The Language Teacher
November 1999

Taking a Walk on the WILD-er Side of Teacher Development

Alan Mackenzie

The World Wide Web and e-mail have become many language teachers' principle developmental arenas. E-mail lists such as JALTCALL, TESL-L, AUTONOMY-L and NETEACH-L are being used to share teaching ideas and provide other information helpful to teachers. These sites generate a huge amount of mail, but because of the transience of e-mail there is a lot of repetition and often discussions are "nipped in the bud" by moderators or carried on in private, off-list. Static websites like Dave's ESL cafe (http://www.eflcafe.com) and the Tower of English (http://www.towerofenglish.com) principally provide teaching resources for both online and classroom situations, while sites such as the Internet TESL Journal (http://www.aitech.ac.jp/~iteslj/) replicate academic journals online.

Although these sites offer much information as well as many interactive activities designed for students, there are few interaction-focused activities to be found through which teachers can pursue their own development. The WILD-e (pronounced "wild") web site (http://www.wild-e.org/) aims to fill that gap by functioning as a truly interactive self-access center, within which teachers as learners can help themselves and others to develop in a non-threatening exploratory atmosphere.

WILD-e was set up in October 1997 as an online experiment in changing teacher-teacher communication from the often argumentative and intimidating academic style found in journals and mailing lists to a more personal and collaborative form. A non-argumentative, cooperative style of discourse was seen as essential to make contributors feel welcome, based on the belief that teachers are sharing experiences of separate but interconnected journeys through the same field, rather than attempting to prove their own ideas or to attack others for being wrong. Given the autonomous nature of teaching, the type of discourse that appears on many mailing lists was therefore viewed as potentially destructive and liable to block the growth of ideas and change within teachers themselves (Downing, 1995). In its place, as Krishnamurti (1972:2) has proposed, WILD-e chose to take the approach that "conflict exists only when you are not learning."

By encouraging teachers to investigate their experiences in an honest, non-judgmental manner, the site hopes to act as a focus for building both a personal awareness of one's professional activities and a professional view of one's personal actions. It is also being used to investigate what real issues teachers face that are ignored by the traditional academic press; what personally inspires individual teachers; how those diverse interests can be used for teaching purposes; and what similar insights there might be between TESOL and other, seemingly unconnected fields.

Rather than offer pre-determined information, WILD-e attempts to create a constantly evolving journal of pedagogic discoveries made through self-reflection, presented in an entertaining and even unusual manner. In fact, the site came into existence because its designers (myself and Nanci Graves) were dissatisfied with current forums for development, felt isolated in our workplaces, and were seeking a way to motivate ourselves to explore new approaches in our teaching and in our academic lives. The ultimate goal of WILD-e is motivating other disaffected teachers to do the same, by discovering how liberating communication based on awareness-raising is and just how much it can stimulate the flow of ideas.

Because of the open-ended subject matter and the corresponding approach, it is important that this form of teacher development be presented online in bulletin board form. Firstly, this is because it provides a permanent record of visitors' thoughts and shows the developmental path that discussions take; something that is often lost in e-mail conferences. Also, it creates a certain anonymity: contributors do not have to leave their names, addresses or affiliations anywhere on site. The lack of face-to-face interaction decreases pressure on people who have little confidence in their ideas, and participation is open to anyone, no matter how isolated geographically or ideologically from their colleagues, giving immediate access to multiple, global teaching perspectives and contexts. Finally, the bulletin-board system gives visitors time to reflect on what is being said in the different threads and the freedom to jump into a conversation at any point they like.

Theoretical Foundation

In order to suggest an alternative way for language teachers to use language in a creative manner that would simultaneously help the writer to develop as an educator and stimulate readers to develop themselves, WILD-e was based on the philosophical framework provided by the following ten principles of awareness training:

In order to grow as educators we need to:

develop our own autonomy
respect old and develop new traditions
understand our own experiences more deeply and how they relate to others' experiences
heighten our sense of awareness of ourselves and others
be generous with our ideas, time and love
have a sense of style about everything we do
realize the interconnectedness of all things and the true complexity of the universe
cooperate with and respect colleagues and students
develop inspiration and creativity in ourselves and in others
develop ourselves for development's sake.

Each of these principles is explored in-depth in WILD-e (http://www.wild-e.org/WILD-e/pages/Principles.html) and their expression can be found both in the type of communication that is going on at the site, as well as in the construction of the different activities within WILD-e.

WILD-e's two sub-sections (or "parallel universes" in WILD-e parlance), the interactive and the guided realms, each have five separate sub-areas which provide different lenses (Fanselow, 1987) through which teachers can become more aware of and gain insight into our profession, our actions and the behavior of our students.

The Interactive Realm

The different interactive areas are what set WILD-e apart as a teacher development site, providing a variety of immediate access points for contributors and creating, as a whole, an ongoing journal of combined experience. Because all teachers are learners and it is the learners that have to do the learning (Nunan & Lamb, 1996), experiential tasks were seen as the best way to elicit collaborative development from teachers. The interactive realm therefore contains the following five areas, each of which provides different awareness-raising experiences and appeals to different interest areas.

For Meditation: The Wonderwall

To date, most people have first contributed to The Wonderwall. This is an open, "grafitti space" to put quotations that participants have found inspiring, so that they and others may take the opportunity to meditate on their meaning. Its purpose is to tap inspirational sources in the teacher's experience and give them a forum to share that inspiration with others. This contribution of others' words is both a statement of personal philosophy and a gift to others of a helpful instrument for self-reflection, allowing contributors to state what they want to say without any arguments.

The quotes found there are indeed inspirational, but some are also comic and tend to question the status quo:

For whatever is written, with whatever purpose, whether to express the struggle for freedom or the passion of a love affair, can only reach towards the power of truth in the measure in which the writer is capable of exploring the splendor of language brought into its service. -- Nadine Gordimer

Ideology wants to convince you that its truth is absolute. A novel shows you that everything is relative. -- Milan Kundera

If you don't have any teeth, use your gums! -- Korean Proverb

Although there is an additional area where quotes can be discussed, it is little used, perhaps because there is no need. Most of the quotes posted are transparent statements of philosophical belief, most are in tune with one another, and many focus on exploring the meaning of autonomy, which appears to be a major concern for both teachers and students.

For Questioning: Can You Tell Me Why?

In Can You Tell Me Why? teachers can insert questions about accepted practice and method in the teaching world. Tradition and received behavior are queried and exploration of alternatives encouraged:

Why do we keep telling students that it's so important to ask us questions while we're often afraid to ask our bosses why things are being done the way they are?
Why isn't there more communication between teachers of English and other languages?
Why don't teachers' meetings get regularly assessed for their degree of effectiveness?
Why don't learners learn what teachers teach?
Why do school bureaucrats always reinvent the wheel?
Does being popular with your students mean you're an effective teacher?
Why do the people who teach the most get paid the least?

In this area, one question often leads to another. People's awareness of their working environment seems to be enhanced by the asking of the simple question: Why are we doing it this way? Some of these questions may have no answers, but an awareness is being built that alternatives need to be developed for current practices that are of no benefit.

For Revealing: True Confessions

The Confessional provides an area for teachers to acknowledge their own failings and anxieties, and to see that even the most experienced do things of which they are not proud. Teachers can divest themselves of negative emotions not only by telling others what they have done that they regret, but also by reflecting on why they were ashamed and what they plan to do to change their behavior in the future:

I'm having trouble getting students to speak in a lower-level freshman listening lab class. The book is absurdly ambitious with uninteresting texts. The activities are only fill-in-the-blank, TOEFL questions, dictation and translation. the professor asked me to prepare some speaking activities, so as I am already teaching 32 hours a week, what I did was think up discussion topics. And of course the students find them impossible to discuss.

I guess I am not really looking for answers...I just wanted to confess a sin. I am ignoring student needs. One student suggested videos, something another teacher (a video freak) is doing. I am resisting this as I don't like television. And the extra work.

The action of confessing helps teachers to reflect on their behavior and the possible dissonance between their beliefs and their practice. By increasing their awareness of what they are doing and why they are doing it, such reflection upon perceived weaknesses also helps them either to develop strategies for dealing with a situation that they may often feel unable to prevent or to ask others for suggestions.

For Exploration: The Maze

The Maze recognizes that metaphor both informs and represents our actions and thoughts. By understanding and experiencing one thing in terms of another, participants can gain insight into the deeper meaning of their experiences (Lakoff and Johnson; 1980). Indeed, the exploration of different metaphors can reveal different, often complimentary truths (Edge, 1993). This area offers teachers an opportunity to create their own truths, through metaphor as a way to understand their own reality. It gives them the opportunity to take part in a metaphorical journey where connections between teaching, learning and seemingly unrelated actions or objects are explored:

Learning is like an adventure in the mountains. You have the chance to explore many new places, you climb quickly sometimes, spend seemingly endless time traversing plateaus, you descend into dark valleys, drink from crystal clear streams, and sometimes wander around completely lost. (There is also the potential to starve to death!)

For Relaxation: The Pub

Finally, The Pub is an area that allows teachers to "shoot the breeze" by bringing up anything they have read on the site or sharing their questions with other site contributors. Discussions here have ranged from how the site might be improved and expanded to the threatening nature of its having a solid philosophy "up front," while other threads have dealt with some of our inspirational sources, such as The Smiths, Oscar Wilde and Joe Orton.

In sum, the interactive realm was designed to encourage an exploratory rather than an argumentative discussion style, and to foster examination of participants' own realities in light of multiple perspectives. The hope is that language teachers will thus develop their own language awareness through the effort to become more non-judgmental, respectful and constructive.

The Guided Realm

The guided realm contains areas for more considered pieces of writing that have been developed over time. Again there are five main categories."Reviews" explores what inspirational non-academic sources (music, movies, fiction etc.) can tell us about learning and teaching. "The W-files" makes use of the metaphor of the TV show "The X-files" to explore phenomena in teaching that are difficult to explain and rarely tackled in academic investigations."Features" contains longer explorations on a variety of issues, while "Nexus" provides practical lesson plans and strategies for classroom practice. Finally,"The Outhouse" points to sources outside WILD-e that may be of interest.

What seems to happen when people first write an article for the guided realm is that they produce powerful, personal pieces of writing based on their own experiences and often fuelled by righteous indignation of some kind, as if they feel they have been silenced for a long time.

For example, Petra Kay's " The Metaphysics of the Word: The Gist-Spirit, The Gist-God and The Spirit-of-Metaphor" starts with a revelation: "I was granted a Vision of Joy and a Vision of Horror that was to mark me forever." It continues on to describe a conflict in beliefs between herself and her employer, including a plea for greater consideration of the beauty, artistry and multiple meaning of language, in contrast to the current trend for dealing primarily with the gist and main points.

Similarly, the conflicts described in "Sara's self-analysis" are concerned with painful interactions with another teacher. Through the act of writing, Sara resolves the issue for herself and comes to the conclusion that, "It is only when we begin to share our experiences that they are elevated to the realm of collective wisdom. In doing so, we gain the power to analyze relationships and transform negative encounters into opportunities for self-development and learning."

These articles constitute a form of creative expression that needed only the freedom to be allowed to happen. For contributors, it is a liberating feeling to know that they can say anything they wish in a thoughtful and entertaining way -- rather like they might at a dinner party -- to an audience that will listen, think about what was said and then comment on it if they feel the desire. WILD-e also allows different people to contribute in different ways, thus encouraging teachers to utilize other linguistic skills that academic publications do not tap. Petra, for instance, is a poet applying her talents to teaching, while writing for WILD-e appeared to open a floodgate for Sara, who subsequently started writing for other publications as well as developing her own teaching materials.

Conclusion

Krishnamurti (1972:56) notes that that there is a human tendency to "fix a direction, and avoid everything else," yet it is precisely the "everything else" that WILD-e is interested in exploring. As a journal of individuals' learning and teaching experiences, WILD-e will continue to grow and develop organically with a small band of contributors. The ultimate aim of WILD-e is to exist: to be there as an interesting alternative to the traditional teaching press and to challenge authority and received wisdom whenever necessary. Through the medium of the Internet, WILD-e seeks to simultaneously encourage cooperative solutions and increased personal awareness of the teaching/ learning condition. Contributing to WILD-e is a form of self-liberation rather than a professional duty that is designed to enable individuals wherever they are to share their experiences and find commonalities which will help them in both their personal and professional lives.

References

Fanselow, J. (1987). Breaking rules. White Plains, NY:Longman

Nunan, D. & Lamb, L. (1996). The self-directed teacher. London: Cambridge

Krishnamurti, J. (1975). Beginnings of learning. London: Penguin, Arkana

Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Edge, J. (1993). The dance of Shiva and the linguistics of relativity. Applied Linguistics, 14,1, 43-55.

Kay, P. (1998). WILD-e. The metaphysics of the word: The gist-spirit, the gist-god and the spirit-of-metaphor. Available at http://www.wild-e.org/WILD-e/pages/metaphor.html

Galer, S. (1998). WILD-e. Sara's self-analysis. Available at http://www.wild-e.org/WILD-e/pages/Sara.html

Downing, J. (1995). Finding your voice. Sydney: Allen & Unwin

The Language TeacherNovember 1999