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RM1983
Joined: 03 Jan 2007
Posts: 360
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 Posted: Thu Feb 26, 2015 2:41 am Post subject: |
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| marley'sghost wrote: |
Good points here. I'll toss in my ￥２。
| RM1983 wrote: |
1)
- I think that some of my JTEs don't understand what the purpose of an ALT immersive class is. It collides too strongly with the exam-based syllabus they have to teach....... |
| RM1983 wrote: |
- Last thing,and maybe a personal one.......... I can't really stand sitting in the teacher's room all day doing nothing. |
And I see that as one of the things making the job worth it. I am payed for only 29.5 of the 40 hours I'll spend at school. I see that down time as mine and if they want me running around full time, somebody needs to hire me privately full time. I'll use that time to study, prep my private students' lessons, and ramble on on Dave's. |
You're right about this actually. We don't get paid for downtime, and that is how we get stuck on 29.5 hours isnt it? |
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steki47
Joined: 20 Apr 2008
Posts: 1029
Location: BFE Inaka
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| Posted: Thu Feb 26, 2015 3:09 am Post subject: |
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| marley'sghost wrote: |
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I try and not to dwell on the cultural differences between my home country and Japan. People are people, we are all the same animal at the core. Whether Japanese, or American, or Rwandan or Thai we're all trying to earn a living, protect our families, raise our children and contribute to our society........ or to grab a bigger slice of the pie. Culture is just the path we take to do those things, and culture is determined by the accidents of geography and history, nothing more or less.
We all have problems. The Japanese tend (warning:gross generalization to follow) to take the approach that a problem is something to be endured. You get through it by sticking together, working hard and doing your job. To an American, that can look like a gutless herd of sheep, uselessly sucking their teeth in the face of adversity. And sometimes that American would not be wrong.
Americans tend (repeat warning:gross generalization continues) to look at a problem as something you confront and solve. You get through it by pushing and pulling at it, debating, even arguing. To a Japanese, that can look like a bunch of childish, selfish, complaining. And sometimes that Japanese would not be wrong.
Again, I try not to dwell on the differences. You can end up doing more harm than good. Just try and be aware that we all do the same things, but just come at it from sometimes completely opposite directions.
We can beat up on the Japanese school system and the larger cultural forces that shape it all day. That windmill will remain unmoved despite the furious tilting of a thousand ALTs. |
Yes and no.
1. Many of our comments and gripes are certainly a reflection of general patterns in the Anglosphere/Western socieities. This is quite ethnocentric, but that is to be expected somewhat and it is healthy to bitch and moan sometimes.
2. Many of the stated reasons for ALTs being in the classroom come from MEXT Action Plans that want to internationalize Japanese education and produce "Japanese with English abilities". Have we succeeded in those goals? I would argue that we have done some things, but fall short of the potential.
3. "Accidents" of history of geography. Sorry, but no way is this the case. There is a lot of randomness in the world and human behavior, but the evolutionary pyschologist in me sees too many patterns with plausible explanations to attribute the development of cultures to mere accidents.
East Asians were the first people to develop standardized testing, specifically for the civil service exams in China. The tests mainly consisted of memorizing and reciting (sound familar?) philosophy and literature.
The current generation of East Asians are the successful descendants of people who could sit still for long periods of time, memorize gobs of data and recite it on command. On a genetic level, East Asians have very low frequencies of the DNA for ADHD-quite rare in these parts.
High population densities, largely brought on by rice, create pressure for more authoritarian societies with strict rules of control. People who violated these rules and displayed selfishness, laziness, short tempers were punished and often killed. The DRD2 gene that gives a predisposition towards impulsivity is also less frequent in the Japanese gene pool. I suppose beheading peasants would have some affect on the gene pool.
Europeans, starting with Greeks, encouraged education to satisfy one's curiosity and solve problem. (Good point there!) Logic and analysis spring from the Greeks and spread through the Western intellectual tradition.
Standardized testing in the West came much later, after the Industrial Revolution. We began to standardize production and then tried to standardized people.
Certain DNA (serotonin transmitters and dopamine R4 receptors) are found in different frequencies in Europeans than in Asians. The differences give Europeans propensities towards risk-taking and less social anxiety (leading to conformity) with East Asians having greater social sensitivity and lower levels of experimentation on average.
I attribute this to the culture/gene coevolution process, whereby human create cultures than reflect our desires to eat and make babies (another good point), but adapting to different environmental pressures.
In other words, many of the differences between the West and East are both cultural and genetic and reflect the interplay between environments and our leaders "domesticating" us to conform to our given society.
Phew! Long-winded answer, to be sure. I agree with many of your points but I still think it is healthy and even productive to point out the differences and try to find some compromise between the two different educational cultures. |
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fluffyhamster
Joined: 13 Mar 2005
Posts: 3292
Location: UK > China > Japan > UK again
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| Posted: Thu Feb 26, 2015 5:25 am Post subject: |
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Regarding the cultural exchange reason, that has always been nebulous at best. (Sure, there are observed social conventions such as turkey at Christmas, but if we were meant to mumble about or indeed more or less silently personify mainly that sort of stuff, then we'd be employed in community centers rather than schools). The culture is to all intents and purposes the language. Mind you, steki47 has quoted the apparently "Japanese with English abilities" plural, so maybe that implies being able to carve a mean roast rather than "just" talk about "whatever".
Last edited by fluffyhamster on Thu Feb 26, 2015 12:11 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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steki47
Joined: 20 Apr 2008
Posts: 1029
Location: BFE Inaka
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| Posted: Thu Feb 26, 2015 5:31 am Post subject: |
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| fluffyhamster wrote: |
| Mind you, steki47 has quoted the apparently "Japanese with English abilities" plural, so maybe that implies being able to carve a mean roast rather than "just" talk about "whatever". |
Make scones? Don't know, what abilities do the English have? Hehe |
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rxk22
Joined: 19 May 2010
Posts: 1629
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| Posted: Thu Feb 26, 2015 9:38 am Post subject: |
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Steki, awesome post.
I agree, that the more or less Confucian styled govts in East Asia led to standardized testing. I wonder what genetic impact it has had.
Also rice, which is more labor intensive, yet yields more calories per square meter than wheat crops do. Also, rice allowed central China and southern Japan to have 6 crops every 5 years.
I think having to govern and deal with high density pops, even in the ancient era, led to a fundamental different cultural. You can't ignore trouble, as it will lead to chaos rather quickly in urban areas.
I do think also that route memorization was fantastic for it's era. When information was hard to come by, even with printing books were expensive pre 1900. Memorizing facts was a good skill. Now analyzing and dealing with info is what is needed. As digital media has made memorizing facts a Don Quixote like quest. I can not memorize facts to the point that an average person reading wiki would be wowed by what I bring to the table in my field.
I think the big sticker for me was, an an inexperienced ALT walking into a Japanese school for the first time, I saw that the Japanese school systems were doing almost nothing correct English learning wise. Things could be so much different/better, but it seems the govt bureaucracy is a machine that can not be stopped. |
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steki47
Joined: 20 Apr 2008
Posts: 1029
Location: BFE Inaka
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| Posted: Thu Feb 26, 2015 10:26 am Post subject: |
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| rxk22 wrote: |
Steki, awesome post.
I agree, that the more or less Confucian styled govts in East Asia led to standardized testing. I wonder what genetic impact it has had.
Also rice, which is more labor intensive, yet yields more calories per square meter than wheat crops do. Also, rice allowed central China and southern Japan to have 6 crops every 5 years.
I think having to govern and deal with high density pops, even in the ancient era, led to a fundamental different cultural. You can't ignore trouble, as it will lead to chaos rather quickly in urban areas. |
Thanks!
That was what I was getting at with the culture/gene coevolution reference. Essentially, rice farming can support a larger number of people, Asian societies develop higher population densities and this in turn creates pressure for more controlling cultures. Japan is a small island with less arable land and so the pressures to conform may be have stronger.
Europe has so many mountains and a massive coastline so implementing total control over the entire continent would have difficult to impossible in the ancient world. This may be part of the reason why Europeans have greater tendecies towards individualism or tolerance of individualism; it was too difficult to control everyone. US and Canada even more so.
The DNA argument goes that a given gene pool would be shaped through all of these factors over a period of time. Sometimes a few thousand years, a blip in evolutionary time, can significantly change the nature of a gene pool. Plus, most people want to be accepted by their parents and the greater society around them, so certain behaviors are rewarded while others are punished. Japanese teens don't attend juku because they like it.
I have studied anthropology and more recently education. My primary interest is the differences between Western and Eastern cultures and now I am an American working in the public schools, so research topics are popping up frequently.
The culture/gene theory has been around for awhile, but more recent studies are coming out and making their way into the mainstream media.
Weak article but nice references:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2113350/Why-individualism-free-thinking-genes-British-people.html
Better source on Chiao's work:
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2009/10/27/rspb.2009.1650 |
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rxk22
Joined: 19 May 2010
Posts: 1629
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| Posted: Thu Feb 26, 2015 12:07 pm Post subject: |
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No, thank you Steki. Posts like that, make coming here worth while.
I think that a lot of these theories can actually be proven/debunked now thanks to significant advances in DNA research, as well as understanding and mapping gene sequences.
I am a hist buff, so this is up my alley as well.
I do disagree that Euro has more mtns than East Asia. I think that Euro is pretty open, esp western and northern Euro. It being so far north, that despite being warm for it's latitude, it has poor sun, and really low agri output. Which means more spread out cultures/low density compared to Asia. So you had more of the feasting/hall culture in Europe, which led to warmer relations with local lords. While Asian lords/governors seems to have been more like Babylonian nobility. Aloof, and seen as superior to the peasants.
Though Euros did see themselves as superior, I feel that Christianity made everyone more equal. While Buddhism and Confucianism can justify inequality.
I think the biggest problem is that these gene/socio development studies have their origins in racism. FOr instance, US blacks being bred to look good on an auction block. Hence their propensity to more muscular. Not that this theory is wrong. Most just don't to touch it, same with Asians and ADHD or the lack of it.
I wonder if the serotonin transporter gene is the culprit in many more sociological situations than we presently think? Amazing how little we still know at this point. We, sociology wise, really aren't that much more scientifically more advanced than the Victorians. |
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steki47
Joined: 20 Apr 2008
Posts: 1029
Location: BFE Inaka
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| Posted: Thu Feb 26, 2015 12:59 pm Post subject: |
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| rxk22 wrote: |
I think the biggest problem is that these gene/socio development studies have their origins in racism. FOr instance, US blacks being bred to look good on an auction block. Hence their propensity to more muscular. Not that this theory is wrong. Most just don't to touch it, same with Asians and ADHD or the lack of it.
I wonder if the serotonin transporter gene is the culprit in many more sociological situations than we presently think? Amazing how little we still know at this point. We, sociology wise, really aren't that much more scientifically more advanced than the Victorians. |
You could be right on the Europe comment. Makes sense. Will have to read more on that.
RE: Racism. Maybe in the 19th centuries when Westerners first created the social sciences. The research I am seeing in more recent years comes from valid and thoroughly apolitical scientists, yet they sometimes get accused of "scientific racism". Check out EO Wilson or, more recently, Cochran and Harpending.
Must say, the academics who started the equality trend were mostly Communists (literally, they called themselves that) who rejected empiricism and argued against biological explanations or even influences on human behavior. And they were largely proven to be frauds who falsified their data. Boaz, Gould, even Lewontin.
PS-The higher on average level of fast twitch muscles of Africans is much older than slavery and the US itself. Probably tens of thousands of years older. And it has paid off in athletics, to be sure.
Interesting sidetrack here! |
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kpjf
Joined: 18 Jan 2012
Posts: 385
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| Posted: Thu Feb 26, 2015 1:58 pm Post subject: |
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| fluffyhamster wrote: |
| wonmi wrote: |
| I completely understand, but honestly, if I wasn't NEAR native in ANY language, I wouldn't want to teach it. |
This reminds me of the situation regarding teaching Chinese in UK schools. IIRC/AFAIK Chinese grads are expected to teach more popular (in this case, perceived as "easier") languages such as French, Spanish and German to at least KS3, even though they may well not be at more than A or even just GCSE level in those additional languages. I shudder to think of the damage such a policy might cause to those languages (hopefully schools will prefer to hire graduates in them than mere stand-ins for long, but then, jacks-of-all-trades have their obvious uses, two for the price of one etc), and it is obviously not exactly furthering the cause of Chinese. I guess it is a similar situation in Japan, where e.g. graduates in Japanese language may be asked to teach English, with presumably the at least implicit threat that their particular school position won't continue to be available for them for long if they don't.
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This applies even for the more 'popular' languages in UK. Every teacher in UK must be able to teach 2 foreign languages nowadays - if not you'll be jobless! For those applying to teach if their second language isn't up to scratch or they don't speak a second foreign language, there are fully funded summer language courses (with many offering 1-2 week fully funded holidays to Spain/Germany/France. Lucky devils!)
The reason for all of this is that they say one school cannot offer enough classes if they are only to teach one language. And, of course this is going to be even more so the case with Mandarin or Japanese (I have seen the University of Sheffield offering Japanese surprisingly (with French or Spanish)) given that these languages probably don't offer many hours per week.
Problem here doing a course of Spanish for 2 months isn't exactly going to make you equipped, capable and confident of teaching that language. I wouldn't be confident teaching a language I'd only learnt for 2 months. Of course not all are beginners and have some knowledge of the language in advance. Nevertheless, I wouldn't fancy it myself. What if the kid asks you "Sir, what's the French for [insert some basic word]? You mightn't know it given the limited time studying the language, but you're going to look like a moron for not knowing it (of course you could do the old 'I'm not a human translator you know, look it up in the dictionary' to try and hide it). Essentially, however, this is what's happening all over England for recruiting trainee teachers (PGCE).
I do wonder though, how many Mandarin speakers are accepted. |
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fluffyhamster
Joined: 13 Mar 2005
Posts: 3292
Location: UK > China > Japan > UK again
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| Posted: Thu Feb 26, 2015 9:14 pm Post subject: |
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Hiya kpjf! I think what would help the UK's currently quite parlous state of FL teaching is:
1) consider making FLs compulsory again to school-leaving age (that is, a student should be expected to study at least one through to completion at GCSE level)
2) if not 1), at least get rid of the competition between exam boards, league tables, etc etc ("Are you sure you want to study Mandarin, Johnny? It's a hard subject and it won't look good for you or the school if you fail it. Try something easier please! Besides which, we simply don't offer it as few students seem to want to do it for some strange reason!?")
3) overhaul the Mandarin GCSE so that there is only a minimal or zero focus on the native orthography. Pinyin-only is probably the way to go for this level, leave any formal study of the hanzi until A level
Given the current situation however it is probably easier for schools to simply hire native speakers of Chinese for mere taster lessons at more the primary-school level, with actual secondary school teachers of the subject few and far between (like you say, they're probably all just "teaching" their often just 2-month-level French). Of course, there may be a more prestigious school here and there that prides itself on pushing a Mandarin programme, but that is probably not the national average at all.
Regarding the origins of cultural differences (steki n rxk), I remember reading certainly the Japan chapter of an interesting book back in my undergrad days. I must dig it out sometime (not sure where it is now!).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrington_Moore,_Jr.#Social_origins_of_dictatorship_and_democracy
. |
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steki47
Joined: 20 Apr 2008
Posts: 1029
Location: BFE Inaka
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| Posted: Thu Feb 26, 2015 10:05 pm Post subject: |
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Thanks for the link!
Specifically with the Middle east, anthropologists have spent time explaining why democracy is generally not a good fot for the region. Tightly-knit tribal networks and low trust towards members of outgroups.
Lew Kwan Yew of Singapore argued that democracy wouldn't work in a multicultural society as the Indians would overwhelmingly vote for an Indian candidate. This one is pretty bleak.
But, yeah, the Japanese have never had a revolution from below. |
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marley'sghost
Joined: 04 Oct 2010
Posts: 255
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| Posted: Fri Feb 27, 2015 12:19 am Post subject: |
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| steki47 wrote: |
| marley'sghost wrote: |
...
I try and not to dwell on the cultural differences between my home country and Japan. People are people, we are all the same animal at the core. Whether Japanese, or American, or Rwandan or Thai we're all trying to earn a living, protect our families, raise our children and contribute to our society........ or to grab a bigger slice of the pie. Culture is just the path we take to do those things, and culture is determined by the accidents of geography and history, nothing more or less.
We all have problems. The Japanese tend (warning:gross generalization to follow) to take the approach that a problem is something to be endured. You get through it by sticking together, working hard and doing your job. To an American, that can look like a gutless herd of sheep, uselessly sucking their teeth in the face of adversity. And sometimes that American would not be wrong.
Americans tend (repeat warning:gross generalization continues) to look at a problem as something you confront and solve. You get through it by pushing and pulling at it, debating, even arguing. To a Japanese, that can look like a bunch of childish, selfish, complaining. And sometimes that Japanese would not be wrong.
Again, I try not to dwell on the differences. You can end up doing more harm than good. Just try and be aware that we all do the same things, but just come at it from sometimes completely opposite directions.
We can beat up on the Japanese school system and the larger cultural forces that shape it all day. That windmill will remain unmoved despite the furious tilting of a thousand ALTs. |
Yes and no.
1. Many of our comments and gripes are certainly a reflection of general patterns in the Anglosphere/Western socieities. This is quite ethnocentric, but that is to be expected somewhat and it is healthy to bitch and moan sometimes.
2. Many of the stated reasons for ALTs being in the classroom come from MEXT Action Plans that want to internationalize Japanese education and produce "Japanese with English abilities". Have we succeeded in those goals? I would argue that we have done some things, but fall short of the potential.
3. "Accidents" of history of geography. Sorry, but no way is this the case. There is a lot of randomness in the world and human behavior, but the evolutionary pyschologist in me sees too many patterns with plausible explanations to attribute the development of cultures to mere accidents.
East Asians were the first people to develop standardized testing, specifically for the civil service exams in China. The tests mainly consisted of memorizing and reciting (sound familar?) philosophy and literature.
The current generation of East Asians are the successful descendants of people who could sit still for long periods of time, memorize gobs of data and recite it on command. On a genetic level, East Asians have very low frequencies of the DNA for ADHD-quite rare in these parts.
High population densities, largely brought on by rice, create pressure for more authoritarian societies with strict rules of control. People who violated these rules and displayed selfishness, laziness, short tempers were punished and often killed. The DRD2 gene that gives a predisposition towards impulsivity is also less frequent in the Japanese gene pool. I suppose beheading peasants would have some affect on the gene pool.
Europeans, starting with Greeks, encouraged education to satisfy one's curiosity and solve problem. (Good point there!) Logic and analysis spring from the Greeks and spread through the Western intellectual tradition.
Standardized testing in the West came much later, after the Industrial Revolution. We began to standardize production and then tried to standardized people.
Certain DNA (serotonin transmitters and dopamine R4 receptors) are found in different frequencies in Europeans than in Asians. The differences give Europeans propensities towards risk-taking and less social anxiety (leading to conformity) with East Asians having greater social sensitivity and lower levels of experimentation on average.
I attribute this to the culture/gene coevolution process, whereby human create cultures than reflect our desires to eat and make babies (another good point), but adapting to different environmental pressures.
In other words, many of the differences between the West and East are both cultural and genetic and reflect the interplay between environments and our leaders "domesticating" us to conform to our given society.
Phew! Long-winded answer, to be sure. I agree with many of your points but I still think it is healthy and even productive to point out the differences and try to find some compromise between the two different educational cultures. |
Good stuff there. I don't think we really disagree. By "accidents" I was sort of trying to sum up the whole rice farming=centralized societies, train of cause and effect you carefully explained. Nobody chose to make Asia's climate suitable for rice, it just happened because of geography. By "accidents" I meant " environmental factors out of the direct control of any one individual's hands". I'm no psychologist or sociologist or anything, but I read my Jared Diamond.
And yes, yes it's fine and good and healthy to discuss differences, no argument. But I'm sure that if you spend any time on these forums you will find a lot of bitching and moaning. There is always the danger of losing sight of the larger picture as we furiously type away here between classes. I remember a guest speaker we had way back when I was a JET. He said, "It's fine to go on Gaijinpot or where ever and complain, vent, let of a little steam. But don't live there. It will hurt you."
I don't think that is happening here on this thread, but I always make an effort not to fall in that trap while I'm rattling my chains.
Maybe "tiliting at windmills" is a bit too colorful. The point is that Crusaders don't last long. They exhaust themselves swimming upstream, get bitter and eventually float away. The system is what it is, and we can do our best work by going with it and worming our way through the holes. After 10+ years of ALTing I'm pretty wiggly.
That probably makes me an exception. Most ALTs last 2 maybe 3 years? I think folks do stay around longer than in the old days. There are more old timers with families. Job prospects "back home" are bleaker than they used to be, so I think folks are sticking around a bit longer as there is no "career" to go back to or get started. I also have spent the last half dozen at the same schools. I've been here longer than all but one of the English teachers. I'm in my early 40's, so I'm older than most of them too. So the JTEs go along with my way of doing things as that's "how it's always been done".
When I was a fresh off the plane JET all those years ago, I couldn't do what I do now. I didn't know where the holes were. The JTEs had to help me out and tell me what to do at first. And they often had no idea...... I think the point of Womni's workshop is to figure out how the JTE's can initiate that integration. Odds are they don't have a crusty old timer like me to get them started. |
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fluffyhamster
Joined: 13 Mar 2005
Posts: 3292
Location: UK > China > Japan > UK again
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| Posted: Fri Feb 27, 2015 2:30 am Post subject: |
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Well, again, Crusaders is a bit too colourful. I think most of us posting on Dave's have been around the AET block at least a few years and done many hundreds if not thousands of lessons, and even though only a minority of those lessons have ever sought our input, we know better than to push it.
Usually all the JTEs' lessons make me do is think of all the ways they were linguistically skewy and not quite functionally cutting it. I rarely if ever tell them my thoughts - the only time I can recall giving an "unbridled" opinion was when a newbie teacher had stumped for 'She is going to sleep' (cf. She is falling asleep, She is going to work, I'm just going to the shop, do you want anything? Cornetto, and so on) as a primary exemplar for 'be going to' (It's going to rain, She's going to have a baby, I'm going to be a father, Her dad's going to kill me at the shotgun wedding, etc etc). In formal feedback after his lesson (I guess it was a quasi-observed deal) a more experienced JTE who was pretty capable (and had agreed with me that the example seemed skewy) asked me to tell him what I'd thought and would suggest. I told him that the very example he'd selected was right at the top of the Google search I'd done, and taken from a Japanese English-teaching website, and thus appeared to be an invented example. All I then did was implore him to invest in some empirical grammars and dictionaries, and suggest some titles. Shocking stuff, I know.
The fact is, we are AETing by the invitation of the BOEs and presumably the parents in general. Classrooms should not be the JTEs' little fiefdoms, that they can choose to insulate and barricade against the "imposition" of authentic language and interaction. Of course it isn't the AET's job to call the worse JTEs out on this, but boy it would be nice if someone in a position of authority did. The fact that they don't makes one wonder quite what the point of the whole enterprise is then. Window dressing ultimately, with the goods inside not to be touched and certainly not for up for bargaining.
But then, one looks at what is waved in their faces as an alternative. Often "monolingual expert" CLTers pushing vague "fluency-based" piddly tiddly-wink activities? Meh!
Last edited by fluffyhamster on Sun Dec 13, 2015 8:28 am; edited 3 times in total |
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steki47
Joined: 20 Apr 2008
Posts: 1029
Location: BFE Inaka
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| Posted: Fri Feb 27, 2015 2:46 am Post subject: |
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| marley'sghost wrote: |
| By "accidents" I meant " environmental factors out of the direct control of any one individual's hands". I'm no psychologist or sociologist or anything, but I read my Jared Diamond. |
Gotcha. I attacked your choice of words with a bit more vigor than necessary.
BTW, not a huge fan of Diamond. GST and Collapse were quite good in parts but his inaccurate and obscurantist take on genetics is a bit disturbing to me. Mt two cents.
| marley'sghost wrote: |
| And yes, yes it's fine and good and healthy to discuss differences, no argument. |
When I am in a more optimistic mood, I like to examine the differences and then try to find middle ground or a third path that ALT/JTE can work with. Rather viewing each other as the "Other", I try to view it as a continuum, with some room for compromise.
The JTE will always have the upper hand, so I often feel like my above sentiments is me negotiating against myself or, worst case, being shut out of the picture altogether. |
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wonmi
Joined: 12 Feb 2015
Posts: 17
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| Posted: Fri Feb 27, 2015 5:33 am Post subject: |
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haha, hi all! I think I got lost in the sea of replies where I'm suddenly seeing DNA and wondering..woah..where did my conversation turn!? haha...in any case, a HUGE thanks to you all. I gave my workshop today and it went extremely well. It was as if I had opened a completely new world to them about how to communicate with ALTs and I hope this really does SOMETHING when they go back. I even had a shpeal about passive-aggressiveness in which I heard some ohhhh.... so yeah, some of them now understand this term so it's a bit of a wake up call.
Keep the conversations going but just wanted to let you all know! |
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