Teaching to the Eyes

In my last post, I talked about not knowing what students walk in the room with. This was reiterated in the comments on the post and I believe an important discussion was started and is continuing in our blog posts.

This post, as a continuation of my last and the discussion that followed, is to give some concrete, practical ways that one can teach to the eyes. Not all of these may work for your classroom, or for every students. Rather, they can be a guide of options that you can mold to fit the culture of each school, class, and student.

1. Daily Engagement Assessment (DEA) – I’ve been using some form of the DEA for years in my classroom. It has changed and evolved over the years, but its ultimate use stays the same: using the DEA I can quickly assess whether students are “with me” in class or are not. This includes everything from focus to comprehension. When I can see their eyes, I can tell if there is an issue in class the vast majority of the time. From this point on, in this list, if something is included explicitly in my DEA, I’ll mark it with the phrase DEA.
2. Be present, be on time (DEA) – Every teacher wants this. But, this is key in helping students succeed in class. If a student has excessive absences, it would behoove us all to look further into it. Many times what many teachers thought was laziness or a lack of care actually was…. a job to help support the family, having to be home to care for younger siblings, sleeping too late because their work made them stay late (the laws regarding child work are not as tight as we might think!)
3. Eye Contact (DEA) – This has evolved over the years. Rather than eye contact, it means more along the lines of…. “give your attention to the speaker”. This is coupled with another item: sitting up and square shoulders. I must admit I am more a stickler for the sitting up and square shoulders than specifically “eye contact”. Nota Bene: not all students are comfortable with sustained eye contact. This may be misconstrued as not knowing a response or rudeness when in reality it can be a host of other things (I would refer you to the great conversation in my last post’s comments). This is why it is more important that I see their eyes, not that they necessarily see mine. In these scenarios, I have always been willing to make exceptions or alterations to this.
4. Hand Signals (DEA) – I am going to start by saying that I am VERY careful about hand signals. As language teachers, we are all aware of the danger of certain hand signals that are innocent to us but not others. We should also be aware of any appropriation we might make of sign languages. Any hand signals in my room are ASL and are used in a communicative manner. I use hand signals to support students who do not make eye contact regularly, do not wish to speak up all the time, or for other special circumstances. We have signals to indicate – understanding, questions, and immediate needs.
5. Good Will Attitude (DEA) – This may be the most important thing in my room. I am known as a stickler for it, even giving “fair warnings” when I myself am having an off day. This allows for conversation to happen on a personal level if there’s ever an issue.

Some Exceptions:

We all have students who need change and for a variety of reasons. Here are some things I’ve done to make change that works for my classes and students:

• provide a student who speaks out of turn a notebook to record thoughts and questions. Read them every day and respond in kind.
• provide stuffed animals to students who fidget or who have anxiety. Turns out… they love them.
• allow students to draw or trace figures.
• allow students who are tired to stretch, stand, or sit in closer proximity to you (even on the floor)
• provide special hand signals for specific students to signal when something is needed.

Lastly, here is what I tell my students each semester and as needed: We all walk in the room with something and our classes should be a place where we can leave those things at the door to pick up later. I don’t mind if you just want to leave it there. It will be there when you are ready for it again. 

If we work to include all students, no matter what they walk in the room with, we will all be successful.

Neurodiversity in our Classrooms

One of many types of diversity that characterize our classrooms is neurodiversity. As Nick Walker, the scholar behind Neurocosmopolitanism, writes,

We are a neurologically diverse species: the enormous innate variation among individual human bodies extends to our brains, which differ from one another like fingerprints. This diversity of brains means a diversity of cognitive styles, a diversity of innate cognitive strengths and weaknesses, gifts and peculiarities. This is what is meant by neurodiversity.

Neurodiversity thus refers both to the fact of variation among “fully healthy”* brains and to the fact that many brains function differently from such “fully healthy” brains in some way or another (sometimes called neurodivergence). For instance, persons may process visual or auditory stimuli in ways that are different enough from the average to be noteworthy. Persons may be inclined to pay attention to different things, or for different lengths.

Consciously thinking about neurodiversity is fairly new to me, and I am no expert on its implications for teaching and learning. But I invite us to ask questions similar to ones that my colleagues on this blog have often raised:

Does the neurodiversity in our Latin classes and programs mirror the neurodiversity of our schools and neighborhoods at large? If not, should we want it to? Why or why not? What do we do or could we do to take the fact of neurodiversity seriously?

Many of us have developed close relationships with our schools’ guidance counselors, special education teachers, and occupational therapists to learn about how we can help the students they work with thrive, and to emphasize our eagerness to do so.

In parallel with these efforts, we can continue to learn about and make the most of aspects of human experience and learning that may transcend many neurological differences. Some possibilities that come to mind are stories, exploration, and creativity. We can also learn more about what diverse human brains tend to have in common in how they process and create language, and work together to figure out what this may mean for how we help students learn languages in general and Latin in particular.

As I dip my toes into actively exploring a neurodiversity paradigm*, I’ve found Nick Walker’s blog Neurocosmopolitanism especially helpful. Some language teachers have also begun to blog about relevant topics. A great example is Elicia Cardenas, who has shared how she is conducting a “sensory occupational therapy experiment” in her classes.

Whatever thoughts you have or actions you take with respect to neurodiversity in your classes, there is a pertinent principle that applies to all education, but may offer special richness in a language course, given the role of language in exploring and communicating the content of our minds: Get to know your students as well as you can, as much on their own terms as you can, through interactions both with students themselves and with their supporters—guardians, teachers, counselors. And consider and enjoy the ways in which a language course in particular can thrive on students’ getting to know each other better by communicating in the target language.

I would love to hear what you learn in the process!

 

*Check out Nick Walker’s thoughts about shifting from a “pathology paradigm” to a “neurodiversity paradigm.”

Note: Don’t forget that it may be illegal for you to discuss openly the particular ways in which any given student contributes to neurodiversity in your class. Be sure to find out both what is legal and how specific students and families want or don’t want to talk about neurodivergence.

Your Program: Basing it on Acquiring Latin (2 of 3)

My last post followed this logic:

• ALL humans can acquire a second language.
• Few humans learn about languages.
• Programs based on learning about Latin are exclusive.
• Programs based on acquiring Latin are inclusive.
  

This post addresses how to base a program on acquiring Latin. I’ll begin with an important systematic change that otherwise keeps Latin programs exclusive:

**Stop grading and assessing the identification, manipulation, and/or production of forms.**

Without a doubt, this is the most unintuitive concept for any traditionally-trained language teacher (especially Latin teachers) to fully grasp, but it’s really Step 1. Why? All of that knowledge, drilling, and forced expression has very little, to absolutely no affect on acquisition, and has kept Latin classrooms exclusive and elite. Even if it did, your “struggling” students illustrate that not even daily “practice” guarantees mastery within just a few years, which then leads to exclusion if you expect said mastery. An inclusive classroom is not based on conjugating (i.e. even if it occurs sometimes), which is something you simply must acknowledge and change. If your situation requires you to test these things, realize that your program is already at risk of excluding students. See my posts over at magisterp.com on Reporting Scores vs. Grading on how to not count any of that towards a student’s grade, and instead report scores in a 0% grading category that satisfies most department/school requirements.

**Begin grading and assessing for meaning.**

The student who doesn’t understand the case system, but does understand events in a narrative is doing exactly what leads to acquisition (especially if, or maybe ONLY IF they enjoy the narrative content!), and such an expectation fulfills our updated Standards. The student who retells or summarizes a text in the past tense when all of the forms are present is doing just fine. Even the student who interprets the meaning of vocandum as “having to do with ‘calling'” is right on track. Accuracy increases over time with more language exposure, so your expectations should take that into account. If students understand most of the Latin they listen to and read most of the time, they should get the equivalent of an “A.” N.B. grading as NOTHING to do with acquisition, but certainly something to do with keeping your job and keeping students in your classes. Very few people continue doing something they have low efficacy in, so diminish or eliminate those numbers and letters whenever possible.

There you have it—the first change you need to make—even if it’s just a change of perspective. If you don’t, you risk making class more onerous (vs. rigorous) and even more exclusive once other changes towards basing a program on acquiring Latin are made (i.e. beginning to speak Latin yet still explicitly teaching grammar, and continuing to grade and assess just as before).

My next post will continue on how to base your program on acquiring Latin…

**Read the third follow-up post**

I Need to See Your Eyes

We don’t know what our kids walk in the door with. We don’t and there is no way of knowing… unless…

• we make our classrooms safe places.
• we ask our students if they are okay.
• we allow our students to feel successful and enjoy our time and space.
• we teach to the eyes.

The fact is, there are many divisive and marginalising things that happen in our schools and classrooms every day, whether we realise it or not, whether we mean it or not. It is the truth. We cannot control it all, but we can control it in our rooms and in our teaching. Comprehensible Input is key to making this happen.

As teachers, we must make our rooms safe places, and I don’t mean that as a joke. So many times over my years of teaching I’ve heard stories from students asking for advice or help when a teacher allows bullying in a room, or is a bully themselves. We must be the deciding factor when it comes to the treatment of other in our room and we must make sure that the treatment is fair and inclusive to all.

The content of our lessons must be inclusive to our students. The context of our lessons must be inclusive to our students. Our classroom rules, whatever form they come in, must be inclusive to our students.

I plan to discuss some specific strategies for the day to day in a later post, but the key in my room is this: I teach to the eyes. The eyes of a student can tell us so much about what they are understanding, and going through. While teaching to the eyes, we can make quick changes to include more students as well as see just how effective the things we do are. Is a student whose head is down really just tired? Is he giving up because he can’t understand? Is he giving up because he feels he doesn’t have a place in our rooms? It is not his job to make himself feel included in the class and by the teacher. It is our job.

Your Latin Program: Exclusive or Inclusive? (1 of 3)

Some have described the way I teach languages as ideological or dogmatic—other contributors to this blog are no strangers to that criticism, either—and it’s certainly true that a lot of my teaching is directly informed by definitive research, but I no longer feel the need to espouse and cite research to arrive at the following, in classic chiastic (< chiasmus) form:

1) ALL humans can acquire a second language.
2) Few humans learn about languages.
3) Programs based on learning about Latin are exclusive.
4) Programs based on acquiring Latin are inclusive.

Reasons for #1 should be obvious in that all humans are “wired” to communicate. Reasons for #2 are unclear, though lack of interest is most likely the cause—an example of how important compellingness is—but the result of programs focused on learning about Latin has two crystal clear outcomes; at best, very few students remain in the program; at worst, enrollment is less-affected because the program is already exclusive to the few students who learn about languages anyway. In both scenarios, the few exceptional students serve as validation for a Latin program’s success—this in spite of most students who could have been included.

This is a social justice fail.

The question, then, for another post is “how do I base my program on acquiring Latin?”

**Read the second, and third follow-up posts**

Welcome to the Inclusive Latin Classroom

Welcome to ILC!  We are a group of Latin teachers from all over the United States, colleagues and friends, veterans, mid-career and new to the profession.  Between us, we teach Latin in middle schools, high schools, and universities. We all have in common that we have embraced the theories and practices that make up Comprehensible Input.  We are clear that teaching Latin with CI has the power to create an inclusive classroom where all kinds of learners are welcome and capable of progress in the language.

We all want to be better at what we do, delivering the Latin language in understandable messages that are compelling for the success of all kinds of learners.  We know that means continually growing as teachers. We invite you to follow us and to join us here each week to reflect on the issues that face us.

Rachel Ash                                 Miriam Patrick
Justin Slocum Bailey                Bob Patrick
Kevin Ballestrini                       Lance Piantaggini
John Bracey                                John Piazza
David Maust                               Keith Toda