But at the beginning of this semester, I felt that things were different this time: I had finally developed a curriculum that really was *the* right way to teach ESL Academic Writing. And yet here I am 4 months later with a To Do list for next year.

The New Curriculum

The basic structure for this course comes from a curriculum that I helped a colleague develop at my previous institution. We had talked about the value of revision and helping students learn writing academic writing at an increasingly complex pace, and so one summer we implemented the Iterative Writing Model in the upper level academic writing classes at our Intensive English Language Program. It wasn’t perfect, but we were excited about it enough to continue experimenting/refining it and even presented on it at TESOL the following year.

Basically, the model involves asking student to write 3 papers over the course of the semester. The first paper is the shortest and deals with a limited aspect of a the organization of a typical research paper. The second paper requires students to repeat the organization of the first paper (in a slightly more condensed form) and add to it the next aspect of a typical research paper. In the final paper, students repeat the two previous parts (once again in a more condensed form) and then add the final rhetorical/organizational elements required to have a comprehensive research paper. By repeating the process three times, each with increasing difficulty, students are able to refine their English language writing skills along with their research writing skills without too great a cognitive load of a completely new rhetorical structure with each paper.

Additionally, the model has students “share” topics over the course of the semester. So while Student A may write about Topic X for paper one, she will also cover Topics Y and Z for her other papers, and Student B will cover the same topics, but in a different order. In this way, students can share research sources with one another AND can provide their own papers to classmates as a base text for those who will later write about that topic. This help reduce the amount of time that students need to spend locating sources, it helps students become aware of audience (because a classmate will ask them to clarify a poorly written paper), and it builds a sense of community.

The Good

Feedback from students this semester suggests that they liked the increasingly difficult nature of assignments that made the task of writing a 10-page paper approachable at the end of the semester. They also enjoyed reading one another’s papers which helped them gauge their ability and learn from their classmates. I also received strong feedback from students that they enjoyed the weekly activities that helped them learn and apply vocabulary from the Academic Word List. More than a few students highlighted the games such as Pass-It-On which students suggest were very helpful in applying the AWL vocabulary to their papers.

Students also cited “speed dating” as an effective learning activity. Essentially, this activity allowed students to receive feedback on an “oral draft” of their paper by being interviewed by a classmate. Students repeat the interview multiple times with different classmates, and, as one student explained, “as I would speak, I realized what part of my paper needed to be improved with better explanations.”

The Bad

The organization of the course management system (CMS) could have been better. Part of this is due to the fact that at the beginning of the course I was not sure exactly how and what students would share with one another. Another problem was that most of the students had little familiarity with the CMS and would frequently post things to the wrong place in the CMS making it difficult for me and for their classmates to find their materials. Lastly, when students missed deadlines for assignments, it made it impossible for me to rely on those assignments for peer reading class activities. I think that these issues could be improved by better explaining how the CMS worked, and by enforcing stricter deadlines (which I am always reluctant to do, so many students flounder when they are given flexible deadlines).

I also think that I need to provide more model papers (both good and bad) for the class to read and analyze. In conjunction with this, I need to make the grading rubrics available to student right from the start and show them how the model papers hold up to the rubric.

The Ugly

It seems as though every year that I teach ESL I encounter a student who has a bad experience. For example, in one year that I taught a double section of advanced university-prep ESL writing, I had one student whose essays contained large portions of text that had been copied from an internet source but were not attributed as such. When I informed him of the problem, he became immediately defensive and refused to discuss the problem with me. Then, on the subsequent assignment, I found the same problem, and on closer investigation, I realized that not only did the text plagiarize an internet source, but in fact the essay was written by a friend of his in a previous semester – in essence, he was plagiarizing a plagiarized paper (I also discovered that he was only studying in our program so that he could qualify for a student visa so that his children could live in the USA and study at a US public school).  Once again, he refused to discuss the issue with me. When the semester ended, he failed the course and left the program with a negative opinion of academic writing.

More recently, I struggled with another student whose papers had plagiarism problems. I caught these issues early in the semester and indicated to the student how they could be fixed, and the student claimed to fix the errors, but I still found the subsequent drafts to be unacceptable. This went on for over a month, and I would invite the student to speak with me about it in class or through office hours, but he would not do so. Instead he would respond to my concerns through email and it was not until the end of the semester that I realized what the problem was. Due to his spotty absence record in the class, he had missed out on crucial discussions of attribution, quotation, and paraphrasing. In the end, I was too late to help him resolve his misunderstandings, and I although he passed the course, I was fairly certain that he left with an incomplete understanding of proper citation practices.

The disgruntled student that I encountered at the end of this semester was perhaps the most surprising and definitely the rudest of any of these cases.  Right from the diagnostic test on the first day of class, I noticed that this student’s English language skills were drastically lower than her classmates. Not only was she less fluent (remarkably fewer total word written compared to the class average),  less accurate (far more errors in her writing compared to her classmates), and less complex (her vocabulary and grammar range was very limited), but her performance of tasks suggested that she also misunderstood the nature of assignment regardless of whether the instructions were provided orally or in writing.

As a result, her grades were lower than the class average (a fact that only I was aware of since I did not share the average grade with the class), but I felt that I was actually padding her grade in order to motivate her to keep trying (rather than give her a more appropriate lower grade that might discourage her from completing future assignments). My feedback was always encouraging, but also clear about what aspects of her papers fell short of the standard. I invited her to discuss her paper with me during office hours, but she never accepted these invitations. So this semester I tried something new; I required all students to meet with me at the end of the semester to discuss their performance and provide them with an opportunity to ask any parting questions. On the whole, these were positive experiences. However, when this particular student arrived for her interview, it was obvious from the start in that she was not satisfied with the quite generous grade (from my point of view) that I was prepared to assign to her performance. Instead she demanded a perfect grade, and when I refused, explaining my decision as evidenced by the feedback I had given her all semester long, she resorted to shouting, and then crying, and then a refusal to leave until she got what she wanted. Of course, she did not get what she wanted, and left accusing me of a double standard (?) and of not recognizing her effort during the semester (apparently she felt that her grade ought to reflect her effort regardless of her skill or her performance). It was an exhausting 30 minutes, and it is experiences like this one that are so disappointing, especially when I feel like I’ve worked hard all semester to help students.

The ugly truth is that education does not change students. Rather, students can choose to change themselves via education, but it has to be a voluntary process; we can’t force it on them. So if a student insists on being lazy, ignorant, or self-righteous (and filled with a sense of entitlement), sometimes there might not be a lot that an instructor can do. We can provide experiences that can help motivate students to become better versions of themselves, but unless they want to change, those experiences may not do a lot of good. It saddens me to think that our educational system may encourage students to pursue grades rather than learning, because grades are a short-term goal whereas learning is eternal.

The New New Curriculum

Although I learned a lot from The Bad that will help me to design a better course next year, I’m not that there’s a whole lot that I can to prevent The Ugly. I will say that I feel that I have done a far better job of teaching citation/paraphrasing/anti-plagiarism then ever before, and I think it has had a positive impact on students’ ability to use sources in their research writing.

But can I foresee and prevent all student attitude issues? Maybe not, but I suppose that I will keep trying. For example, next year, I am going to be much more direct and strict about deadlines and grades. Weak writers will need to be prepared for the fact that their writing  fails to meet appropriate standards will be graded as such, but they will also know that the course is generously weighted towards the second half of the semester which enables students to improve their skills and receive a grade that acknowledges this. And I will try not to become jaded by The Ugly experiences that do not generally reflect the excellent students that I work with each year.

Rather than post stats and charts, I think I’ll take a more thematic approach to the analysis.

What changed from last year?

First, the course number changed.  The university added zeros to the ends of all course numbers, so 509 became 5090. Sounds more professional, doesn’t it?

I also got rid of the discussion board. I had great success with discussion boards as a student at TechBC, but when I later took a course with SFU that involved asynchronous discussion, it was painful. I even made a post to my class explaining *how* to participate in an online asynchronous discussion. While at TechBC, I just assumed that people knew how to participate in BB discussions, since all my classmates at TechBC could do it.  But my experience at SFU showed me that it must be a inherent talent in geeks (TechBC was, not surprisingly, populated by geeks) and an acquired skill by regular folk (the SFU course was a Shakespeare distance ed class – ironic that English majors could not get the hang of written communication – I guess they never learned to interact through their writing).

This trouble with asynchronous communication likewise plagued my TESOL class last year. Just like the Shakespeare students, they had no concept of interaction. Rather than ask questions and respond to one another (thereby building their knowledge of the weekly topic), they simply posted homework questions to the BB in succession without even reading one another’s posts.

As a result, the discussion board questions were the most frequently cited feature of the course that students cited as “uninteresting” in last year’s course evaluations (even though students admitted that it help them make sure that they did the reading). So this year I had two ideas: 1) teach students how to participate in asynchronous discussion and hope that they do it effectively, or 2) switch to face-to-face discussion. I opted for face-to-face and asked students to prepare short notes on the assigned reading questions in preparation for small group discussion in class.

But I didn’t abandon technology completely. The assigned questions were posted to the class wiki, and at the end of each discussion session, groups were randomly assigned one of the questions to summarize and post to the wiki. As such, the wiki served as a topical repository of the major issues each week. I told students that the wiki would later serve as their study guide for the oral exam.

On a side note, although all of my students had certainly heard of wikipedia, none of them knew what wikiwiki means, nor had any of them ever edited a wiki before.  So much for the “digital natives” myth. In any case, even if I didn’t teach the students how to participate in effective discussion board knowledge-building, I did at least expose them to the wonders of wiki editing. And that was probably the biggest change that I made to this year’s course.

What stayed the same?

I kept the same textbook, the same syllabus, the same assignments. All in all, structurally (at least) the course was the same. However, the population of learners was drastically different. Last year, I had a larger number of students, a classroom less than half as big, and less reliable technology. This year, I had only a couple grad students, hardly any linguistics majors, and an overwhelming number of fourth-year students who were suffering from typical senioritis. The entire atmosphere of the class changed from being dynamic and inquisitive (last year’s group) to being quiet, absent, and lethargic (who a few notable and remarkable exceptions) with this year’s group. These were not lazy or dull students, but they simply lacked the energy and enthusiasm of last year’s cohort.

What’s the best aspect about this year’s class?

Despite the change in rapport (between the students and I, and among the students), this year’s class was very efficient with their learning. They instantly recognized when something was useful, and they were just as sharp at identifying waste. For example, they all cited how useful and practical most of the assignments were, and they were just as vocal about their intolerance for boring or poorly planned TESOL Issue Presentations (15 minute presentations given by their peers on an assigned topic).

If nothing else, this had shown me that just as we cannot expect students to have great discussion board skills, we cannot expect them to have good oral presentation skills either.  Don’t get me wrong – we had some great presentations – but I was just as surprised to discover that some fourth-year students could be on the verge of completing an undergraduate degree and still not be able to give a concise, direct, and engaging presentation, even when I provide them with all the materials. I guess I will need to spend more time teaching students how to give an effective presentation (it worked wonders in my ESL first-year writing course this semester).

What’s the least successful aspect?

The most frequent response that I got on this topic from the course evaluations refereed to the “learning contract.” It’s a concept I adopted from a graduate course as part of my PhD coursework. He required the students to review the syllabus, determine whether they would follow the the recommended assignments (or substitute them with equitable alternatives)and what grade they expected from the course based on what effort they expected to put into the course. The point was to make students responsible for their own learning.

I tried this out last year, with decent results. Some students liked the appreciated the flexibility and designed a personalized contract. The rest stuck to the syllabus but appreciated the fact that I would have allowed them to cater it to their needs, and they all appreciated the flexible due dates. Only one student last year (a fourth-year) struggled to complete the assignments before the end of the course.

But this year NO ONE altered the syllabus. They all said that they would follow the assignments as prescribed by me, yet – again with a few notable exceptions – the majority of the class ignored all due dates and they let nearly all the assignment pile up during the last 3 weeks of the course. I was shocked. I kept warning them. I was sure they’d snap out of it. But they didn’t. And they noted it on their course evaluations. One student wrote, “I think the learning contract is an excellent idea conceptually, but in practice I am not disciplined enough to handle flexible due dates. I procrastinated everything and now I’m rushing to get everything done. I’m not mature enough to handle that kind of responsibility.” What? A graduating university student cannot handle that kind of responsibility? What have they been doing for the past 4 years?

I think this is an unfortunate trademark of US education. It starts in grade school, peaks in high school, and continues on through university. Students learn what the teacher tells them to learn, rather than learning what they want to learn and what they think will be most beneficial to them. And of course young children need to rely on their teachers to guide them in this way, but by the time a student is in his 20s, he ought to have developed some ability to self-direct his learning and to self-manage his time. But the evidence suggests that the average student cannot do this, and shrinks away from any opportunity to do this.

I remember taking a graduate English course during the second year of my MA in TESOL program. I was taking the course as a co-requirement in order to be able to teach composition for the English department. For one assignment, I was placed in a group with all English MA students. As we discussed our presentation topic, I explained what I was interested in and how I planned to approach the topic. All of the other students seemed nervous and indecisive. “Are you sure that’s allowed?” one asked. “Is that what he [the instructor] is looking for?” piped another. I was flabbergasted; I could care less what the professor wanted out of the presentation. I was looking to create a presentation that met my interests and that I thought would be useful for the other students in the class. My classmates disagreed. They wanted a good grade, so that wanted to find out exactly what the professor wanted, and then they wanted to give it right back to him. It was at that point that I said a silent prayer to Heavenly Father that he had guided me to get a Masters in Applied Linguistics and NOT in English. The English MA students were not researchers, they were “homeworkers.”

And that’s what I worry about this group of students. I’m concerned that they may have spent too much of their education learning what they thought someone else wanted them to learn, and not enough time learning how to figure out what they want to learn and *how* to learn what they want to learn.

What will I do differently next time around?

Do I want to give up on all the things that students struggle with (the discussion boards, the learning contracts, the oral presentations), or do I want to build into my course mini-lessons that help students learn these kinds of skills.  The truth is, no one is teaching a class in how to use a wiki, and no one is teaching a class in how to adapt the homework assignment to your future career goals. And probably no one ever will. But maybe, via a course in Applied Linguistics, I can help them develop these competencies. I don’t know how many of these students will actually go one to teach ESL or EFL, but I do know that every one of them will continue to use technology, presentations skills, and self-direction no matter what career path they take.

So I’m not going to get rid of the tough stuff; I’m just going to get better at helping them see how they can do the tough stuff.

Yu, G. (2008). Reading to summarize in English and Chinese: A tale of two languages? Language Testing 25 (4), 521-551.

• Reading comprehension is accepted as a prerequisite skill to summarization (pp. 521-522)
• Summary skills can be used to improve reading ability (p. 522)
• Summarization ability is necessary for academic succes (p. 522)
• Is summarization a reading skill or a writing skill, or both. Perhaps neither, it’s a hybrid subskill (p. 522)
• There has been a recent revival in integrated reading-writing tasks (p. 523)
• Summarization skills are more complex and seperate from basic reading skills (p. 524)
• Students with weaker overall proficiency were more likely to do verbatim copying (p. 525)
• Students who copied claimed that it was easier since they did not have to understand the meaning of the words/phrases (p. 542, 544-545)
• Problem-solving strategy use was more common among better summarizers (p. 526)
• L2 summaries tend to be of poorer quality than L1 summaries, have less important information, and have more false information (p. 527)
• Although general reading comprehension scores slightly relate to summary writing scores, there is still a great deal of difference between the skills (p. 536, 544)
• General comprehension reading skills may be very different from the reading skills needed for summaries, and other skills or factors may be involved in summarization ability (p. 544)

Song, M-Y. (2009). Do divisible subskills exists in second language (L2) comprehension? A structural equation modeling approach. Language Testing, 25 (4), 435-464.

In essence, the author asks: to what degree does student performance on a test suggest that reading, listening, and 2-3 identified subskills exist as separate constructs (as evidenced by structural equation modeling)? In comparison, I have been trying to identify the degree to which reading comprehension, writing ability, synthesis comprehension, and paraphrase writing ability are all subskills of reading-to-write tasks. So this article provided quite a bit of theoretical framing and technical analysis that I need to further refine my own study.

Song starts the article by pointing out that the concept of “subskills” is a controversial one. Not only do researchers not agree on how many subskills (if any) exist for a particular language skill (i.e. reading), but they also do not agree on the value of identifying subskills. For example, I recently read (and commented on this blog about) Grabe’s 2009 book on L2 Reading. He provides about 6 subskills for reading, but other researchers claim there are really only 3, whereas others identify over 30.

These divergent views on the existence and number of subskills can seem confusing: are there or aren’t there a certain number of subskills? In truth, I think that it is all relative to the context. As Song points out at the end of the article, “the validity… is significantly affected by the characteristics of he specific dataset explored in this study” (p. 459). In other words, evidence for or against subskills is dependent on the meauring instrument (does it cause users to access those subskills) and on the proficiency of the specific group of leaners (are they at such a level that they is a measureable difference among their subskill use). Song found evidence for 3 listening subskills but only 2 reading skills. This could be a result of the test construction (that gave users more time to reading and hence eliminated the differentiation between subtle subskills) and a result of user ability (the test takers may simply be better readers holistically, so they perform all test items well, thus eliminating any statistical difference among the subskill specific items).

This is why it is important that my study (and my measurement instrument) be used with the target audience of new or in-coming university-level English for Academic Purposes students. Learners who are below this level (such as nearly arrived ESL students in the novice range) would perform poorly on all aspects of my test, and users well above this target level (such the Western European students in the law school class that I teach) would perform extremely well on all parts of the test. For both groups, there would be little evidence of subskills for either reading or writing, since all test items would have similar scores for each group. However, the group in the middle (which is the TOEFL target group and those in their first year post-TOEFL) would take the test and provide much evidence that seperate subskills do exists when completing reading-to-write tasks. And since it is this group that the diagnostic testing instrument was designed for, then this works perfectly. This is the group of learners that need help to develop the more advanced subskills that my study highlights.

Remaining thoughts:

• I need to show how my study addresses the 3 implications that Song offers on page 460
  • subskills help us to test for needed language abilities
  • subskills should be reported as seperate scores to students and instructors
  • researchers need to investigate how users accomplish test tasks that claim to measure specific subskills (in order to learn whether those subskills are being used, or whether something else is happening)
• I need to more clearly identify the subskills that current research identifies as part of the reading-to-write task
• I need to explictly state my models for SEM
  • Test for unitary trait (literacy)
  • Test for two skills (reading versus writing)
  • Test for two abilities (basic literacy versis advanced literacy)
  • Test for multiple subskills (reading, writing, synthesis, paraphrasing)
• I need to define all of these constructs
• I need to justify that my test takers are in the target proficiency group
• I need to have the right software to analyze my data

So as I dropped off a handful of books at the libraries circulation desk, I also walked past the “New Books” section, and found a couple more books that peaked my interest. One of them was:

García Mayo, María del Pilar, ed. (2007), Investigating Tasks in Formal Language Learning. New York: Multilingual Matters.

Ultimately, I was disappointed with this book as I was hoping to see more about integrated language tasks. Instead, the book seems fixated on Robinson’s view of task-related theories which I enjoyed reading about, but not over-and-over again in nearly every article. I’m also surprised that although the editor provides an overview of each study in her introduction, she fails to address the apparent contradictions that the individual studies suggest in relation to these task-related theories. Some of the studies suggest that the task complexity encourages more advanced and more accurate language (in support of the Cognition Hypothesis), whereas other studies suggest that task complexity results in the opposite: that student performance drops when the task is more challenging (a la Limited Attention Capacity Model). What gives?

In truth, I can see many variables that would lead to support for one theory over the other, but I was hoping to see how my hypotheses compared with the editor’s. Instead, the book ends without any resolution. As a result, this “edited” book feel like little more than a collection of articles grabbed from an online database using the keywords “SLA” and “task complexity.” It’s unfortunate.

Last fall, after testing all potential ITAs for oral proficiency training, our program received many concerned calls from departments whose international students did not meet the minimum English language standards to be TAs. In fact, a large number of the students were well below cut-off in the university’s policy regarding ITAs. Departments were concerned that these students needed funding and now they did not qualify to work as TAs due to their oral proficiency. To put it mildly was a very frustrating experience for many stakeholders.

In an effort to better inform departments across campus, I did an analysis of in-house oral proficiency scores and pre-admission English language scores (such as the TOEFL). Based on this analysis, I was able to determine what target admission score departments should look for when they made admissions decisions that would be dependent on TA work. Then, with the help of my colleague, I presented the findings to departments and again reminded them of the suggested admissions scores 4 months later when departments began making admission decisions.

Through this pr0cess, we kept wondering, “Would this make any difference?” Truth be told, English language skills may be low on the list of admissions criteria for departments. Would they have the luxury of considering language ability among candidates, even if those language skills would be tied to other important aspects of the students’ work?

Well, it is now one year later, and we recently tested a new group of ITAs. Unlike last fall when the majority of new students fell into the introductory oral communications courses, this year’s batch is remarkably higher. Yes, it is true that many of them will still need to take ESL classes before being ready for TA duties, but unlike last year’s group who would require over a year of training before being approved to work as ITAs, this year’s group would be ready much more quickly. Preliminary results suggest that our analysis and education efforts have made a difference.

Of course there are unintended consequences as well: we had to add more than one extra section of the mid-level oral communications course due to the number of new ITAs scoring at that level. Educational policy is a very complicated business.

The idea came to me as I stood in line at the bank this week. The tellers have one primary task: help customer perform banking transactions. As I stood in line, they never moved from their chairs, everything they needed was in arms’ reach, and they were efficient. Did they come up with this system themselves? I doubt it. Banks have been operating for decades in the current format, and job efficiency is likely a result of evaluation and feedback. Good managers used to be tellers, so they understand what a teller needs, as so they can improve teller efficiency when they finally make it to manager and have greater authority to make improvements to the bank’s overall efficiency. Tellers have too limited a view of the bank, so even if they see a way to make their job easier, they might inadvertently make things harder for someone else.

And that lead me to think about jobs I have worked in where I started at an entry-level position and moved up over time. I had a myopic view of the organization when I started, and as I learned more about my job and the job of my co-workers, I began to see even better ways to accomplish not only my tasks, but the tasks of others who were dependent on what I did.

I contrasted this with jobs where I did not start at an entry-level position. Suddenly I was responsible for things that I didn’t do (never did), and things that I didn’t understand. Even worse, I was responsible for tasks that I also did not have authority over, so even if I did see room for improvement, I was basically powerless to make the change. What’s worse is to see managers who demand that their workers perform tasks without understanding what it takes to complete those tasks. Poor communication and poor understanding do not make for a productive or happy work environment.

I think that these problems could be avoided if all managers were required to spend at least one day doing the job of their workers. They would begin to see task dependencies, resources shortages, and general concerns.

And why stop at the manager – all workers could trade positions so that they could see how to better support one another. Such an exchange might also reveal which positions need more support, or which positions are mostly wasteful. I think it would improve the efficiency, but also the comradery of workplaces.

Yesterday, I visited an undergraduate class on campus to advertise for another course. As I stood in the back and watched the students file in, I had a unique perspective on the students and on their instructor. How valuable would it be for instructors to be able to experience at least a day from the perspective of their students. When I used to work at an IEP, I often thought how interesting it would be to pretend to be a student for a week, attending all of their classes. Just think how much I would learn about our program! Undercover evaluator!

In nothing else, Do Your Co-worker’s Job Day might just make us all very glad that we have our own jobs, and not someone else’s.

“We’re taking the idea that you can have a million people engaged not just in entertainment, but also have them creating huge amounts of content for other people to experience,” said Wright.

“The question is how can you transfer that to other fields besides games.”

And that is the all important question. Spore, for example, not only has millions of user-created creatures, architecture, and vehicles to further enhance game-play usage, but with its recent Galactic Adventures expansion, user can now create game missions. In essence, the expansion is little more than a set of tools that enable gamers to develop the game for one another. The same goes for The Sims franchise. Everytime EA releases a new item for one of its Sims games, there are more than 50 fan-made items generated at the same time. What’s more is that the fan-generated content tends to be more responsive to what users are actually interested and the “corporation” is not nearly so in touch with the masses.

Yet, this does nothing but create an even greater need to answer Wright’s question: how do we harness the creativity and productivity of the community into developing something “that really matters?” How can communities be guided for educational and social goals? How can this model serve non-entertainment needs?

I think many of the answers lie in the gaming model. You need to have passion; you need to provide tools and examples, but ultimately you need to let the users determine the content and the purposes. Users bring the ideas and the hardwork, but someone has to bring them together using a well-designed and well-known network, and provide them with easy to use tools. Then, you need to support them as they demand even better tools as they take the content beyond the originators expectations.

Is anyone trying to do this? Perhaps social networking is moving in that direction, but so much of social networking is either commerically-controled or unpopular. Today I noticed that one of my research tools may, in fact be moving in this direction. Mark Davies has made his corpus linguistic search tool freely available on the Web, and as my students and I were using it this morning, I noticed that there are links to People and Projects. In essence, he is encouraging users to share the results of their searches with one another. He is encouraging them to share their innovation search code with the community. I think this is an example of a tool-based community that is moving in the right direction.

Any other examples?

Problem is, I have written a thesis – and run a marathon – and I used no such regimented schedule. I had a deadline (the date of graduation/the day of the race) but I just wrote/ran when I felt like it, and somehow I reached the goal. I can remember thinking, “Oh I probably ought to be more disciplined at this,” but I never was. The whole write-for-30-mins-per-day or increase-the-number-of-kms-you-run-per-week plans were not effective for me. And considering that I completed both tasks on schedule, maybe that’s ok. Perhaps those regimented schedules are over-rated.

However, at that time in my life, I had far more ownership and autonomy over my schedule. I was single, I lived far from family, I only worked part-time in a job that I enjoyed, and I had an apartment across the parking lot from the building where I taught. In fact, I would often go home during the 10 minute break between morning classes to pick up materials that I had left on my bedroom desk, or to stop by my pantry to grab a snack.

Yet now, I am married and an expecting father. I own a house along with all its upkeep responsibilities. I work full-time in a job that I find exhausting and frustrating, and I spend more than an hour a day commuting to and from work. I feel as though I have less time, and when I do have time for running/writing I feel too tired to do either.

Maybe it’s time that I try out a regimented lifestyle. I don’t think I will enjoy the regiment, but surely it’s better than the current alternative which is a lack of progression in my academic/fitness life.

To be honest, our Orlando experience did not leave me with a fantastic impression of Disney hospitality and service. We enjoyed Walt Disney World, but we found the staff to be less friendly and polite than Disneyland (and in fact we sometimes found the Orlando staff to be sarcastic, indifferent, or sometimes rude). We were also not particularly impressed with the services including the unreliable Disney bus transportation. Still, I recognize that Disney is huge and that the hospitality and tourism industry must have enormous turnover, so the fact that our experience was as good as it was, was remarkable.

My original interest in this book was mostly curiousity, but as I listened, it caused me to critically reflect on my own work environments and how I perceived my managers. I concluded that I had had a couple amazing supervisors who truly exemplified the qualities honoured by Disney. Those two jobs were ones where not only did I feel like I was making a meaningful difference, but I was excited to push ,myself and learn new skills on the job.

Unfortunately, I also recognized several issues that are likely the source of my frustration, discouragement, and general apathy at my current job. I began to make a list of all the things that were wrong with my current job environment and how all of it was someone else’s fault. Thankfully, before this got too out of hand, I decided to take a different approach. Rather than use this book to condemn my work environment, I used the advice to reflect on my limited scope as a leader and supervisor. I came up with a list of several things I would like to try implementing:

1. Make a comprehensive list of job duties for the graduate students that I supervise.
2. Schedule regular weekly meetings with ALL of these grad students, and use that time for mini TESOL professional development session should they not have any specific questions/concerns.
3. Share “good” gossip about what these teachers are doing with one another. Help them feel a sense of community and feel comfortable contacting and interacting with one another.
4. Prepare an agenda and email it out to all staff members who attend our weekly staff meetings.

Ironically, as I look at this list now, I realize that those are all things that I used to do at my last job. And they worked. So why did I stop? I think the adjustment to the new job, the confusion that I experienced for the first 8 eights as a result of no training or orientation, and the lack of co-worker support (I’m basically on my own here) all wiped me out. I feel as though I have been operating at a reduced level of effectiveness, and it hasn’t gotten any better this summer when I had to run a summer program with even less support (and still plenty of teacher problems).

Yet, I am determined to improve my outlook and my productivity. It’s not easy, but as Cockerell states, “It’s not the magaic that makes things work; it’s the way we work that makes things magic.” I don’t have to have a perfect job to feel good about my ability; I need to feel good about my in order to develop this job into something that is meaningful and successful.