 to 15 at a private institute. Many had trouble expressing their meaning clearly. What would be a good way to help them? What helped me in my own communication? The 5Ws & 1H template had helped me. Maybe, I hoped, it would help my students, too.

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How to introduce the 5Ws & 1H model to my students? I started by explaining to them about my own past and present troubles with English, and even Korean, speaking and especially writing. Plus, I explained to the disbelieving students, everyone, even native speakers of English and other languages have trouble, especially with communicating ideas clearly. I gave an example in which a friend and I were supposed to be at a park, but he got lost because I had left out details about where exactly to meet. This miscommunication now happens less, I explained, because I use the 5Ws and 1H, which I then explained: the 5Ws are who, when, where, what, and why, and the 1H is how. That was my “Talk,” in which I explained to the students about the 5Ws & 1H. Putting the 5Ws and 1H into Practice  To “Walk My Talk” in writing class about the 5Ws & 1H, I started by showing and explaining. I presented an outline based on a story from my own life. The outline was organized around the 5Ws & 1H. I used a story about a birthday gift, because people usually like stories, and people usually enjoy stories about gifts. Also, in my experience, if teachers are going to ask students to write and talk about themselves, we should also sometimes write and talk about ourselves, too. My Memorable Gift What: A robot kit set Who: My parents gave it to me When: I got it on my 10th birthday Where: My home Why: My parents knew that I very much wanted to make a human-like robot How: My dad gave it to me in a huge gift box I led a discussion to check and enhance students’ understanding of the outline. Plus, I asked students in pairs to discuss gifts they had received, using the 5Ws and 1H to structure their discussions. Then, with myself acting as the scribe (writer), I used a laptop and projector to show students what I was doing as I expanded my outline into a full story, under their supervision. As we were doing this, I emphasized the 5Ws & 1H. Here is what we wrote. My Memorable Gift A robot kit set (what) that I got from my parents (who) is one of my most memorable gifts. It was my 10th birthday (when), and I was at my home (where). My dad brought (how) home a huge gift box, placed it in the living room, and the birthday party began. I wondered what was in there. As I opened the box, I was very happy since it was the robot kit set that I had long wanted so that I could make a human-like robot (why). 47

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One student pointed out that this story had two wheres: at home and in the living room. I asked if that was okay, and the student said that she thought so. I agreed and pointed out that the story had three whos: the parents and the child (four whos if you count the robot ). I told students that following the 5Ws & 1H model would sometimes provide them with a start to write more clearly and easily. Then, it was the students’ turn to write. I had Walked My Talk by using the 5Ws & 1H to write a story about a memorable gift I had received. Now, we (the entire class and I) were going to “Walk Together,” wroting about their memorable gifts, with guidance from peers and I. First, they each created an outline. I gave students freedom to vary what they do. For example, in this case, they could write about the gift they had discussed earlier in pairs or about another gift or about a gift they hoped to receive or even a gift for someone else. One student who was in a grumpy mood that day wrote about a gift that he hadn’t liked and tried to get his parents to return to the store. From that day for the next three weeks, I asked students to brainstorm their writing (and speaking) ideas using the 5Ws & 1H. Some students did an outline first; others brainstormed and didn’t do an outline. I continued to Walk My Talk by doing my own writing, but I didn’t show my writing to students until after they had done their own first draft. Sometimes, students were more interested in reading what their classmates had written than in the experiences of their boring old teacher. Something we did to reinforce the 5Ws & 1H was to notice the 5Ws & 1H in what we read, and when sometimes writers left out one of the six question words, we discussed whether that was good or bad. For example, maybe leaving out who or why increased the mystery in the story. Building on the confidence and skill students gained from using the 5Ws & 1H model, the class started writing longer pieces of writing. Conclusion Did the 5Ws & 1H make my students into great writers? No way. Did it increase their confidence in themselves as English communicators and in me as an English teacher?  I hope so. It certainly boosted my confidence, and it kept me looking for more models that I could learn, that I could use to improve my own communication, and that I could talk about to students and Walk My Talk with them.  Youngyoon Cho - Jeonbuk National University, Republic of Korea Meng Huat Chau - Universiti Malaya, Malaysia [email protected]

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COMPASSIONATE FEEDBACK

How do you give feedback to students? In 2020, when COVID-19 struck hard and classes went online, the quantity of written assignments increased dramatically. As a result, I found myself paying special attention to my feedback, that which students were giving each other, and learner self-reflections. I believed all three types were important for learning. Around the same time, I had been getting deep into Nonviolent Communication (NVC). Studying NVC through books, videos, and workshops raised my awareness of aspects of compassionate communication, changed me, and inspired a fresh approach to feedback.

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English for Peacebuilding Purposes Before I tell you how I promote compassionate feedback, I’ll share details about an English for Peacebuilding Purposes (EPP) course I designed and currently teach to undergraduate students at a national university in South Korea. It focuses on creative and academic writing for inner peace and involves cycles of brainstorming and poetic composition, followed by further brainstorming, outlining, and paragraph-writing on peace-related themes. Then, students revise and edit, give each other feedback, and complete a self-reflection report. At the end of the semester, students choose their favorite piece in each genre to rework for a grade. After they animate their poems by creating videos with PowerPoint, mount their paragraphs on a visual backdrop, and display both on Padlet, we host an interactive, virtual exhibition. Promoting compassionate feedback As teachers, we probably all believe that feedback is necessary for learning, and students usually expect it. However, we may have different understandings of what constitutes quality feedback and who should give it to whom, when, where, and how. Since my course focuses on peacebuilding, I hope we can engage in compassionate feedback, a dialogic type given with the intention of fostering positive relationships as well as personal growth. In the objectives I present on Day 1, I write that an aim is for students to “develop self-awareness and grammar, vocabulary, and writing strategies to express their feelings and thoughts clearly, effectively, and humanizingly.” Because I want students to develop agency, I emphasize the need for language awareness through analysis of texts, theirs and others’. As my syllabus states, “Receiving feedback is important as is the skill of giving it.” Before doing peer feedback, as a prerequisite for safe learning, I try to cultivate a relational climate in class through various activities (icebreakers, discussions, a kindness game, a gallery walk, etc.). Then, in Week 3, I devote a lesson to feedback basics in which I explain that, when well-done, feedback is helpful to both the reader and writer. To further increase mutuality, I let students discuss how they feel when giving and receiving feedback about diverse topics in different situations. We then read short stories and reflect on the idea in NVC that communication allows us to give from the heart (Rosenberg, 2015) such that our writing, the way we respond to it compassionately giving quality feedback, and how we receive that with appreciation are all gifts. I acknowledge that, as a skill, initially it may not be easy to convey through and recognize in feedback what Rosenberg (2005) considers the two basic things we communicate: ‘pleases’ and ‘thank yous’. That’s why I point to the ABCs of feedback, so students notice different

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types of response: affective (emotional response), cognitive (intellectual response), and behavioral (strategic response). Afterwards, we talk about characteristics of compassionate feedback and analyze examples to see if they align well. Giving compassionate feedback to students During the formative phase of the course, I do not give scores; I only give participation points for task completion at different stages. Monitoring students’ progress within and across cycles gives me useful information about their movement through tasks, uptake of learning points, areas of confusion or difficulty, etc. and affords me iterative opportunities to offer them the quality of feedback I hope they will give each other and themselves. Let me share some examples I gave recently. In NVC, “connection before correction” is a key maxim. Sometimes, focusing on relationships is more important than giving feedback. Once, a student wrote about a personal struggle finding themself and concluded their piece with, “It is only me that can give me a ‘peace’”. To simply let them know I had heard them, I responded empathically, “Peace is a journey. Take it step-by-step.” When writing is less emotionally charged, I may concentrate on content and meaning. For instance, while composing a process paragraph about ways to know peace, a student focused on the importance of having an “earnest heart.” Delighted by this expression and desiring that they develop more, I commented, “I am very curious about the power of an ‘earnest heart’, and I would love to read more examples!” Another student drafted a six-word story, “Farewell, Highheel, Tap, Tap, Tap, Flop,” and I checked, “Here, it sounds like it’s a farewell to the shoes. Is that right?” because their freewriting indicated that the original idea was about a breakup between a couple. At times, organization is the urgent priority. A student prepared a poem and later a paragraph about an object that brings them peace. Urging them to review their work autonomously, I noted: “In this paragraph, you made use of your brainstorming for the last two tasks. Excellent! Moreover, I see structure in your text. There is one sentence, though, that does not quite fit. Can you find it?” Specific techniques are sometimes another focal area. When a student wrote about a peaceful time, I commented that I found their paragraph clear and appreciated the opening question, but I needed more convincing: “I would like to feel more emotion. I want to know this was your happiest Christmas!” On another occasion, in response to some initial writing on a peaceful place, I penned “Keep going. I want to experience this with all my senses!” to motivate further description. Another time, satisfied, I communicated to a student who composed a process paragraph about helping others to find peace, “I felt moved by your paragraph! Your hook (opening scenario) stimulated my imagination and clearly set the

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stage for your main point: the need for a sad person to receive empathy. I would have liked to receive that kind of assistance.” Certainly, language can be an issue. Once, a student chose to describe their father, a person around whom they felt comfortable, and did so very positively. However, they alternated second- and third-person pronouns throughout their poem. I announced my positive impression before inquiring about their intended audience, “He sounds truly wonderful! Question: were you intending to write to or about him?” As a final illustration, when prewriting, a student jotted down that they were a cat lover, but then stated, “I am like a cat” in a poem. To alleviate my confusion, I asked a clarifying question, “Do you like cats or are you like a cat?”, to which they responded, “My characteristic is like a cat!! Of course, I love cats too :)”. In these examples, as in my general practice, I strive to demonstrate compassionate feedback, keeping the principles of NVC in mind. I try to connect, conveying feelings I notice in myself while reading their work and note things I appreciate. I’m not perfect, but I attempt to make neutral observations and ask questions to clarify things I do not get or to elicit more details to understand better. Where necessary in my view, I endeavor to suggest alternative strategies or specific improvements but in ways that propose choice or stimulate reflection. These behaviors align with the usual observations, feelings, needs, and requests components of NVC (Rosenberg, 2015). Following ‘THICK’ guidelines When teaching peer- and self-feedback in this course, instead of explaining the NVC model, I present the visual acronym ‘THICK’ based on similar beliefs: Truthful: Quality feedback is based on descriptive observation. Helpful: Quality feedback offers strategies for learner improvement. I-centered: Quality feedback relies on I-language to ground the observer’s feelings and needs.  Clear: Quality feedback is specific and easily understandable. Kind: Quality feedback is also compassionate. I ask students to practice giving this sort of feedback by writing response letters to each other. They then have the opportunity to discuss orally, face-to-face. I encourage them to use ‘THICK’ as a checklist. While giving them feedback on their peer reviews, I also refer to the checklist and offer comments in an effort to celebrate successes and/or highlight areas to work on in the next cycle. They learn by doing this facilitated activity several times, and I improve with them. 52

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While I have presented examples from my EPP writing course here, compassionate feedback can be used in any kind of context. How does THICK feedback sound to you? Could you use it in your classroom? References Rosenberg, M. B. (2005). Being me, loving you: A practical guide to extraordinary relationships. PuddleDancer Press. Rosenberg, M. B. (2015). Nonviolent Communication: A language of life (3rd ed.) PuddleDancer Press. Jocelyn Wright - Mokpo National University, Republic of Korea

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SHARING A HOBBY

I have been teaching for about 40 years. My first positions were teaching EFL/ESL to children in Mexico and then in the United States. After that, I taught French to high school students in the United States and later in Venezuela. I returned to teaching EFL/ESL in Portugal, Japan, Ukraine and for many years in Hawai‘i. There I taught in an academic ESL program for international students and trained teachers. Now I have come full-circle. I am back in my home state, Wisconsin. 

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In each place I lived, I needed to meet new people and build new friendships. For me the best way to do this was by finding groups of people who had hobbies and interests similar to mine. Our students often find themselves in the same situation. They enter a classroom and might not know anyone else. If they have come from another country, they might not know anyone at all in their new location. We can foster relationships and friendships among our students both in and outside of the classroom by providing them opportunities to share their hobbies and interests. This chapter will include stories about how I have tried to do that. My Hobbies I have a number of hobbies, but I credit two of them—international folk dancing and cooking—with not only helping me meet new friends but also providing opportunities to practice authentic language. As a student in France, I joined a Breton dance group. While teaching in Japan I took traditional Japanese dance classes and Japanese cooking classes. All of these activities offered real-world experiences in which I used another language, encountered topical vocabulary and learned more about another culture. Moreover, pursuing and sharing these hobbies brought me joy and led to meeting some lifelong friends. First Days of Class The first day of my classes always involves giving my students a diagnostic test and going over the syllabus. Too often these tasks could fill the entire first class period. I have to remind myself how important it is to start learning about my students and their interests. One way I do that is by giving them a short questionnaire—along with all the other paperwork— to fill out. The questionnaire asks about their interests and hobbies in addition to other questions. After reading my students’ questionnaires, I write back to them commenting on their responses and sometimes asking for more specific information about their hobbies and interests. I then keep these questionnaires and use them for reference. Another way I try to learn more about my students’ hobbies and interests and have them start getting to know one another is by using an icebreaker activity in our next class meeting. Although there are many icebreakers, one of my favorite is done in the following way.  Students stand or sit face-to face in two lines. I give a prompt, and they have two minutes to talk with the person they are facing. One of the first prompts I give is “talk about your hobbies and interests.” Once two minutes have passed the students in one line move down one person and begin talking again with a new partner for two minutes. This activity is fast-paced and gives students the opportunity to interact and learn something about many, if not all, of their classmates. Because the format of the activity is often new to many students and to let students know about my hobbies, I demonstrate the activity by talking with a partner in front of the class about my hobby of international folk dancing.

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Speaking Activities In academic speaking classes, one of the early assignments is often a demonstration presentation. In this type of presentation, the speaker explains how to do something. In order to introduce the assignment, I give an example demonstration presentation of a simple dance, such as the Chicken Dance. This is a silly dance that makes students laugh. Still they are surprised to learn in my introduction that the song was actually composed in Switzerland in the 1950s and that the dance is sometimes done at Octoberfest and weddings in the United States. When the students start thinking about topics for their presentations, I encourage them to demonstrate something they are truly interested in and know quite a bit about, such as one of their hobbies or special interests. These presentations often turn out to be very interesting and informative. For example, one student brought her surfboard to class, told us about how she had developed a love of surfing, and demonstrated the basic techniques of surfing. We even learned terms like “hang five” during her demonstration. Another student explained that he had never lived away from home. He had been looking for and trying some easy recipes, so he wouldn’t have to starve or spend so much money in restaurants! He brought a portable butane gas stove to class and showed us how to make an egg fried in a hole in a slice of bread, sometimes called Egg in the Basket. Everyone was eager to try his recipe. Sometimes I substitute a poster session for a presentation assignment about sharing interests or hobbies. I use poster board for my sample poster presentation although posters could also be digital. My poster presentation on dance, besides providing an example, gives me the opportunity to give some tips on the use of visuals and text on a poster. I also show student-made posters from previous poster sessions as examples. Once students have decided on their topics, they make their own posters. Half the students take up positions around the classroom with their posters. The other half of the class divides up so that at least one visitor is at each poster. They listen to their classmates talk about their topic, ask questions, and then move on to another poster. Once the session is over, students change roles—presenters become visitors and vice versa. I invite colleagues and other students to attend the poster session, and I visit each presenter as well to learn more about their topics. This always turns out to be another lively way to share our hobbies and special interests. Writing Activities For a professional organization I belong to, I interview colleagues abroad and write a profile of the colleague for a newsletter. Two of the questions I ask are, what are your professional interests, and what are your personal interests? In my classes focused on writing, I show students these newsletters, ask them to interview a classmate and include questions about professional and personal interests. They then write a profile of the classmate they interview.

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I always set aside time for the students to read as many profiles as possible and to ask the person profiled questions. Brain Breaks No matter the teaching setting, I have found that once in a while, the entire class seems fatigued or lethargic. One of the best ways to get the adrenaline going is to dance. If students have seen my Chicken Dance demonstration presentation, we might do that. As an alternative, I might show a clip from Best of Favorite Dance Moves , and we try to do the move. Some students volunteer to do their own dance move for us to try. We all end up reenergized! Extracurricular Activities I can tell students about my hobbies and interests and have them share theirs in a number of ways. However, to really engage in those hobbies and meet more people, students need to go outside of the classroom. As the saying goes, “Birds of a feather flock together.” In most institutions where I have taught, there were clubs. In some cases, there was a club day with informational booths. When that happens, I ask my students to browse the booths and talk with the people volunteering at them. Then upon returning to class, the students discuss what they had found out about club offerings and which clubs they might possibly join. If there was no club day, I invited the staff member in charge of student organizations to be a guest speaker. This gave students a good opportunity to take notes, ask questions and to learn that organizations such as Anime Club and Hiking Club among many others were offered. To share my hobby of international folk dancing, another faculty member and I once formed a Dance Club. Several times students wanted to start clubs and asked me to be a faculty advisor. One was a Bowling Club where the students had to teach me about the rules and scoring because bowling wasn’t one of my hobbies. I also check the local newspapers and look for flyers and posters advertising community events. I ask the students to do the same. Each week we take a few minutes to list upcoming events we think might be of interest to class members based on what we knew about their hobbies and interests. Conclusion It is not uncommon for textbooks to include a one-time activity about hobbies. The question though is how often do we share our hobbies with our students and facilitate their finding opportunities to share theirs both in and out of the classroom. Not everyone will be comfortable using dance in teaching, but everyone has hobbies. Sharing these hobbies can potentially lead students to learn and practice language while making friends in authentic ways. 57

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Sally La Luzerne-Oi - Independent Teacher and Teacher Trainer, Wisconsin, U.S.A.

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TEACHER REFLECTIVITY IS TEACHER AUTHENTICITY

Reflection is a conscious process in which I think about the actions I undertake, the reasons for these actions, and their impact on my life and on my students. Through reflection, I become deeply engaged with my day-to-day experiences and the meanings I create to such experiences as I interact with students, fellow teachers, and the larger academic community. I become profoundly aware of how candid and direct is my experience with others in the world in which I exist. I become conscious about the world, and this makes reflection an authentic way of understanding myself as a teacher and the students that I teach.

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Reflection enables me to realise emotions that sit deep within my core, i.e., my passion to teach, to open the minds of my students, to alter their seemingly flawed perceptions about issues that matter, and to help them navigate the world and craft their own future. I realise that my passion to teach has a profound link to humanistic and social constructivist education (Bandura, 1969), that appreciates students’ unique experiences and promotes holistic development. Pinning down this deeper emotion helps me in answering an existential question: What is the essence of teaching? Or what is the meaning of life as a teacher? Ways of Informing Students About Reflection My favourite way of letting students know that I reflect deeply on my actions is through stories. Without doubt, stories appeal to people’s imagination, and I seize every opportunity to share personal narratives with my students to let them know how I Walk My Talk when it comes to reflection. For example, in my lesson on intercultural communication with business students in a university in Singapore in mid-2020, I shared a classroom scenario back in 2010 in Cebu City, Philippines when my seemingly stereotypical questions (perhaps because of carelessness)   about indigenous peoples caused a furore between two students. I asked these questions in my Philippine Literature class: Would the character’s attitude about parenthood change if the speaker was a modern mother speaking in mainstream language? What views does this poem share about mothers who belong to indigenous tribes and those who see themselves as modern mothers? I realised that I had made a mistake: I phrased my questions incorrectly triggering intense emotions. “What difference would it make for a character in a poem to speak in their own dialect? Apart from an inaccessible language, how can we understand the plight of these mothers whose tribe we don’t even know still exists?” one student replied. In response, another student reacted verbally with aggression. I managed to restore order in the classroom by arranging a private conversation with the students concerned. I learned that one of them was abandoned by his mother who belonged to an indigenous tribe displaced by massive urban development and natural disasters, which led him to respond aggressively to his classmate. I showed empathy by listening to him intently, nodding my head to show agreement, and paraphrasing some of his statements. I understood the anger and pain in his voice. I apologized to both of them. I told them that I was careless and insensitive in asking my questions. I should have been circumspect before asking those questions to have avoided those allusions and comparisons that somehow stereotyped those mothers from indigenous tribes. I was lucky that both students forgave me for what I did. “It’s good to know that you admitted your mistake, and that you would be more mindful of your questions in future. I’m sure your students had appreciated you for that,” one student told me as we were wrapping up our lesson on intercultural communication. I agreed with my student. That encounter 60

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made me reflect about using proper tone and appropriate language in communication to build stronger relationships. I learned that being mindful of our actions, words and attitude is always commendable. As experts say, “Words make or break people and society”. In my teaching nowadays in Singapore, I do not hesitate to share that encounter back in the Philippines to let my current students know that, as human beings, we make mistakes, but we can learn from our mistakes and become more empathetic to the human condition. Telling them how that encounter in the Philippines changed me is showing them how reflection can lead to positive change intrapersonally and interpersonally. In my intercultural communication lectures in Singapore, I  keep reminding my students to have courage to tell their personal encounters to others to show that a changed mindset or a better perspective is possible to achieve, and that it allows us to make our lives better. My business students in Singapore express their praise and admiration. They were able to relate to the issue of stereotyping through my personal encounter back in the Philippines. And they appreciated how I embraced my own vulnerability. Another way of informing my students that I am a highly reflective person is sharing with them snippets of my journals. I write journals in two ways: using a hard copy notepad (it is always inside my backpack) and writing notes on my phone or laptop. When the time is right, I show snippets of my journals to my students to remind them that we can capture our thought processes, ideas, or emotional responses to daily events through journals. In writing journal entries, I am guided by the following questions (Schon, 1983): 1.

What did I do?

2.

What was good about what I did?

3.

What went wrong?

4.

What does it mean?

5.

How can I improve?

When I showed images of my writings on an old notepad to my business students in Singapore, they convinced me to become an adviser of the university’s Media Club. In that journal, my former students in Cebu had expressed appreciation to my effort of taking them to a local radio station to understand the everyday life of a radio broadcaster and the impact that such experience made on themselves as students of media communication. If I did not capture this experience in a journal, I could have missed the opportunity to prove to my current students that action leads to reflection and reflection leads to further action. Now, as an adviser of the media club in a university in Singapore, I remind my students to keep a journal as a reflective activity. I would always remind them to have a pen and a notepad or to 61

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be quick to use their notes on their smartphones wherever they are so that they can write down their observations of people and events, their reactions to articles they are reading, their daily conversations, and their reflections in relation to those things they have observed and experienced, and their interactions with people. In one of our regular meetings in the media club, I implored the student writers: “When you reflect on these things in your daily life, you become mindful of the world in which you live, and you can write about them as your way of sharing your voice. If an idea enters your head whether you are on a plane or simply lazing in a park, capture them with your pen”. My message was clear: go write a journal entry wherever you are, because, as writers, we cannot afford to forget ideas that matter. Giving Students a Space to Reflect When we share our reflective selves to our students, we invite them to ask questions, deepen the conversation, and reflect, i.e., to Walk Together with us. One simple way for me to involve students in reflection is to ask open-ended questions and give them at least 5 minutes to reflect on the question and 3-5 minutes to share their ideas voluntarily to the rest of the class through a group representative. I tell them that consciously or not, we constantly reflect on our actions and experiences, either in silence or with others around us. I tell them that I do this with my colleagues during meetings. We ask ourselves questions, we take time to think, or we share our ideas freely because those ideas matter to teaching and learning especially to student growth. One day, in my lecture on organisational communication, I asked my students to reflect about our lesson on organisational leadership. One student from India responded, “Real leadership is having integrity, humility, and courage. Real leadership is going out of your comfort zone, reaching out to your people, asking them how they feel about their work, and understanding what makes them love their job. Real leaders inspire their constituents. They do not rest on their laurels. They do something to make people’s lives better.” The rest of the class agreed in silence. Reflection enabled the student to think deeply about leadership. Another practice I undertake that offers students a space to reflect is to ask them to respond to a couple of questions after my lectures. In 2021, when I was teaching a business communication in a university in Singapore, I encouraged my students to respond to a couple of questions after every lecture, namely: 1. What did you find useful in this week’s lecture? 2. Why is this week’s lesson relevant to your life? It was voluntary and I explained to them that they can be subjective in their responses, and that they will not be marked. I told them it was my way of knowing them more as individuals. Engagement was high because of the feedback I gave to each of their responses. They

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appreciated this activity perhaps because I just didn’t tell them that I’m a highly reflective person, I practised what I preach by engaging them in reflection and reacting to their reflection online. To my feedback about cognitive dissonance theory, one student replied, “I can now appreciate the value of conflict negotiation by focusing on the problem yet remain empathetic to the other person at the negotiation table. I learned this simple idea from the discussion on cognitive dissonance theory and its role in negotiation. I feel guilty at times when I am already hurting other people’s emotions from the way I express my ideas. Sometimes, I forget that I am talking to human beings. This is an important realisation for me.”

Conclusion Reflection enables me to appreciate the profundity, uniqueness, meaning, and power of human experience. I develop faith in my abilities and value those things that symbolise my passion as a teacher through reflection. I just don’t explain concepts and theories in class; I listen to my students’ stories of success and struggles to understand them better. I do these because I have an important role in their lives - to bring them from point 1 to a higher level of learning and to encourage them to believe in their inner potential. I am always satisfied when I see them reflect on their actions and share their reflective insights with others. Its ripple effect, implicitly or explicitly, can certainly improve lives. References Bandura, A. (1969). Social learning theory of identificatory processes. In D. A. Goslin (Ed.), Handbook of socialization theory and research (pp. 213-262). Rand McNally & Company. Schon, D. A. (1983). Educating the reflective practitioner: Toward a new design for teaching and learning in the professions. Jossey-Bass. Nimrod L. Delante - James Cook University Singapore [email protected]

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FINDING OUR PASSIONS

All my EFL students here at an Indonesian university have been reading Indonesian and later English in school since they were seven years old or even younger. Unfortunately, rather than loving reading more and more as I do, many of my students consider reading as something to be avoided. They see reading as painful because of the books they are asked to read and the activities they are asked to do to accompany their reading. These activities are of the type you can call “read the text and answer the given comprehension questions” activities. 

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On several occasions, I have asked students to describe reading in one word. The results were somewhat expected, yet still made me sad. They chose such words as boring, annoying, tiring, and stressful. Fortunately, a small number described reading as fun and meaningful. This small group enjoyed being able to use their imaginations to visualize the events, people, and places in stories without being constrained by images that were shown in videos and tv. While listening to my students’ thoughts and opinions towards reading, I remembered a quote by James Patterson, a well-known author: “There’s no such thing as a kid who hates reading. There are kids who love reading, and there are kids who read the wrong books.” I was one of the minority of kids who loved and still loves reading. How could I get the majority at my university to join the fun bunch who were passionate readers? Sharing My Passion for Reading The first step was to share my passion for reading – both fiction and non-fiction, both hard copy and online - with my students. I did this in three ways. One, I shared with them a kind of reading autobiography of myself, telling them about my reading as a child, as a university student, and now as a teacher. I highlighted books and other materials in whatever language that had ignited my passion for reading. Two, I Walked My Talk – I let students see me reading different media, including reading on my phone, and I told them about what I was reading, even it was an online newspaper or a webpage in Indonesian by our university about how to avoid being hacked. What some teachers do is to put up a sign in their classroom announcing what they are currently reading, such as “Mr Sudirman is currently reading Sapiens, a non-fiction book about the history of humans.” Three, some of my reading consisted of books that I thought would appeal to at least some of my students. Fortunately, with so much online available to read, it has become easier to share reading suggestions with students and for students to share their reading suggestions with their peers and me. The Extensive Reading Foundation’s website is a wonderful and growing resource for such materials, including these two webpages: https://erfoundation.org/wordpress/useful-resources/useful-sites-2 and https://erfoundation.org/wordpress/free-reading-material. X-Reading is also definitely worth a visit: https://xreading.com. Walking Together I invited my students to walk together with me on my reading journey. I asked them to choose among these three options: a) they choose their own books, b) they have me choose books for them, or c) either one (choice a or choice b) is acceptable. Ninety percent chose the 65

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second option, while 10% chose the third option, and none chose the first one. It was peculiar that none of them chose the first option. Apparently, they felt that they wanted to read something new but couldn’t find anything that could make them passionate about reading. I decided to take students’ reluctance to choose as their way of seeking a little bit of help and as students opening a door for me to introduce them to new books. So, I chose a picture book entitled “Egghead” by Michael-Lacey Freeman. This award-winning picture book (Language Learner Literature Award) is a based on a true story experienced by the author himself. This book talks about the emotional turmoil and the struggles of being bullied at school. My initial purpose in choosing this book was the idea that my students would easily relate to the topic since bullying exists here in Indonesia, too. Yes, bullying can be a sensitive topic, but my students are already young adults. Also, reading the book together would be a great opportunity for me to build emotional connections with my students and initiate them to the joy of reading. Fortunately, the book is free online at: https://issuu.com/elipublishing/docs/egghead_web/6. Another book available online that I strongly recommend is “Charlotte’s Web,” https://cleveracademy.vn/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Charlotte_s_Web_.pdf, but please note that urls for online books can change. Normally, extensive reading is done with each student reading their own book or other form of reading material. However, sometimes the entire class reading the same book can help students develop the motivation and skill to do their individual reading. For example, reading is more enjoyable when we connect what is in the book to our own past, present, or future. I modelled that as the class was reading Egghead. Conclusion      As my class and I read “Egghead” together, I could see the wisdom of Patterson’s words. With this book, the students became people who love reading. Of course, I needed to continue to talk about the virtues of reading and to walk my talk so that students could walk together with me along the reading path. Part of this walking together meant helping students find and develop their passions in life, whether their passions were for taking photos/making videos, helping people with special needs, cooking, playing gamelan, reading book series, etc. Reading and learning generally serves all and any passions. The hope is that with these passions, students will become role models for each other and for me, too, so we can all walk along the reading path together. We just need to be careful so that we don’t get hit by a bus while walking together reading on our phone.

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Christina Lhaksmita Anandari - Sanata Dharma University, Indonesia [email protected]

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IT'S OKAY NOT TO BE OKAY

“Rahul, you just bit by hand. Do you know it hurts? " "But I don't like you stopping me from running fast." "I understand Rahul that you don't like me doing that, but do you know that if you run so fast in the classroom, you might hurt yourself and your friends. Let's have walking feet in the classroom, not running feet. It's okay to be upset, but it's not okay to bite anyone. Would you like it if anyone bites you?" "No, I wouldn’t." "So, next time when you're upset, you can go to a corner and be quiet for some time. We can always talk about it, but it's never okay to hurt anyone else just like you don't like anyone hurting you." "Okay Miss Anu."

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This was an incident with the four-year-old Rahul during a regular class at the preschool where I teach in Singapore. Children have emotions. We should encourage them to feel their feelings and also to take charge of them. We should encourage children to express happiness, sadness, and other emotions at the same level. But I didn't grow up in a society which encouraged me to be Just Me, to express my emotions. I was always told to do the right thing, to control my emotions unless they were positive emotions, such as happiness. As a result, as an adult, I found difficulty in expressing any emotions other than being happy and excited. After many years, I realized that it's okay to be sad, it's okay to be jealous, it's okay to be irritated, it's okay to be angry, it's okay to feel disgusted; and it’s okay to share those feeling just like it's okay to share feelings of happiness and excitement. Understanding and managing emotions is important for the development and well-being of people of all ages. In the Talk phase of the Talk, Walk My Talk, and Walk Together with Students model, I begin by talking to my students about feelings. I explain that the first step is to feel feelings and acknowledge them. Next, we have to take charge of feelings by expressing them in a way that is harmful for none. If, in contrast, we keep feelings inside, this can cause trouble for ourselves and others. I also Walk My Talk. For example, if I feel sad, I tell my preschool students how I feel, and I explain to them in an age-appropriate way why I feel sad, and they see and hear what I do to express my feeling in a way that does not hurt others, in a way that can make me feel better. For example, one time, I told the class, "Yesterday, I was sad because I saw an injured bird after school.” I also told them that to act on my feelings, I had called an animal rescue organization, and they had come to help the bird. Then, I felt grateful to the kind rescuers. The children asked me many questions, and I patiently answered them. I asked them about what they have seen other people do when they feel sad and also what the children themselves do when feeling sad. I emphasized that feeling sad is part of life. Sometimes, my emotions involve what the students do. An example was when I expressed to the class that I felt upset because a few children were not following the rules of keeping the classroom organized and tidy. Then, the students observed me sitting down and waiting till all the materials were back in their place and everyone was ready for the story time. Also, I wear my “teacher hat” by using the expression of emotions as an opportunity to build language skills. In this way, the children and I Walked Together. For instance, we have Circle Time. During Circle Time, we often begin with the question, "How are you feeling today?" Around the classroom, on cups, pins, etc., we have drawings expressing different emotions, 69

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and the children draw faces to represent an emotion they are feeling or felt recently. Then, they explain the situation to a partner and/or to the entire class, including how they manage that emotion. We also include flashcard games where children take turns to guess the emotion depicted and mimic it. In the beginning, students only shared about feeling happy or sad, but after a while, children started talking about other emotions such as irritated, excited, shocked, and tired. Some children need more time to express their emotions. I do not worry. Instead, I remember that these students are soaking in what they see and hear around them. While encouraging children to share emotions, I have continued to express my own emotions. For example, the other day I could not locate a book I wanted to read with the class. I made an extra effort to look worried, and then, when I sat down I told them, "I'm very worried; it looks like I have misplaced the library book I planned to read with you. But it's okay. I'll try to find that book another time, and for now, we’ll read another interesting story. I must learn to be more responsible.” By me modeling appropriate ways to express feelings, the children get into the habit of labeling feelings and controlling them. Additionally, many great story books help students talk about how the characters in the story are feeling. This builds empathy, a very important life skill which will help children to maintain positive relationships with other people while respecting their own feelings. I have seen immense improvement in how the children have been expressing not just happy feelings but their anger and irritability. They have been able to take charge of the emotions. Once students can identify and manage feelings, they likely experience fewer meltdowns and temper tantrums. It becomes easier for them to make friends and get along with others, such as working in teams. In addition to sharing and managing their own emotions, students also need to respect the emotions of others. Here again, we can use the Talk, Walk My Talk, and Walk Together with Students model. When teachers demonstrate respecting the emotions of others, we are actually helping students understand life better and showing them that displaying our emotions and respecting others’ emotions doesn't make us weak, because in our classrooms (and elsewhere in life), it's okay not to be okay. Anupriya Iyer [email protected]

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LISTENING TO STUDENTS

"You know, it is one of the most marvellous things in life to discover something unexpectedly, spontaneously, to come upon something without premeditation, and instantly to see the beauty, the sacredness, the reality of it."  During the years I undertook my doctoral degree in ELT, the research methodology seminar had yet to perceive a pair of brooms, a dustpan, and a dustbin as essential tools, tools that became essential in understanding how my students eventually created a flipped classroom for me. 

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Before I go into detail on how these ordinary, everyday household items became tools of transformation, I will need to go back a little in time.  I live in Bangalore, India. I grew up at a time when the general educational ethos was that a convent schools provided a holistic education. There were several reasons for this perspective. One distinct aspect of that education was cleaning time. Irrespective of where one was on the socio-economic ladder, it was your responsibility to keep the learning environments spick and span! Of course, none of us wanted to sweep or swab, and I did not anticipate that this simple practice would come back full circle when I was a teacher.  And here's where the story actually begins. I provided after-school support for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. The program began in 2019 with two students, but soon, through word of mouth, we grew to a small group of twenty. If you live outside of India, perhaps you are unfamiliar with the fact that India's primary and secondary school systems are fraught with problems. Access to education is still beyond reach for many in the country, where several generations of children remain uneducated. The few among these students who eventually succeed do so because they are determined to beat the cycle of poverty and find people and resources who can support them.  How I met this group of twenty was nothing but serendipity.  These students came from a very mixed bag. They had various religious affiliations, and their parents held different jobs. In the group of twenty, most went to a nearby government school, and some never went. All students spoke Kannada and Hindi; some spoke more than three Indian languages, but none knew English well. All of them came from distant villages in the countryside; so, the city was a new space, and playing by its rules was new to them. I'd visit their homes regularly to ensure they did not drop out. I'd chat with the parents. While I was busy doing that, I noticed one fascinating thing across all families. Their living spaces were shanties, but they were immaculately clean. The young children swept the immediate surroundings and sprinkled water every morning and evening to keep the dust down. I didn't give this much thought except to praise their efforts in wanting to keep a clean surrounding. So, with great enthusiasm and no experience teaching multilingual learners from disadvantaged backgrounds, I set out to teach these eager beavers. I assumed I could now put into practice all the theories I had learnt in my Second Language Acquisition classes. I took it that Krashen, Corder, Selinker, and the hundred other educational theorists I had pored over during my coursework would miraculously aid my teaching. After all, I had taught college students for years, and all I had to do was adapt the learning strategies and materials to younger learners. 72

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Oh! How wrong I was.  I had students between five and thirteen years of age; so, I assumed learning would be optimal if I divided them into small groups based on their age. I created different corners in the room and assigned spaces to each group. I would then go around the classroom, spending time with each group and teaching them different things I thought would help them learn. Five months in, and all I ever left the school day with was a feeling of failure. My classroom was noisy, and my students were deficient in class discipline as they ran amok, creating chaos. Students who wanted to focus and learn found it impossible to do so because of the noise. My classroom began to look like a poorly managed daycare centre. A centre where students spent six hours a week doing nothing but running in and out of the classroom while I ran in and out to ensure their safety. The only time students were well-behaved was at the session's close when they were offered a snack. Again, once the snack time was over, they would grab their bags and run out of the door, leaving me mentally and physically drained.  After five months of this chaos, when I was contemplating quitting, a few fifth and sixth graders decided to talk to me. Like teacher trainers observing their trainee teachers, these students had watched me as I performed in class. They made mental notes about every moment of interaction. Now, they were ready to report their observations and explain to me why things were not working.  They said in their mother tongue: "You don't have a structure to hold us down. You are using a very Western approach, and we need something else. What will work for us is to feel involved in making this space our own.” They went on to tell me what would work for them. They said, “Here's how you can make this classroom our own space: 1. Get us to wash our feet before we enter what is a sacred space – the classroom is a sacred space for us. In washing our feet, we feel compelled to enter this sacred space with reverence, which means we will maintain silence when appropriate. 2. Let us move freely between groups and help each other. The younger ones feel safe when they see the older students to whom they can relate. So, remove boundaries. 3. Before we finish class, help us by creating a space where we can share our lives with you, because, although you have shown interest by visiting us, you still don't know our lived experiences well. 73

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4.Make it mandatory to clean the classroom before we begin and when we wind up. We are asked to sweep our spaces at home; so, why should we treat this classroom space differently? Hold us responsible for ensuring we leave our sacred spaces clean.” The last point above took me back to when I was a school student and, with my fellow students, did the sweeping and swabbing. So many years later, I finally realised how much this act instilled in me a sense of ownership for the spaces I lived in and used, and for what took place in those spaces.  I thought through their recommendations and implemented them over the next four weeks. I never believed I would find success, but success I did find!  How I did not walk my talk: Before the conversation with my students, I held the sceptre of learning and, in some sense, all the power. An evolved teacher never operates that way. A true teacher understands surrender.  Thus, while most of the chapters in this book describe how teachers Talked to students and then teachers Walked Their Talk before inviting students to Walk Together with teachers, in my case, it was the students who Talked, Walked Their Talk, and invited me to Walk Together with them. When we began, I didn't give any thought to the fact that my students always removed their footwear before entering the classroom. I, on the other hand, walked in with my footwear. They came from a practice of removing their footwear at home, at their schools, and in class with me. Their caretakers and teachers elsewhere did the same. Sometimes, my shoes were caked with mud, but I still walked in with my shoes on. In some sense, I created a certain kind of dissonance for them.  They washed their feet before they entered everywhere else they went, but they did not do so here. Most students couldn’t afford shoes; so, they would walk barefoot to their schools. The schools, anticipating their dirty feet, provided a water tap where they could wash their feet before entering their respective classrooms. At home, too, they had a similar provision. However, I had removed a certain kind of access that they always had–I did not provide a place where they could wash their feet.  They were used to moving around freely between groups when they found learning difficult. They were not restricted by age, only by how much others could help. When they found a younger or older student, they either stepped down or stepped up to learn and to teach. The students opened my eyes to the fact that I had curtailed that freedom.

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Story circles were vital to them. The villages they came from had dedicated time for the young and the old to share their lived experiences. I had provided no space for sharing. In many ways, my classes were one-sided. They lacked the richness of multiple voices.  In not asking them to clean up after themselves, I had also removed what they were raised on - a sense of responsibility towards the spaces they use. They were expected to sweep their homes and keep them clean, but I had yet to set that expectation in my classroom. This led to a complete disconnect from an integral space in their lives – why care for something that is not mine?  After I had learned from my students Talk and their Walking Their Talk, this is how I Walked Together with them. I removed my shoes before entering the room.  I washed my feet too. I swept the classroom with them each time they did. I did not speak until we all had a moment to settle in.  Once a week, when they shared their lived experiences, I'd also made time to share mine.  When I dropped my exalted position as a teacher, I realised I had also let go of my ego. If it weren't for the wisdom of these young children, I would have given up five months in. In learning from them, I was more the disciple, and they were my teachers. It felt like a Bodhi moment*. Note: Bodhi in sanskrit means awakening. Sharoon Sunny is a language researcher. As a creativity researcher and teacher of writing, she tries to find the thin line that brings together creativity, elegance and simplicity. She is a member of Azim Premji Foundation and can be reached at [email protected].

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THE POWER OF QUESTIONANSWER INTERACTIONS: A WAY TO NURTURE CONFIDENCE

Foreign language was the most difficult and least enjoyable subject for me. Growing up in the U.S., I studied Spanish and Italian. Only one teacher and one activity made me feel better about foreign language learning. That occurred for my final exam in a university Italian class. The exam was conducted outdoors and consisted of the teacher having a short talk with each student individually. When it was my turn, he asked me where I grew up and what I liked to do. Thus, our interaction came to life with a meaningful and authentic purpose for using the language; it was not an artificial test of grammar or vocabulary. The memory of this real-life conversation has guided me to try to re-create such an atmosphere for my students, not just on tests, but in classrooms too.

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Personal History To give you a little more background information, I am a fourth generation Japanese-American who grew up in California. I never spoke Japanese. So, when I went to Japan to teach English, I had almost no Japanese ability and had to depend on other teachers for help. Over the years, my Japanese level has grown gradually, but still, I only use English in class. Authentic efforts to communicate between teacher and students occur as we need English as our shared language to get things done. Talking the Talk: Teacher explains to students the rationale for the activities As an orientation to the classroom activities that we do, I constantly remind students of their past English education and the transition to university education. In secondary school, the focus was, unfortunately, on rote learning of grammar and vocabulary in order to pass entrance exams. In university, the focus, fortunately, has changed. Now is students’ time to learn through using the language for practical purposes, for real communication. In university, what I emphasize prepares students for their future. In class, we will connect what we do naturally outside of class (talk to each other) with what we do in the class through questions and answers. Students often claim to be too shy or to lack confidence to speak English in the classroom, but once outside, they come to life speaking in Japanese. I urge them to channel this energy and engagement from the outside to inside the classroom. I will describe what one of my university classes looks like. The number of students is usually 32 (though some classes are 12-30). Student proficiency level as measured by TOEIC is intermediate. I maintain the same organization regardless of class size and proficiency with ongoing adjustments. I have been teaching online in recent years; so, what I will explain comes from an online class though I taught basically the same way face-to-face pre-pandemic. Walking the Talk: Teacher asks and students answer Early in the term, I facilitate each stage of the Zoom discussion and the accompanying weekly written assignment accessible on the university’s Learning Management System through the basic conversational concept of the power of a question to elicit a response. Students are asked to prepare their answers in advance, in order to promote confidence and more fluent answers. After class is over, students submit their written assignments, and I give weekly individual feedback. I always begin the weekly class by showing interest in students. I ask students, “How are you today?” I invite them to share something different every week. Some students even become more active during the week so they have something new to report. We start with volunteers, 77

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and then I call on students who haven’t had a chance yet. This teacher-student interaction models what I have been saying about the power of asking questions and responding (without a long pause) to keep a conversation going. This initial exchange may expand into elaboration with follow-up questions. While I am talking to students individually, other students are a third party overhearing and watching the conversations. Students can observe and then participate. Walking Together 1: Students ask each other questions and discuss the focus topic in Break Out Rooms (BORs) with group leaders Students are randomly assigned to groups by Zoom. Based on my two and a half years of using Zoom BORs, I have found organizing students into four groups works the best for students and me. For students, eight team members seems to be a comfortable number to work together. If there are too few students in a group, they become uncomfortable as extra attention is drawn to them especially when they turn on their cameras. When there are more groups, I don’t feel I give enough individual attention to each group. Before students move to their teams, I remind them to decide among themselves today’s discussion leader and reporter. The leader speaks first and then makes sure every member has a chance to say something. The reporter will summarize their main ideas when we come back together as a class. I encourage students to work together on their own as much as possible. Since elementary school, students in Japan have much experience doing cooperative groupwork in various aspects of school life. (See Elly S. Rachman’s chapter in this same collection for an example). This division of tasks is further reinforced in university clubs and circles, where senior and junior members are assigned different responsibilities. Furthermore, these students are already able to carry on basic conversations in English. In other classes, they have learned textbook dialogues and set phrases, practiced set phrases and vocabulary with Assistant Language Teachers (ALTs), who are native or near-native speakers of English, taken other English classes in university, and have taken English proficiency tests which sometimes include oral interviews. Thus, I don’t explicitly teach set phrases to use in groupwork. I start with what they can already do. If I see the need, I will give language support at that time. When I join each group, I begin by listening to what they are saying (everyone is expected to give an answer). Then, I ask them who are today’s leader and reporter. Besides providing answers, other students have the responsibility to ask questions to the group if they don’t understand something. Focus topics and discussions center on interests and issues that are relevant to university students such as Ken Robinson’s (2006) lecture on “Do Schools Kill Creativity?” 78

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Sometimes, I have observed the leader mimicking my style of eliciting responses by nominating the next speaker or asking questions as prompts. In the future, I hope leaders will try use a mixture of yes/no questions and wh-questions (what, where, when, who, and how). The power of questions to elicit responses is seen in action in student-student exchanges. Students are Walking Together with me, although often somewhat in their own style. Student-student talk in a cooperative manner in the BORs (with the cameras on) provides them with opportunities to exchange information, build skills (along with confidence), and raise awareness of the importance of turn taking and nominating the next speaker. When students talk to each other, an important transition is made from listening to speaking. Japanese students speaking to each other in English is a very useful activity, but it is not the final learning goal from a life-long skill perspective. Being able to use English with people who cannot speak Japanese is the dream of many students. Whether it is realized is another question. I want to help. Walking Together 2: Student reporters from the BORs summarize and share their BOR’s main ideas with the whole class When the BORs are closed and all students have come back to the whole class, the team reporters (with cameras on) summarize the ideas that they talked about. I might ask follow-up questions to encourage greater clarity by the reporters. Walking Together 3: Students ask and teacher answers Before closing the class, we have question-answer time. I start with volunteers and then call on a few students to ask me questions about the focus topics they have chosen. They say what’s on their mind, I listen, and then try to answer what they have asked. My challenge in teacher authenticity is to provide answers that address their needs and interests. The power of a question ideally is matched with an equally sincere response. Acknowledgment Thanks to George Jacobs for insightful comments on earlier drafts. References Rachman, E. S. (2023). Cleaning Our Classroom. Stories of Teacher Authenticity. Robinson, K. (2006). Do Schools Kill Creativity? TED Talk. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY Ian Nakamura - Okayama University, Japan

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TAKING RESPONSIBILITY

I remember my teachers in primary school, my teachers in secondary school, and my teachers in university. I’m even still in contact with some of my undergraduate professors. To me, this shows the power of a teacher to have an influence on their students’ lives. While sometimes, we might consider university lecturers or professors to have a lesser influence, given that we come to them when we are already more mature, and spend comparatively less time with them, I don’t think that this is the case. We meet our teachers at university when we are often at a time of becoming fully independent adults, when we can truly start to appreciate what it means to be a contributory member of our society. Therefore, university lecturers and professors have a role to play in modelling what upstanding members of society should be.

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One of my areas of interest in research is academic integrity in higher education. This means committing to the values of trust, responsibility, honesty, courage, and fairness. If I do things like cheat on an exam or submit work that isn’t my own, I don’t demonstrate these values, and it makes the process unfair for other students who do commit to these values. I have spent a lot of time thinking about this subject and trying to find ways to demonstrate what it means to uphold such values in the classroom. I believe in these different values relating to academic integrity, and integrity more generally, and responsibility is one value that I try to embody in my teaching practice.  Taking responsibility for everything I do, including my academic work, is an essential skill for life. Thousands of years ago, the Stoic philosophers in Greece knew this and emphasized that there is only one thing that we can control in our existence: ourselves. We can’t control the weather or the circumstances we find ourselves in. We can’t control a delayed train, a traffic jam, or a stroke of bad luck. We can control what we do, what we say, and how we act. This is what it means to fully understand responsibility.  In the role of a teacher, Walking My Talk for this value of responsibility means stating clearly what I will be accountable for, and then living up to that standard. It doesn’t necessarily mean getting everything right all the time – mistakes happen, and that’s to be expected from time to time. It does mean holding my hand up and explaining how I might have contributed to things going wrong and transparently reflecting and learning from what happened. Again – it doesn’t mean I have to be perfect, but it means setting myself reasonable tasks, committing to them, and being honest with myself if things go wrong.  One way that I try to let students see and hear me Walking My Talk and then encouraging students to Walk Together with me is to demonstrate and encourage responsibility through contracts. Student contracts have long been used to encourage motivation and learner autonomy, and research has validated their efficacy. Contracts should, however, be a two-way street. They need to refer not just to the roles and responsibilities of students, but to teachers’ roles and responsibilities too. I incorporate these two-way elements into my classes. Most importantly, however, such contracts shouldn’t be a standardized template, and they shouldn’t be given to students without their input. It’s not a “Do as I say” situation. What I do is have open dialogues to contextualize the teaching and learning process, in order to explain what we as teachers would like to ask from our students, and what they would in return like to ask from us. Once this has been clarified, I can draft a contract with them. Note that these contracts don’t have to be written, and they don’t have to be “Sign on the dotted line” types of contracts. Verbal contracts can be equally powerful and create just as strong a commitment.  

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One time I was negotiating a contract with my students, and they asked me why I was making life harder for myself by committing to all these things. I replied that, actually, I was making it easier for myself. If I knew what I was responsible for, I didn’t need to worry about anything else. They then suggested that we leave some areas open to interpretation. For example, Good Attendance didn’t need a percentage number (90%, for example). I said to them, okay, then how would you feel if I just do a “good” job in marking your work? Rather than commit to give written feedback or verbal feedback, I could just give “good” feedback. They saw my point. I’m not advocating for quantifying everything, but sometimes this dialogic approach and give-and-take in the classroom can help us to view the world through each other’s eyes and gain a better mutual understanding. So, taking this approach not only reduces my anxiety about what do I have to do to manage this course, and models responsibility as a value, but also can help to provide clarity for students and lessen cases of learner anxiety. If I say to students, I will be able to reply to all emails within three days, then I have set up a good expectation for the remainder of the course, and they won’t be confused or frustrated if they go two days without a response. One other example I can think of where I could have shirked my responsibility and not Walked My Talk comes to mind. I was teaching a group of engineers in a portacabin on a building site in Vietnam, where they were responsible for the development of a new mixed-use development containing a cinema, apartments, and a shopping mall. The class would start straight after they finished work, and predictably, it wasn’t an easy environment in which to teach. Firstly, the class was at their workplace, in the middle of a construction site. Secondly, they were still all involved in work conversations, or exhausted from their day. But they all wanted to learn. Honestly, I was often tired too. These were evening classes and, while I enjoyed them, I had already taught more than a few hours on those days. I could have let them talk, rest, and relax. In some ways, this would have been the kinder option, and they might have appreciated it more. For this class, in particular, there were no assessments, no benchmarks, no final exam. In other words, the only accountability we had was what we created ourselves. I was only there because they wanted to learn to help them in their careers. I could have rested and relaxed myself, let them talk in Vietnamese about the project for two hours (or the first hour, at least) and still collected a paycheck. But I didn’t. I had to find a way to combat the mental fatigue we all had and work out a way forward. This was the only time I could teach them, and it was the only time they could study. I decided to negotiate a contract. I spoke to the class, and we all agreed that when we started we were tired, distracted, and unfocused. Not in the right mood for learning.

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We agreed on a strategy going forward. We would finish the class fifteen minutes later. The first fifteen minutes were to settle in and destress. We would talk only about the project, only about our day, or if we had nothing to say, just rest and relax. But after those fifteen minutes were up, we had to switch to English, and no one could mention the project! I made sure that those fifteen minutes had nothing to do with learning English. I didn’t ask them to explain anything new, I didn’t try to teach, and I definitely didn’t say anything about them using their phones. Eventually, I found that the class developed a culture of autonomy. After fifteen minutes, I knew it was time to refocus and so did they. We ended up feeling more energetic, less distracted, and the learners would have a healthy, distraction-reduced class environment. Once I made myself accountable with the 15-minute contract, I believe the engineers bought in too. In all, accountability, integrity, and responsibility are values I prize in my teaching. They are not easy to live by, but teachers and students can aim towards them in our classroom practice and in our lives generally. Plus, when teachers and students Walk Together, we support each other in the reasonable attainment of these values.   Jasper Roe - James Cook University Singapore

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EVERY ANSWER CAN BE A REFERENCE ANSWER

Since the end of the 1970s, the Nationwide Unified Examination for Admissions to General Universities and Colleges, i.e., Gao Kao, has been one of China’s most critical national examinations. Every year, students strive mightily to obtain high scores on Gao Kao. When I was in secondary school, I was one of those students.

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The story I would like to share in this chapter begins with a belief I obtained in the several years I was preparing for Gao Kao. That is, I gradually adopted the view that each question should have a standard answer. My task was to make my answer as close as possible to that standard. An answer close to the standard could be considered a “good” answer, an answer that would result in a higher score, while an answer far from that norm was a “bad” answer which would result in a lower score. This belief was so strong that I was still consciously or unconsciously practising it long after Gao Kao. I held it until I became a teacher. I continued to hold that one-good-answer view when in 2019, I became a literature teacher at a college in China, teaching a course named Foreign Literature. At the end of my first semester, I was asked to take charge of grading students’ final examination papers. As part of the typical and probably “efficient” practice in the college, another teacher developed “reference answers” for me to use when grading. I still remember that one question asked whether Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables belongs to Romantic or to Realistic literature. The standard answer, the one told to students during lectures, the answer students were expected to provide on the exam, was that “Les Misérables is the most classic novel of European Romantic literature.” Thus, in my grading, if students answered that Les Misérables belongs to Realistic literature, I marked their answers as wrong, even though I could see that this answer was also reasonable. The story later took a dramatic turn. A few weeks after marking the exams, I was invited to join an informal Reading & Sharing session organized by some students. During that event, several students shared their understanding of Les Misérables from a Realist perspective. Many of the other students there recognized the validity of this point of view. I did, too. I was delighted to hear these diverse, well-reasoned thoughts from students. Yet, my delight was spoiled by the regret I felt because the “efficient” grading of the exam question mentioned earlier had discouraged students from expressing their complex, nuanced thoughts on assessment instruments. One may consider such a case as a minor issue. After all, I could always comfort myself that some sacrifices are inevitable in pursuing “efficiency.” However, I noticed that similar issues arose repeatedly in my class. For example, I often gave my students assignments at the end of each lesson. The grade for these assignments would be calculated as part of the final grade for the course. This was a very traditional method. Over that semester, not unexpectedly, I found that my students’ assignments were becoming increasingly similar: most echoed the content in the textbook and, thus, were similar to each other. I discussed this issue with several students. Surprisingly or not surprisingly, they told me that they knew that while they were encouraged to think creatively and critically, in an

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examination or graded assignment, the “safe, smart” choice was to give the “standard” response. I suddenly realized that I had to act to “save” my classroom. At the beginning of a new semester, I Talked to my students, telling them that in this course, they were encouraged to share their true thoughts on each literary work with each other and with me. There were no standard answers, but the answers from anyone could be the “reference answers.” Their thoughts could draw from their own experiences, textbooks, the internet, or discussions with classmates and others, but most importantly, the responses needed to be supported with convincing reasons. To Walk My Talk, I made some adjustments to my assessment techniques. First, when grading my students’ assignments, my grading criteria were no longer limited to standard answers. Instead, I paid more attention to how their arguments were supported. Were their arguments backed up by appropriate reasons? For instance, an answer could be that Les Misérables was neither a Romantic or Realistic novel, and this answer might get a high score, as long as it included sufficiently convincing reasons. I also encouraged my students to share their thoughts in class. Specifically, at the beginning of that semester, I listed the must-read works of literature for the semester. As the course progressed to analyzing each literary work, I invited my students to share their ideas on the topics we were discussing. The sharing session was based on the Group Investigation technique of Sharan and Sharan. Specifically, I divided my students into groups (4~5 people per group). Each group selected one of the topics I had prepared, or they could develop their own topic for that literary work. Once each group had chosen their topic, they were encouraged to brainstorm and do research. Then, after discussing ideas within their group, members reported to the entire class or sometimes groups presented to other groups. After each presentation, I would share my comments with my students. Soon, the first presentation began, and overall, it went pretty well. However, I did notice one interesting phenomenon: most groups chose to make only one member to be the presenter, and the thoughts shared by that member were all unanimously agreed upon by their group members. During the communication session after the students’ presentations, I asked them why they chose to collaborate in this way. Many said that although they were encouraged to share their ideas, they still worried that some of their ideas were not “deep” enough to be shared with others. Therefore, I adjusted my techniques again. This time, I encouraged students when reporting to the class or to another group to include those thoughts that were generated both individually and collectively. And everyone in their group would have a speaking part in the presentation.

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Importantly, I also decided to expand my role from that of a listener and reviewer to also being that of a participant, Walking My Talk and Walking Together with my students. I asked myself if I had new thoughts on each topic and, if I did, I volunteered to participate in the presentations as a separate “group.” After each presentation, everyone in the classroom could pose questions politely to the group that had presented, including the group of me. All the members in that group could answer the questions. This time, everyone in the classroom, including me as a teacher, exchanged our ideas equitably. As to the final examination, due to the faculty requirements, I still had to construct a paper test for students. However, I strictly distinguished between objective and subjective questions and increased the proportion of subjective and open-ended questions. Inevitably, it increased the cost of my time in grading. However, I was thrilled to receive a greater diversity of answers from my students this time. Perhaps more importantly, they were expressing their ideas and attempting to make good arguments for their thoughts with excellent logical flows. This was just what they did in their presentations in classrooms. There were no standard answers for me, and my students’ answers became my “reference answers.” Chenghao Zhu - Universiti Malaya, Malaysia [email protected]

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PROMOTING SUSTAINABILITY WITH YOUNG LEARNERS IN WESTERN JAPAN

How can I help students to live more sustainable lifestyles? The short answer is by demonstrating to them that I do so myself. How do I perform such demonstrations? Well, that may take a minute to explain. First, a little about myself and my students: I teach ESL in Western Japan at an elementary school. The students are bubbly little people that light up my professional life with joy and wonder.

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First, I talk about sustainability-related goals (i.e., planet-friendliness) and insert Earth-positive concepts into lessons—and the moments between classes. This provides students with opportunities to imagine how sustainability-related goals (SRGs) can fit into their own lives (Reidak, 2022; Scott & Reidak, in press). Next, I walk my talk by demonstrating to students how they can utilize SRGs. Students will be more likely to make personal SRG attempts if teachers lead by example. The final step is to walk together and perform sustainable actions together—when possible—with my students. Hit the Lights “Turn off the lights, turn off the lights,” I hear the students chorally telling their classmates who were last to exit the classroom. “OK!” the slowpokes reply. I would not have heard this type of exchange just one month ago. Teachers—and students—do not usually turn off lights when they leave classrooms in our school. I am not abrasively eco-friendly, but I do think that there is value in conserving resources. I also feel there is merit in instilling this value into young learners by talking to them about why people—globally—should not waste energy, water, or resources in general. However, such teacher talk cannot start and stop with a textbook about SRGs; students need to see their teacher walking their talk. I accomplished this task by modeling energy-conservative behavior. When the students and I leave the classroom, I announce loudly, “Time to turn off the lights!” Initially, the students eyeballed me with puzzlement. One boy asked me, “Why?” I responded, “to make the Earth happy.” The student then remarked, “hmmmmmm (with rising intonation),” and chuckled about my comment with his classmates. I continued turning the lights off daily, and the students looked at me with less and less inquisitiveness as I talked about my reasoning for conserving energy. Sometimes talking and walking is an intermingled process, but if students can understand their teacher’s reasoning (i.e., talk) and see their teachers leading by example (i.e., walking their talk), teachers can then attempt to walk together with their students. Recently, a few students have been overly eager to be responsible for turning off the lights; so, I created a signup sheet for lights helpers. Four students from our grade 1 class are now responsible for turning the lights off with me (i.e., walking together) for one week. After one week, new lights helpers members are randomly selected from the list of remaining applicants. Teachers and students performing an Earth-conscious action—albeit a basic one like conserving energy—and walking together are steps in the right direction. If teachers can promote sustainability-mindedness and perform eco-friendly actions together with our students, we are contributing towards a better future for our planet. Sustainability Journaling The students at the elementary school write weekly journal entries. My team teachers and I task the students with writing about concepts related to their L2 textbook studies (e.g., 89

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likes/dislikes, animals, and daily routines). Recently, I received a journal entry from one of the students about turning the lights off at home, and I was pleased to read that she was also being sustainability conscious at home. This led me to reconsider the style of journal writing that we were conducting. The first step I took was to talk about the variety of SRGs people can easily accomplish with minimal effort. One example I provided to the students was related to turning off lights—the conservation of water. My team teacher and I asked the students why conserving water is essential. The students answered that keeping water running for a long time was wasteful. I agreed with them and explained that while I am washing dishes, I do not keep the water running while I apply soap to the dishes. My team teacher talked about how she waits until her laundry basket is full before doing the laundry. Another example that we discussed was alternatives to cars. I told the students that I use my bicycle to get around town—and that I always wear a bicycle helmet. My team teacher talked about walking or using the train whenever possible as an alternative to driving. The students said that cars can be dirty and that they understood the reasons for cycling or walking whenever possible. Next, I wanted to demonstrate to the students that I walk my talk; so, I wrote a journal entry about SRGs that I commit to in my daily life. I also brought pictures to back up my story so the students could see me walking my talk. Before sharing my journal entry with the students, I displayed pictures of my bike from my notebook PC. I also showed students pictures of me cycling in various regions of Japan. After showing the students my bike-related photos, I read my short journal entry about why I think that bicycle riding is good for the planet. It felt great to discuss the world outside of the classroom together with the students. They had follow-up questions such as “Is your bike fast?” and “Do you prefer to walk or to bike?” We communicated about SRGs in the students’ L2, and they were all quite engaged. The most challenging part of walking together regarding SRGs is that only so much can be done inside classrooms. Some schools have community-based SRG programs, and more will follow, but for the time being, such programs are uncommon. Within the school, apart from shared energy conservation, the closest to walking together that the students and I can accomplish is to share accounts of how we walk our talk via SRG journaling. To accomplish SRG journaling, we spent time brainstorming about various SRGs, and the team teacher and I assisted the students with writing a couple of personalized sentences. One student commented about recyclable PET bottles “Use a PET bottle. It’s excellent.” Another student wrote, “Don’t make big garbage” [Don’t make so much garbage]. After finishing their writing, the students were asked to draw accompanying pictures for the 90

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English sentences that they had written. The students then stood, walked around the classroom, stopped on a signal, formed conversational dyads, and shared their SRG creations with classmates. After the conversation activity, the students were tasked with a homework exercise: to discuss SRGs with their family members and write down a few more sentences about SRGs they engaged in around their homes or within their communities. If the students could not think of any SRGs they engaged in, they were permitted to write about SRGs they would like to start doing. The students returned to class the following day with more exciting SRG ideas to share. One of the students wrote, “I eat all my dinner because of many hungry people.” Another class member shared, “I plant flowers with my mom.” Many of the students—some with the help of their family members—wrote many novel ideas in their journals. Some students who could not think about any SRGs they were currently engaged in with their families wrote sentences such as, “I want to make outside clean. Very clean.” We shared our SRG ideas one at a time, and some students also displayed pictures to match their writing. Although our SRG connection is mostly classroom-based, I still feel that the students and I are walking together toward a more sustainable future for everybody. Also, I hope that the kind of individual actions we do, such as turning off lights, can encourage students to advocate for more big picture changes in the future, such as moving to alternative energy and building more public transport options. References Reidak, J. (2022). Operationalizing sustainability-related goals (SRGs) in Japanese elementary ESL classrooms. In A. B. Gallagher (Ed.), Trends in language teaching 2022: Post-Conference Proceedings (pp. 55–71). JALT Okinawa. Scott, C. A., & Reidak, J. (in press). Measuring the effectiveness of sustainability-related goals in Japanese public elementary schools. Proceedings of the 23rd Temple University, Japan, Applied Linguistics Colloquium. Jesse Reidak [email protected]      

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BEING GRATEFUL

I am a primary school teacher in Singapore who has been teaching at my current school for close to 18 years. I teach English and Science. Currently, I am a form teacher, similar to a homeroom teacher, of a Primary 4 class which is made up of 9-10 year-old students of mixed achievement levels and various family backgrounds. 

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I noticed that some students come into the class with an attitude of taking things for granted and feeling entitled. They also tend to complain about their parents not giving them enough. I know at the back of my mind that their parents are trying their best to provide for them; so, I not only want to help my students learn the subjects I teach, but it is also important to me that they are kind and grateful. Furthermore, our school’s motto is Wisdom and Grace, which means that students are not just attending school to learn but to also be gracious. I feel that one way I can encourage my students to be more gracious is to inculcate in them an attitude of gratitude. This chapter talks about how I try to do that. Part of the framework for facilitating gratitude is that in English class, each day of the school week has a different name to make things varied and encourage students to look forward to our lessons. I want to avoid giving them a learning experience filled with run-of-the-mill teaching and worksheets. Hence, every week, we have Musical Monday, Thankful Tuesday, Word Bank Wednesday, Tell-a-Story Thursday, and Fill-a-Bucket Friday. Thankful Tuesday reminds me to encourage my students to be grateful every week and to make lessons more interesting. Talk  At the beginning of the year, I share with my students that every Tuesday will be called Thankful Tuesday, and, on that day, they will use one of their exercise books as a “My Gratitude Journal.” They are puzzled at first. So, I explain that gratitude means being thankful for the people, places, and things that make their lives better. Walking My Talk Using the I do, We do, You do approach, I begin by sharing examples of what I am grateful for. Next, some students share with the class or with each other what makes them feel grateful, and finally, students write in their Gratitude Journals. I model for students what they might write in their Gratitude Journals. I suggest writing about three people, places, or things because three might be more manageable for my 9-10 years old students. Walking Together At first, students usually just make lists in their Gratitude Journals of who/what they are grateful for. That is good, but I want students to think more deeply; so, I tell them, “It would be really good if you could also explain why you are grateful.” To help them, I supply a stem: “I am grateful for (who/what) ________ …, because (reasons) ______________________ … .” Here's an example of what one student wrote: "I'm grateful to my father for playing badminton with me, because it's fun when my family plays sports together. That way we can be a healthy family. Plus, my dad always lets me win.”

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When students are writing, I too write in my own gratitude journal. Sometimes, I tell the class about what I have written, and next year, I plan to share my written journal entries via the visualizer in my classroom. Writing with students and encouraging them to share what they write builds a feeling of community. Those not comfortable sharing with the class submit their journals to me, and I add encouraging comments. By reading their journals, I get to learn about things going on in their lives that I might not hear about otherwise, and I feel the journals build a more positive Teacher-Student Relationship. Other Ways My Students and I Promote Gratitude Stories and Songs - During lessons, I share videos from YouTube about the importance of being grateful. One of my favorite videos is a song called Thankful by The Juicebox Jukebox (https://youtu.be/YeSdQmO51Ps). It is age-appropriate and gives good examples of simple ways to be grateful. At the same time, I share stories from books found in the school library or on YouTube related to gratitude, such as Gratitude is My Superpower by Alicia Ortego. Role Modeling – I encourage my students to show gratitude to our school cleaners by thanking the cleaner when they come to empty our class’s waste-paper bucket. Soon, some students will start to do the same, and in time, the class monitor will use their own initiative to ask the students to stand and thank the cleaner, and sometimes use the person’s name or call them Auntie or Uncle, which is traditional in Singapore. Students even remind me when I forget to thank cleaners and others, such as IT personnel. These reminders to me are the hallmark of effective role modeling: that students start taking the initiative to do something good. I congratulate students that even the simplest acts can make someone’s day by allowing them to feel seen by others. Awareness in Learning - I have read that gratitude can bring about a sense of awareness for what students are about to learn. So, during my English or Science lessons, I ask my students what they are grateful for in relation to what we are going to learn. For example, at the start of our Science lesson on Light Energy, I ask them for examples of how they use light in their daily lives and what would happen if they did not have light energy. Why should we be thankful for the light that we have? For an English unit on Friends, students can think about their friends and why they are thankful for them. Discipline – Once I came to know that one of my students was being rude to his mother. So, I took him aside and used questions to encourage him to reflect on what his mother does to take care of him. My questions and this reflection helped the student see that his mother was doing her best to take care of him, and his rude words and actions were emotionally affecting her. I have tried the Gratitude approach with some of my other students when it comes to discipline, and I do feel it helps them to be cognizant of the impact of their words and other actions. 94

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Conclusion This journey of encouraging my students to be grateful has not been an easy one. Some students find it a waste of time, but others enjoy it and remind me about Thankful Tuesday. I try to have Thankful Tuesday every week, and even during holidays, I encourage students to write in their Gratitude Journals. I hope that by encouraging students to be grateful via methods such as writing in their Gratitude Journal on Thankful Tuesday, sharing songs/stories, role modeling, and incorporating gratitude in what they learn and in discipline, that my students will not only be more aware in their learning but also kinder to and more compassionate towards others. Mindy Neo - West Grove Primary School, Singapore

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TEACHERS AS WRITERS

I have been teaching for about 40 years. I started as an ESL teacher, teaching English (my native language) to people from other countries. I started in the U.S., the country where I was born and raised, but the large majority of my career has been spent living and teaching in other countries. For almost 30 years, I’ve been in Singapore, where I am now a citizen. I still teach English, but now I also teach Education to language teachers and teachers of many other subject areas. They all write.

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Writing is so important for students of all subjects and teachers of all subjects. In fact, writing, in any language, is great regardless of what we do in life and how old we are. That is why I encourage everyone to write. Thus, this chapter will feature stories about how I try to Walk My Talk by writing myself and letting students know about my writing. Myself as a Writer What could I do in an authentic way to facilitate my students becoming lifelong writers? First, I needed to Talk, to explain to students why writing is important. For example, I explained how writing plays a big role in many jobs, as well as in other aspects of life, such as communicating with family and friends. Plus, I challenged the idea that writing is merely taking what is already in our heads and putting it on paper or typing it on a keyboard. Instead, our thoughts develop as we write. Thus, writing aids thinking; it makes us smarter. Second, to build students’ enthusiasm for writing, I needed to Walk My Talk, to show students that I wrote a lot. I did this in five ways as demonstrated below: memoirs, academic writing, joint construction, quickwriting, and journal writing. With each of these five types of writing, I invited students to Walk Together with me by doing similar types of writing, too. Memoirs I have a close family friend who I’ve known for more than 30 years. Len is now 95 years old. When he was in his 60s, he started writing his own memoir. Len is a retired professor; so, I assume he has lots of writing experience and skill. However, his memoir was only about 60 pages including lots of a photographs. Inspired by Len, I started writing memoirs in the form of a collection of collected stories. Each story was less than 1000 words. When I wrote for my students, the stories were usually only a few hundred words. To Walk My Talk, I would read aloud or summarize one or two of these stories for students (they usually weren’t very interested in their old teacher’s stories). Then, it was students’ turn to Walk Together with me, for example, writing a memoir about their lives from childhood as readers or writers. Academic Writing I often teach academic writing. Doing my own academic writing provides opportunities to Walk My Talk with my students. Again, I don’t expect that students are going to be very interested in my academic writing; so, I just briefly talk about or show some of what I’m writing to highlight key concepts, such as the need for revision or to take into account one’s audience. I give them a url or offer to email them if they want to actually read my stuff, but interest is usually restrained. After I have Walked My Talk, it’s students’ turn to do academic writing. I hope they feel as though we are Walking Together. 97

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Joint Construction Another way that I show my students I’m a writer too is by doing what is known as joint construction, which I’ll explain in the next paragraph. Before students begin a writing task, first I teach the features of a particular text type (also known as a genre, for example, the genre of information reports or an explanations). I also help students notice the features of the text type in a couple texts. Next, the class does joint construction. This means that, with the teacher acting as a guide and scribe, the class works together to construct one text in the text type we have been studying. Before powerpoint projectors, I used to use whiteboards or even chalkboards to do joint construction. So, in joint construction, I am the main writer, Walking My Talk for students. Usually, without trying, I make mistakes, thereby showing students that writing is effortful even for their teacher. If I don’t seem to have made mistakes, I’ll make a couple intentionally. After joint construction, students work in groups and/or alone to write a text of their own in the same text type. Thus, we are Walking Together. Quickwriting Another way I Walk My Talk about the benefits and enjoyment of writing is via quickwriting. The basic guidelines for quickwriting are: a. Write a title at the top of the page b. Begin writing and do not stop writing until the time limit (usually 3-5 minutes) is up. c. Focus on ideas, not mechanics, grammar, or organization. d. If you cannot think of anything to write, repeat your last sentence or write, “I can’t think of anything to write” again and again. Quickwriting helps generate ideas and enhances writing fluency. I always demonstrate for the class before asking them to quickwrite, and sometimes, I quickwrite along with the class. Journaling My favorite way to Walk Together with students on writing in via journaling. One form of journaling is when everyone in the class writes a journal entry, all on the same topic, for example, goals for the term or a favorite family member, or each person writes on whatever topic they wish. I do my own journal entry which goes to the entire class.

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Feedback plays an important role in the journal experience. I like to do both peer feedback and teacher feedback. This feedback focuses on content, not of surface matters such spelling and grammar. Also, positive feedback and questions encourage dialogue. Among the benefits of peer feedback is that students do not have to wait for their one teacher to read everyone’s journal entries; peers can be much faster. Conclusion In a study of student views of the characteristics of authentic teachers, one of those characteristics was that teachers have a passion for what they are teaching. I try to demonstrate that passion by showing my students that I am writing along with them, that writing isn’t always easy or fun, but that dealing with the challenges and communicating with others and ourselves can be rewarding. Fortunately, it is easy for me to appear to have a passion for writing, because I really do. George M Jacobs - Kampung Senang Charity and Education Foundation [email protected]

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REFLECTIONS

The book is free to read online, which means that the authors in this book are sharing their experiences for free. These experiences all revolve around “teacher authenticity”. Despite this, we understand that teaching has lots of uncertainty, and the stories in this book are to some extent idealized. Actual teaching may not develop at all the way we envision it, which means we may not exactly copy anyone’s experience in this book. For example, when teachers admit their own ignorance, students may think that the teachers are incompetent and may not trust teachers any more. Another way in which the stories in this book may not apply to all situations is that flipped classrooms based on internet access only work if students have such access. Another example is that if we always give compassionate feedback, students may become arrogant and proud, unaware of their own inadequacies. The book shows some living teaching examples of some important concepts being put into practice. I knew many educational theories and famous educators before I read this book. “Student-centered” and “cooperative learning” are the educational philosophy that I learned when I stepped into the education field at the beginning. But I still couldn’t solve a lot of the problems I encountered in a real class. It was fortunate that this book allowed me to see some teaching examples. For example, I was most impressed with the chapter “Efate Novelist” which taught me that textbooks should not be shackles for restraining students. Although we may not be able to completely discard the teaching material like the teacher in the book, at least we know that the teaching material can be localized to suit the students. In particular, the chapter encourages teachers to attempt to solve the difficulties they may encounter in the process of teaching. Beyond teaching, this book benefits me a lot in life. Achieving the unity of knowledge and action is not an easy thing. A lot of times, we just stop at slogans because there will be many difficulties when we practice them. Also, we are often strict with others and lenient with ourselves. We should know if we want others to do it, we have to do it first. More importantly, we must honestly admit the difficulties we have encountered when we practice, as shown c

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in the chapter “It’s Okay Not to Be Okay”, which is also an important premise for working with others to solve problems. I am also very lucky to contribute the chapter “I Don’t Know” to this book as an author. In my chapter, I shared how I learned that teachers should not feel guilty for not answering all of the students’ questions. If my chapter and other chapters in this book can give you some inspiration, it will be the biggest meaning of this book. It also reflects the value of this book if you just find out that someone else has encountered the same predicament as you in teaching and you know that you are not alone. Of course, this book may not have been seen by more people, and that’s okay, we’ve shared our experiences. We’re reflecting on, and improving our teaching. As the saying, we cannot do everything, but still, we can do something; and because we cannot do everything, we will not refuse to do something that we can do. Guo Qingli - Universiti Malaya About the editors Adelina binte Asmawi is an Associate Professor at  Universiti Malaya.  She holds a  PhD in Education  from the  University of Melbourne, Australia. As a researcher, Dr. Adelina actively publishes in the areas of higher education, instructional technology, creative thinking, TESOL, and professional development.  George M Jacobs has a PhD in Education from University of Hawaii at Manoa. His research interests include cooperation, student-centered learning, ecolinguistics, and humane education. Many of his publications can be found on ResearchGate. Qingli Guo is a PhD student in the Faculty of Education at Universiti Malaya. She earned her master’s degree in teaching Chinese as a Second Language at Beijing Language and Culture University. Her research interests include Chinese teaching and learning, and ecolinguistics. Dr Willy A Renandya teaches language education courses at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He has extensive experience teaching in Asia and has published extensively in the area of second language education. He maintains a large teacher professional development forum on FB called Teacher Voices: https://www.facebook.com/groups/teachervoices

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