Down-time Deprived

I have mentioned sleep deprivation in a previous blog, but would like to give it more space here. An interesting testimonial is given here. Thomas is talking about how sleep deprivation affected his personality, how he became more impulsive, irritable with people, less creative. It was also associated with a spiralling depression. People who chronically lack sleep are also prone to micro-sleeps, which is falling to sleep for a few seconds without conscious awareness.

What's interesting about Saudi Arabia is the possibility that many here are affected by a similar condition. Almost everyone I talk to at some point mentions how they feel tired most days (I do, that's for sure). You have to wonder if the high incidence of impulsive risk-taking with driving are because of sleep deprivation. Could the high traffic accident rate be due to people having micro-sleeps at the wheel?

Sleep deprivation is often caused by life stressors. Thomas above began to have insomnia after his divorce. It is said that many come to KSA for 3 reasons: drugs/dry out, divorce, and dough. There are a lot of financial refugees here - I am one of them! Those financial stressors are in the background as we work, and they must re-emerge in our subconscious dreamworld, to reduce our quality of sleep. Addictive cycles have also been associated with a disruption of the sleep cycle, too. One stays up late at night considering all that needs to be done, all the loose ends, making it difficult to get settled and into a relaxed state that precedes sleep.

Interesting article here states that obesity, depression and anxiety all contribute to day-time sleepiness, which in turn is associated with problem behavior, attention deficits and learning difficulties:

Children who have learning, attention and behavior problems may be suffering from excessive daytime sleepiness, even though clinical tests show them sleeping long enough at night, a new study reports. Penn State researchers studied 508 children and found that those whose parents reported excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS) -- despite little indication of short sleep from traditional measurements -- were more likely to experience learning, attention/hyperactivity and conduct problems than children without EDS. The culprits? Obesity, symptoms of inattention, depression and anxiety, asthma and parent-reported trouble falling asleep have been found to contribute to EDS even among children with no signs of diminished sleep time or sleep apnea.

From a socio-cultural perspective, Bedu culture also is a night culture, with people staying up late at night and getting up late in the morning. The mainstay drink here is a strong coffee, and the caffeine does not help. islamic tradition also is influential: as the summer waxes, the sundown prayer time and sunrise times will grow closer together. This culminates in Ramadan, with all-day fasting (making it difficult to sleep), and feasting until the wee hours of the morning. My students are tech addicts, video gaming being one of their primary recreational activities:

Technology can also be blamed for disrupting our sleep. The constant input of emails, texts, and social networking, video and online games, and TV on demand, all the time, puts the brain into a constant active state. A brain that’s wired up has difficulty settling down when it’s time to sleep. Often enough, a person who tosses and turns trying to get to sleep gives up – and goes back to the computer! So much for quieting the unquiet mind!

Staying at home inside (its hot outside) is associated with growing obese. Obesity is a serious problem in saudi arabia. And, tragically, it may also reinforce sleep deprivation:

Sleep-deprived people may be too tired to exercise, decreasing the "calories burned" side of the weight-change equation. Or people who don't get enough sleep may take in more calories than those who do, simply because they are awake longer and have more opportunities to eat; lack of sleep also disrupts the balance of key hormones that control appetite, so sleep-deprived people may be hungrier than those who get enough rest each night.

What to do?

Several ideas sound good to me:

1. avoid napping (which is what I tend to do already);

2. avoid eating before sleeping; I do tend to have a snack an hour be sleeping, and I need to stop that;

3. relaxation before sleep: I have taken up listening to music before, to try to settle down before sleeping;

4. regular schedule: tough to do sometimes because the skyping schedule back home is 7 hours difference, but I try to turn by 10 or 1030PM

5. block noise: I have an air cooler, which circulates water through the machine, and this quiet gurgling provides a white noise which helps to block the noise of my roommates rustlings late at night, as well as the playing of children outside, and other sounds (screeching cars and cats).

Community Conscience

This will be a thoroughly speculative piece. I am wondering about the behavior of the men I am working with here. We live segregated from women 24/7; we teach only male students; and generally, we socially interact with men only, except in privileged circumstances some expats enjoy on the compounds.



No female influence here either

I wonder if the combination of the isolation from women with the stress and anxiety of this controlling environment creates a loss of community conscience? Do women provide a sort of social conscience that is absent when men are put together? That some other type of social order assumes command in its place? That social order is one of “survival of the fittest”: who is the loudest, strongest, smartest vie for social prominence in a way that is more pronounced when women are not present to act as moderators? I have found that a lot of men I am working with have grown less able to control their normally operating social inhibitions. There is a greater frequency of lost tempers, abusive language treatment, carelessness with customary social obligations.

This could be due to simply accumulated stress. It could be just that people are always this way, and their true nature is becoming manifest. Or, it could be that a moderating influence of women on social behavior acts as a brake on male excesses. I have heard that having women drive in KSA would probably do more to improve the quality of driving on Riyadh highways than any speed bumps or added law enforcement could ever accomplish. Is this the case for social settings as well?

In any case, I am sensing a growing amount of tension and “extreme” behavior in people I have come across. It is approaching the end of the year, people want to go back home and re-connect during the vacation period, and relieve some stress. It is also getting hotter; the temperatures are rising, the rain makes everything muggier and more humid. All things put together, this makes for a wild ride in the last month before vacation, so seat-belts are not optional.

The Daily Debacle: Lack of competence, or lack of courage?

Another day, another debacle.

Maccah Road, next exit

There are standards in this place, and they are printed on walls and on posters scattered throughout the campus. The first goal on this list is the following: "To instill in students a sense of responsibility, committment and self-discipline." The mission statement posted on the website states: “To equip the youth of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with the English language skills needed to succeed in their studies, in their society, and in the world. In doing this, we work in partnership with our fellow educators to instill in the students life-long learning habits and respect for self, others and the environment.” The notion of responsibility is key, since this is linked clearly with learning success. Hence, admin has stated in its own very message:

“The [university] will open up many unprecedented opportunities to self-development. Since instilling the principle of responsibility into students is one of its objectives, the [university] will not act as a custodian nor will it hand you everything on a silver platter. Indeed, it will provide you with the development kit and you have to learn, yourselves, how to make use of the available opportunities. You have to take the consequences of your negligence, if there is any, without blaming it on anyone else.”

That responsibility manifests itself in time management, respect for each other and oneself in language and behavior, consistency in class performance, etc. etc. On the other hand, when students are shielded from the consequences of their actions, the invalidation of responsibility-taking takes hold.

One major project involved the students in conducting (mainly secondary) research on a current social issue, presenting their findings to the class, and then handing in a written paper on the work; this had strict deadlines and rubrics for marking. Today, those deadlines were arbitrarily lifted and extended; presumably, students went to admin and complained about a scheduling conflict: the assignment was the same day as a math exam. Admin arbitrarily directed the project coordinator to inform teachers midway through class about the extension. I had pushed and prodded my students to complete their studies for the last two weeks. Invariably there are laggards, and I sternly was telling them that presentations were to be done by tomorrow, and papers handed in after the weekend would be late. That discussion was invalidated by today’s email.

This is the kind of event that happens over and over. Significant numbers of students were over the 50-class absence, and made their to the admin office. They were promptly given 50% more absences to play with, 4 weeks before the end of classes. Thought it was difficult to get projects and assessments done before? Now just try, with students taking their absences as entitled vacations. In the first couple of weeks, students routinely get teachers removed from their classrooms when the teachers have expectations of performance that are above what the students are willing to expend. We are told to be generous in our marking of exams, and that to hold student output to the rubrics in a fair and standardized fashion is to invite reprisal and sanction.



Butler-teacher, serving education

Some would say this is simply a lack of competence, that admin simply does not realize the consequences of decisions made on the day-to-day class management issues faced by teachers. But admin has said that students are to engage in “self-development”, and that they would face “consequences of [their] negligence”. Tough words. When push comes to shove, it’s clear they are just words. The admin will not stand by its statements. I call this a lack of courage. The admin refuses to stare down the students and maintain standards. Students know through sheer numbers, through their wasta connections, through intimidation and threats (as was the case with the prior admin head who had bottles and shoes thrown at him in a previous ill-fated confrontation), they hold the balance of power.

The admin is afraid of the students. They are afraid of holding students accountable. Students are indeed handed their education on a silver platter. Teachers act as the butlers, and they had better be appropriately attired.

Courage is not to be unafraid. To not be afraid of the consequences of losing your job, or worse, is to be a fool. Everyone feels afraid; the key is what to do with it. Nelson Mandela said, “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”

To know what the standards are, to know that imparting these to students is for their benefit, and to knowingly give in, is a lack of courage. Admin, like cowardice, has asked “is it safe?”, and for expediency’s sake “is it politic?” But, to continue Martin Luther King Jr.’s observation: “conscience asks the question: is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular- but one must take it simply because it is right.” Martin Luther King Jr. 1929-1968

BTW, teachers hold no such leverage as the students do. The best they can do is quit, and they are quickly replaced. The lack of continuity is of no concern, because the program goes through several iterations in a given year anyway. As long students are marked present, are happy, and no shoes are thrown, the program goes on. I am surprised that admin even admits to this: “Everyone knows that [this university] is not difficult academically.”

I recall an event from a previous position with the Human Resources Department of a major corporation. They were in weeks-long discussions to change the nameplates on the classrooms, to reflect more modern, quality-assurance lingo. What did not change was the process inside the class, the process for planning what happened in the class, and the responsibilities of all participants generally. The nameplates changed, the realities did not.



Integrity beaten, chained up and slinking away

Tying in with the curriculum plan I described yesterday, the program is changing the descriptors, but the processes are untouched. And integrity, beaten too many times, lacking courage to change the context now, turns tail and slinks into the shadows.

Curriculum capers

Another meeting, another surreal experience. This one was about curriculum development, and was about as enlightening as you would expect. The objectives are supposed to be research-based, needs-driven, and international-standard-focused. It will be an iterative, cyclical process, proceeding step by step in a circle of continuous improvement. Good luck.



Circular motion of spinning head?

Five years ago, an internationally-renowned institution with thousands of schools in dozens of countries, was running a standard-focused tight ship of a program. After numerous run-ins with management, this organization pulled out. For another example, a business program running independently within the university was run as an adjunct program with a tier-1 university in the USA. After 2 years of butting heads, the university was kicked out, and run as in in-house program. The next iteration will be the replacement of all expat teachers in the program with indigenous faculty.


At least two recent precedents exist, which had a standards-focused, high quality of educational excellence, and both were replaced because they did not toe the company line. Why should we expect that this time around, with something developed completely in-house, the process will produce something different? That is actually the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.



Circling the drain?


Some of the issues I predict for this caper concern assessment, accountability, and attainability. Currently, all assessment materials and protocols are produced on a sister campus. That content and the responsibilities it is concerned with have been wrangled over for years. It is a political contest that I do not see will be won any time soon. To have a needs-driven, outcome-focused curriculum requires an independent assessment regime. If assessment does not follow the learning path, then the learning has no purpose. I have talked about this in a previous blog.

Accountability is something I have talked about in more than a few blogs. The presenter talked about having objectives associated with each level: when we describe a student as a level 4, there is a consensus on associated level descriptors. Of course, that means that there are entrance as well as exit expectations. To graduate means that students show mastery over coursework. To enter means that students possess the needed prerequisites. To assess means that students will demonstrate genuine ability that cannot be manipulated during the testing. Currently, grades are assigned on the basis of generosity, not fairness. Teachers are evaluated on the basis of lack of complaints, not on actual teaching ability. Graduation is determined many times through political force rather than on documented evidence. These are practices that must change, or the curricular accountability is a farce.

The presenter said that the research and the feedback on curricular effectiveness would be determined by the end of the next academic year through a top-down/bottom-up process. Research would be carried out, and the outcomes manifest would be implemented. Cases in point: an informal survey of teachers who attended the meeting were asked “how many of you received an email informing you of today's meeting?” Less than 50% actually got the email; they knew about the meeting through an informal network. Seriously, why bother with the technicalities of a research process, when basic communications can't even be counted upon? How about setting out attainable objectives? Can we get keys for our lockers? Can we have an efficient system for evaluating teacher professionalism, rather than requiring teachers to stand in line after a presentation to sign for attendance for a period of time longer than the presentation itself, as what happened today?



Research follows the plan

The research atmosphere that I have intuited about this place is that research outcomes have already been determined. Research follows practice, not the other way round. The research itself would be conducted (1) to justify existing practice, and (2) to give the pretense of research credibility for international standards (# of PhDs, # of papers published, regardless of quality). The research would be done with results expected tomorrow, and implemented without question the following day.

When I first arrived, I saw this happening with frustration and irritation. Now, I laugh, and say to myself, “Good luck on that, mate! You're gonna need it!”

Elysian Eloquence - not

Well, that was entertaining. 45 minutes of solid text, nary a joke, and almost completely without visual support. Such was the presentation we were given last night by a world-renowned researcher whose public speaking skills leave something to be desired. We were all wishing to depart to the Elysian Fields during that one!

 That said, there were some points raised during “Task Based Learning: Challenges and Possibilities” (surely that was dusted off from some previous plenary??) that stimulated some conversation.

First, the contention was made that TBL mimics the processes that underlie the acquisition of the mother tongue. TBL is meaning-based, outcome-focused, and intrinsically communicative. All true. However, it is certainly controversial to suggest that the process of learning a first language is necessarily the optimal path for learning a second: the environmental conditions are different (relations between interlocuters, the supportive differences between home and school, sheer frequency of exposure); physical conditions are different (the brain has developed into a more logically grounded one which may/may not be attuned to language in the same ways as in younger years; the accumulation of background knowledge / experience interferes / interacts with language accumulation).

 Second, the speaker's use of the word language is slightly disingenuous: I think he actually meant L1 oracy. Children typically do NOT learning writing skills until they go to an institution. Many cultures have been and still are largely oral-based, and so while it is true that everyone, all things being equal, learn a language, this means they learn to speak it, not necessarily write it. Native speakers of English have varying levels of proficiency when it comes to writing, hence the growing numbers of writing centers at universities, to assist native-speaking students to improve writing skills. This is an important distinction, because TBL is often used for developing writing classes, and relies heavily upon the written medium as language support in more advanced learning classes.

Third, what I think is interesting by omission is the issue of authenticity. The speaker referred to Mike Long's work on TBL often, but as far as I can recall, did not mention the word authenticity once in 3 presentations on the subject. Long, OTOH, does emphasize the importance; for example Long, M. H. (1996). Authenticity and learning potential in L2 classroom discourse. In Jacobs, G. M. (ed.), Language classrooms of tomorrow: Issues and responses (pp. 148-69). Singapore: SEAMEO Regional Language Centre. The speaker characterized TBL as outcome-focused, communicative, and meaning-based. I would contend that Long would say meaningful is more important. That communicative depends on the context of language use, and that the outcome needs to be more connected to students' needs and their particular contexts of use than a skills-based curriculum that may developed largely arbitrary to an analysis of learner's needs.

I wrote about this in a paper on authenticity, and tried to capture the essence of authenticity along three dimensions illustrated by the following table:


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Authenticity	Criteria
Engagement of Communicative Competence	Degree of interaction	Length of discourse	Language knowledge areas	Proportion of code vs. context rules	Intercultural competences
Task Context	Field	Tenor	Mode	Genre
Learner-centeredness: Available choices	opics	Tests / Tasks	Output criteria	Administrative prerogatives

Authenticity in EFL teaching practice is an increasingly important issue, made more difficult by the lack of any concise description of what the concept constitutes. I wonder if the speaker holds to the commonly-held view of textual/script authenticity, which I reject, and would propose instead a view that sees authenticity as the interaction between the text, the context, and the user. These factors are operationalized along three dimensions: the engagement of learner communicative competence in terms of interlocutor interactivity and discourse; the description of task context in terms of systemic functional linguistics; and the orientation of the task towards a constructivist approach. This characterization of authenticity is seen as crucial for being able to discuss and evaluate best practice in both testing and teaching contexts.

Last night the speaker rejected the notion of pre-teaching, as TBL practice subsumes such practice. However, Widdowson and Long have both supported such practice. Following on from Widdowson’s (1979: 257ff) recommendation, teachers can legitimately use so-called interlanguage (ie simplified) texts, without compromising authenticity. These texts are created by the teacher, for example, to highlight some kind of language features that students may need for future real-world tasks. Widdowson (1979) maintains that task authenticity is not compromised as long as the manipulation of such texts reflects purposes and activities that real-world users would normally engage in.

Using such simplified texts also finds justification in Long and Robinson’s (1996) Interaction Hypothesis. In this model, form-focused instruction on these language elements proceeds opportunistically, through the teacher-led exploitation of communicative, interactional classroom analyses of text. Again, what is important is not so much the process by which a text is created initially or modified from its appearance in its original (ie genuine) context, but in how the textual features (purpose, roles, context) are de-constructed in the classroom context by means of meaning-based interaction.

The use of simplified texts is also supported in the Genre-based approach. This can be described as an approach involving students in opportunities to master a given genre through repeated exposure and practice. Teachers guide students toward greater understanding of the genre gradually, in a process of teacher-student interaction referred to as “scaffolding”: “[Students collaborate] with others, who serve as conduits through which cultural knowledge, including language, is acquired. Initially, learners require the scaffolding provided in interaction with others to understand and to perform a new skill but subsequently, they are able to access this skill unaided.” (Ellis, 1997: 242)

Plans against Pococurantism

Been over a month since my last post. Life here always seems to have some curveball coming, and after several fastballs high and tight (chin music), the big round curve gets a swing and miss most times. Baseball season has started, hence the metaphors.

We have started the 4th quarter in the school schedule recently. Students were given an extra 25 hours of absences allowed after their vociferous complaints. That seems to be the way it goes: complain loud enough, and the students get what they want. Many teachers have said that they have only 2 or 3 students show up on a given day. Two told me they haven't had any show up for 2 weeks. Yet, when the students do eventually show up 45 minutes late without pen or book, they start up with "teacher present teacher", followed 5 minutes later by "teacher when finished teacher". Thankfully I haven't had that on my side, but the other department is rife with it.

Turns out we only have about 4 weeks left of dedicated teaching left in the semester; there is a week of review after that, and then a week for finals. Everything finishes by the end of May, and then we have 2 to 3 weeks of sitting around clocking in and out until mid June. In preparation for weeks of boredom otherwise, I enrolled in an online course for quality management statistics, to prep for an official certification in this area upon my contract completion.

Nowadays I am also looking at the possibility of a PhD in Curriculum Development or Educational Policy, and I would like to do it in my hometown. My house is there, and so logistically it would present fewer difficulties than taking courses in yet another city. I am interested in researching tipping points in education reform; that is, what small changes in school/learning settings create disproportionately significant outcomes. Married with a quality management certification, hoping that will open a few more doors vocationally in the future.