Donation Motivation

I recently responded to two requests for donations via my PLN on social media. The first for my time and ideas, the second for money. Both are in support of activities to help refugee children. 

Why did I agree? What motivated me to sit up, take notice and positively respond to these particular requests when so many more go unheeded on an almost daily basis?

This exploration of what motivates me to donate arose from a virtual conversation about the veracity and trustworthiness of a person who was effectively asking fellow TEFLers to crowd fund his wages, on an interim basis. Initially, I responded without reservation, went straight to the donation page and transferred some of my hard-earned cash to – well, to a completely unknown (to me) person. Why did I do that?! Not until a friend asked me to vouch for the person before she considered doing the same, did I pause. Then I felt stupid and gullible. 

Had I fallen prey to an online scam? Was I just another naïve do-gooder handing over cash on a whim? Or am I an altruistic supporter of fundraising? 

Times Higher Education article about a Syrian refugee school

Timely exposure to stories of the migrant crisis on TV awakened the philanthropist in me. I was ripe for the picking, as it were. Being unable to directly make a difference myself, I jumped with alacrity at the chance to facilitate others who can. They offer me the chance to contribute from the comfort of my home and alleviate my privileged-person’s guilt. I can buy some “moral licence”, bank a good deed to offset against “bad” behaviour some day in the future. Job done, I can carry on with own stuff secure in the knowledge that I have helped. 

Have I though? How does contributing towards another person’s wage guarantee that the ultimate recipients of all this time, money and effort actually benefit? How does my one contribution towards a collective book guarantee the teachers using it can make a difference to the refugee children? 

We can mask our apathy with cynical questions and concerns about the true intentions behind a fund raising activity.  We can easily refuse to share our (arguably meagre to us) wealth on the grounds of “corrupt charities” and “nothing changes anyway”. The thing is, there are never true guarantees of anything in life, apart from the guarantee that nothing will change if no-one does anything!

 

The Hands Up Project

I think giving in such cases as these is a leap of faith and trust in a person’s good intentions. Talking about trust, it being potentially mistreated and we still doing it anyway, a colleague of mine expressed it well, “I'd much prefer to risk giving money to a scammer than refuse to give money to someone with a great idea willing to devote themselves to the plight of refugees!”

I might be acting naively and gullibly; maybe I am using donating as a way to alleviate guilt and bank some moral licence. So what? That’s between me and my conscience. And does it matter, if it means my small contribution ends up making a small difference to some people along the line? 

According to William MacAskill of the charity 80,000 hours, it matters hugely in the grand scheme of things. Funding cannibalism is an increasingly critical issue in the social sector. Where I sympathise with much of MacAskill’s arguments, I’m painfully aware of my reluctance to “make a commitment to find out which charities are most cost-effective”. Nor am I prepared to publicly pledge to give a proportion of my wildly fluctuating freelancer income. 

However, if I did want to “set up an ongoing commitment to those charities that (I) conclude do the most good with (my) donations”, Give Well would be a good place to start. Or if I did want to pledge some of my earning, Giving What We Can could make it easier.

Meanwhile, back to my original question; what is my motivation for donation? If I’m brutally honest and self-critical, I want to assuage my sorrow for the plight of today’s people in crisis without causing myself too much disruption or cost. Which fundraiser benefits from my emotional need? The one run by a person to whom I can relate, is doing something I understand, could even imagine doing myself. Someone from my profession, who knows the same people I know so that I can feel they are trustworthy. In a nutshell, I donate to projects run by people I feel I can trust. 

So, until I have reached the point of “meaningful behavior changes” and have made altruism part of my identity, I give thanks to you honest, committed fund raisers making a difference on my behalf.  

PS: Writing this turned out to be quite challenging. I find my thoughts continue to churn while I can come up with no answer to the problem of “funding cannibalism” and judging who deserves what from me. But I keep coming back to: every little helps; doing something is better than doing nothing, whatever a person’s motivation is.

What Learner Autonomy Looks Like to Me

On Saturday 17 October, Jennie Wright and I facilitated a workshop about Learner Autonomy at an ELTAS event in Stuttgart. Neither of us had been scheduled to speak that day. OUP's Heather Buchanan had been waylaid by a cancelled flight in Leeds and couldn't make it. Rather than cancel, ELTAS asked if I had something I could do with group rather than cancel the whole afternoon. Knowing a little about learner autonomy, primarily based on the 6 weeks' teaching I had done at Bristol uni this summer, I agreed to give it a go.

Having  thrown some guiding ideas and flip charts together in the 2 hours before heading off to Stuttgart, my approach was to rely on the combined knowledge of the group. Luckily, Jennie was able to access material from a full 8-hour workshop she'd previously designed, for use after the break.

In my enthusiasm, I did the usual thing of jumping in and "winging" it. Now I want to back up a little and fill in the missing gaps - as much for myself as for the participants at the workshop who patiently and kindly went along with me.

The Socrative quiz we did was made of questions behind which I had specific intentions. Primarily, to think about how we prefer to learn ourselves; then to think what might be our learners' preferences. The one question which most people couldn't fully answer was about memorisation strategies.

Q5.  When you are a learner, which revision strategies work best for you?
A State-dependent Recall
B Chunking
C The method of Loci
D Interacting images

 Here are the definitions for each strategy, FYI:

a.   State-dependent Recall  It’s easier to remember something if you can put yourself in the place where you learned it – you might remember something funny in the classroom for example, or eating something strange etc)

b.   Chunking Take small pieces of information and group them into large units – useful to help remember lots of info

c.   The method of Loci mnemonic device – mentally remember items in association with physical location – placing concepts on a map, eg following a path/route or rooms in a house

d.   Interacting images – easier to remember something if it interacts with something

e.   Priming – a stimulus – reading about a topic before writing

f.    Forgetting curve – graph showing how much is lost from the memory unless information is reviewed consciously and regularly

 
I presented socrative as an example of a digital learning tool in keeping with the original workshop description. As many of our learners fall into the "digital native" demographic, we want to create an environment in which these learners feel confident.  They will then, presumably, be in a better position to work autonomously. The familiar breeds confidence, right? Which is pretty much what the group came up with:

Throughout my half of the workshop, my intention was to give participants the time and space to think for themselves - to work autonomously. In this spirit, I tried out the World Café format. For those who attended, I leave it up to you to decide how well it worked. From my point of view, there was plenty of movement and discussion and little input from "the teacher".

In researching the topic, I came across a blog in which these sentiments were reiterated. Here, from that blog, is a nice summation of what I was aiming to get across:


"Thinking is the key to learning. While teachers can do many things for their students, there is one inescapable fact, they cannot think for them." ~Jim Ahern. In the foreign language classroom, teachers can provide all the daily necessities for learning. Thus, they can lead their "horses" to rich sources. However, the students themselves are the ones to be professionally accountable for developing a willingness to learn (Mohanty, 2010). 

For more about Jennie, or to request a copy of her material from the workshop, go here.
To get hold of a copy of the post-workshop handout I created, email me directly. Or ask ELTAS.

OUP Prize Draw at end of workshop - I won a set of books!

 

Affordable Coaching for Freelance EFL Teachers

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English Language Teaching Professionals.

Many teachers work intensively and with focus on their learners. The job requires a great deal of self-motivation and dedication to maintain inspiration and motivation in the classroom. Then they have to actually teach something useful, interesting and relevant to their sometimes less-than-willing students. Teaching might well be the most “noble profession”; how many teachers feel convinced of the truth of this?  

"In a completely rational society, the best of us would be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something less."
Lee Iacocca

I believe a person has within them infinite capacity to achieve extraordinary things. Sometimes, we lose sight of what’s possible, what’s available to us, who is around to support and work with us. It’s the human condition. As a coach, my role is to provide a space where you can take time out to look at what’s going on with you and your environment. As a teacher, I empathise with many issues which can arise in the profession. I will listen with respect and attention, in absolute confidence, while you think through the issue currently blocking your way forward. Through a process of timely and incisive questioning, you will gradually unblock the way and uncover the answer you were looking for, and discover it was within you all along! 

“The teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom but rather leads you to the threshold of your mind.”
Khalil Gibran

Investing in ourselves can sometimes feel like a guilty waste of time and money. I truly believe that I am giving my students a valuable additional service when I have spent time on learning more and developing myself.  Knowing the teaching profession as I do, I completely understand the conflict of personal development with paying the bills and doing as good a job as possible in too-short days! 

“People want amazing results with limited resources. They say they haven’t got time. We show them ways you can use coaching to free up time.” Shaun Lincoln, director of coaching and action learning at the Centre for Excellence in Leadership (CEL)

 With this in mind, if you are a freelance EFL teacher, I am prepared to work with you on a “pay-what-you-can” basis. In the open market, coaches offer their services for €100 – €300 per hour. That hour goes beyond the face-to-face interaction; the coach prepares appropriate material, considers which tools would be of most benefit and follows-up after sessions to check if their client needs additional support. It’s an important relationship which a coach nurtures and cherishes for as long as the client has agreed to work on something - and often beyond. 

 “Coaching links entirely with increasing capacity and raising attainment. It increases self-knowledge and helps direct communication and the ability to challenge in a non-confrontational way with clarity and purpose.” Lesley Mackenzie, head of Westfield Primary School in Radstock, Bath

You can reach me via e-mail: keeptraining.michelle@gmail.com 
or by mobile: 0174 97 22 5555. 
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