Conflict Issues and Special Topics of Invention in English Teaching

English Teaching can often be quite stressful!

            Every day of the week, English teachers are constantly in some sort of conflict where they must convince others.  An extremely common point of conflict, or stasis, in English teaching is how to best teach the students.  Disagreements often arise between English teachers and other English teachers or, more likely, between English teachers and administrators on how to best teach and engage the children. 

           

Take this common scenario of conflict.  

Principal Collins, fuming, burst into Mr. Rice’s classroom early last Friday.  In a rage, she demanded to know why he refused to teach Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet to his 9^th grade class this semester and taught them the more “mature” Othello instead.  “This violates the state and the board’s educational laws and outlines!  There will be a standardized test at the end of this year, and you haven’t taught them the necessary material!” she seethed.  Mr. Rice sighed.  He hated teaching Romeo and Juliet.  The class consistently became much more engaged in Othello than in Romeo and Juliet, and he had looked at the test objectives.  They required perhaps a small summary of the play and nothing more.  Why, he wondered, did he have to teach his class anything but what he wanted to teach them?  They would get everything covered that they needed to cover.  Grammar, essay writing, literature, everything needed would be taught.  Mr. Rice stated slowly, “Ms. Collins, I take great pride in teaching my class and helping them learn and grow in English.  My students’ standardized test results consistently have been 20% higher than the state’s average, and I see no reason to deviate from my proven method no matter how much the state or board changes the requirements or curriculum.”  “Your job is a good reason, Mr. Rice,” Ms. Collins simpered. 

English teachers may not want to teach the
standardized curriculum for their class.

            Here we see a special topic of invention common to public school English teachers.  The idea of the law vs. personal desire occurs quite a bit.  Mr. Rice wants to teach what he wants to teach in English.  However, the state dictates that he teach a certain curriculum to his students.  Mr. Rice might be a better English teacher without the restrictions of the curriculum, but he, by law, must teach a certain way or he will lose his job.  The common topics of invention of law and cause and effect also occur with this special topic.  Law or at least school board doctrine must always be taken into account in Mr. Rice’s teaching.  Furthermore,  Principal  

Collins thinks that if Mr. Rice fails to teach his students the proper curriculum, the students will fail the standardized tests.

Another special topic of invention seen in this scenario is learning vs. curriculum.  Sometimes learning does not occur even with approved curriculum.  Mr. Rice must struggle between teaching approved curriculum and teaching what he feels is best conducive to learning.  Reconciliation can occur with the style he teaches.

Engagement’s relationship to learning is yet an additional special topic.  Mr. Rice thinks that the more engaged a class is in a topic, the more they will learn.  I do not think anyone doubts this fact, but trying to engage students is a classic problem for all teachers everywhere.

Communication and Persuasion in English Teaching

            English teachers, especially high school English teachers, use communication in more diverse ways than arguably any other career.  They not only teach communication and persuasion; they live communication and persuasion.  Their whole career basically revolves around communication and persuasion. 

Every school day, high school English teachers teach the finer points of communication to their students during class. They hold conferences with students to help them with their writing skills.  They might tutor after school as well.  All of these activities require effective communication to a specific audience of students.  All students differ in personality, motivation, engagement in class studies, and intellect.  How an English teacher communicates to his or her class is largely dependent on the students.  AP, IB, and Honors students are typically more engaged in English and learning in general than College Prep or regular classes.  While honors students might appreciate an entertaining lesson just as much as non-honors students, honors students are typically more able to engage even in classic lecture lessons without YouTube videos and PowerPoints than non-honors students.  English teachers must be aware of their students’ personality in order to communicate effectively the lesson given.  Teachers are inherently quite different from students.  They are older, more mature, and in a leadership position.  These differences sometimes make students pull away from the teacher.  The English teacher must be able to highlight the similarities between him or her and the students.  The similarities are that both students and English teachers want the student to learn about English.

In order to communicate effectively to their students’ demographic, English teachers also need to know popular communication techniques.  Social media, YouTube, and multi-media presentations are all extremely popular.  In order to communicate effectively in the classroom setting, the English teacher must know how to not only classically lecture and inform but also incorporate modern communication techniques.  Though most of the classroom communication is oral, more and more English teachers are using written social media and emails to interact quickly with their students.  They therefore use types of “e-communication” regularly.  Apps and websites like Edmodo give English teachers ways to quickly and easily communicate with students over a social media platform.

English teachers differ greatly of how they communicate knowledge to their students.  Some feel lecturing is best.  Others like back-and-forth communication, posing questions to their students and having them answer.  Written communication also occurs as English teachers give tests and quizzes and send emails.  Their communication techniques, however, all alter with where they are communicating or persuading.  They mostly communicate in their classroom, but they also must one-on-one communicate in their offices.  English teachers must be available to communicate with during class, after class and at home using email or social media.  Large amounts of informative communication usually occur when students email questions about large assignments to him or her. 

Therefore, although most people assume that the teacher is usually the speaker and the students are the audience, a lot of the time, students are speaking to the teacher and the teacher must be the audience.

 Despite the obvious fact that English teachers use communication regularly and even teach the art of communication, what is lesser known is the persuasion that English teachers must use.  For example at least a few times a year, they must use effective rhetoric to stave off angry parents or students upset about a bad grade on an essay or grammar test.  Persuasion through body language and enthusiasm is often common.  English teachers must make students “buy into” their lessons.  Furthermore, a few times a year, frustrated English teachers will usually give speeches to their students about how important English is and how they cannot relax their engagement and attentiveness in the class.  Oftentimes, English teachers will be in direct conflict between administrators, other departments, or even other English teachers about what is best for the school and students or how best to spend the budget.  Though all faculty wants what is best for the students, administrators are bound by government laws and have different views of the best way to effectively teach than English teachers might.  Thus, English teachers must also be persuasive as well as informative, though they usually persuade in dialectic oratory.  Clearly, both communication and persuasion are vital to the high-school English teacher.

I found my information chiefly from email correspondences with my high-school English teacher Christopher Rice.