Researching Wednesday

As I work on this article about student choice, I've been lead to a lot of academic work on fostering student autonomy, and how supporting learners autonomy has a number of positive outcomes like increased motivation and engagement, but also a bunch of other stuff, such as students being happier about doing the work, feeling more fulfilled, a growing more as people. Interestingly, I can relate this not only to my own classroom, but myself in my job. Things that suppress autonomy (which means doing things of your own accord, because you want to and feeling like you have the power and skills to do things on your own) are a lack of genuine feedback, forced tasks that have no discernible reason or value, and intruding on tasks with unwanted correction or 'help'. Clearly, the biggest one for me is the forced tasks with no value (or even any outcome as far as I can tell, half the time). So, I think a lot of my dissatisfaction with my job stems from me feeling like I have no control, and very few tasks that are personally relevant or of any value to me. Well, I didn't need to do research to tell me that, but it is interesting.

Also, since I started doing the reading and writing, I've noticed I've been feeling much happier in general. My day feels a little bit more worthwhile. I think this is because I'm doing something which will yield results and that is interesting to me, relevant to my career, and should have a usable result (an article to try to get published). Even if all I do is write a bad article that no one wants anything to do with, at least I learned that the 'doing' is of value for it's own sake :)

One article I read said: "When students feel that teachers support their autonomy they are likely to value the task and experience positive feelings toward it". I'd say this is true for any number of situations, not just teacher-student.. I know my favourite jobs have been the ones where my employers trusted me to get the job done, provided support, but mostly trusted me and left me alone. In fact, I've enjoyed all but two of my jobs (out of 9-ish) and those were the two that included make-work for no reason, excessive monitoring and control, and no opportunities to take responsibility for myself. Interesting.

So, can a worker - stuck and unmotivated - in one of these non-autonomy supporting jobs, find a way to foster their own autonomy? Can a student? If I was one of these blogging gurus with a website anyone actually read, perhaps I'd come up with some nifty 10-step plan for it :-D Haha, but I'm not. But I've maybe (even just temporarily) fixed my own.

*            *            *

Anyway, no teaching again. By the end of this week it will be a month since I taught properly. Well, I did get to teach one full Wednesday last week, but other than that, nothing. I still have to be at work though, for a full eight hours. Even when all the other teachers get to leave at lunch, I still have to be there, at my desk. Weird system, but whatever. Holidays in July! And, only two weeks of summer camp! I taught six in winter, so that's a lot less planning for me to do :)

You know, it's gone past 'warm' now, and is definitely into 'hot'. My apartment was apparently 25 degrees inside this morning. Won't be long before the air-con comes on. I love it. However, many Korean people are still wearing jackets, and EVERYONE is still in pants, socks, and shoes. And hardly anyone opens the window on the bus. It's like they are resistant to the heat. I swear, it's somewhere around 30 today, and my co-teacher is still in full pants, socks, long-sleeved shirt and blazer. I'd die! I'm in a t-shirt, skirt, and sandals. In fact, I've just read that it can be considered suggestive for a woman not to cover her feet, so a lot of women in Korea will wear socks right through summer. Well, I'm all for cultural sensitivity, but bugger that. I'm gonna let my suggestive feet show.

Ok, today's five things:

1) Getting lots of reading done and feeling inspired by it.

2) Mastering the sinus rinse technique.

3) Boneless fish fillets for lunch - really yummy, along with a tasty omelette. 

4) Sun sun sun!

5) I went to the market on the way home and got two big things of strawberries for $4! They're only a bit squishy in places. I'm freezing them to make smoothies with! Also, I just (hopefully didn't break) my blender making almond butter. It's like peanut butter, only made from almonds. And WOW, I don't think I can go back to peanuts now - it's soooooo good!