2008 Teacher Retreat

Sunday 8th June - Chuo Surugudai Memorial Hall, Ochanomizu

This year's retreat was attended by: Meg Arai, Clara Chare, Jean Pierre Chretien, Satomi Hatae, Steve Hesse, Christine Horne, Yuriko Ikeda, Greg Lamb, Andy Martin, Susan MacAskill, Milt Miltiadous, Yuji Miyamaru, Saeko Nagashima, Jamelea Nader, Mike Nix, Ellen Scattergood, Nishi Suresh, Zorana Vasiljevic. Mary Jo Pichette joined us (though she's not currently teaching with us) with her colleague from Ferris University, Caleb Pritichard - they are thinking of starting faculty development work with part-time teachers at Ferris.

Many thanks to everyone who participated in the retreat and contributed to another useful day of small group discussions on course and cross-curriulum issues (see the write-ups below), reflective pair discussions, and a final plenary.

1. Write-ups of the discussion sessions

• Introduction to Active Communication

• Basic Research and Discussion

• Writing Courses

• Sports Special Class

• Content-specific and Skills-focused Advanced Classes

• Note-making

2. Discussion on developing the retreats for the future

As well as lots of positive feedback about the retreat this year, there were also quite a few suggestions in the plenary for changing and improving the way we do retreats. To develop that discussion we have asked everybody to let us have their thoughts on the retreats to date and ideas for improving them in future.

Email, July 4th 2008, to all teachers of taught-in-English classes:

In terms of the organisation of future retreat events, below are some ideas that came up at the retreat last month, and since:

• Making the discussion sessions on courses more substantive and focused (perhaps with a facilitator and several participants briefly presenting students' work, worksheets, teaching approaches, etc).

• Making the day shorter and more intensive (e.g., from 10:00 - 2.00), perhaps with a working bento lunch.

• Having training presentations by teachers on teaching topics and approaches (not necessarily relevant to the Chuo curriculum), after the Chuo curriculum-focused discussions (perhaps from 2.00 - 4.00).

• Changing the time of the Retreat to a different day of the week, to a weekday evening, to before the start of term, etc.

• Getting some remuneration from the Law Faculty for participants.

We'd like to take this chance to broaden the discussion into a thorough review of how useful the retreats have been so far and how we can develop these to meet everybody's interests and needs. For this, we'd like to get thoughts from all of you on any aspect of the retreats, including the name 'retreat' itself, the location, timing, length and frequency, the content and organisation of the sessions, how we circulate reports of the events and build on those in the process of curriculum development... anything and everything. Comments on what works well for you now, or has in the past, as well as suggestions for change and feedback on this process are all welcome.

Feel free to send ideas in by email to either Steve or Mike, put them on paper and send them to us via the receptionist in the Teachers Room. You can also tell us in person, but committing your thoughts to paper or e-mail will ensure they remain intact during the collection and discussion process!

We're now in our 7th year of retreats and of pioneering this kind of curriculum and professional development in the Law Faculty. As the Faculty moves towards a new semester system and considers how it can improve its faculty development, this is a great time for us to rethink and renew our own FD work in the taught-in-English programme.

We'd like to get your ideas before summer, so please get back to us by July 18th at the latest. Thanks very much!
Looking forward to hearing back from you on this.

Cheers,

Mike and Steve

Contributions received so far:

• Contribution 1

A suggestion for altered retreat plan
Main points:

1. Divide the sessions into 2 distinct purpose

a. themes that are fixtures in the curriculum

b. themes of current interest to participants

2. Offer incentives for participants to teach workshops

3. Consider alternatives to a Sunday:

1. One session (the morning) could be used to support elements of the curriculum, for example: notetaking techniques, extensive reading, mind-mapping, integrated skills, an overview of the course descriptions and connections. These could be led by the full time staff.

The second session (the afternoon) could be used for workshops of interest to teachers led by volunteers from the staff. Some ideas for workshops include, for example: using ipods, the internet, computers, confidence building,, notebook styles, reading skills, writing skills, TOEIC/TOEFL, sports class, self-study techniques, developing listening skills.

2. A small gift or sum of money would be appreciated

3. Sundays is difficult since for most it is the only day off. Some ideas include holding an overnight retreat at the beginning of Golden Week or during Culture Festival season.

Another idea is to do two evenings at a convenient location and to videotape the proceedings so that people unable to attend could watch the proceedings.

• Contribution 2

CONTENT:

I agree with the idea (in Contribution 1) for

"Having training presentations by teachers on teaching topics and approaches."

This would be more like the presentations/Q&A sessions that many people do at JALT. For instance, I might give a presentation on how I use blogs for the 'language log' portion of my classes. Or one on how to use podcasts in class. Or someone might give a presentation about how s/he organizes a poster presentation on Topic A. Or a presentation on how to use Graded Readers. Or one on a certain 'cycle' for a research essay on Topic X. Or one called something like "How to Get Students Talking in English." I'm sure we all have lots of ideas.

I like the JALT-style idea because it's focused, the presenter is well-prepared, and others can pick and choose the topics that they want to learn more about or contribute to. I've felt in the past couple of years that the 'veterans' end up talking about what they're doing and the 'newbies' listen and get ideas. There's nothing wrong with that, but it would be a more efficient use of the time to plan who is presenting what (and the rest of the 5W1H, too), and -- here is the key for me -- for everyone to be prepared. We talked a little about how it could be made worth our time. I wouldn't expect monetary compensation (although it would be nice and a further incentive to make a good presentation), but we don't get paid for our JALT presentations either. We do get to put them on our CVs, and that's the incentive. Maybe we could print up all the presentations and publish them?

I don't know what the answer to this is, but I do like the idea of focused presentation/Q&A with one or two people in charge of one very specific topic. If the topic is popular, or if people want to see & participate in more than one presentation (and, of course, if the presenters want to go to other presentations too), maybe we could have some presentations going on at the same time, or some people present twice (as we know, presenting twice is a good way to get better at presenting!) Organizing this might take some effort, but if we make deadlines for presentation 'abstracts' and have people sign up for the ones they plan to attend, it could work. It might not work smoothly the first time, but there's no harm in trying. New teachers wouldn't have to present (unless they wanted to), but veterans would be encouraged to.

Another way to make better use of the time might be to have people prepare a mini-speech about what (specifically & with visuals) they're doing in their classes. Meet with all the other people doing the same class, and then end up with something that shows how the class has proceeded so far and goals for the class for the rest of the term. Isuppose what I'm saying is that we should all be better prepared before we get to the retreat, and be prepared to explain (clearly)
what we're doing in our classes, with each person contributing
equally. So this is similar to

"Making the discussion sessions on courses more substantive and focused (perhaps with a facilitator and several participants briefly presenting students' work, worksheets, teaching approaches, etc)."

Having a facilitator is always a good way to use time efficiently, but instead of several participants, *all* participants. If you join the group, you have to present what you're doing (briefly, concretely).

NAME:
I think the name "retreat" is fine. I don't really care what it's called. The label isn't important to me; using our time efficiently is.

PLACE:
The place (central Tokyo) is very good for me. I'd probably go anywhere within the Yamanote LIne,

TIME:
I think a more focused morning-only (or afternoon-only) session is a better idea. But if we have too many people wanting to present, it might take longer. A working brown-bag lunch is a good idea.

I would vote for having this session earlier in the year -- say during Golden Week. It would help new teachers when they really need it, and it would help veterans organize their own ideas before the term really gets started. By GW, we have had two or three classes, so we have an idea about what our students can do and need help with, but the term isn't half over already. I think it would encourage us to be a little better organized in our own term plans.

That's some feedback for now. As you can tell, I'm a bit OCD. I want order, and I expect it of others. I'm all for chatting, too, but I like a good summary at the end: This is what we accomplished today and these are our goals for the next step.

• Contribution 3

• For the discussion sessions on both specific courses and cross-curriculum issues, teachers bring examples on paper to share of what students are doing in class (worksheets from teachers and/or examples of students work).

• For the above, teachers need to keep examples of students' work from their classes to show at Retreats

• A full-day, e.g. 10.00-5.00, with a working bento lunch is okay

• Contribution 4

"Making the discussion sessions on courses more substantive and focused (perhaps with a facilitator and several participants briefly presenting students' work, worksheets, teaching approaches, etc)."
Very important, especially for the newer teachers. I think it's valuable to present some approaches that may differ, but that all seek to help achieve the stated goals of the curriculum. Such presentations may usefully include handouts of presentation cycle frameworks with some clear explanation of how they are used, examples of students work etc. In short, something that approaches how presentations usually succeed in conveying useful information. In order to do this, it would be necessary to have people willing to do this and decide a schedule of events.

"Making the day shorter and more intensive (e.g., from 10:00 - 2.00), perhaps with a working bento lunch."
Yes, a working bento lunch is definitely a good idea.

"Having training presentations by teachers on teaching topics and approaches (not necessarily relevant to the Chuo curriculum), after the Chuo curriculum-focused discussions (perhaps from 2.00 - 4.00)."
I'm not so sure about the 'not necessarily relevant to the Chuo curriculum, I think I'd prefer 'relevant to the Chuo curriculum and as a bonus, probably relevant to other curriculums

"Changing the time of the Retreat to a different day of the week, to a weekday evening, to before the start of term, etc."
If more people are willing to come at a different time than the usual Sunday in June, then having the Retreat at a different time might be Ok. However, I think the central location at the Ochanomizu site is best.

"Getting some remuneration from the Law Faculty for participants."
Nice if it happens.

On the whole, I've found the retreats that I've attended to be very worthwhile. I've always come away with something worth learning. However, it's a good idea to focus more clearly on how we can make the retreats even more relevant to the needs of the participants.

• Contribution 5:

Comment on the 2008 Retreat:

This was my third time attending the retreat and as always, it was very useful and helpful meeting from which I could learn important things. Especially this year I have two new classes among three and I have wanted to reassure of what I have done for the classes and what I should do for the rest of the semester. I got several good suggestions and advice, so that I felt really refreshed and got some positive motivation toward the classes for the the rest of the semester. Even the trivial, small casual talking about the classes and students seemed to be very helpful for my teaching. The Retreat IS the opportunity that I really need for my teaching at Chuo.

• Contribution 6:

Thoughts from before this year's Retreat:

I was talking to some of the teachers who have been at Chuo a long time about the retreat, and it seems like we share a feeling that the retreat isn't always useful for us old timers. It is great to get reminded of how to do things and regain focus. Plus, we really appreciate what you guys do as coordinators to support us and how much that makes our lives better and easier, so we try to come.

But on the other hand, since quite a lot of us work on Saturday, giving up our only day off is quite hard.

So, we want to want to ask you as nicely as possible to consider doing more "workshop" type things where perhaps one of the teachers could actually give a short presentation on something that they do or want to show us. One comment I heard was that Andy often gave us great photocopies of what his students had been doing, but not everyone got to hear how he achieved those things.

These are some of the ideas we talked about, but if you speak to the old timers, I think they'll give you better ideas.

How exactly -step by step- do you get students to write the beautiful note taking examples that are in the blue folders. What do you do in a class when half of them don't /refuse to 'get it' and the other half are doing what you want straight away? How do you bring up the slow ones without slowing down/ frustrating the fast ones?

What is the difference between mind mapping and note taking, which is better for what purpose?

Using some of the equipment in the teachers room that we hardly use anymore, like the tape/ CD deck. How to Incorporate more listening, use Internet teaching sources, and how to use the collocation dictionaries.

Using power point, the projector and the computer in class. Maybe we could try some activities? What practical things does academic literacy include? How can we do those things in different ways?

I personally would really like to learn how to use the readers and how to teach with them. Although, I don't use them at Chuo, its something I'd like to explore for my own personal development. Skills & refresher type things, I guess.

I also, wouldn't mind learning about some of the facilities available at Chuo that part time faculty can use, like the dormitory, libraries, gym? Or cottages? Can we use them? And does the university give any grants to part timers or help fund research, or study skills?

And, it seems like some particular experienced teachers (not me) do give a lot of great ideas & end up teaching a large number of us anyway. Maybe they could get a token gift for doing a proper workshop?

I think the way we have done the retreat in the past needs to change a little bit ( I know I didn't go last year, but...). Plus, it seems like one of the original retreat goals of coordinating and defining the English curriculum, has been largely achieved. Maybe now, we need to think about what all the teachers get out of it and make it more valuable.

And a thought from after the 2008 Retreat:

It has always been really useful to come to the Retreat, but now Sunday is my one precious day off, it's a bit hard. Also, now we have it in the city, the amount of relaxing social time isn't as necessary or as pleasant as when it was it lovely Zushi, so they day could be more compact.

• Contribtion 7.

I've looked at the contributions about the retreat and there are certainly some interesting ideas. Golden Week may not be a bad time - we get to meet the students, and we still have enough energy (and time) left to experiment with new approaches. I am just not sure how many people would be in town. Cultural Festival Week may be too late.

Considering that we all work at different places, having a retreat on a weekday evening may be really difficult to organize, and probably would not give us enough time to discuss too many topics. With regard to topics, I would prefer if they were related to Chuo classes - I think that's what makes the retreat really useful.

I am also not so sure about videotaping discussions. You would probably need 4-5 cameras running at the same time, and I do not think too many people would actually watch those tapes later. Online summaries are probably more effective. I was thinking that maybe we could use those Walkmans in the Teachers' Room to record our discussions - not so much for people who could not attend, but to make life easier for the note-takers. Once we get involved in the discussion, it's really easy to forget about notes, and it's quite difficult to recall it all later.

We'll add more contributoons here as you send them in.....