Marking homework/papers – the unassailable wall?

It just happened to me again (as it has so many times over the years): the dread of marking. This time I only had a few final MA assignments to grade, but it made me insanely depressed just to think about it.

(If by any possible chance you are one of my current – nearly ex – students, don’t worry; I’m complaining about me, not you!)

I can’t remember how often, over the (many) years in the world of TEFL that I have seen a task as so insurmountable, so mind-sapping, so time-wasting, that I have put off doing it for years – or at least far longer than I should have done. Marking exams; correcting student essays; doing some task (usually, frankly, marking); writing up observation reports….. and so I have put it off and off until it becomes, frankly, embarrassing.

Am I the only one? I don’t think so. We all do it. We put off something we don’t especially want to do, and the longer we put it off, the bigger it becomes in our minds. And then it gets so huge that we just can’t face it at all!

That’s what happened to me over the last few days. I had to mark and grade just a handful of final assignments on an MA module. The number is/was in single figures. But I was ‘on the ‘road’ in Poland and Romania, giving talks and trying to keep up with emails. And the longer I put off spending a few hours on the task in my hotel room, the more depressed I became. I couldn’t face it. I started to have a big sulk. My wonderful co-tutor asked me how I was getting on. I metaphorically dug myself into my burrow.

But finally I HAD to start reading these papers. So I started in Bucharest airport and continued on the flight home. Right now that I am home, I’ve nearly finished. And the result? Magic! I have read a passionate defence of coursebook use and and then almost immediately found myself reading a paper which argued precisely the opposite with the same kind of energy (and I wanted to agree with both of them). I have read some great classroom ideas. And finally I found my 36,000 feet tiredness absolutely blown away by a bravura attack on anyone (including me, the tutor) who had ever allowed Gardner’s MI theory to be dragooned into a(n apparently) misunderstood view of learner styles in education. Electrifying. You know what? I really enjoyed my reading, and the hours of the flight literally flew (sorry!) by.

So what on earth was I so worked up about before I started?

I remember a lovely article by Lesley Painter about how she made homework writing and marking a joy for all by letting the students choose what their homework tasks should be. Sounded wonderful. Is that the answer?

How do you manage to climb the homework wall – or other similar tasks, if it comes to that – without getting all petulant like me? How do you make marking less of a chore?

I’d be fascinated to know!

There’s nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so

The other night over there on Twitter on one of those ‘nightshift’-tagged evenings, I found myself swapping music with Anna and Luke and Simon and Carol – and a number of others. It worked really well, all of us loving each other’s music and getting quite sentimental about it. Oh wow! Etc. People like doing that on Twitter. It’s like a virtual lounge, everyone sitting around drinking wine, playing music. Lovely really. And it goes on happening so we must like it.

Except for one person, that evening who just didn’t like any of the folk music that was being put around. They loved the choir carol, though.

Hmm. I found myself thinking ‘but how come they don’t like folk music?! Must be crazy’.

Here’s something else: the other evening we played a concert which included Elgar’s first symphony. For various personal reasons (to do with my father, the UK, who knows what else) and because of music itself, I was emoting so much (especially during that amazing slow movement) that I could hardly play my part as a humble not-very-good member of the viola section. I thought, even as we the music swelled, that everyone MUST love this music, how could they not? It’s beautiful, beautiful. And then I thought (as I often do), wouldn’t it be great if I could find someone who loved it in exactly the same way as me – who understood EXACTLY what I was feeling right then!! I mean exactly.

Can you ever?

And then (sorry if I am boring you, but we’ll get to the professional bit later), after the concert I started remembering those moments when not only can you NOT find someone who thinks like you, but actually people just don’t LIKE what you do, and how weird that is. Hamlet is taunting the king’s spies Rosencrantz and Guildenstern when he says ‘There’s nothing either good or bad/but thinking makes it so’, but of course he’s right.

I remember, for example, seeing Paul Haggis’ film ‘Crash’ – the one about racial tensions in Los Angeles. I really liked it as it happens. When I went to the Guardian’s ‘Have your say’ column I found other people who agreed with me. One person thought that “every second of this film was illuminating…brave, bold, brilliant”. Another said that the film was “intelligent, thought-provoking, gripping, emotional,” and there were lots of comments like that. But other opinions were not the same at all. The film was, according to one commentator, “simplistic, superficial, stereotyped, pretentious, predictable” , and another said it was “pretentious, predictable racist nonsense”.

And the thing is that these people saw the same film as me!

Except, of course, they brought their different brains and personalities along. It is humbling, after all, to realise that there are others out there who just might not share your own view of the world.

It’s like when we go to conferences, or when we hear about new methodology. Like the reaction people have to Twitter  (I love it, I hate it).

Recently, for example, people have started to talk about drilling and repetition in language teaching in a friendly, cuddly way – the first time for years. It used to be a subject on which we had all taken a more or less monastic view of silence!

Some people espouse technology, and tell everyone they have to come/go to Second Life (which for others is a no-go area, psychologically). Others argue passionately for teaching the`Dogme’ way (I am absolutely not having a go at Dogme here, by the way), or for whatever it is that takes their fancy.

And perhaps that is just the point. The same thing (like the same film) seen through different eyes and by different people can yield spectacularly different results. The same kind of teaching tricks can have the same effect.

It all reminds me of a passionate argument I once overheard in a staffroom in Cambridge between two teachers who were discussing a reading text in the coursebook Headway Intermediate about a woman called Sister Wendy, a nun who in those days was achieving television fame by making cute comments about works of art. One teacher (I kid you not) thought it was the best text in the book; the other wouldn’t use it because they thought it was twee, rubbish, irrelevant etc.

So, here goes with questions that preoccupy me pretty much all the time (well, ever since I started writing about methodology, anyway):

1

How can we ever achieve a standard that everyone can agree on? How do we all agree on what makes good teaching for example, when we come from different cultures, have different personalities etc? Is it really possible (as British politicians are currently attempting) to build a coalition of views?

2

Is all teaching a matter of style – I mean the style the teacher prefers? Do people teach ‘unplugged’ because it is intrinsically and provably better, or is it just because they themselves prefer doing it that way? Does that mean their students prefer it too? Are they and their students seeing the same movie?

3

Speaking personally, I guess I’m a bit of a technophile, and I am sympathetic to the evangelism of some of my Twitter friends. It seems unanswerable that technology is helpful. But maybe that, like everything else, is just my view of the movie.

Is nothing either good or bad?

Any comments gratefully received.

What it feels like to be surprised, very surprised!

In my blog I have tried, so far, to address general issues to do with presenting, conferences, writing abstracts etc etc. As with every other blogger, my ‘thoughts’ have been personal, of course, but I have tried to exercise some dispassion.

But not this time. Just for once I want to tell you how I feel – or rather what it felt like (and then see if there is anything to learn from that). What I am trying to say is that this post is going to be incredibly personal, and I hope you will forgive me for that.

This is how it goes: I was sitting on a train from Penrith (in the North West of England) to London. The route traverses the Pennine Hills, and as I looked out of the window I was awestruck by the beauty of the landscape, the young lambs, the hills, the green. It was the kind of scenery to make you feel glad (unaccountably, I often think) to be alive. The day before I had lead a workshop at International House in Newcastle, and then spent the evening with my brother and his partner. As a result I was feeling – how shall I put this – not the healthiest I have ever been. Nevertheless, the lovely scenery and the fact that I was going to meet up with my daughters in London to celebrate my birthday contributed to a general feeling of hazy-headed contentment.

And then I got a text message from my friend Petra Pointner. It read “Log on to Twitter! Right now!!!” So I did.

[A blank space follows here because it is the only way I can think of to describe the way my metaphorical jaw dropped through the train carriage floor as my iPhone exploded - it felt like - into life]

if you are one of the people who organised or joined in with my ‘surprise birthday party’ (#JHsurpriseparty) I want to tell you how absolutely wonderful (I need to repeat that…ABSOLUTELY WONDERFUL) it was to be on the end of all that positive, kind, funny, silly, and totally uplifting energy. I was sent pictures of birthday cakes and lasered dogs (really), of modified book covers, of hugs and kisses, of foods, and links to  youtube clips and songs – and even of Greek primary kids saying ‘Happy Birthday Jeremy’. There was a Voxopop site of people leaving messages. There were messages and messages and messages.

And it went on pretty much all day. And beyond

I can only hope that all the people who organised and took part in this joyful ambush experienced as much real and profound pleasure from it as I did. I mean that. Speaking personally I have never really known anything quite like it. My caption for the day? Hate the age, love the birthday!

Is there any more to say about this?

Yes, I think there is. Firstly, in one of the sessions I do on teacher observation I say that we should spend much more time telling teachers how good they are, rather than identifying their weakenesses – and that complimenting teachers (something that doesn’t happen too often) may have a more profound effect on those teachers’ development than any manner of training sessions and observations. To be suddenly surprised with the kind of positive affection that I experienced – however and in whatever spirit it was given (I am not, I think, totally naive!) – makes you feel great, and as a result you go to what you are going to do next (like teaching a lesson or arriving in Cairo for a meeting) with a renewed sense of energy, commitment and enthusiasm.

Then there is the power of social networking – in this case the power of Twitter. How extraordinary to be able to ambush a slightly hungover traveller sitting on a train in the middle of nowhere as if a hundred people had suddenly turned up at his door carrying cakes and ale and singing at the tops of their voices. How wonderful to be able to ‘make things happen’ without the paraphenelia of, well, anything. Perhaps Gavin Dudeney and Nicky Hockly (amongst others) are right. We are the mobile generation.

The next Twitter surprise birthday party will not be QUITE as surprising perhaps, but the power to unleash this kind of group experience is awesome. As Olaf tweeted towards the end of the day “I believe this may have started something though. The idea of Twitter birthday parties could be a spur for very creative actions.”

What could those creative actions be?

Over to you

(oh, and, in case you hadn’t got it, thank you for a really great birthday!)