The story:
Asking students about their everyday life and engaging them in small talk is a key ritual in my class—whether in-person or online. It helps me build trust with my students and alleviate L2 learners’ anxiety. Halfway through this summer semester, during a routine task in a zoom class, a student—let’s call her Danny, did not respond to my call. Her camera was turned off. A few minutes later, I received a private message in the Zoom chat: “Teacher, can I go to the breakout room with you?”
I joined her in a breakout room. Danny turned on the camera, struggling hard to hold back her tears. I tried to help her calm down. Finally, she managed to explain that the region, where her family live in Syria, was under attack, and she had not been able to contact her family members for two days. She asked me not to engage her in any class activity or group work, but to allow her to simply attend classes without any participation. I was taken aback, but I accepted her request. In fact, at that moment all I could think was that I must be empathetic and compassionate toward her. Nevertheless, I was still wondering whether I had made the right decision or slipped into an unprofessional judgment.
Thoughts at the back of my mind:
As an ESL instructor, it is important to me that I ensure students’ engagement and participation in their learning. Danny’s request clearly does not conform with the principles of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) method of language teaching where we design task-based activities with active participation of the learners. Under normal circumstances, I send students check-in emails for their non-participation and unresponsiveness in the class. Moreover, I follow up with the academic teams about such students to prevent any future confusion or disingenuous claims about their status in the course. But Danny’s cause of non-participation stood apart from the usual challenges of an ELT classroom. Therefore, I stuck to my decision to allow her to attend classes silently.
What I did from my end:
In the succeeding classes, I continued to check in with Danny about the lessons through direct message in the chat. I acknowledged her presence in the class, appreciated her patience and eagerness for learning amidst her emotional strains. I also suggested that she join the breakout room for the class works to observe her classmates’ activities, even if she does not feel like participating. The rest of the term went on this way. For good reasons, I assumed that Danny would not do well in her assessments. But, to my surprise, Danny passed the course, scoring higher than the required marks—with no indication of plagiarism.
What led to Danny’s success:
Undoubtedly, Danny would have benefitted more through active participation in the class. Nonetheless, Danny succeeded in this course. In fact, what contributed to her success was the application of empathy and learner agency—two key principles teachers should employ in ELT classrooms. Responding to learners’ affective factors help teachers reduce their anxiety and enhance their motivation. This in turn, promotes learners’ accountability to and responsibility for the best learning outcomes. And, at the root of it is to create a congenial classroom environment where students feel comfortable in expressing their voices and emotions. In Danny’s case, I was happy to feel that she trusted me enough to express her feelings and needs. Surely, Danny proved she was self-motivated by completing her homework and assessments on time. However, in this process, my part was to facilitate her learning through timely guidance, provide her external motivation, and most importantly, to show my understanding of her situation and validate her emotion.
At the end of the term, Danny sent me an email with a lot of appreciations—thanking me for being supportive to her and for the encouragement and for regularly checking in with her. I was reassured that my decision to allow Danny to take care of her own learning was the right one, and that sometimes not following the methodology is a method in ELT classrooms!
Reference:
Krashen, S. D (1982). Principle and practice in second language acquisition. Pergamon Press Inc.
Image source: www.bigstockphoto.com
Guest Contributor: Rumi Roy
Rumi Roy is an Ontario-certified ESL teacher with an MA in English Literature. Over the past four years she has developed her practice, teaching adult learners from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. She has taught across a range of programs including General Adult ESL, Professional Communication, and English for Academic Purposes. Rumi is committed to ongoing professional development, values collaboration within the TESL community, and is particularly interested in research-informed practices that support learner success and integration.
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