Lee Shainis: Depends on how many of you are going to be on screen, so if you could just take a second and turn on your camera if you have the ability to be on camera. I also just like to see people's faces for a moment and know that you're actually there and not like taking a bath during this presentation.

Great. All right, cool. We got some people. All right, so we'll do a few breakout rooms. I'm going to be sharing. It's OK if you don't have a camera as long as you participate. That's great.

I'm going to be sharing a copy of this presentation or a link to access a copy of it at the end. There's a lot of good stuff in here. I don't expect you to remember everything we talk about. I really hope you walk away with one or two things that you remember, and then you'll have the PDF of the presentation to go back to for the rest of your life and pick out different little ideas here and there. So it's some good stuff that some of my colleagues and I put together over the years. And I'll get right into it.

So my name is Lee Shainis, and I am the co-founder of a nonprofit based in Boulder, Colorado, where I am right now called Intercambio Uniting Communities. I'll share a little bit about Intercambio you in a moment. But first, I want to put you into some small groups and ask you what motivated you to come to a session about motivating students.

So I'm just going to give you 3 minutes in groups of three or four here real quick. So what motivated you to come to this session? So this is our first breakout room. Just introduce yourselves for a few seconds and then get into this conversation of why are you here. You decided to spend an hour of your day to be talking about motivation and confidence.

I'm curious to know what those reasons are, so let's see. Let's do seven rooms. And I'll see you back here in 3 minutes. You might see a 1-minute warning. You don't need to do anything. Don't eject yourself prematurely from the breakout room and offend your peers. They'll think that you didn't want to talk to them more. So just stay in there, and you'll automatically get sent back here after 3 minutes or so.

All right, enjoy each other. I'll see you back here at 10 after. So again, what motivated you to come to this session on motivation? Let's see. All right. There we go.

Dan and Michele, if you can hear me and you want to join a breakout room, let me know. But if not, you can hang out here.

Michele Raymond: Hi, Lee. This is Michele. I am going to have to leave in a second, so I didn't want to mess people up.

Lee Shainis: Yeah, no problem.

Michele Raymond: I'll be back. I just have to step out of the office for a second.

Lee Shainis: OK, no problem.

Michele Raymond: Thank you, though.

Lee Shainis: No, thanks for letting me know. Let's see. Who else here? And Tina, welcome. We have some people in small breakout rooms. Hi, Tina.

Tina Mowles: Hi.

Lee Shainis: I'm going to bring back people in like a second so we can just hang out here, and then so yeah, what motivated you to come to this session? That's the question people are talking about.

Tina Mowles: I work with high school equivalency students, so anything I can do to help keep them motivated is always good.

Lee Shainis: Cool. And Jay Soto, welcome. Are you there?

Jisela Soto: Hello. Yes, I'm here.

Lee Shainis: There you go. What's your name?

Jisela Soto: Jisela Soto.

Lee Shainis: Jisela, Gisela, Jisela or Gisela.

Jisela Soto: Jisela.

Lee Shainis: Jisela, all right.

Jisela Soto: Yes

Lee Shainis: Cool. And what motivated you to come to this session? People are discussing in small breakout rooms right now.

Jisela Soto: OK, yes, this is my second year working with adult ed and just kind of figuring out ways to really get our students engaged and wanting to come back. I think we have that responsibility to make sure that their time is worthwhile here. So finding out ways to do that.

Lee Shainis: Cool. Awesome. And welcome, Ray. I don't know if you can hear me. People are coming back already. OK, all right, welcome back, everybody. If you would like to share something in the chat about what came up in your small group, something that motivated you to be here, I'd love to see some people share.

We're still waiting for a bunch of people to come back. But if you can write in the chat something that motivated you or something you heard from a colleague, you're welcome to share anything in the chat about what motivated you to be here today. So I'll give you a second to write when people re-enter, and I will go back to the presentation.

So if you're just joining us, rejoining us, hopefully, you enjoyed your conversations. You can share anything in the chat that came up for you. It's also good to see what other people are thinking about this. Someone said motivation and persistence is a goal at our school. Great. All right, keep writing in the chat.

So I want you to reflect on this one. I can't see your fingers. So on a Likert scale 0 to 5, how important is motivation in adult learning or young adult learning? I know there's some high school equivalency folks here as well. 0 to 5, how important is motivation? How important is confidence? I see a lot of 5s.

Yeah, the stuff's pretty important. Good. I see some hands. And what about this last one? I know how to motivate and inspire confidence in my adult learners. You feel like that's a 5? A 3? A 2? I see some 3s, some fours, a 3 and 1/2. Nice, I like that. Cool. All right, that's good.

That tells me that a lot of people see room for improvement here, which is probably why you're here. If you thought you were an expert on this and doing all the right things, you might not be here. This is something that's really hard to do and be intentional about all the time, which is what it takes. It takes really being aware of this a lot.

Another question, you don't need to say this out loud. We're going to come back to this at the end of the presentation. But think about your answer. What's the first thing people do when they get home from work? You don't need to write it down but think about that.

What do you think is the first thing people do? Do you just fall on the floor like this guy, or do you turn on the TV? Do you do other things? All right, we're going to get back to that question at the end.

Objectives for this training are to understand the unique characteristics of adult or young adult learners, learn how to increase motivation and confidence based on some theory, and then give you a lot of specific techniques that support motivation and confidence in your classes, things you could start doing tomorrow. So we really want this to be practical, applicable. And again, we don't expect you to apply everything we go over here but just one or two things tomorrow and then maybe another one or two things in a month or in six months from now.

So we're going to talk about what motivates adult learners. What blocks motivation, how to create physical and different environments to encourage people, specific techniques for it. We got a little summary at the end, and I might have some time for questions and answers at the end.

So Intercambio is the organization that I co-founded and ran for 21 years until late last year, and I'm still working with them to do conferences and stuff like this. We started in 2001. We launched our first curriculum and pronunciation book and a tool called the Immigrant Guide in 2008. In 2019, we launched a new curriculum called Confidence and Connections, which I will allude to here a little bit just as to show you examples of how some of these things can be built into a curriculum.

We're not trying to sell you the curriculum. Just show examples. And then Intercambio also has a national network of actually 82 member organizations now that use our training and materials and share ideas with each other through networking opportunities and attend webinars and things like that. A lot of our model is based on what we call mutual learning or multidirectional learning, where students and teachers are sharing perspectives and experiences, and it's all about building belonging, which really impacts motivation and confidence.

So in Boulder, we've had 15,000 participants. And nationally, we work with hundreds of organizations. We have an online platform that connects people one on one. And then we also have a few programs that we have free tools available for if you're interested in citizenship class materials. We offer cultural humility trainings to organizations.

And we have a really cool program called Community Conversations which I'll talk about, and that's a great way-- that's one of the best ways we've seen confidence being built in our students. We pair them up with community volunteers. It's speed dating style English conversation, and students walk away with a huge boost in confidence. So I'll talk about how that works.

And then there's also another session, which I'm talking about in an hour and a half, called Conversations on Race and Equity for Adult English Learners. So if you're interested in that, check out that presentation in an hour or an hour and a half. And then this is some information about the network. You can check that out on our website. So let's get into it.

Who participates in our programs? It's people from a lot of different backgrounds. So different nationalities, of course, different ages, different socioeconomic statuses, different academic backgrounds, different religions, different-- all kinds of differences which creates amazing opportunities. Adult English programs are one of the only places ever where people from all these different backgrounds come together and talk to each other every week or twice a week, and it's an incredible opportunity that can lead to very strong connections and motivate people and build confidence, or it can do the opposite. A lot of that is up to us as teachers and administrators.

At Intercambio, our volunteers are also from a lot of different backgrounds, and they, too, need to be motivated and build confidence. So adults are naturally motivated for a lot of reasons. So few is they arrive to our programs with a lot of life experiences. They're goal-oriented. We're going to talk about goals.

A lot of them need to know why is it this way which, in a lot of cases, you just say because I'm not going to explain the history of grammar, and our grammar makes no sense in English, so sometimes it's just because and they want to be there. They want the classes to be relevant. They want to stay connected to them, and so on. So they're naturally motivated.

There's also things that can block their motivation. So they come with a lot of experiences, a lot of, I don't know if I like to call it baggage, but they come with a lot of times fear and anxiety. They're worried about failing at this. The number one barrier to people learning English is not transportation or childcare, or cost. It's fear of failure. That's the number one cause of people not joining our programs not staying in our programs.

Some have had bad experiences at different schools, definitely not at your school but at different schools. And a lot of them do have legitimate obligations outside of class. So we'll talk about all these things. How do we create an environment that encourages learning? Well, one, we need to lower those blocks.

When we can reduce the fear and anxiety, we can encourage learning. We can encourage confidence and make all these beautiful things happen. But as long as that fear and anxiety is still there, we're stuck. We use an acronym at Intercambio bio called PEACE, and each letter stands for something. This is more for teachers. So these are like critical things that teachers need to do to build confidence in their classes and have successful classes.

Can you guess what any of these letters mean? What are some of the most important qualities for teachers in adult education? You can just throw out some guesses here, and I'll go over all of them. So participation. I see patience. Ding, ding, ding. You got one of them. Patience is one of them.

You can guess any of the letters while we're doing it. Empathy, I do like that. It's not one, but it's a good one. Equality that's a good word as well. What other ones? What else do you think? P-E-A-C-E. There's two E's, so you've got a better chance with the E's here. I'll start to give them to you.

Accessible, I like that. Engaged, I like that. Accountability, we'll talk about that. Engagement, yes. All right, so I will give you some of the correct answers here. There's no correct answers. You can create your own acronym. You can create your own mantra, which I'm actually going to talk about in a moment. So the P is Patience.

The first E is Enthusiasm because a lot of our students come into class and they're tired, whether it's online or in person. So if the teacher is bringing enthusiasm, that's going to keep the students motivated. The A is the toughest one. A lot of student talking. I bet none of you guessed that because we really want our students to talk 50% of the class or more.

C is for Corrections. So offering them corrections. Our students want to be corrected. This is the only place where it's safe for them to be corrected or give them feedback. And then the final E is Encouragement, which we're going to talk about. So you can steal this from us. You can modify it to make it your own. You can have a completely different acronym, but we've enjoyed using this, especially with our teachers at Intercambio.

So encouraging learners, one thing is to reexamine our expectations every class. So this is about clarity. If there's no clarity, there's more chance for conflict. So, for instance, in the cultural humility training I lead, I talk about when students enter your class late, what do they do? Do they go in and sit down quietly or do they greet each student individually and disrupt the class?

What is the expectation in your class? Is it OK if they greet everyone individually and disrupt class temporarily, or do you want them to sit down quietly, and how do you make that clear in your expectations? You want to start class on time. Turn off your microphone. Find a quiet place, blah, blah, blah, whatever those expectations are, but having clarity around expectations is important, whatever expectations you decide to set.

So let's talk about the mantra. So I talk about this in a different training, and at the end of the training, I say what really resonated with you. A lot of people say I really like the mantra idea. So the idea of a mantra is, this is for your class for students, picking out like three short phrases you say at the beginning and end of every class, so like what's really important that you want to remind them of.

So things like be patient with yourself and your classmates. Mistakes are great. You need to make mistakes. You know, don't be afraid of mistakes. Something around mistakes because we know that the number one barrier is fear of failure, fear of making mistakes. How can you just ingrain it in them to not fear that to embrace it instead?

Ask questions. You want to create an environment where they're comfortable asking questions. Be open and kind. Practice. Practice. Practice. I can do it. Have fun. Whatever resonates with you, if it's nothing, it's not one of these seven or eight, if it's something totally different, I just encourage you to come up with three, two to four-word phrases or even a one-word phrase that you repeat at the beginning and end of every class.

So we'll get back to this in a moment but be thinking about that. So I'm going to have you share your mantra in a small breakout room in a few minutes here. So encouraging learners. How you start class is also really important. So that's going to set the tone that creates the environment.

Some recommendations are always start on time. It is like fingernails on a chalkboard when students come on time, and the teacher says, well, let's just wait here for a few more people to show up. It's like, no, you're punishing the people who came on time, and now they're going to start coming late, and then class is going to start later and later and later.

So always have something to do even if they come early. Don't punish them for showing up early as well. Always have something in your back pocket for people to do. Make it something fun. Don't do something that's in the lesson that you're going to have to repeat when other people come. I'll share some ideas in a second.

So interact warmly with them. You can review class material from the previous class or the previous month. Answer questions they have. Do a little warm-up gain. And the teacher books that we have and Confidence and Connections all have kind of warm-up ideas for every lesson, so you don't always have to come up with your own.

So some ideas for some warm-up things there are some games like Tic-Tac-Toe. You could do a little show and tell, some connection questions, charades, Pictionary. You can show a short video, do a song, or a quote, an idiom or a saying of the day.

What I do is I use our pronunciation fun book and just do a page out of that because students love doing pronunciation, and it's not something that really impacts like the flow of a regular lesson, so I always do some pronunciation to start. But whatever it is that you feel good about doing, maybe your students like games, maybe they don't like games.

We've had some teachers who are like I don't do gains in my class. That's for kids. And other students and teachers were like the games are the best part of class. So it's very individual of what works for you and your class. So those are some ideas. But always start on time. Don't punish students for coming on time, and that's one of the big messages there.

All right, let's see. So motivating adults. So we talk about the just right learning. We don't want it to be too easy. We don't want it to be too hard. We want it to be a stretch but like a comfortable stretch. So we talk about the yoga stretch. You don't want to hurt yourself, but you want to stretch and like feel something, so we have to find what that is for our students.

If it's too easy, they're not learning. If it's too hard, they get frustrated. So one thing is activating background knowledge. So our students possess a bank of knowledge in their memory. And when we allow them to talk about what they already know, it activates that knowledge, it builds confidence and provides this sticky hook to hang on the new knowledge.

So you can use images, do brainstorming, word, webs, we use realia, ask questions, anything so that they can share what they already do know so it's not just always presenting new, but also letting them share what they do. Another thing is encouraging self-belief. So I had that example in the mantra of I can do it.

So people are designed for continuous learning, and adults are experienced learners. We all want to learn. Our job is to ensure students that they believe that they can learn because a lot of students enter our programs thinking I can't do this. Learning another language or getting your high school equivalent degree or whatever it seems like this unachievable thing.

Nobody says, or very few people say, I'm going to learn a new language, and in a couple of years, I'm going to be speaking with confidence because I'm going to stick with it and practice and do my homework and attend class and then I'll be able to have conversations with people in this other language like it's hard to envision that for yourself, especially if you're coming in with a lack of self-esteem or lack of confidence. A lot of our students come with a variety of academic backgrounds, and typically people with lower academic backgrounds have less confidence in their ability to learn another language.

Another concept here is called scaffolding. So this idea of scaffolding means we're building a step-by-step structure into a lesson. So you don't just start with conversation. You build up to the conversation by breaking it into manageable parts.

You start with some listening and then do some vocab and some pronunciation and some grammar and some structured activities and some fill-in-the-blank and then maybe fill out some forms, and then you work your way up to open-ended discussions about topics. So that's the idea of scaffolding.

And a lot of research shows that-- I've already gone to the next one. So again, with the scaffolding, every lesson in our book is scaffolded. It's kind of follows the same structure. And a lot of students like having a structure that they can count on, that they're used to, that they know that every lesson starts with a little listening activity, and then we go to pronunciation, and then we go to vocab, and then we go to grammar and then blah, blah, blah, and so on.

Goal setting is another one of the five elements of motivating adults. So research-- I'm not into research, but my team loves research-- shows that goal setting is important for student retention. So students want to know what are we doing today. What am I going to learn this semester if I stick with this?

So we have what we call SMART goals. I'm sure some of you have heard of this before. So SMART goals are Specific. They're Measurable. They're Attainable. They're Relevant, and they're Time-based. So they can say, look, I've stuck with class this term, and now I can do these 20 things or these 10 things.

And so, in our curriculum and most curriculum, I think you have. I will be able to do this by the time I finished this book so I can talk about the weather. I can talk about my hobbies. I can fill out a form. I can use basic past tense. I can speak in the future a little bit, whatever it is, so that they know it's a mix of like topics and grammar and conversations they can have.

So it's important to present this maybe at the beginning of a semester so they see like, oh, wow, this seems achievable, and it's a lot. It's not too much. It's not too little. And this is exciting that I can actually I can learn these things. And then there's also checklists and kind of progress checks in the middle and the end of every book.

So again, some things about what they should be able to do. So whatever curriculum you're using, it's important that they kind of have checkpoints to see like, oh yes, I can do this. And not just can you do this, but show me you can do this. Ask me for directions. Tell me what you like to do. Talk about the clothes you're wearing. Talk about what you're doing this weekend and things like that.

And then, finally, certificates are huge motivators. Crappy certificates, really fancy-looking certificates, it doesn't matter. People love certificates. Our teachers love them. Our students love them.

When I go to our students' homes, I always see the Intercambio certificates on their wall from 15 years ago. And it doesn't have to be fancy. It doesn't have to be in fancy frames or anything, just an opportunity to celebrate their achievement. So we do these at the end of every eight-week term.

You finished a term, great. We're going to give you a certificate, congratulate you for your resilience and for sticking with it and boom, you've earned this. Your name's on it, and it's yours. Congratulations. So any celebration opportunity, take advantage of those. OK, So I'm going to put you back into small groups again, and we're going to talk about these five things. I'm going to write those in the chat too.

So it's the just right learning. It's activating background knowledge, encouraging self-belief, scaffolding and goal setting. And then I threw in the bonus of what's your mantra in there? And the questions are, how do you incorporate these? Are there some that you incorporate a lot more than others? How do you do goal setting? Which of these are most challenging for you, and what's your mantra?

So I'm going to put these in the chat here. So I put those in the chat. I took out the goal-setting one, and I'm going to take that. So if you're able to turn your cameras back on, I'm going to give you about 5 or 6 minutes for this one. So everyone should have the five things and the questions in the chat now.

So how do you use these in your classes? Which are most challenging for you? And what's your mantra? If you have one or if you're thinking of one. It helps to say them out loud. Sometimes you, like, write it down, and then you say it, and you're like, oh, this sounds terrible. I need to change this. So practice saying it out loud because it might be something you're saying a lot over the next several years.

I'm going to mix it up the breakout rooms a little bit here, and I'm going to have groups of four to five. So each person has should have about a minute or two to share. I'll give you about 6 minutes total. Can I get some thumbs up if you're good on these instructions? OK, and I'll look forward to seeing you back here in about 6 minutes. Ready? Go.

All right, let's see. What? Two people?

Renee Collins: You had a good turnout, Lee.

Lee Shainis: Yeah, it was like 35 people.

Renee Collins: Yeah, I think I counted 34 as the highest.

Lee Shainis: Oh, that's awesome.

Renee Collins: Yeah.

Lee Shainis: Nice. I hope I don't lose people when I send them to breakout rooms.

Renee Collins: It's always interesting to watch that happen a little bit. I think maybe we lost four.

Lee Shainis: I think it's better for the people who stay and engage.

Renee Collins: It's funny because I think people are-- they're uncomfortable with it at first, but then once they're there, it's a happy place to be. You're like yeah, interacting with people who are experiencing often very much the same kind of things that you are.

Lee Shainis: I love the breakout rooms. I think it's actually better than in person sometimes because it's not loud. It's more private.

Renee Collins: So I apologize for popping the thing in about the evaluation, but I was trying to be prepared, then I accidentally press the other button, so I won't do that.

Lee Shainis: That's no problem. As you said, you're giving five presentations at this.

Renee Collins: Something like-- well, I'm not the lead presenter in all of them, but I'm doing-- we just finished something called the California Adult Ed digital learning guidance, so I'm part of that. I'm part of one tomorrow about AB 1491, which is about Carryover Funding for Adult Ed. This afternoon's Canvas one. I can't remember them all, but maybe a couple of others.

Lee Shainis: Cool. That's great. Nice.

Renee Collins: I basically said, just put me where you need me. Happy to help.

Lee Shainis: Nice. Yeah, I'm doing three.

Renee Collins: That's a lot.

Lee Shainis: Yeah, it's good.

Renee Collins: It's good.

Lee Shainis: I like it.

Renee Collins: Well, it's nice when you can take those different approaches of equity and race. Those are some topics that are a little scary for some people to talk about or think about how it applies to them, or there's also the group that just doesn't think it applies for them or their position or what have you.

Lee Shainis: I like attempting to have the conversation, at least.

Renee Collins: Yeah, no, that's good.

Lee Shainis: Let's see. It's going to pop into this one room and make sure. Always makes me nervous when there's only three people.

Renee Collins: Yeah, I'll just go on mute again. You let me know if you need me at all.

Lee Shainis: All right, they're good. OK, breakout rooms.

I hear some good conversations happening in there. I hate to end it.

Renee Collins: That's great. Yeah, just always takes a little time to warm up.

Lee Shainis: I know, yeah, a lot of people are on camera, which helps too. But all good things must come to an end. All right, they are closed. See how many people leave their breakout early.

Hello, welcome back. Welcome back, Michele, Denise, A. If you want to share something in the chat that came up in your group, that would be great. I heard some interesting challenges. So welcome back, everybody. Welcome back. Welcome back. Welcome back.

How were those conversations? Good? I popped into each group just for a second. It sounded like there were some good things being discussed. So if you want to share something in your group that came up, that would be great, something that you heard, a theme maybe, something that emerged for you. It'd be great to share in the chat a few of those and then possibly at the end if we have time to share verbally.

But in the chat right now, if you want to share. I see that someone said not all students are willing to participate in goal setting. So thank you for sharing that. So go ahead and feel free to include other things in the chat as I go back to the presentation. Agreed with the practice, practice, practice. Yes, that is a huge thing.

We'll talk a little bit more about types of practice and how that can be a challenge as well. So keep writing things in the chat if you've talked about anything. So let's move to confidence. We talked about motivation. How can we build confidence for our students? So one thing is expectations. Our patience. All right, so patients overall.

Patience that means you and your students having patience. So everyone needs to have realistic expectations because some of our students come and they think, oh, I saw this ad that says I can learn English in 30 days or less. Is that true? No. Unless you're a freak of nature and are studying 24 hours a day for a month, maybe you'll get pretty good.

But learning a language is a multi-year process. And it's important for students to know that you need to persist and continue coming to class not just for one term but for many terms. Don't let frustration show ever. It's can be frustrating for you. If your students' sense any touch of frustration, they're not going to feel like they belong in your class, and they're going to drop out pretty quickly.

Wait a little bit before offering correct answers because if you just jump in with corrections, if you say, what's the answer to number 4 and you wait 2 seconds and then say, oh, it's this. You don't give them time to process, and that's OK. That silence is less awkward for our students than it is for us.

And then one of our mottos is be strict but caring or strict but loving. So I always thought this was interesting. When we asked our students for feedback, they'd say I love my teacher. They're very strict. And I was like, wait a second, like when I was in school, strict teachers were the bad teachers, and now it's like the opposite. They want people who are strict but who are kind.

So holding them accountable for practice. So if a student comes in and says, oh, sorry teacher, I didn't do the homework, how are you going to respond to that? It's OK. What's going to happen? They're never going to do homework again.

Or you can have a conversation about it and say, hey, you know, homework is really important. You know, how much time do you have in your day? When can we find a time in your schedule that you can do 10 or 15 minutes of homework? If you're doing homework and practicing, your learning is going to accelerate. If you're not doing homework, not practicing, your learning is going to be very slow. So this is for you.

And so those are just two quick examples of how you can respond to I didn't do my homework. So what else? Concrete encouragement. So there's two types of encouragement you can give one is saying like, hey, you're doing great. Great job. Nice. Just general encouragement. That's good.

Specific encouragement like you can speak well in the past tense now or you can use the future tense now, or you can now pronounce your th sound. You can now make the "thuh" sound. Or you can count to 100 now, and you can only count to 10 when we started. Something like that is great. So concrete encouragement.

Think about what am I telling my student that they can see that this is true. Like, oh, I can do this now, and I couldn't do it before. So concrete encouragement. And then I've heard from teachers who say at the end of class, I will give each student an individual compliment on something good they did.

So if it's on Zoom, you know, like, mention everyone's name. Hey, Renee, you were great at this today. Michele, you did this. Maggie, you did this. Great, great job. Or if they're physically there, as they walk out if you can quickly complement something that's also a good confidence booster.

Creating the right space is also really important for the setting the environment. So I feel very strongly, if possible, to set your room up so that people can see each other's faces and not the backs of each other's heads or just their backs. It creates a completely different dynamic. So a horseshoe or a half circle or even a circle, if possible, is much better for building the environment than stadium style or you just seeing people's hair. Unless they have fabulous hair, which is, in this case, it's great.

Or if you're on Zoom, make sure that you can see each other's faces. Take an extra few seconds to work with the student on their lighting. Like, hey, Enrique, you might have to pull down your shades a little bit so we can see you better and things like that. Make a big difference in building that sense of community in your class.

And then speak in a way they understand you. So I was the director of Intercambio for 21 years, and now I started a company my own company called Simplify Language. It is focused 100% on this issue because I've seen that when students don't understand their teachers, they stop coming. They lose confidence. When they do understand their teachers, they feel confident.

It's very simple. But how to do that, how to be understood by simplifying your language and not dumbing down language, is very hard to do, and it takes a ton of practice. So these are just five quick tips. I have like 20 total. So one is to speak clearly because when we speak natural English, we slur our words together, and our students understand us better when we speak clearly.

And not like patronizingly slow or loud. "Hello, how are you?" Don't talk like that, but you do want to slow down a little bit, pause, enunciate. I say to like exaggerate a little bit so they can hear differences. If you're teaching pronunciation, if you're teaching the "suh," "zuh," or "chuh," "juh," "yuh," "juh," or "buh," "vuh," "ee," "eh" exaggerate it a little bit so they can hear it we're not trying to trick them but then like kind of tone down the amount of exaggeration over time.

Use fewer words, so think about what you're saying. How can I say these 15 words in five or seven words instead and still say the same thing, and it's still grammatically correct, but you know I've simplified it? I've taken out this complex grammar structure because I have a level 2 class, and I'm saying the same thing. Avoid metaphors, acronyms, and idioms.

I was observing a class recently, and the teacher said you guys are killing it. And I'm like, I'm pretty sure they associate killing with something bad, whereas you're using it as something as a compliment. So if you're using idioms, if you catch yourself using a metaphor or idiom or something like that, teach them what it means or say it in a different way, or else you leave them confused, and that reduces confidence.

And then this is a tough one because we have so many of these phrasal verbs in English. Wrap up, keep up, give in, ask out, make up, make out. These are very hard. So any time you can replace that with just a word that doesn't confuse people, it's better. So those are just a few tips for that, but that's a whole separate training.

And helping learners move beyond the fear to speak and connect outside of class. So I've seen lots of teachers say, oh, you know, your homework is to go speak to people in the community. Are they going to do that? No. They don't do that. Why not? It's terrifying. They're not going to go up to random people and be like excuse me, I need to practice my English. Can we have a conversation? No. You don't do that.

Our students need structure as much as possible. So does it hurt to challenge them to do that? Yeah, you could try it. Maybe a few of the bravest students will actually strike up a conversation with a stranger. But if you can build in structure to their practice, that's better.

So here's a few ways you can do that. One is just generally homework. Lots of different homework activities, whether it's just filling out activities or watching TV for a minute or for a few minutes and writing what they understood, kind of low anxiety type homework. Field trips are also an amazing way to get your students practicing with real people in the community.

You can go to the library. You can go to the fire station. You can go to a bank, a health care. There's lots of ideas for field trips in our curriculum, and lots of I'm sure a lot of you have done some cool things.

And then there's community conversations which I mentioned at the beginning, which is, again, the best confidence builder I've seen in our program in 21 years where you train community volunteers, you bring them to your class, we do it in the middle of a semester, and we pair them up with our students kind of speed dating style and say, all right, you have a conversation for 15 minutes, and then you rotate.

And sometimes, each volunteer has one student. Sometimes it's three students. And every time, I'm like, is this going to work? Like these are level one students, and they have conversations for 15 minutes. And so our students meet three new people in an hour and have conversations, and they walk away thinking, oh, my God, I just talked English for 45 minutes with three different people. I can do this.

So something like that. We have a toolkit that we're sharing for free. If you're interested in that, you can let us know. So that's how that works. And some final thoughts is the key to learning is curiosity. So that's one of the things to talk about.

So what's the first thing people do when they get home from work? Wonder what your-- oh, and one quick pause. Renee put the feedback form in the chat, and I'm putting our jot form here. If you want a copy of this presentation, you just have to put your name and your email in a form, and we'll send that to you as a PDF in the next week or so.

So what's the first thing people do when they get home from work? I wonder what your guesses are. So the answers are, watch TV, cook, shower, relax, change clothes, and take off your shoes. All right, I see the form failed. Let's see which form failed.

OK, whoops, sorry. So, why do we do that little quiz there? When we're asked to trivia question or something like that, our brains focus more, and we learn more about everything. So doing little trivia or quizzes or questions like that can really help students retain information there.

And then keeping learners engaged. So when students are given the opportunity to share about their own lives, their own experiences, they can build a lot of confidence. So we really encourage you, whatever curriculum you use, to have lessons and questions that encourage students to say what's your experience with this.

What was your first job? Where did you grow up? How is your neighborhood different now than when you grew up? What are your biggest challenges? What are your biggest hopes and dreams? Whatever it is, make sure that you're asking them about themselves. And it gets them using the language more, get them doing things, get them using the language. So that's what allows them to retain it and build the confidence.

And remember, remind them that learning English learning a language is not taking off. It's a roller coaster. There's going to be ups and downs. There's going to be bumps. So lots of things that are just normal in this process. And it doesn't always work.

So some things are out of our control. Students do have things in their life that we can't do anything about. So how do we get them back? So we want them to stop out instead of drop out. So leave an open door and say, hey, you're always welcome to come back. It's amazing.

I've seen students like disappear for 10 years and come back, and it makes me so happy that they feel welcome enough. They don't feel like, oh, you know, I abandoned that program, and they're going to hate me now. It's like, no, I feel I still feel welcome there. So make sure you leave an open door.

We talk about that at Intercambio a lot. Like if you need to drop out for this term, you're always welcome back in next semester or next year or whenever it is and reminding them of that. So as you plan your next lesson, I want you to ask yourself, what can I do? What's a tool that I use that I learned today that I can use to increase motivation and confidence?

And I'm not going to do this quiz. I don't have time for that. But I do want you to write in the chat I would like you to write into the chat something that you would like to use from this workshop in your classes or something that you want to learn more about. So something you want to try, something you want to do. I think we only have about 3 minutes.

So time for chat in there. Put a bunch of ideas in the chat. I want to hear from everybody, so I want 24 things in the chat there. This would be a quiz. So if we had more time, we would ask the quiz. What's a trait of adult learners? What's one thing that could block motivation? What's one thing that can encourage or support an adult learner? And what's one technique you're going to use in your class?

So again, they're going to be motivated and confident when they know that they can succeed, when they feel you're supporting them, when they're engaged, when they know that this topic is relevant to them, when they do things, not just hear about it when they're encouraged to be independent and practice as much as possible.

So I'm going to look at the chats now. And all right, let's see what we got. Creating a mantra. Mistakes are great. Be patient with yourself. I love it. I like the idea of training volunteers to come to class for conversation's. Good. People like the mantra starting class on time, doing a quick review, something like that. Practice. Practice. Practice.

Doing some pronunciation activities, the scaffolding, the speed dating conversation. The mantra, again. The mantra is always the winner. Community volunteers for conversations. That's a close second place. Motivation techniques for counselors and administrators, specific encouragement, excellent. Let's see what else we got here.

Always being on time and starting on time, using the mantra, starting with an activity, the mantra, supporting confidence, excellent. All right, and then if you want to take that jot form, you could also take a screenshot of that QR code. So again, if you just fill that out, you will get access to this presentation because we don't expect you to absorb all of that. Some of it's new. Some of it's not. Hopefully, you got at least one new thing from there.

You can also visit our website, intercambio.org and email resources@intercambio.org if you have any questions. I will take it off of screen share. I'm going to put that jot form in here one more time for that, and I'll put our website in there in case you need information on that. And you're welcome to share in the chat if you haven't already.