In my imagination, one benefit of my move to Germany was the possibility of becoming a learner again. Not the learning from idle curiosity, as when I attend advance math seminars and workshops, but a learner of necessity. In reality many Germans have good communicative competence in English, but to really get by in this country and culture I need to learn German.
Why is becoming a learner of value to me as a teacher? I am reminded of some of the issues that learners face, and so can re-sensitize myself and, perhaps, adjust my teaching practice to become a better teacher.
I got two lessons yesterday. Lesson one; communications. My German teacher for some reason changed his Zoom information, and he posted a message with the new log in information in a Whatsapp group that most members of the class belong to. I suppose many people keep their phone by their side at all times and as soon as a message comes in to social media, they stop what they're doing and read it. I don't.
I have a full-time job as a teacher, and I don't interrupt class to stay up-to-date with the social media world. By the time I got to my phone, the message in question had been pushed far up the thread, buried in smiley faces and people chit-chatting about various uninteresting (to me) topics. It never occurred to me that my instructor had posted a vital piece of information 8 or 9 screens up the scroll, and I didn't look.
So when class time came, I attempted to log in. And I sat in the waiting room. I glanced at whatsapp to see if there was anything happening, and there was a note from the teacher saying, "sorry I have problems to login now. gimme a sec pls." So I waited. No idea he was talking about the new room number.
After a few minutes the chat in whatsapp stopped, but I still had not been admitted. So I waited. I checked my email to see if there were any notifications. And I waited. I sent an email asking if they're still having trouble. I checked whatsapp again and there was no information. So I posted there asking to be let in.
Only then did the teacher send a second message about the new room. So I switched and got into class a half hour late. To an empty room (it turned out that everybody was in Breakout Rooms working on some exercise). When breakout rooms closed and everyone came back, I was left to fend for myself with no briefing on what I had missed. Language classes are very fast-paced. I was allowed to experience in much greater depth than I ever hoped for the feeling of being completely lost in a class, where everyone else appears to understand, and not wanting to ask for additional explanations. Wow!
One of the ideas I've been increasingly convinced of is Cognitive Load Theory. I was 30 minutes behind, I struggled to leaf through the pages of the text book which were clued to me by the current topics in class, and tried and tried to catch up. To no avail, I believe because I was already so far behind that my "working memory" was stretched beyond capacity and I could not get enough additional information in to sort things out. Another excellent reminder, as this is so often the feel that students in Math class have.
What I wanted was for the teacher to pause, and bring me up to date. Even if not reteach everything, at least give a summary of what had passed.
I hope this experience helps make me a better teacher. While I'm not happy to have experienced it (it was extremely frustrating and irritating) I hope to use this to inform my own practice.
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