Anka Zapart

How to survive a coursebook. B2 Case study

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Part 1 (skippable) A teacher complaining

This story started last Wednesday evening. I was getting ready for my Thursday classes, including my teens’ group. I knew that we were about to start a new unit but I hadn’t bothered to look at it, I had no idea what it was supposed to be. It was only on Wednesday that I opened the coursebook and I sighed but this feeling quickly turned to anger. Because what we have in store for the next three weeks, the next twelve academic hours and the next fourteen pages are natural disasters, casualties, destruction and damage. Even if we had lived in some more peaceful and optimistic times, that would be a lot to take. For my students and for me, the teacher, too. Especially that the whole unit is some weird collection of depressive topics and debates. Literally, asteroids, tsunamis and epidemics are destroying the planet’s population on every single page of the unit, in the vocabulary lesson, in the grammar lesson and in the every skills lesson. In one word: I hate it and I personally think that this is a rubbish unit. I don’t like it. It needs to be highlighted here that despite the fact that I do believe that the perfect coursebooks don’t exist, I like our coursebook, Gateway B2 from Macmillan and we have had a good year so far. But this unit is simply a disaster.

There are two things that I could do. Naturally, I could just skip the entire unit because I do not really feel like using my and my students’ time doing something we are all going to hate and suffer through. 12 academic hours is 540 minutes or one full working day. I was really considering that and I am sure that if I explained it all to my parents, I could just get away with it.

However, that would mean that I would have to find, create and put together enough material to fill in those 6 lessons and at this point in my life I simply do not have time for that. Then, there is of course the fact that the environment and the natural disasters are a part of the B2 curriculum (why they are there is another question) and I wouldn’t want to deprive my kids of the material that they should be covering. With a heavy heart I decided to go for the option two: try to surive the Survive unit by heavy adaptation.

Welcome to a new short series of posts. My main aim is to record the adaptation process in detail and on the go as well as to motivate myself to reflect on each of the lessons taught, hoping that someone might find it useful.

Lesson 1: Main aim: Vocabulary

  • We started the lesson with the weather vocabulary revision and upgrade. The students were divided into pairs, each student in a pair was given a link to the weather wordwall cards (set 1 and set 2), with the visuals and the key words and definitions. The students were working in pairs in the breakout rooms, calling out one of the words and discussing if they are similar or different, for example: ‘Scorching and boiling? Are they similar or different?’ or ‘Fog and rainbow? Are they similar or different?’ They were both sharing their ideas and discussing.
  • A small set of questions for the students to talk about their favourite and least favourite weather and the extreme weather conditions that they have experienced or read about.
  • The key vocabulary from the coursebook on page 96. We used exercise 1 and exercise 4 but I have also prepared an additional quiz for the kids to practise the words related to natural disasters. It can be found here.
  • As a follow-up I decided to include a debate, modelled on the B2 speaking exam task. For that used the list of the key words (ex 1a page 96) and a question that was added, namely: How damaging are these disasters? Talk about the impact on the people, the environment and the economy. Choose the most damagine one.
  • I decided to skip the text on page 97. I didn’t like it and I decided to replace it with the text on page 108 and change the direction of the lesson towards people for whom natural disasters can be an adventure.
  • We started with a discussion on whether students would like to go to a location of a natural disaster (inspired by ex 1 on page 108). Before we started the discussion, the students were shown two videos of people who research volcanic eruptions and people who like to visit the sites. I used the short clips from the following ones: Cooking pizza on a volcano, Cooking sausages on a volcano, Drone above the volcano. We talked about the reasons that make the people go there and our views.
  • As the final task we read the text to find out more about the expedition to a volcano, as featured in the coursebook, together with the comprehension task (page 108). The final summarising question was: Has this text helped you make your mind about such adventures? Has it made you change your mind?

Reflection

  • Overall, I am quite happy with how the lesson went.
  • I like to start a new unit / topic with a visual-based task but this time I decided to leave it for later. I already have an idea for a task for lesson 2 or 3 of the unit. This time round we started with the weather vocabulary speaking task and it was a good decision. First of all, the topic is related and most of the natural disasters are somehow connected to the weather conditions. Second of all, we could revise and extend our weather vocabulary – some of the words were familiar, some were new but the cards include enough information for the kids to be able to handle it and to participate. Last but definitely not least, the game we played was a great balance to the rest of the lesson, a lighter beginning, not so dramatic and / or desctructive as the rest of the input. And even though it started slowly (‘Anka, but these words are completely different’ aka ‘We can produce one sentence’), it quickly took off and the students were getting more and more creative as regards the potential similarities between pairs of words chosen randomly.
  • We will definitely need to revision and opportunities for practice not for the key vocabulary (the natural disasters) but for all the accompanying words. There were just too many verbs and nouns.
  • Quite unexpectedly, the debate on the impact of different natural disasters was a success. The students are familiar with the format (FCE speaking part 3) and I knew that this would not be a problem. I was worried, however, that they might have enough ideas or inspiration to compare the impact of a pandemic with that of an avalanche. I was wrong. All of the natural disaters are destructive but because of the angle (impact on the people, the environment and the economy), the students got involved and they were almost amused arriving at a conclusion that avalanches, in fact, are not so damaging for the economy and they are not often dangerous for people or the nature because they just happen whereas, in many ways, an epidemic such as coronovirus was even beneficial for the environment as people stayed at home and were not using their cars or flying as much…
  • Using the videos was also a good idea because it help the students understand the eruptions a bit better and it gave them some food for thought and it activated the schemata for the reading task. I have already started looking for a follow-up video, an interview with the volcano tourists that I could use in a listening task.

See you soon in part two of this series!

Happy teaching!

Crumbs #55 Early readers and the sentence building blocks.

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‘Pigs might fly’ from Poznan

Ingredients

  • Since I am teaching online at the moment, my main resources are digital. To create this material and this activity, I used my Miro Board although the same could be done using a regular powerpoint. In the classroom, the activity could be recreated with a set of flashcards and wordcards, on the board or on the floor.
  • Three sets of cards are necessary: the key phrase, the numbers, the objects.
Step 1

Procedures

  • We start with revising the key structures and the vocabulary. We read together all the cards.
  • We read the first sentence (I’ve got’) and add one of the food items. Once it is added, the card changes the colour to match the first one. The same activity is repeated with all the cards.
  • We read the sentences again but this time the students choose the number, the teacher add the number and changes the colour to match the colour of the sentence. The same procedure is repeated with all the cards.
  • We read all the sentences together.
  • We play in pairs and we call out the colour of the sentence for the partner to read out loud. The teacher is monitoring and helping.
Step 2

Why we like it

  • This kind of an activity is introduced in the middle of the unit when the students are more familiar with the key structure (I’ve got) and the vocabulary (food and numbers 1 – 20) and its main aims the literacy development.
  • I have only used it with 1-1 online students but there is some potential for adapting this activity for a group of even for pairs (with a multiple set of cards or colour-coded handouts).
  • The activity helps the kids deal with the written form of the vocabulary and structures and to read the words in sentences. In a way, they are also involved in writing because they put the blocks together and make decisions about the numbers, too.
  • The colours help to make the activity more fun and to help them deal with a text that for them will be long and potentially scary. The activity uses only one structure at a time which will be also an early reader-friendly approach.
  • The activity can be made more or less challenging by adding food illustrations to help the kids read, extending the number of sentences or extending the sentences ie I’ve got 4 cakes and 3 apples, etc. When the students are ready, the teacher can also introduce a variety of structures in one set i.e. I’ve got, I like, I can etc.
  • The activity is easy to prepare, it can be recycled and it can be used with a variety of structures.

Step 3

Happy teaching!

Crumbs #54 Caterpillars everywhere

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Ingredients

  • A4 paper, one sheet (for the leaf) and some coloured paper, I have tried both cardboard and regular craft paper and they both worked very well. The smaller caterpillar in the photo was done with the cut-up cover page of the drawing album and it works well, too. Some of my students were using ultra-thin craft paper and it worked, too so I presume cut up colourful pages of glossy magazines could be recycled this way, too.
  • Glue, scissors, markers and crayons.
  • This lesson was a part of the series of lessons devoted to spring so among all the other materials that can be used there are: The Very Hungry Caterpillar, the book or the video, the story or the video from Playway to English 3 about 6 Hungry Caterpillars, a video about the life cycle of a butterfly, the garden craft and the butterfly craft. It can also be a part of the Art lessons on the topic of weather and seasons. More about it – soon!

Procedures

  • Check that we all have all our resources, one by one showing them to the camera and, more often than not, finding the missing bits.
  • Show the kids the final product. This is not something that I do in every lesson, sometimes this element is left out for the surprise element. This time, however, I wanted the kids to understand exactly what we are doing and why.
  • Draw the leaf on the A4 paper, colour it green and cut it out. Demonstrate each step to the camera and wait for the kids to complete it before moving on to the next one. During this particular lesson I have also came up with a little chant that we started to sing while colouring and cutting (‘It’s a big, big leaf for a very hungry caterpillar’)
  • Ask the kids to prepare the strips of the coloured paper, of any colour they want. The paper can be cut sideways (probably the easier option as it involves less cutting) or lengthways (in this case each strip needs to be cut in half). I didn’t tell the kids how wide the strips should be. We have been doing craft online for a few months now and my kids are now able to make such decisions themselves. I assumed that everyone will choose the width themeselves (as wide as they can handle).
  • We glue the strips into a ring by putting the glue on one end and shaping it into a circle. We glue all the rings first.
  • Glue all the rings together by applying the glue and attaching the rings and pressing them with two fingers.
  • Cut out one circle for the face, draw the eyes and the smile, glue the circle onto the caterpillar. If possible, the little antennas can be added, too.
  • Sit the cateripillar on the leaf, introduce the caterpillars, say hello, use them in a dialogue etc. We sang the song about the garden that we had been practising for a week then.
Here are the caterpillars made by my kids. Courtesy of FunArtKids

Why we love it

  • It is very easy to make.
  • It is beautiful and sweet. Whenver I choose and prepare activities for my groups, I always wonder if my kids will simply approve of it, if they just like it. When I showed them the caterpillar, simple as it is, I got this very special ‘Ahh!’ and big smiles.
  • It can be done in the offline classroom but it is also possible in the online classroom.
  • It gives the kids some opportunities to make decisions about the creative content, the size of the leaf, the colours for the caterpillar etc.
  • It can be easily combined with any spring lesson or with any story lesson.
  • The level of challenge can be adjusted. In the classroom the teacher can prepare the strips of paper or the parents can be asked to pre-cut them if the lesson is taught online. We used five strips / rings but the caterpillar can be made longer or shorter.
  • There is some potential for the literacy skills development – kids could write the key words on the outside or on the inside of all the strips before glueing them together.

Happy teaching!

All you need is… a picture. Vol. 3

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This episode is going to be devoted to the older students, juniors, teenagers and adults and those of the higher levels, from B1 upwards.

All of these activities were inspired by the approach in the visual based speaking tasks of the Cambridge exams. I use these activities frequently at the beginning of the ‘unit’, to introduce a new theme, to ease us into it and to start with some freer speaking activity, that, really, does not have any specific linguistic requirements or a very formal framework. Not to mention that by the way, my students get an opportunity to practise and develop their exam skills, in a slightly more relaxed way.

All of these activites are deeply rooted in my professional laziness because even though I have to devote some time to the picture selection, that is, really, the only time investment beacause the task is usually a one sentence instruction and, to be perfectly honest, most of the ideas listed below were created during the lesson, as a follow-up and an extension of the regular Cambridge ‘similar or different’ task.

Usually, my greatest helper while preparing these activities is google search engine. I type in the key words and I look through the images until I find these four, six or eight that match the idea that I have in mind. They can be saved in a document or displayed on the screen (powerpoint or Miro). I save them and keep them for later because they are always recycled.

Frequently, I start the cycle with the simplest of the activities (‘Choose two to compare’) and I follow-up with a wider discussion (‘Have you ever…?’) or any other combination but, naturally, these can be used on their own. All of the activities can be done with the whole class or in pairs.

  • Talk about your favourite photograph: students choose the photograph that they really like, they describe it and justify their choice
  • Talk about your least favourite photograph: students choose the photograhp that they like the least, they describe it and explain why they don’t like it
  • Choose two pictures for your friend to compare: students choose two of the pictures to compare them, to look for similarities and differences, very much like in the B2 speaking part of the Cambridge exams. The fact that there are more than two pictures allows for the activity to be repeated a few times, over and over, in pairs or with different partners. The longer the activity takes, the more interesting arguments appear and the more creative the answers.
  • Choose two pictures for your friend: students work in pairs but in this case they choose two pictures for their partner to compare. It makes the activity more interesting as it is easier to avoid all the obvious choices and this way more interesting contributions are generated.
  • Have you ever done that? This is the activity in which we use all the pictures at the same time. Students ask each other the question about all pictures, one by one.
  • Would you like to? This is another activity that can be used with all the pictures. Students ask each other questions related to the situations in the pictures, but more focused on the future.
  • The comparatives: Another activity in which students discuss all the pictures, going over the list of questions and choosing the pictures that somehow stand out. The set is closely related to the theme of the photographs. For example, in a lesson devoted to health and health problems we looked at these four pictures and we answered the questions: Choose the most serious problem, the least serious problem, the most common problem, the easiest to deal with, the least unpleasant for the doctor, the least unpleasant for the patient, the most expensive to treat, the least expensive to treat, etc.
  • What happened before? What will happen afterwards? This is a cool actvity that I adapted from the latest editions of New Cutting Edge Advanced. Students choose their favourite pictures and discuss the before and after, almost telling a story.
  • Ask a question: students work in pairs, they ask their friends questions related to the pictures, they have to use different pictures and different question words and they need to a different word each time: What? Why? Who? Where? How many? How much? What kind of? When? How often?
  • It reminds me of: students work in pairs, they talk about all the pictures. The talk about their associations, memories or references. It can be a free activity or it can have a theme of: books, films, songs and personal memories.

Make sure you also have a look at the first two parts of this series. You can find them here and here.

Happy teaching!

Close Your Eyes sentences

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A while ago YLTSiG IATEFL announced an open call for real ideas for the activities to develop literacy skills with young learners. I described one of the activities we use with my primary kids and I sent it on its way. And quess what? It was chosen for publication. Yay!

This tiny bit of a post was published in the Practitioner Showcase: Developing literacy skills in the English classroom in the spring issue of the IATEFL YLTSiG Worldwide (2023, Issue 1).

Adults learning from kids. Or how I accidentally formulated my teacher beliefs

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I have already been writing about ‘the shock’ of a teacher of YL going back into the adult EFL classroom in an earlier post ‘What an old dog learnt?‘.

A message to the parents

Two weeks ago, after one of the lessons, I sat down to write to the parents about the homework, the upcoming test and some feedback. It was just a lesson and a busy one because we were doing a lot of preparation for the test. ‘Nothing special’ you might say because we didn’t have any amazing activities, no ‘fireworks’ or ‘surprises’, only a lot of hard work and practice. And yet, somehow, the lesson was just beautiful, so great, in fact, that I decided to write about it to my educational parents, too. I just wanted to tell them that the kids were amazing (they are!) and that we had a speaking activity and it all went very well. ‘You know, I wish I could show our group to some of my adult students to show them what communication might and should look like‘, I typed, and it was only then that I did sigh, in awe at my own wording and the very idea.

Oh, how I wish I could do just that.

What would my adults see…

First of all, they would see children of different ages, aged 10 in this group, but also 3 or 17 in my other groups, kids studying together, in groups or individually. If they came, they would be surprised at the level of English the kids already have at this point. Or, rather, as a proud teacher of my kids, I hope they would be impressed. Just a little bit.

I would also hope that they could notice how comfortable the kids feel in their other language version. It is not an accessory that you carry around in your hand, a tool that you try to use although you are not quite sure how to. Nor is it a costume that you have to put on and become something else, a dragon, a princess, a cat, something that you are not. On the contrary, I would love them to see how, regardless of the age and the level, English can and does feel like the second skin. Something that is just you, the other version of you but also the very self that you are.

I would love my adults to be inspired by the open-mindedness and the general attitude to anything that is new and out of the box, especially the readiness to see, to try, to experiment. That does not mean that everything that I bring into the lesson and everything that I dump at them, grammar, tests, exam preparation, all the games are welcomed with the open arms and everyone, but absolutely every single person jumps at the opportunity of diving in. It is absolutely not the case. My kids are ‘normal’ kids who get tired, who have lots of homework, who sometimes, I bet you, would be doing something else entirely, not the things we are dealing with in the classroom. And, consequently, they are looking for the ways out, for the ways of cutting the corners, for taking a time out. Which, to be honest, is something that I secretly admire them for, although I will never own up to it. But, even so, overall, they are ready for a challenge.

I would love to the adults to notice the egalite as one of our rules and standards that everyone has the right to and that everyone has to learn to accept, because, indeed, sometimes this is something that we have to work on, although for kids the reasons are slightly different. The younger kids are developing their social skills for the first time, as it were. The adults hide either behind their personality or good manners or, perhaps, the corporate culture that might be developing the habits in some relation to the hierarchy in the company. Although here, I don’t know, I am just guessing.

Last but not least, it would be very interesting to have my adult students see that the teacher is not some kind of an air traffic controller, deciding who goes next but more of a head chef, the individual, who, although fully present and involved, is only keeping an eye on the process and making sure that the food is made and served or, in other words, that the aims are met. What is more, and very closely related, is that everyone gets to execute their freedom of speech, or in simple and less grandiose words: that people talk whenever they have something to say, not only because the teacher asks a question and when she does it.

I have no idea why but with every word typed up here, it started to feel more like typing up a teaching manifesto, my own teaching commandments almost. I can promise that I will leave it here as it is and I will get back to it in a few weeks to see if it still feels like that and if I still believe in it.

As a result…

The truth is that I wouldn’t really do it. The kids’ need to stay protected, in the precious coziness of our online classroom and without any ‘invasions’ from strangers. The adults, on the other hand, might not appreciate having their teacher suggest that their new role models in communication are some ten-year-olds. Everyone will stay in their own classroom and I will just continue doing my job and learning from observing and reflecting on two different environments and types of lessons.

And using them as a source of inspiration for new activities, like this new series on the blog Discourse Development. Here’s to hoping that staging, scaffolding and practising will lead to automacy and to the development of new habits and even my adults, all my adults, will be interacting with more freedom and ease.

So far, there have been four but I got a feeling that there will be more coming up

There is definitely more to come!

Happy teaching!

Crumbs #52 Discourse development: All your thinking hats

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Ingredients

  • A set of cards with opinions, for example those that have been used with adults or those that have been used with teenagers.
  • A list of the discourse tricks displayed on the board or on the screen (see below) if the activity is done in pairs OR a set of six thinking hats if you want the students to debate in groups of 3 – 6 people. I have created two versions of these here and here. If you are interested in the orignal thinking hats that this activity was inspired by, you can start here.

Procedures

  • Pairs: student A expresses an opinion which, in the earlier stages, can be limited to only reading the opinion off the list or cards) whereas student B reacts to it using one of the approaches. Afterwards, they swap roles. It is good to highlight that student B has to use a different approach in every round.
  • Small groups: student A expresses an opinion (see above) and the other students in the group react in accordance with the hat that they are wearing in this round. Afterwards, they swap roles and the new hats are assigned. In the original activity, in the real classroom, we have been using dice. In the online world these have to be replaced with the wordwall spinner.
  • Regardless of the format, it is better to play the first few rounds with the whole class and with the active participation of the teacher to show the students that it is in fact easy to switch from one hat to the other and that the hats really help to generate ideas.

Why we like it

  • The main aim of this kind of an activity is for the students to develop the habit of reacting to what their interlocutors say and to give them a range to tools (or tricks) to contribute and to develop the contributions of other students. Hopefully, with time, my students will be able to participate in a debate and opinion exchange without any support of the spinner or the display.
  • This activity also encourages the students to listen to what their peers are saying. This has been more useful with the teenagers and juniors who are more likely to space out and start daydreaming in class.
  • The list of all the tricks can be limited to only the two basic ones (I agree / I disagree) and, later on, when the students are ready, further extended.
  • The wordwall spinner in the online classroom was a bit time-consuming for my liking but it turned out to be very beneficial for my shy / withdrawn / panicky adult students because it gave them the additional time to think and to assume the new role. Later on, we were able to switch to a simple list which served only as a reminder of all the options out there.
  • The same goes for the whole class and teacher participation. With some of my adult groups, I had to be involved more in the beginning, to model both the activity itself (to help with the speaker’s block (does it even exist) and, at the same time, to model the ways of getting involved in a debate. Otherwise, they would be just ‘politely’ waiting to be nominated to speak, even at the C1 level.
  • I have been using these with my adult groups and with my young learners, too, with teens and with juniors, when appropriate.

Happy teaching!

Crumbs #51 Peppa Pig in the VYL classroom

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Lisbon

Ingredients

Procedures

  • Work with the vocabulary and structures of the unit, here the weather and the clothes
  • Introduce or revise all the weather accessories and all the other key words (i.e. umbrella, hat, warm milk etc)
  • Watch the video, with pauses to ask short questions about the video and the story. These will depend on the level of the children and their ability to produce. In the beginning we often talk about the emotions of the characters and about everything that we can see. As soon as students can use some elements of the Present Continuous or to evaluate the behaviour and the actions of the characters, the conversation really takes off.
  • We follow-up with a speaking activity. The yes / no quiz is an easy version and it is based on the students comprehension and the listening skills. They listen to the teacher and react with a simple yes or no, but, with time they will be also better able to produce simple sentences. The other activity, the reordering, was created for a more advanced pre-school student and we retold the story together, with the teacher reorganising the cards and helping the student produce the sentence. Sometimes it was a full sentence (‘It is raining”), sometimes, the teacher started a sentence and the student finished (‘Dr Brown Bear it talking…’ ‘to George’)
  • The activity can be repeated in the following lesson to give the students an opportunity to participate with more confidence and, hopefully, more language produced.

Why we like it

  • Kids already know and watch Peppa and it is fun to bring her into the English lessons, too.
  • The episodes are relatively short (around 5 min) and it is an amount of time that will not be a challenge for the students and it can be relatively easily included in a typical lesson for pre-schoolers
  • Although the language of the cartoon is not graded and it is possible to find the episodes that will be easy to understand also for the very young students who have just started to learn English as the foreign language.
  • The videos can be shared with parents and watched again at home.
  • In my classes, we use the videos in the final stages of the unit, as one more source of the target language and of the target langauge in context and to create some opportunities for production.
  • Usually, I don’t watch the videos twice in the same lesson. It might have been beneficial for the general comprehension but I am not sure about the effectiveness of such an approach. Ten minutes is a large chunk of a lesson with pre-schoolers and I doubt the kids would be still interested and focused. I prefer to pause and to chat getting the kids ready for a more communicative video-watching. In the beginning, our conversations are quite simple, very often limited to calling out the words we can see in the video or discussing ‘Is that a good idea?’, a phrase that we frequently use in our classes anyway but it helps kids reflect on the story and perhaps predict the events to follow.
  • Some other episodes that we used in class included: Peppa Pig and the Pet Day, followed-up by matching the kids and their pets, Peppa Pig Lunch followed by a Yes / No quiz, and Peppa Pig and the Fruit Day followed by an activity in which we made our own smoothies on our Miro board.

Happy teaching!

How (not) to train a teacher? A personal story

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Lisboa

Here is a post from an experienced teacher trainer and a recruiter looking back at her own teaching career and the beginnings of it. With a tiny little bit of surprise and a dash of delayed horror because, all these years ago, if I had been the one taking me on the job, I probably wouldn’t have offered myself a position, and certainly not on these conditions. I certainly would have had some serious doubts whether I should consider myself as a candidate.

What I would like to see in a newly qualified teacher of YL?

Generally, the experts Sarah Rich (2017) and Sandie Murão (2015) highlight three areas which should be included in YL teachers’ education:

  • the knowledge of the English language
  • the knowledge of the English language methodology appropriate for children
  • the knowledge of child development

These means some specific documents such as university degrees, language exams and teaching qualifications which will largely depend on the law and the education system in each country. On top of that would come all the personal characteristics that a teacher working with young learners should have such as resourcefulness, creativity and enthusiasm. And a real interest in working with children.

What did candidate Anka Z. have to show on her application for the first teaching job?

In short, not much.

I had graduated from the university with a degree in History, having spent the previous three years in the libraries of Wroclaw, leafing through the newspapers and magazines of the 1950s and, somehow, I had managed to pull off getting a masters in History writing about jazz. Something to be proud of and I was. Even today, when I open my MA thesis, I am happy with it and with the distinction that it earned me, although, obviously, there is no way in which it could have been of any use in the EFL classroom.

One saving grace was the fact that since I always wanted to teach, when it came to choosing specialisation, from the two options of a) an archivist and b) a teacher, I went for the latter and, as a result, I did two years psychology and pedagogy (aka memorising theories to pass the exam) and two months of the pre-service teaching practice. This was something because it gave me a chance of spending two months at two different schools, working with real students and being supervised by real teachers and it gave me a taste of what teaching might be about. The methodology of these two subjects, history and English as a foreign language, could not have been different but at least I had a chance to perform in front of a bunch of kids. Officially, I was a trained teacher. Of history.

It was also a happy coincidence that somewhere in-between the historical research fits, I found time to fall in love in English, Hamlet and that I started to read the English poetry and prose in the original version and, eventually, realised that there is something in the world which brings me more joy and happiness, more than history. For that reason, starting from year 3 of my university studies, I started to spend my student’s grant on the English classes in a private language schools and on exams. And even before I got my MA degree diploma, I was already a happy owner of the CAE Pass (B) certificate.

What could also be added on the assets side of the balance sheet, was definitely the state of the educational system in the country, the legislation, the demand for teachers of foreign languages at the time. They had just changed the curriculum for the primary and the secondary schools, English was introduced as the main foreign language from the age of 7 and there were no teachers. At the time when I was starting, the schools were given a permission to recruit university graduates with the relevant pedagogical training and the relevant subject knowledge, which, at the time, in case of the English language teachers was the level of B2+ aka FCE.

This is how I was hired as a full-time permanent contract teacher with all the benefits and perks.

Was I ready?

No, I was not. I had spent two months preparing lesson plans, delivering lessons, reflecting and working with the feedback I was getting. However, getting ready for discussing the ancient Rome with the primary school children and the WWI with the teenagers has got very little to do with getting your head around preparing for teaching the same kids and adolescents to speak in a foreign language.

There is no doubt that I entered the classrooms in my first week and month of teaching absolutely unprepared, relying mostly on my passion for English and on some naive (but useful) enthusiasm.

A teacher is born and raised

When I was reminiscing of the beginnings of my career, already as an experienced teacher and a trainer, I was somewhat surprised to realise that there was no mentoring programme in place. We had the informal head of the English language department, a lovely teacher Gosia who until this day is my dear friend but her help and support were based on her own personality traits, a kind heart and friendliness, rather than on a formal set of procedures. It took the form of the conversations in the teachers’ room and the joint participation in some of the projects, events and workshops.

It was the school policy for the headmaster to observe the teachers but he himself was not a teacher of languages so, really, he could not offer any real support related to the aspects of teaching English.

I survived the first month, somehow and soon enough, on the 1st of October, I started studies on the part-time BA in the English language and literature.

Perhaps it was justified, to some extent, because, when I was starting I had already enrolled on the one of the subjects that we were offered was the EFL methodology. The progress was taking place and, at the same time, my university mentor never had a chance to see me in the classroom, with my students, in action and, although, I did benefit from that, as a trainer, I cannot say that it made a real difference to my teaching. Interacting with my peers and sharing ideas was definitely more beneficial and now, thanks to the university, I had not only the two colleagues at my school but about 40 other teachers from the whole region.

Today, it feels like the teacher was simply expected to manage and to get on with the job.

Where the real learning and development happened…

…was in the classroom, of course. It was by a sheer coincidence that in my first year of teaching I was given 5 classes of year 1 of the middle school (another coincidence with the changes in the structure of the Polish school system), 3 of them divided into two groups. All of these students were of the same level and all of them were using the same coursebook, Open Doors 1, from OUP. That meant that every lesson that I had to prepare I had to teach eight times. It worked amazing well on a few levels.

First of all, this has seriously reduced the preparation time which, for a newly qualified teacher, in the first year of a full-time work, with about 30 academic hours of teaching a week, was god-sent. I could devote time to lesson preparation knowing that I was investing in 8 lessons, not in one and it was definitely much more manageable than planning 30 different lessons.

Even more importantly, that also meant that I had a chance to each the same lesson eight times in a row. Even if I hadn’t wanted, I would have been forced to reflect on how the same set of activities worked with different groups, some of which were bigger, some of which were smaller, some of which were more dilligent, some of which were less motivated, all of which were mixed ability groups, with a different ratio of weaker and stronger students.

Naturally, the lesson plan and the activities were changing and were being adapted as I went from lesson 1 to lesson 8 of the round and it was getting better. It is quite likely that by the time I got to teach it for the eighth time, it was a DELTA-worthy lesson. And even if it wasn’t, it was a much better lesson plan and I was a better, more experienced teacher.

And they lived happily ever after…

Well, I suppose they did. I got my BA in English and I stayed in a state school for five years. Then I left the country and finally got to do my CELTA course in London and then I left to travel and teach here and there and everywhere and to become an ADOS, a trainer, a blogger and all the other things that I am today.

This journey also makes me think of all the happy coincidences on the way and all the things that contributed to my becoming a teacher and staying in the profession. Inevitably, what follows are all the alternative scenarios that could have but did not happen. What if I had got different classes and what if I had to teach 30 completely different lessons every week? What if Gosia had not been there but some other not so pleasant and not so kind colleague? What if I hadn’t started my second degree straight away? What if I had had some horrible students in my first groups? Where would I be today? Just curious)

Happy teaching!

References

Sarah Rich (2018), Early language learning teacher education, in: S. Garton and F. Copeland (eds), The Routledge Handbook Of Teaching English To Young Learners.

Sandie Murão (2015), Play and Language Learning, IATEFL YLTSiG.