A letter to my younger teacher self

Hi Soph!

What date is it?? What YEAR??

Just kidding, I know it is 1997 and you are into your second year of teaching in lovely London town. Now look, don’t be freaked out, but this is totally a letter from the FUTURE, and it’s written by YOU, only ‘you’ are now 40, significantly wider and living in Singapore. This letter has been sent back in time by the Resistance, headed by Joanna Malefaki, to give you some advice on a few teaching-related matters. I wish I could tell you more but it might destroy the very fabric of the universe so better not.

So – hey, enjoy that school you are working at right now. It’s great to be starting off in a brand new school and get to be there from the ground up. Enjoy growing in confidence as a teacher, enjoy teaching pre-intermediate from a coursebook, and enjoy getting to meet your young, fun, and generally awesome students from all over the world too. Life is pretty good for you right now.

Don’t worry excessively about those weekly/fortnightly/monthly student evaluations. Sure, take a look and see if anyone has something specific to say, but remember that students aren’t trained to evaluate teaching and learning. Their ‘evaluations’ often tell you more about how (un)happy they are in their life in general, or that they simply click less with you than that ‘fun’ teacher who does songs every lesson and takes them to the pub afterwards. It doesn’t necessarily mean that there is anything wrong with you or with what you are doing in class. I know you have that thing where you can get 14 good evaluations and 1 negative one and all you will think about FOR DAYS is that negative one. Please don’t. If you always have a rationale for what you do, if you are providing what students need as well as what they might (think they) want, if you have been observed by your line managers and they support what you do, and if you are always reflecting on your teaching and trying to figure out ways to do it better – then you are doing all that it is within your power to do, and you are doing FINE.

In the same way, don’t let negative colleagues get you down or draw you into their drama. Like that one negative student above, they are just unhappy, but don’t let their shadow loom larger than they are. Hang around with the positive people, the constructive ones, the optimists. You will have a much better time 🙂

Don’t be afraid of teaching Business English, Academic English, or any kind of special purposes English. It is still just English and you are still a teacher who knows how to plan with students needs and contexts in mind. You will be great.

Well, sometimes you definitely won’t be great – but that is OK too and you will survive. Don’t be too down on yourself when things go wrong in class, it’s all part of the learning experience. And speaking of learning experiences, try to look on observations as something positive, a fresh perspective and a chance to try new things rather than merely something that literally makes you throw up with nerves. In fact, try to take up any professional development opportunities that come your way – workshops, conferences, webinars, peer teaching, peer observation – it’s all good. There might come a time when you don’t have as much access as you used to, so take it when you can.

Accept challenges, try to enjoy them, and do them NOW. Don’t be afraid of presenting or of becoming a manager or of doing your DELTA. If you’re going to be staying in this job, then why wait? Throw yourself in, the water is warmer than you think.

Don’t get too jaded by the many issues in this industry (lack of standards; not being considered a ‘real’ teacher; never making enough money; zero-hour contracts rather than permanent ones; upper management who care more about money than sense, etc.). Try and be the change you want to see. In the future, the walls will start to come down and you will may start to see more transparency, support and sharing in the ELT community.

But if those things really bother you, yet you want to stay in teaching, start making some concrete plans for your future as soon as you can. Maybe you should get your ‘proper’ teaching qualifications and at least open up those pathways to more secure and recognised employment. Maybe you need to start a savings and pension plan, or buy a house. You won’t be footloose and fancy-free forever and I don’t want you to wake up when you’re 40 and wonder what happened.

Having said that – there are zillions of people out there who hate their work. You’re lucky to have something that you enjoy that is ever-evolving. Go to new countries, meet amazing people, expand your skills, and don’t be afraid to start weaving together a working life out of many different strands. You’ll never be rich but you will always be learning something new.

So, Soph – I wish you lots of good times and all the best for the next 20 years or so. By the way, it is totally OK if you want to wait till you’re 40 before taking some of the above advice, I know I have.

Lots of love

Soph xxx

Notes:

• This post is inspired by a blog challenge started by Joanna Malefaki. Click here to read her original post and find links to others who have taken up the challenge. There are some great responses and each is very different. Mike Griffin’s post made me want to write my own.
• This is also a terrifically motivating writing idea to do with a class – though I also like the idea of limiting it to an area like learning English or getting to know a new country, unless you really want the hankies to come out (Regrets! I’ve had a few…)
• If you are into this sort of thing, do yourself a favour and check out the Big Issue’s regular feature Letters to my Younger Self when you get a second. Warning: hankies required.

Review: Big Questions in ELT, Scott Thornbury (the-round, 2013)

Back in 2006, Macmillan published An A-Z of ELT, a Scott Thornbury volume that aimed to outline the key concepts, terms, approaches and issues in English language learning and teaching in an accessible way for the practising English language teacher. The simple ‘dictionary/encyclopaedia’ approach of the original book evolved into a hugely popular blog of the same name, which quickly took on a life of its own. From late 2009 to earlier this year, when Thornbury finally called time in order to focus on other projects, the posts from this blog lit up the online ELT community on an almost weekly basis, not only in terms of sharing, but also in terms of the fascinating and sometimes heated debate that inevitably opened up in the comments – some 7000 over the the lifetime of the blog.

Fortunately, for those feeling the tumbleweed blowing through their brains now An A-Z of ELT has retired, Thornbury has revisited some of the most interesting posts, and reworked them into a 21-chapter e-book with the irresistible title of Big Questions in ELT. The old alphabetic titles (“A is for Aims”, etc.) have been reframed, naturally, as questions, and surely ones that have crossed many a teacher’s mind, for instance: Are there different learning styles?, Is the use of the learners’ mother tongue a good idea?, Is there anything wrong with rote learning?, and How does identity impact on language learning? Of course if you’re looking for “big answers”, you won’t find them, but what you will find is an engaging and well-considered discussion of the issue, mixing anecdote with reflection and more than a sprinkling of relevant reading which draws on seminal works, popular articles, and the latest research and developments in the field.

While most of the chapters are fairly similar to the original blog posts online, and indeed the whole e-book could be read through in a hour or two, one of the key differences is the addition of eight ‘questions for discussion’ after each entry, which aim to help curious readers to create links between their own experiences and the research findings, to refine their stance on an issue, to explore grey areas, and to refocus their future practice. These questions make an excellent springboard, in short, for reflection, research and professional development.

However, whilst the time-poor will appreciate the bite-size nature of the chapters, which are just a few pages long, others might feel frustrated; brevity works well in the blogosphere, but do (e-)book buyers expect more? It’s a shame, perhaps, that some of the original comments could not be included as these fleshed out the arguments and uncovered many more perspectives. Obviously it’s impracticable to seek permission to reprint hundreds of individual comments; however, Thornbury has done the next best thing and included the the original link so interested readers can explore further if they wish, and I would strongly recommend this – the number of incredibly knowledgeable and self-aware teachers out there is phenomenal, and comments also come from well-known names such as Stephen Krashen, Jill Hadfield and Jane Arnold.

Having said that, Thornbury’s reworkings of the original posts do take into consideration the ways the discussion developed, an evolution that is also reflected in the discussion questions and the reference list. Again, this latter comprises only of texts mentioned in the chapter and so is generally limited to between three and eight references, a fact which may disappoint the more academically-focused. However, it must be remembered that Big Questions in ELT isn’t meant to be an in-depth, cover-all-angles view of a particular issue, but rather a starting point, something to provoke, to spark interest, and above all, to raise questions in readers’ minds.

One thing I have always liked about Thornbury’s writing is that he combines wide-ranging reading and intellectual discussion with actual classroom practice; he has never forgotten his roots as a EFL/ESL teacher and trainer. Accessible, intelligent, engaging writing remains a rare commodity in any sphere, but particularly perhaps in ELT, where there often seems to be a great divide between theory and practice, researchers and teachers. Bridging this divide with ease and clarity is Thornbury’s great strength. I would absolutely recommend this book to any teacher who is interested in understanding, exploring and questioning what we do in the classroom, and who wants a springboard to direct their reading of recent, relevant research in the field. It would also be an ideal starting point for workshop sessions or professional development discussion groups. And at just a fraction of the cost of a typical ELT resource book, this is professional development that’s within every teacher’s thinly-lined pocket.

This review was first published in the English Australia Journal 29(1). To find out more about the English Australia Journal, or to contribute, please click here.  

How to make your students cry (Part 3)

Reading the signs

Don’t worry, this post marks the end of Blubfest 2014. But one of the best things about embarking on this little blog series has been hearing other people’s stories. While I still cringe at night thinking about some of the things that have happened, I can rest a little easier knowing that other people are doing the same thing 🙂

The lovely Anne Hendler (#makingkidscrysince2002), reckons she’s the Wicked Witch of the West for all the times she makes her students cry: “No, you can’t change your seat. Yes, you have to do your homework. No, you can’t go to the bathroom every five minutes. If you do that again, I will call your mother . . . ” But she added: “To be fair, they sometimes make me cry, too.” Ain’t it the truth. [You can follow Anne on Twitter @AnneHendler, and she also writes an excellent blog – reflective, honest and thought-provovoking.]

Anna Loseva wrote: “In the recent 2 years I’ve made 2 adult students cry in class. In both cases no extra discussion material was necessary, just my impertinence and directness in asking questions about holidays and weekends, and my thick skin. Was it terrible? It was.” [Anna’s Twitter handle is @AnnLoseva, and she blogs at http://annloseva.wordpress.com – there are some real gems here, expected and unexpected, so do have a wander through.]

And Laura Phelps (@pterolaur) wrote: “I’ve had grown men weeping in class. I once had to stop a physical fight. I remember one particular group of 16-18 year olds – mostly unaccompanied minors – I had for a year, I asked them to prepare three-minute presentations on anything they wanted and loads of them went really personal and ended up in tears. And I count myself lucky for the hundreds of stupid comments I made that ought to have ended in tears and somehow didn’t.” [Laura is a writer and teacher, and her very funny and always interesting blog is here.]

What struck me about these stories though was that in most cases teachers are just pootling along doing the sorts of things that English teachers do, when BAM! Drama strikes. So is there a way to avoid this?

Scene 1:

Class of young adults in London in the 90s. In an effort to shoehorn in some contemporary cultural content, and as a “treat” for the students, I had prepared a listening lesson on Creep by Radiohead (I said 90s already, right?) Not wanting to get too personal, I deliberately stayed away from discussing “relationships”, and focused just on who was singing/about what/if they liked it, and some vocab follow up work. However, playing the song through for the first time I realised that one of my favourite students, a beautiful, smiley Italian girl, wasn’t actually just incredibly focused as she bent over her paper, hand over her eyes. In fact, her shoulders were shaking alarmingly. Yep, she was crying her eyes out.

Emergency response:

When the song finished I quickly grouped everyone to check their task, and unobtrusively channelled her outside. In the corridor, she just leaned back against the wall and put her hand over her eyes. I rubbed her arm in feeble British fashion. I asked “Are you OK?” (more Feeble Britishness). She nodded. I asked “Do you want to tell me about it?” She shook her head. I asked, “Do you want to take a break?” Shake. I asked “Shall we just stop – we can do something else?” Shake. “OK, we’ll just finish this off as quickly as we can and then we’ll go onto something else. OK?” Nod. “If you ever want to talk to me about this, you know you can OK?” Nod. Eye-wiping.

I never learned what the reason was for her unhappiness that day. She was her usual self the next day, and while I tried to follow it up with her, I obviously wasn’t the person she wanted to talk to about it.

Could I have avoided this?

I don’t think so. It was just bad timing – wrong song, wrong day, wrong person. You never know on what particular ordinary day someone’s heart may be breaking.

Scene 2: 

Full-time CELTA, Monday Week 2. I am the trainer. In a four-week course, it was the first and possibly only session explicitly and exclusively on teaching listening skills. After a demo lesson we get into the nitty gritty of the staging and aims, and I utter the magic words “blah blah blah blah activate schemata”. The trainees look at me like if it was the middle ages I’d be in the stocks and they would be pelting me with rotten fruit. I open my mouth again and a lovely, older lady just says, “Stop! I can’t – ” and – tears. She is overwhelmed. [There is nodding and muttering]. They have all worked too hard over the weekend [more nodding and muttering]. There’s too much new information, there’s too much jargon [pitchforks waving]. It’s too hard to prepare lessons and write assignments and take in sessions. And so on.

Emergency response:

It’s a fair cop, guv. I stopped the session and just took the time to hear them, sympathise, get the venting done and finally talk through some strategies.

Could I have avoided this?

Yes. Though probably not by much. CELTA is a great course, but it can be a bugger of a course. Listen to mumble mumble, copy someone else’s notes, write generic assignment and go home with nice shiny certificate – no. You have to be firing on all cylinders in all different aspects, all the time. And echoing Anne Hendler here, that goes for trainers too – we’ve all had a few watery-eyed days. It is stressful. But I reckon these tears are OK. It’s good to get it out and good on you lovely older lady for saying what everyone was feeling and putting it out there. Too often on intensive courses emotions can go the other way and turn into resentment and antagonism, so I vote lacrimonious not acrimonious (I really, really wanted to say that). However, in later courses I tried harder not to overload trainees with information and metalanguage – to slow down, signpost and support – and I was much more aware of the existence of those bubbling emotions and more ready to address them before they got to the point of bubbling over.

 

So all in all, over the 3 posts in this series – this is what I’ve learned on how to (not) make your students cry:

• Sure, engage learners by personalising content – but be wary of making it too personal or things can really escalate quickly (see Part 1). If you given a reasonable amount of thought to how students might respond to your material, and adjusted accordingly – well, at least you don’t have to feel too guilty when a student starts crying anyway.
• It’s important to talk about genuinely meaningful topics, however PARSNIP-y* – (see Part 2) . . . but sometimes people just want to go to their English class, learn a few expressions and go home. Nothing wrong with that.**
• In that couple of minutes’ space you have for chit-chat at the start of a lesson, it is absolutely worth taking the time to look each student in the eye and just try to get a feel for what signals they are putting out that day. It’s easy to blaze in all bells and whistles, busy being ‘dynamic’, caught up in what we want/need to do in class. But sometimes I’m sure some invisible flags are waving, and if we pay a bit more attention we just might be able to read the signs.

 

 Notes

*PARSNIP-avoidance is a well-known formula in the course book/teaching materials world. It’s an acronym meaning don’t talk about Politics, Alcohol, Religion, Sex, Narcotics, -Isms (e.g. racism, sexism), or Pork. Lots of people have written knowledgeably and critically about this, including Scott Thornbury, Steve Brown, and Luke Meddings – in fact Luke went on to write a whole book (with Lindsay Clandfield) on subverting this sanitised  approach.

** Anna Loseva has written about this dilemma here.

How to make your students cry (Part 2)

Don’t mention the war?

In the first edition of Headway Advanced (OUP, 1989) there was a chapter called “War and Peace” (mostly war). In the teacher’s book, the authors say:

We have tried to adopt a liberal, objective attitude to the subject, and although it can fascinate, it can also repel, so you need to exercise a large amount of caution in the way you approach this unit.

Take a minute to think about that.

I’m not here to slag off Headway – I actually love that book, which is why I still cart it round from country to country with me. But while it may not have been immediately obvious in the Eurocentric teen-heyday of EFL, it’s obvious now that a coursebook can’t dictate the objectiveness of anyone’s experience, and that such material may be, for some people, pretty damn subjective indeed. To say: “although it can fascinate, it can also repel”, is to assume that the teachers and students using the book are outside the reality of war, that the worst that can happen is that their sensibilities may be offended. Of course this is not the worst that can happen. Of course some people in a class of adults will have experienced the violence and loss of war directly or indirectly. Of course none of us are “liberal, objective” observers, no matter how distant we may feel – we are all part of countries and cultures that have had a role to play somewhere along the line and, as individuals, we continue to make our choice – do or do not* – every day. None of us is getting away with this.

That’s not to say that I didn’t use the chapter – it really is fascinating and has some great content – but I was very selective and VERY cautious (and it didn’t surprise me to see that it had disappeared from future editions). Maybe I could have used the opportunity to be a subversive teacher, to combine politics and pedagogy to critically examine perspectives on war in our current climate . . . but if that thought had even occurred to me back then I dismissed it outright because I couldn’t take the risk of upsetting any more students with my bad material choices. Maybe I just really wanted to avoid that and just teach English and not have to deal with any terribly un-British crying.

However, whether you use a Headway-style “objective” approach (Here are a number of words connected with defence . . . put them into chronological order) or adopt a blanket “don’t mention the war”** policy, the elephant is still in the room. Perhaps avoiding it prevents both teachers and students from learning from each other. Uncomfortable segue to . . .

In 2008, I was teaching on a TESOL course in Australia which almost entirely consisted of young South Korean females. The exception was a single much older Japanese lady, who unlike the others, had been a teacher for many years already. It would have been easy for her to feel alienated by the age of her classmates, by their inevitable use of Korean both in and out of class, by their lack of teaching experience – but no. She threw herself in 200%. She’d planned and saved for the course herself and she really wanted to make the most of it.

During the course, something of great significance happened in Australia: the Prime Minister made an official apology to the Stolen Generations of Indigeneous Australians. All classes were allowed to gather in the school’s reception area to watch this live. When we got back to class, my “So what did you think?” was met with an emphatic silence. It didn’t surprise me; they didn’t really know what it was about, and I could see some were itching to get back to their lesson plan, concerned about upcoming observations. But suddenly Akiko stood up and announced she wanted to say something.

I couldn’t really understand her at first. I could see she was upset, and my first thought was that something had happened between her and the other students that had upset her. In a way it had. In stumbling English, she said she wanted to do what she felt her government had not done properly, and apologise to the Koreans for their sufferings at the hands of the Japanese during World War II. She was crying.

I’m ashamed to say that up till that point, despite many years with Korean and Japanese students, I had never really considered their shared history or taken the trouble to learn about it. I don’t pretend to know much more today, but I have at least had my Eurocentric eyes opened – I’ve learned some things that I almost wish I hadn’t and I realise that even today the question of Korean-Japanese relations remains problematic. But at the time, even though I didn’t really understand how meaningful this was, I knew I was seeing something very personal, very vulnerable, very important. There have been tears in my classroom that I’m not proud of. But these ones, I was.

Notes

* Yes, that is a Yoda reference.

** A famous Fawlty Towers reference. If you watch the original clip, you may find the cringe-worthy offensiveness outweighs the comedy – I know I do. The series is a classic though and can, in its less offensive moments, be very funny. In any case, it’s been influential enough for phrases like this to pass into common usage.

How to make your students cry (Part 1)

There’s something really horrible about seeing an adult cry in front of a room full of people. Students have cried three times in my classes. Two weren’t really my fault, but one most definitely was and can basically be summed up as My Worst Teaching Experience Ever. So let’s start with that one. Before I start, can I just say: this isn’t cathartic for me. I still feel just as crappy about it today.

Without boring you with all the background, I was a new and very young teacher (21), teaching advanced conversation to much older people who’d seen a lot more of life than I had. It was a long time ago and I can’t remember exact details, but my class on that day consisted of:

• 1 African refugee, very well spoken and well educated (male) – henceforth X
• 1 Serbian refugee, henceforth B, who had been in the resistance to Milošević and imprisoned for several years, forcibly separated from his wife and his teenage daughter (who nonetheless continued to act as a resistance radio operator). They never thought they would be reunited but miraculously all made it to England.
• 1 Indian migrant, henceforth S, who had thrown family and tradition out of the window when she left her husband, and was now struggling to raise 2 children alone in London.

And me, a sheltered 21-year-old who felt threatened by high-level learners and had no idea how to teach ‘conversation’. I’d had a few typical coursebook topic conversations that felt like pulling teeth, and I got the idea that maybe ‘discussing an issue’ would break the deadlock (this was also how I had seen ‘talking’ modelled to me at school, and my teacher training hadn’t prepared me for anything different). So I went back to a ‘news discussion’ book that I had used when I was a teenager at school, and I chose a story that had resonated with me at the time, about a little boy who was kept in a hen coop until the age of 7 because his mother couldn’t admit to her community that she had borne a child out of wedlock (although this was disputed at trial).

Technically, at age 21, I understood about how this child’s bones had broken and re-fused in strange in ways, how he was unable to walk upright, how he had not been able to develop a human language. I understood something about the issues of societal and familial norms, community responsibility, language development, and attitudes to disability. But I didn’t truly feel the horror of it – not to the depth my older students surely felt it, or the way I feel it now, particularly as a mother of 2 little boys. I don’t have any excuse for thinking this was suitable teaching material. It obviously wasn’t.

The students were too horror-struck to say much. I pushed the ‘issues’ questions hoping to get more ‘conversation’, resulting in B saying that families need both a mother and a father (remember he had been separated from his family for many years) – resulting in S getting angry with him (remember she was trying her best to raise 2 children alone in a strange country). Resulting in shouting. Resulting in standing up and more shouting. Resulting in crying. Resulting in X standing up and getting involved. Resulting in more crying.

Man, that really escalated quickly. I felt like crying too. I have never felt so much out of my depth. B obviously didn’t want to argue with S – in fact, he was trying really hard to qualify what he had said – but unfortunately what he had said was exactly what she feared most and she was beyond calling back from being defensive and upset. I didn’t really know what to do, but I knew I was responsible, and I knew that the role of teacher still had some power, so I stood up, apologised to everyone for my fault in choosing such an inappropriate topic, reminded both B and S what a lovely relationship they had built up, emphasised that what had been said was not meant to offend, and closed the class. We were simply unable to continue at that point.

B and S left (maybe to have coffee, I don’t know – B was that sort of person, I don’t think he’d have let it go without fixing it as best he could). X stayed behind to talk to me and said “What happened today – that’s not what I signed up for, that’s not why I come to class”. I know. I couldn’t know more. I apologised more and made various vows for future classes and he was nice about it but when I got out I knew I had to go straight to my DOS and prepare him for the worst. Amazingly, he was really supportive. He didn’t diminish what had happened but he encouraged me to focus on what I had learned from the experience, and for that I really owe him.

I was terrified coming to class the next day. We were all so polite with each other. Nothing ever came of it but after a few classes and a few social things it was obvious that  we were being extra polite and inclusive because our relationship had changed. Something got broken that day. We aren’t just what we do in class, and what we ‘make’ students do. The classroom dynamic, the rapport between teachers and students, and students and students, is a delicate ecosystem. Be aware of it. Nurture it. Protect it.

Have you ever made your students cry?

Value the unexpected

Let me just start by saying that this isn’t a failure post like I promised – however, some small degree of personal disaster was involved, so I hope that will do for now.

I’ve been watching some of the IATEFL tweets and happened upon this one by the lovely and fast-tweeting Sandy Millin on “preparing for spontanaeity” from a talk by Adrian Underhill and Alan Maley (you can read a great summary of the whole talk here):

Personal preparation for spontaneity. My favourite: work with what is happening, not what you wish is #iatefl AM AU pic.twitter.com/vgho2v64dW

— Sandy Millin (she/her) 🇪🇺 (@sandymillin) April 10, 2013

Although I was reading this out of context – and there is a slide that follows on as well – this immediately struck me as pretty good advice, not just for teachers, but for anyone. It seems to me to be essentially a lesson in letting go, and this reminded me of a recent Twitter conversation I had with Retno Sofyaniek (@NenoNeno) about my first ever lesson as an employed teacher.

I was fresh off the CELTA (then called CTEFLA), and in my particular course, rather than teach you to use (and rely upon) a coursebook, you were simply given the target language/skill and topic area and it was up to you to find, create or adapt materials for your lesson. While this was intimidating at first, I loved it: it sparked a lifelong interest in materials development, it encouraged me to be creative and independent, and from the start to feel that I was 100% responsible for my lessons. On the downside, although I didn’t realise it at the time, I was horribly materials dependent – I felt the lesson was only as good as my materials, and so planning and teaching became more about that than about the students. In my mind, my job was to deliver the prescribed target language or skill in as interesting a way as possible. It would never have occurred to me, back then, that my students might not give a toss about target language, that they might have more pressing needs, or that they could guide the content and focus of the lesson. So, in a nutshell, I was all about the materials.

I got my first job through the fairly typical TEFL scenario of ‘No we have no vacancies’ followed swiftly by ‘Ah yes, we do have vacancies, can you start in about 30 seconds?’ Only it wasn’t really 30 seconds, I actually had a whole weekend to get ready for my brand new class of 15 students – and it really did take me two full days to prepare for a single, three-hour lesson. I even arrived at the school on Monday three hours early to make sure I had everything copied, knew where I was going, etc. I was PREPARED. And it was a damn good lesson. I had very warming warmers, pairwork, group work, a jigsaw reading – the works. Interactive, check. Fun, check. Varied, check. (Didn’t really care about aims in those days but) target language/skills, check. The first student arrived, a young Columbian kid of about 17, whose name I’ve forgotten, but whose face I still remember. We chatted for a bit. A bit longer. A bit longer still. And finally I realised: @#$% – only one student is turning up for this class. I looked at my painstakingly prepared materials and my heart sank. But I knew I could still do some of it because there were two of us and I would just have to make up the rest. And off I went. It wasn’t as lively and interactive as I had hoped, but it wasn’t bad. Actually, I’m not sure what my student learned, but I certainly learned a lot that day.

This is what Maley and Underhill’s advice reminded me of:

1. Bother less about trying to control, encourage connectivity

I had to give up my control for the first time, on my first day in my first lesson. I think I probably was still quite controlling in how we went about the activities, because there’s only so much you can ask a person to let go of all at once – but I did learn I could let go.

2. Work with what is happening rather than what you wish was happening

You had better believe that there was some fervent wishing that just ONE other student would turn up, some fervent wishing I could just blink and snuggle back up with my lesson plan – but no. I’m proud that it didn’t take me too long to just get on with it.

3. Start conversations about whatever matters to whoever is there

Of course, when there is only one student there you don’t have much choice, but this was a first for me in simply connecting in the classroom.

4. Give up trying to be interesting, and reach out and connect

This was my first step on a path that I still get lost on. It’s not so much that *I* am trying to be interesting, but I still tend to spend a lot of time finding/creating those “interesting” materials. For me the challenge still is [insert megaphone and police siren here]: PUT THE MATERIALS DOWN. STEP AWAY FROM THE MATERIALS. But that day I learned that students can be a resource too, that they have their own stories to tell.

5. Make plans but don’t expect them to happen – value the unexpected

This was really the big lesson for me that day. What I especially like here is that Underhill and Maley don’t say “expect the unexpected”. Don’t be ready, because you can’t be ready – not for anything, which is exactly what walks into your classroom every day: infinite possibility. But value the unexpected. See what happens and play it by ear. You will be alright. And you can end up learning some great lessons yourself.

How have you learned to “let go” as a teacher?

Why we should celebrate Failure Fest

So the bad news is: at IATEFL this year, they have abandoned pecha kucha night (boo!) The good news is they have replaced it with something I think sounds brilliant: “Failure Fest”, ie people talking about what they have learned through their teaching failures.

There are a couple of reasons why this strikes a chord with me. First, I’ve had some truly spectacular classroom failures (of which more in a future post!) and it’s fair to say that the lessons I learned from them stay with me. And I’m proud to say that I go on failing, professionally and personally (although hopefully not so spectacularly) on a daily basis, because “failure” is what drives learning. We would never talk about our students as “failing” because they haven’t produced a perfect utterance in English. We know from Selinker that this is part of their interlanguage, we know from Krashen and Vygotsky that trying to do something beyond their level of ability helps them move forward, we know just from our instinct as teachers that it’s ok for students to make mistakes, that making mistakes is good because it means they are pushing their boundaries, and because realising something has gone wrong can help fix things. So it’s ironic really that teachers don’t extend nearly so much compassion and understanding towards themselves, when they make mistakes in the classroom. OK, we might have learnt to (try to) look forward instead of back, to focus on “next time” rather than “should have” – but reflective post-lesson analysis is often, well, analytical – cold, somehow. I’d love it if we could recreate for ourselves some of the warmth, encouragement and positivity that we create for our students who are making mistakes but trying.

Another reason I like the idea of showcasing Failure Fest, is that conference sessions, teacher training input and in-house PD sessions so often seem to take the form of a knowledge gap: an expert with certain knowledge disseminates it to those without. That’s ok, I don’t have any problem with that per se. But what I like about Failure Fest is that it says: “I am human, just like you”. It focuses on our similarities rather than our differences. Finding a shared emotional experience creates a sense of solidarity, mutuality and possibility. Because we are alike – human – I can learn from your mistakes – and your achievements – as if they were my own. What is possible for you is also possible for me. No matter how qualified or experienced you are, we are more alike than different. Think about it: have you ever had a worry, feelings of self-doubt, anxiety about what the right thing to do is – then you find that someone has gone through, or is going through, the same thing as you? It is such a blessed, wonderful relief to know that you are not alone, even if you still don’t have all the answers.

This is a psychological reality. Learning through a shared personal experience has an emotional “stickiness” (to borrow a marketing term) that non-personal learning misses out on. As parents we know this: we tell stories that help children relate and integrate new information to their existing worldview. As teachers, we know this: we take care to personalise, and to try to find materials and topics that our learners will find engaging. I’m just not sure we do the same with each other on a professional level. Why is this? Perhaps it’s just not “professional” to show your human flaws. Perhaps we are conditioned to feel superior or inferior to others with different contexts, specialties, qualifications or experience. Perhaps it’s just human nature when in a group to try to make oneself look as strong as possible – even though, as a consequence, others may end up feeling small, isolated, or afraid to speak up.

If you are delivering a PD session, and you are asking people to jump a knowledge gap, some will and some won’t. Some will care and some won’t. Some will be listening and some will be texting. But if you are engaging people on a personal level, if you can find the meeting point between their experience and yours, you can bring them on a journey with you. Groups where everyone is trying consciously or subconsciously to outdo each other don’t feel good. But the groups that feel amazing are those where someone has spoken up – admitted weakness, asked a question, put out a hand to  others, and ended up giving everyone a voice. Because we are more alike than we are different.

Do you feel the same? 🙂