Authentic Collaborative Classroom

From the books, I learned from experts two things about collaboration in the classroom: one it can engage the students into active learning among themselves; another it can meaningfully involve the learners into self-regulated learning. In these two conditions, the teacher is a facilitator and process moderator in setting the classroom conditions to support and meet the learning requirements and allow for authentic learning experiences to take place.

I feel that I sound so rhetorical in my introduction, well that was the same how the books I read taught me - use big words to catch the acedemic reader's attention, then stiffen their neck in their attempt to understand the buzz. I thought engaging the learners into collaboration simply ends in keeping them busy with group works, paired works, or triadic exercises. And, as long as I could sense that the students are happy with what they are doing, such form of collaboration should be considered a success. From books, I am now thinking out of the box.

I realized that a collaborative classroom is more than engaging instructional activities, where learners learn with other learners. I realized further that a collaborative classroom should apply the engaging principles of shared responsibilities across the various aspects of instruction. It's not too late for me to learn this, after teaching for more than a decade. I had regrets though, wishing that I had learned this from the start of my teaching career - to make a collaborative classroom work, students must take part in all the essential processes in learning and in teaching. My reflection made me aware that students need not be passive listeners. Instead, they should be motivated by actually driving them into learning by doing. This can be done in various ways.

One way is to have the students read, think and talk about what the teacher is supposed to know. Applied to the routinary lecture, the variation is that students must be given more opportunity (time particularly) to process the content in their own way. Here, the teachers are the ones who should listen more, to guide the students through the right concepts with inquiries coupled with genuine affirmations.

Another way is to enable the students to process learning-content through group activities. In such interfaces, the students are to be guided and monitored in their discussion or work task. The expected outcomes and the ways in which the students will be evaluated, must also be placed as collobarating classroom decision. With this decision-making on setting expectations and measures of evaluation, the students views are acknowledge and further refined so that they may align to meet desired learning outcomes.

These two ways are just the tip of the iceberg of classroom collaboration. My point is a little radical - that I now see the silverlining of involving students in the aspects of setting classroom rules, developing test instruments, deciding on topics to be included in the discussion, setting deadlines for work submissions, presenting the lesson content, planning and implementing instructional activities, and evaluating the teaching-learning processes. These are but a few, I have in my consideration of effecting authentic classroom collaboration.

Such idea of authentic classroom collaboration may sound to be a new nomenclature. But I speak with my naive knowledge of my native experience as a teacher. An authentic collaborative classroom has depth and breadth to encourage student participation in constructing active, engaging, motivating, responsible and self-regulated classroom: a classroom that recognizes individual uniqueness and learner diversity driven together to meet the desired learning outcomes.

I have tried and succeeded in many of the other things I have mentioned about the application of the concept of authentic collaborative classroom. It will bring me joy to describe them in my succeeding blogs, because reflecting on my practice enables me to a better teacher.

Classroom Negotiation

I am a college teacher. It is something unusual for me to be handling the same class section for three terms in a row.

The first term with them was manageable enough for me. The space between me and my students were never violated. We could go through the lessons within the time frame, and the class could demonstrate learning in terms of their performance.

The second term with the same section did not not need further introduction. We knew each other, and I could sense that our relationship is at the personal level. Some students had violated my private space, in groups they would hug me when I entered and left the class. This class performed least compared to the other classes I handled. Their formative assessment scores were low, and their grades as well.

The third term is another story unfolding. Things has started to get chaotic - a poor picture of classroom management. My students during lectures had not been paying full attention during the discussion and lecture presentation. Most of them would like to sit at the far ends of the classroom. Most of them would cram in doing their Math assignments for their next class. In my face they would do that, and while I talk they would as well talk.

That was three weeks past the start of the third term. I let them did what they wanted because I thought that I should just let them be who they are. I felt the burden on my shoulder. I felt that what I was doing was not so effective. I tried to fill the room with my voice, to get my the lesson content through their ears, while many of them busied themselves in off tasks talks with their seatmates. I felt so exhausted and drained in that particular class, and I just don't have enough energy to move to my other class. My voice, hoarse, my throat tired, my head oblivious of what's going on. There was just something wrong, I thought.

That tinkled in my mind through several nights. I changed strategy. I made the lessons more multisensory, and engaged them in activities. Yet, those could only hold the order through the activities of engagement. At processing time, I am overwhelmed by their energy. Everybody is just talking, some meaningless, more funny but senseless.

The breaking point, Alas. I got filled to the brim. Asking my students to rephrase, paraphrase and infer from Descartes famous quotation "I think therfore I am", one student mumbled: "I think... we should stop this non-sense". The assasin just got loose and pulled the trigger right into my temple of consciousness. The bang was killing, the message in blood red wall wrote: "SOMETHING IS WRONG". I thought, I was not making sense at all.

I got to pull my pride back, put myself again to where I should be. So I delivered a litany. "That was just disrespectful. If everything was non-sense, you are free to leave this room. Out and find what is sensible for you that you may find. I think, that makes the difference of a man from other lower creatures. Man's capacity to think makes him superior in this world. This is my world. You may have your world, but I don't want to be in that kind of world you have. If you want to be in my world, be here and nowhere else".

Silence. Five minutes of that restful moment and the bell rang. Off I left the room.

The next meeting. That student came to me, admitted his fault and apologized. I told him that he can only consider the apology he asked granted when he could show some change. A week after then, he did show some interest and participated more meaningfully.

But the problem isn't over yet. Througout some lessons we had, they could only pay attention for a few minutes. I understand the empirical data on attention span, and because of that understanding, I try to be more conversational in the approach of delivering the lesson. I saw the same pattern of behavior of disengagement, loss of order, voices everywhere.

Last monday, I had to deal with the problem, I had to open the negotiation table and set things straight them. This is what I never really did - to engage them in setting out the class house rule.

I ought to learn teaching

It was the full moon that greeted me good nite, as I walked my way out of the UP College of Education. The air was smooth and cold, and I thought "educators just have so many things that they should be knowledgeable about." So many things, I told myself. I have to learn them too.

I am an educator, by the mere fact that I am teacher. But am not a teacher educated to be a teacher. Serendipity and my irritation to the routines of magazine editing and writing brought me to the academe. I took chance of deviating and mimicking my previous most hated and idolized professors. That's how I learned to tie the ropes, so I survived a challenging decade of being a communication educator locally and abroad.

Tonight was our second meeting for EDUC 380. It is one my cognate course that I took the liberty of enrolling because I felt I needed to learn my craft. Well I have been in the academe for almost 13 years, yet I still find myself inadequate. I guess I am an evidence that learning is indeed lifelong. Oh, there are really a lot that I should learn. Now I think the non-formal education I gained from my teaching experience was not just enough.

Experience may come as an excellent teacher, but only for that particular experience. Teaching is more than an experience. Experience alone could not make one an excellent teacher that he could be. My dear professor in that course encouraged me, that it would not be difficult for me to learn in that seminar on college education. She explained that what I would learn are the appropriate labels to preexisting knowledge which I have learned from experience.

What she said was true. However, I find myself in moments of eureka. The greatest of which is the realization that teachers be they young or old must commit to continuous learning. That is where I am now - learning. I am a teacher and I am a learner. I ought to learn so others may learn when I teach. How I wish that I gain more for my students in this endeavor.