Ixchell Reyes
The DIESOL podcast

Brent Warner
Developing Innovation in English as a Second or Other Language,

Ixchell Reyes
Episode 72: 13 Scary practices teachers need to stop doing

Brent Warner
Welcome to DIESOL. This is episode 72. We are your hosts. I’m Brent Warner.

Ixchell Reyes
And I’m the spirit of Ixchell Reyes…

Brent Warner
Oooh – That is super scary.

Ixchell Reyes
So what’s been going on with you?

Brent Warner
We’re gonna we’re gonna be sound FXin’ up this time around. It is the Halloween episode. Yeah, I’m doing okay. How are you?

Ixchell Reyes
Wait, are you done with your 30 days of no social media or stuff?

Brent Warner
30 days?

Ixchell Reyes
What’d you do, a month?

Brent Warner
Well, I’m just keeping on going. I’m not. I’m not no social media. I I just deleted it all from my phone.

Ixchell Reyes
Yeah, well, that’s pretty much

Brent Warner
I mean, it’s significantly less, for sure.

Ixchell Reyes
Yeah.

Brent Warner
No more doom scrolling for the most part.

Ixchell Reyes
No more Doom scrolling.

Brent Warner
But yeah, it’s going well, I’m I’m super happy to not have it all on my phone and to have a lot of those apps and other things.

Ixchell Reyes
The Purge!

Brent Warner
It was big time. And I don’t, I don’t have any intentions of going back or putting those things back on my phone at this point. We’ll see what happens. But for now, I’m feeling pretty good. Other than that, anything exciting going on for you.

Ixchell Reyes
Um, Halloween is pretty exciting. I’m trying to choose a Halloween costume. And right now it’s between Minnie Mouse and Maleficent.

Brent Warner
Nice. Weirdly, those are my same choices too, that I’m thinking about trying to get so

Ixchell Reyes
Oh you – then then hands down you’re Minnie Mouse. I’m Maleficent.

Brent Warner
There we go. Yeah, and then also a Fall CUE is coming up next week after

Ixchell Reyes
and where is it taking place?

Brent Warner
So speaking of scary, speaking of scary, it’s in by itself. This is already scary, which is Stockton, California.

Ixchell Reyes
No and no offense to our stock – Stockton fans or the Stockton community

Brent Warner
okay, no joke, though. There is a serial killer in Stockton right now. And it is like, kind of gnarly to be going in there. And so my wife’s like, you’re not going out at night. What as soon as as soon as it gets dark, you got to lock yourself in your hotel room and stay until the sun comes out the next day and all this stuff. So I’m like,

Ixchell Reyes
and we know that for Fall cue that’s probably not happening because it’s all the meetups. It’s like to have

Brent Warner
I know, I know… all the fun stuff. Well, the problem is, so when I signed up all the hotels were kind of booked out, like all the all the local hotels that were part of the conference, were kind of booked up. And so I ended up getting one that’s like 10 miles down the dirty Farm road, alone by itself. And I’m like, maybe that’s not such a good idea. So I’m gonna go back.

Ixchell Reyes
Don’t please, please take an Uber to your destination, don’t…

Brent Warner
I? I am going to have my own car. So I’ll be fine. They’re

Ixchell Reyes
great. Yeah. When’s when’s fall cue happening.

Brent Warner
It is well, after the release of this episode, it will be the fall of the following weekend. So if you’re listening on the 17th, when this comes out, it starts on the 22nd and 23rd.

Ixchell Reyes
Awesome. So we’ll find out if Brent survives Fall CUE in the November episode.

Brent Warner
Can you imagine how dark it would be if I if something did happen to me? And there were no more episodes of DIESOL?

Ixchell Reyes
Don’t say that.

Brent Warner
Anyway, I’m a little I have a dark sense of humor in a lot of ways. But I’m like, I’m thinking about that like as, like, Oh, that would really be a rough final episode.

Ixchell Reyes
The DIESOL podcast! I am your host Ixchell Reyes and the spirit of Brent Warner (laughter)

Brent Warner
Flipping it on the head. All right. So all sorts of scary things going on. And so we are going to talk about some scary practices. 13 Scary practices, teachers need to stop doing.

Ixchell Reyes
All right. So these practices are often ones that you and I have talked about before Brent, or that may be we’ve chatted with other colleagues about and in some cases, from experiences from our own students or from us as students. Yeah, we still see repeated.

Brent Warner
Yeah, well, and I’ll point out to like, I just want to be clear for anyone listening if you do some of these things right now it’s not, it does not make you a bad person in any way, like,

Ixchell Reyes
Oh, totally judging you! (laughter)

Brent Warner
I am very guilty of some of these and like, I have been aware of them as problems in my own teaching for years and years. But like, for whatever reasons, I can’t break the habit either. So, so yes, we’re judging you. But we’re judging ourselves.

Ixchell Reyes
Yeah, definitely like this, these are all something that that I personally have to be aware of as well, especially when we’re when we’re executing one of these strategies. So with that scary practice, number one, teachers need to stop creating group projects that aren’t well thought out, and might end up penalizing a student or placing the burden on a single student.

Brent Warner
So So what does that mean?

Ixchell Reyes
That means, well, first of all, this is I asked an audience on social media, what were some of the scary practices they wanted teachers to stop doing, and I expected my teacher friends to respond, but it was my friends who gave me responses as their experience being students. And the number one thing and I agree with this, because I actually used to hate, I hated group projects, not having roles that are based on different that reflect the strengths of the groups you’re assigning means someone might the overachiever might say, oh, man, I really don’t want to get a get judged on this on the lack of support from my team members. So now I have to do the whole thing. And so that actually does it, you know, doesn’t lend itself to what the purpose of a group project is. But what a teacher can do is make sure that those roles require different strengths. And they’re planned ahead of time. And then always have more roles and the number of students in a group that way, nobody gets stuck with something they don’t want to do. And perhaps allow students, I mean, I don’t like being assigned a role, but allow students to choose their role. And then what you know, the rules that require more responsibilities, and you might want like a particular student being the lead, leave that till the end. So once they’ve selected a role, then say, okay, now I need, you are the point person in this for this project? And that way, everybody has a role already. And then you’re just adding the extra responsibility for the student that, you know, can can be the point person.

Brent Warner
Yeah, yeah. So for sure, and that does take extra planning, because I think one of the nice, one of the nice things for teachers or “nice,” I don’t know, it’s not there phrasing. But I think what happens is, we’re like, oh, group, group project, great, they can figure it out, right, and then just kind of like, leave it to the students. And it’s one less thing on the teacher’s plate, right. And so in a certain way, and so I think that that is what ends up happening is like, you guys are just gonna figure out how to do this together by yourselves. And like, remembering that as teachers, right? As all people, we don’t always work together the best in groups, or we don’t work together in the most efficient ways until we start assigning roles. And until we start saying, like, Okay, I’m gonna be responsible for this, and you’re gonna be responsible for that. But like, many students don’t have that kind of training or understanding of how to scaffold their own teamwork, right. And this is a big part of the conversation that you can actually teach them this skill at the same time. So yeah, I think that one can be can be really powerful. Number two is taking up too much time speaking, rather than letting students do the talking.

Ixchell Reyes
That’s, that’s, that’s our students. The teacher keeps on doing so much. Internally, they’re like, Ah!!

Brent Warner
so this one is a well known, you know, the teacher talk time, right, balancing out the teacher talk time and the student talk time. And, you know, this goes really well with, you know, it’s massive in ESL, right? It was like, how much time are you talking versus how much time are the students talking? And so the idea here is that you want to make sure that you’re carefully weighing the time that you spent talking with the students. And usually that goal is about you know, I mean, the the the goal is 20%, teacher talk time 80% Student talk. That does not always work out, right. Like there are times when you actually need to build and scaffold and kind of help the students get comfortable with what you’re what you’re talking about before they start their talk time. But I think it’s always good to keep in mind as a goal with the recognition that like that is kind of a lot of times it is the rare achievement of actually getting to 80% But if you’re saying, or if you’re saying, hey, I want them to get to 80%, and it’s certainly going to push them a lot higher than what does happen, which is the opposite, right? 20% Student talk time or 15% student talk.

Ixchell Reyes
That’s pretty scary. If this if these students are supposed to be producing, or just think of it, the more you talk, the more you’re robbing them of that time they’re supposed to have and that makes you a scary teacher.

Brent Warner
Right, what’s next?

Ixchell Reyes
All right, scary. Practice. Number three is using a film in class without a specific language or cultural purpose, perhaps, that is clear to the students.

Brent Warner
Oooh Films in class… Are we using them wrong?

Ixchell Reyes
Now films, of course, are fun. But you do need a rationale that’s relevant to the content that you’re teaching. So if you’re showing a holiday film, yes, that may be fun. But what’s the takeaway for the student? What are they going to be applying after they leave your class after they’ve seen the film? Are there phrases that that you could pre teach? Are there idioms they’re going to be hearing? Is there something that students can be listening for? Right, you want them to be still active participants as they’re watching a film and you know not to overload them. Of course, a film is an enjoyable part of learning English, but there may be cultural references that students might need to know ahead of ahead of the film, which means it does have to be prepared ahead of time.

Brent Warner
So really thinking those through right. I think I’d like to imagine that the old days of just like, well, of course, rolling in the TV cart is not a thing anymore.

Ixchell Reyes
Oh gosh, that’s a meme, that’s a meme now, please don’t be a meme. Oh, the teacher’s showing us a film – no work!

Brent Warner
But, you know, it’s like, it’s like the day off and you’re just going to hang out, and there’s no real connection to what you’re actually talking about. Right. So all of those things, but I think the cool thing for a lot of language learners is that there is so much culture hidden and tied into the movies, right? That, that even if you’re not totally focused on specific language focuses, you can still do a lot of cultural teaching through movies and kind of helping people understand things that they might not have seen otherwise. So. So I do like the, the opportunities that come with this. Alright, so next up is letting the textbook guide your teaching. (little girl laughing sound effect)

Ixchell Reyes
That’s creepy! Our listeners are gonna be like spooked every… every… they’re gonna be jumpy after this episode.

Brent Warner
That’s the goal. These are scary practices, we need to stop doing so make everyone jumpy. So. So this is kind of, you know, we obviously talked about textbooks and things like that, if you’re really into this whole, you know, Matt Miller does a whole ditch ditch that textbook thing.

Ixchell Reyes
Yeah, Ditch that Textbook… especially instructions, don’t always…

Brent Warner
And I don’t have total problems with textbooks. So like, so I don’t use textbooks in my classes. But I my students are high enough where I can kind of justify that I was subbing recently for a, you know, a little bit more of like an intermediate or lower level class, and they were using a text and I’m like, okay, I can really see how this does help students through a process. But at the same time, I wasn’t just going to say, Okay, we’re starting on page 17. And we’re gonna finish on page 22. And that’s, and we’re just gonna go through one activity at a time, right, so, so the textbook itself shouldn’t guide your teaching. And the way that I kind of approach it is if you’re going to use the textbook, you know, so for example, maybe the chapters or the units are really good, really valuable, or topics that you know, the students need to learn how to talk about, but that can be a supplement to the things that you’re really customizing for your class and things that you are passionate about. So, you know, if the topic is, let’s go back to going to the movies, right? There might be a couple of good activities inside of there. And I can pick and choose those ones, on top of my own activities that I’m trying to get the students to figure out or play with things that are more relevant because a lot of times by those times, by the time those textbooks come out, they’re like, Okay, you know, it’s it. The the planning for this book started seven years ago, and you know, you’re choosing things that are no longer you know, interesting to students, especially with the you know, like this instant world that we live in and so I think there’s a lot of things to play around with their potentially.

Ixchell Reyes
Alright, scary practice number five that teachers need to stop doing is expecting all students to learn grammar with a paradigm (screamy violin sound effect)

Ixchell Reyes
Yes, we know that grammar itself can be pretty scary, but simply expecting a paradigm to do what you think will do for the students rather than offering Other ways to experience grammar can actually lead a student to think that there’s an old only one way to learn grammar, but you’ve got songs, stories, other media, you know, pieces of music, but there are many, many other ways that students can experience grammar and internalize it. So it’s not just a paradigm. paradigms are there to help some students and we know that the paradigms don’t work for everything. So that’s my my my number five. Yeah, okay, my scary enough. We don’t need to go deeper.

Brent Warner
That’s fair. Totally fair. All right. And number six, treating your adult e ELLs, like children (scary skeletons song)

Brent Warner
spooky spooky skeletons I gotta admit that kids jam – the kid’s jam is really hitting the right places for me.

Ixchell Reyes
I’m glad we can’t see you dancing on this end.

Brent Warner
Well, you can you can see.

Ixchell Reyes
I can see it. The audience can see it.

Brent Warner
That would be scary. So, so yeah, this is the you know, a lot of teachers kind of fall back into like, grabbing teachers resources for kids for eels. Right. And so we’ve talked about this, I’ve complained about this in the past, right? It’s like,

Brent Warner
Comic Sans

Brent Warner
Yeah. Comic sans,

Ixchell Reyes
Comic Sans. We don’t like comic sans on this podcast.

Brent Warner
Those little, you know, like the the graphics that come from Teachers Pay Teachers? Yeah, I did. I used to do every month during Halloween, I would do those hold that whole series of the trash pail teachers, right. So you can go back and search for hashtag trash pail teachers?

Ixchell Reyes
Or that calligraphy that is hard to read for the student?

Brent Warner
Oh yeah. Like all those the ones that are like on the target mugs and things like that? So all of those kinds of things, right? Are you thinking them through carefully? Like are there things that you like, for example, if you’re a parent of a young child, you might be thinking about your kids a lot. And then bringing that into a class for a student, for a class full of like, total professionals, like I’m a doctor in my own country, or, like, I’ve got all of these degrees and in mechanical engineering, right? So are your students into that kids stuff? And there are different parts where it’s like, hey, it might be okay, right, like going through. Going through some kids songs can be easy to understand and to follow along with it can also be totally culturally relevant. So Right. So they can say, oh, okay, this is, you know, we’re about the same age, I grew up in another country, but you grew up in America, and this is an American children’s song that maybe most people around my age would know, or be able to reference, that is totally valuable, right? And so you can see where there are parts of these, but are you choosing it for that and to make sure that they understand those aspects? Or is it like just a kid song that is, like simple and easy, you kind of want to balance those things out where you’re trying to figure out what is appropriate, like, simple and easy to access language doesn’t mean child’s language or child or approaching to children. And so I think that’s a, a break that a lot of people really need to figure out for themselves.

Ixchell Reyes
Yeah, and here’s an idea I’ve had when we don’t have something it means that doesn’t exist or you don’t have access to it. So just build it, have the students build it, draw from the students experience, and then you know, again, of course, this takes more time, but then you’ll have something that you can reuse or you can pull from

Brent Warner
Right, right (scary train whistle)

Brent Warner
all right. So quick break. If you are looking for any consultation or training at your institution, we are open up a few limited spots here and there. So feel free to reach out to us we can help you with some things around developing your team better or interacting with your students. And you know, you can work with either one of us if you like. And yeah, you know, we’re kind of available we’re both fairly busy so so we have had to turn down requests in the past but if we can make it work, we will certainly want to do it and we want to help out and don’t feel afraid to reach out and let us know.

Ixchell Reyes
Right, scary practice number seven. banning the use of L1

Brent Warner
Yep. Oh,

Ixchell Reyes
that’s a scary I thought your voice was a scary

Brent Warner
sorry. My role is to play sound effects.

Ixchell Reyes
So banning the use of L1 when the L1 can be used as a bridge for better content understanding now I of course, keeping in mind that the focus is on the additional language this because we’re talking about English, but but you’ve got to discern when using the L1 is actually going to help you to get through the rest of the L two or whatever language you know, whatever language it is for the students to help you get through the content because of if you’re going to spend 10 minutes trying to get the student to explain something that they don’t have the vocabulary for, when you could simply give them the word and you can move on, then that’s good use of that one as a bridge. Apps no scary if you ban it, please absolutes are just not a good idea.

Brent Warner
And speaking of absolutes, number eight, enforcing absolute deadlines with no exceptions. (Weird sound effect)

Ixchell Reyes
That’s creepy – the deadline creeping up on you and you’re right, submitting something right at the deadline.

Brent Warner
This is just to be clear, like I have not vetted any of these sound effects. I’m just playing around ones as we go, but it works. So yes, and I am dealing with this a lot right now. Because I’m playing around with a lot of deadline conversations with my students and like how it works. But you know, deadlines do matter. I really, I really do believe that they do matter in certain ways. But not in all situations. Right. And so or, or hard deadlines are, you know, much more rare than rarely needed, then, you know, kind of softer deadlines, right? You can pick things that are for example, like, Hey, I’m going to be grading this assignment here. On Monday afternoon, for example, but a lot of times teachers would make it like Sunday night at midnight it’s due. And it’s like, well, I’m not going to be grading until Monday afternoon. So why is the deadline, you know, 12 or 14 hours ahead of that, and they’re just going to be sitting there in a repository waiting, right? And then the other thing is, like, you we kind of want to think about ourselves, right? I’m going to make a strong assumption that everyone here has asked to submit something late at their work or in their in their own school life, right, because of a personal emergency. And a lot of times as teachers, we kind of get into this policing spot, right? It’s like, are you assuming that the student’s emergency isn’t real? Or like you should be the person to make that determination, when it’s really not gonna hurt you too much to say, Yeah, I have an extra day to get this done. Right? It’s okay. Grading essays, for example, like, Hey, here’s the deadline, I’m gonna get through 10 of them today. And I’m gonna get through 10 of them tomorrow and 10 The next day, right? So so you might be able to say like, it’s okay to be a little bit loose. Or maybe if the students have to reach out like, it’s not a perfect thing, right? You can set up different systems to make these work. But I would say just no exceptions. I have in the past, I’ve had a few teachers that are just like, No, this is absolute deadline. If it’s not in on time, you get an F and it’s like, Well, does that F then reflect what the student’s actual knowledge on the content is? Or does it reflect that they just didn’t turn something in? And what is your job as the teacher, right? And then now, those are the things we’re all kind of coming into these considerations for recently.

Ixchell Reyes
All right, number nine, assuming that students who might challenge the teacher are being disrespectful? (laughing sound effect)

Brent Warner
How long is it gonna?

Ixchell Reyes
Is that someone being disrespectful toward me?

Brent Warner
Yeah, that’s the sound of a student laughing at you.

Ixchell Reyes
Yeah, so you know, when students and of course, this is going to arise, this has happened to me, when students are challenging the teacher, this could be a time for dialogue, it could also help to break down any or to address any breakdown in communication that might be due to cultural diversity, it’s a good time to remember that. It might just be that a student is frustrated, or that the teacher is frustrated at something. And oftentimes, it’s because the communication isn’t clear. So often, you know, before reacting and assuming that a student’s doing it just because they’re disrespectful, might actually hurt. And it’s a chance to build rapport, whether it’s for a content point, or maybe the student is saying, Well, you never let us use our phones to to look for a picture and I just happened to be looking for a picture of what you’re saying. Just Just think about it. Right now. Don’t assume that it’s automatically disrespect.

Brent Warner
Yeah. And this is not exactly the same thing. But it reminds me of a time many years ago and I didn’t love this situation, but there was a student discipline issue, right and, and I had to talk to the student about it and I was caught in my own culture and he was caught in his own culture. So he was like a Chinese student and I was talking about the problem. And it was happening over and over again. And I was upset and unfortunately, so like I said, you know, hey, look at me when I’m talking to you about this, because he kept looking down at the ground looking down at the ground looking down on the ground, then later, I realized, oh, like, you know, in his cultural context, if you’re being yelled at, like, you shouldn’t, you should be respectful and looking down in my cultural context, you should be respectful and looking at me in the eyes and understanding, right, and so, so then, so then, and then I was the person with the authority and the power there. And so it was like, I was breaking the cultural, you know, it was like this whole thing. And I felt, you know, I even still today I feel bad about it, because I was like, oh, is unclear, and it wasn’t helpful for that situation. But it was about, you know, now I can kind of understand that cultural context and trying to understand it better as well.

Ixchell Reyes
So Brad, I think maybe what I would, I would like to rephrase this as more of the scary practices really not being aware of cultural differences and how they’re interpreted because I just remembered in some cultures, they’re more expressive with their bodies. So if they’re shaking a finger in front of you, that might mean emphasis on their and but to us might be a threat or to a Western from America. You know, in America, a Westerner in America might think, Oh, they’re threatening me or they’re angry. And that might not be it. They’re just, it’s like bolding a word, right? And so again, that’s pretty scary, can be pretty scary.

Brent Warner
Okay, number 10. Recycling without reflecting on classroom activities. Alright, so this one shows like, you know, you’ll do an activity in class, and it kind of works, it kinda doesn’t work. And so So, and then you put it away, and you kind of forget about it until the next time you run the class, and then you bring it back. And you’re, and that same problem comes up again, right? And so I think this is this happens a lot, right? Because we were busy things, things go on. And we’re like, okay, it’ll take a note to remember to fix that next time. But where is that? No, right? How is what is your technique for making sure that you actually fix it the next time around. And so that can be a big one, here. And so that might be a reflection that you missed out on. And then another one is, like, kind of tied into that is? So for example, if you’re looking at an activity that worked, but it’s kind of heavy on the teacher talk time, right? So we talked about that for, you know, number one, or number two? And so how can you maybe adjust your lessons where you’re reflecting on and going, well, how can I make more student talk time. And I think here, I don’t love this example, I just kind of came up with it. But if we’re talking about an activity like popcorn reading, which I understand that it has its own problems with popcorn reading, but the popcorn reading is where the teacher reads a line, and then they call on another student to read a line, and they call it another student to read lines. Well, if you’ve got a class of 30 students, that’s pretty much at all times 29 of them are sitting there just listening. And, you know, one is one is speaking out, right? So you could maybe adjust that lesson or just adjust that activity to say, Well, hey, let’s do baby popcorn groups, right? Where you’re like, in groups of two or three people, and then at the same time, you’ve got, basically, you know, 15 students out of the class, all reading and all talking at the same time, instead of just one, right? And then then they’re the time in between, while they’re waiting is much, much shorter. So you have them actively working in actively producing language. And so, again, popcorn not the best example. But the concept behind that, right is, I can make an adjustment to the way that I’m running this lesson in order to give more time back to the students and less time for me as the teacher.

Ixchell Reyes
Right. Okay, number 11. Expecting younger students to be experts with tech.

Ixchell Reyes
Silence is scary, dead silence that was dead silence. Okay. All right. No, just because their students are younger or different generation than you are does not mean that they’re, and they, you know, obviously, they have cell phones or more mobile devices, and we were used to as kids, doesn’t mean that they’re going to be experts with tech. It’s our job as a teacher to be the model. So we need to be the one who knows how to troubleshoot or has tested something before deploying it in the classroom. expecting students to do that work is really not that’s not that’s not appropriate. Yeah.

Brent Warner
And there’s a lot of information out there nowadays, that like, younger people are actually less savvy in terms of like problem solving with technology because they’ve because things are actually better design now, so they don’t know so much how to make those adjustments or how to figure out how to solve the problems because they haven’t had to do it with, you know, all of the kinds of poorly designed programs that we

Ixchell Reyes
can’t wait. Right. And they’ve experienced a world with mostly tech. So they they don’t know what it’s like to have no tech and then have to work through it, as you said.

Brent Warner
Yeah, so those can definitely be problematic. Next one, number 12. Is and this one might be controversial, but it’s

Ixchell Reyes
Yeah, make sure the recording doesn’t stop. Oh, yeah. Mysteriously in the middle of this one.

Brent Warner
Yeah. So we got we got stopped in the middle, the recording actually stopped us. So maybe like the tech gods are saying, don’t listen to Brent, when he says, Stop running high flex classes.

Brent Warner
So again, no, it’s played. Are you not here in the blah, blah? Still go in so long? What’s going on? I’m not I’m not taking this, I’m not repeating it. Okay, so. All right, this sound is something screaming, I don’t really know. But yeah, running high flex classes. So if it’s not clear, high flex classes are the ones where you’ve got some students physically in the class and some students online. I don’t remember I know I’ve talked about this in different places before, I am quite opposed to this practice, I get that it can work. In some cases with the smaller the classes, the easier it is possibly to do this. But overall, HyFlex is an inequitable practice, right, you’re you’re not going to be giving as much attention to, to one group of students. And that’s almost inevitably going to be the students that are on for example, zoom, while you’re walking around the class, helping the students that are physically there and present in front of you, you will also be able to better pick up on the voices of the students that are in the room rather than the ones that are online. Otherwise, you’re putting on your headphones, and you’re then ignoring students that are you know, the other way around. Maybe you’re not even putting on headphones, but you just can’t hear the speakers are muted. I don’t know, there’s all sorts of potential problems running between the two students or teachers, I just want to point out teachers can be successful at some levels of high flex, but it’s so much more work for the teachers to do that too. And so I, I always say like, if you’re teaching a high flex class, you should get paid twice as much for it, because you’re doing twice the amount of work to make it work if you’re trying to do it properly. So inequitable, you know, disadvantages certain students. It sets up all sorts of problems, the technology, the the massive bandwidth, we really would need to make this successful just isn’t really there. And so for me, I’m going to say stop talking about Hi flex, let’s get it off your radar.

Ixchell Reyes
And the scariest of all, teacher practices that should be stopped is number 13. asking, Does everyone understand?

Ixchell Reyes
So, yeah, this makes the assumption that students who are being quiet and just nodding that they understand what you’re talking about, and there are so many reasons why students could just simply be agreeing with the teacher. Some of them may be cultural, it’s not polite to disagree with the teacher. Some of them may be embarrassed, because maybe you’ve maybe they think everybody else understands. So why should they show that they don’t understand and slow down, you know, the teacher, or it could be that they just don’t want to slow the teacher down or don’t want to disappoint the teacher, or feel like the teacher wasn’t effective, make the teacher feel like they weren’t effective. And so simply asking that close ended question is, it’s just scary. Just stop doing it. Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. There are so many more ways of checking understand for understanding. And this gets done. I have caught myself doing it sometimes. And so I have to remember to okay, if I’m gonna say this, everyone understand that? They say yes, I have to say right after that. All right. Let’s see, show me that you understand in another way. Because it just made a maybe a habit of us saying, and so that’s habits are hard to break. So the more you’re aware of it, the less likely you are to repeat it.

Brent Warner
Yeah. Yeah. So my version of that is, does that make sense? Right, which

Ixchell Reyes
I know Yeah, we’ll still be on the same page.

Brent Warner
Yeah. And then it’s kind of you’re good. Are you good? Everybody, okay, ready to go? And then it’s like, and part of it is, theoretically, it’s like the teacher is kind of saying, Okay, we’re ready to move on to the next thing, right, we need to get we have time limits, and we need to get to the next thing. And so I can’t spend another five minutes answering questions. Maybe anything read that? Yeah, right. Right. Yeah. So so maybe you need to. There’s also assumptions that like, the students who are quiet and kind of like, Do Good job. Like they’re sitting in the back nodding. And it’s like, okay, they get it, right. It’s like, well, do they really get it? So I like the the version of it. That is, what questions do you have? Right? So

Ixchell Reyes
Yeah – “what questions do you have?” Yeah.

Brent Warner
that’s the classic way to spin it and to make sure and so you can say like, Okay, we’ll move on to the next we’ll move on to the next activity after I’ve answered three questions or something like that.

Ixchell Reyes
Yeah – Right. And if you’ve, if you already know that you have a class of maybe the chemistry doesn’t gel well, or there because of personalities tend to be shy or or quiet, or it’s a different cultural or whatever background, just say, Okay. I’ll take one question from each one, take some time, write it down. Because that also now gives the student a chance to think of the question and not be put on the spot, which is pretty scary.

Brent Warner
It can be. Absolutely.

Ixchell Reyes
Do you understand? Does that make sense? We’re on the same page about that.

Brent Warner
Yeah.

Ixchell Reyes
Okay. Well, moving on. Please don’t do that (laughter)

Ixchell Reyes
All right, it is time for our fun finds. And it is Hispanic Heritage Month. And so I have a and it’s also a kind of it kind of goes along with also Native American or indigenous peoples recognition month, in many places. So I chose a playlist on Spotify. And this is a beat ECWA playlist and you’ll get it on the show notes in the show notes. This is indigenous music from me truck on Mexico. And there are songs being sung in a language called the rascal. So awesome. Can you sit? Can you say that that law school beat UCLA? did a pretty good proud of you?

Brent Warner
Thank you. Yes, teacher. Yeah. And indigenous peoples day, I was talking about this with a colleague. You remember, we used to have Columbus Day off and then now that they switched it to indigenous peoples day.

Ixchell Reyes
Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. We still have Columbus Day off here and moss date?

Brent Warner
Oh, do you guys get to call it indigenous peoples there? Do you have to call it now?

Ixchell Reyes
We call it Columbus Day. And we got it off. So yeah.

Brent Warner
Okay. Well, in California, we switched it. So it’s not much better that we call it now indigenous peoples day, but we stopped giving the day off for people. So it’s like, well, wait a second. Anyways, it’s its own conversation. Inequities abound. My fun find. So Ixchell, I’m not sure. So with that earlier conversation about you know, getting rid of social media on the phone, I have a lot more free time. I’m not. I’m just not watching dumb videos on rediscovered yourself. So I started playing guitar. I picked it up about 20 years after the first time I picked it up. You know, it’s been like 25 years. 25 years. Yeah, I was like a teenager when I’m trying to play a little bit. And when I was younger, anyways, I’m like, okay, it is time. Like, I want to have a hobby that I can just kind of pursue for the rest of my life. And so I picked up guitar total, totally terrible at it at this point. But I will be working on it. But I found this app called Yousician. It’s very popular. But basically what it does is it turns playing music into a video game, right. And so it does like all these things. It’s like Guitar Hero. So you play the chords and it tells you you strummed it right, or if you put your picking and you’re like picking and trying to play along with different songs are whatever. Anyways, it’s pretty cool. It tells you like how accurate you are. And you can kind of play through it. I want to be a little bit careful about it. Because I am reading and you know, just understanding pedagogy is like, when you’re playing that as a game, it’s not necessarily the same thing as processing, the actual, the full playing. So you kind of want to treat it like practice and do some on your own where you’re actively thinking through the process of playing. And then you can also use this as ways to kind of practice and build for yourself. So but it is great. It’s pretty fun. And if if you’re thinking about picking up an instrument, I think it’s got piano guitar, banjo bass. Cool. I was about to ask that. Yeah, so it’s got it’s got a few different ones on there. And then like, depending on the levels, like I’m starting off, obviously, as a total beginner and so I’m just kind of trying to learn some basic chords and basic, basic techniques and things like that, but then it kind of it grows as your abilities grow to as it gets harder and harder as you keep going. So if you’re thinking about picking up an instrument, one way to support that might be Yousician. And Oh, get a point out. I think it’s a little expensive for like a year subscription, something like 120 bucks or something like that. But then I thought, like, how much is a single guitar lesson? It’s like 50 bucks or 60 bucks right or something like that. So depending on again, it could be 20 bucks but even still, it’d be like a month worth of lessons. And here you get to do it for you get a whole year’s worth for that price. So once you start figuring out like how you’re comparing the prices, it’s actually not too bad a deal. Very cool.

Ixchell Reyes
Yeah. All right, it is time to wrap up. Please leave us a review on Apple podcasts or share the show with your colleagues. We really do enjoy hearing back from people who found us you could tag us on social media who knows you might be our next guest.

Brent Warner
For show notes and other episodes you can find our show at DIESOL.org/72 And of course you can listen to us at voiceED Canada. That’s a v-o-i-c-e-d.ca. We are on Twitter. You can find the show at @DIESOLpod and you can find me at @BrentGWarner.

Ixchell Reyes
You can find me at @Ixy_Pixy that’s I x y underscore p i x y

Brent Warner
In English, the scariest of all languages. Thank you is Thank you. So thank you for tuning in to the DIESOL podcast.

Ixchell Reyes
Thank you