Teacher

Guess what happened at work? Or the things that YL teachers live for.

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A suggestion from a student that we should add a ‘Danny Go!’ song to our lesson, written by my student, in his first year of learning English.

Time to admit it, we are a strange breed!

First of all, our work stories are not really glamorous. There are no celebrities in them, no events that make the news, no interesting places and no brand names. Speaking from experience here, in comparison with the copywriters, marketing experts, nurses and doctors, engineers and accountants in my life who also come back home and share theirs. What teachers bring from school are the tales of behaviour issues, funny quotes, developmental stories, getting things right and getting things wrong.

And then even as teachers…a while ago, I met a friend whom I hadn’t seen for a while and we were catching up on life and work and all things related. I shared my adventures and my recent and relatively short-lived (thank heavens) period of revisiting adult EFL. My friend was at the same time in awe and taken aback. ‘In awe’ happened because this year added a nice few pretty-looking lines to my resume as the weight that would come with the names of international banks and IT companies or with the noble and serious sectors of the high levels, Business or Financial English. ‘Taken aback’ came about as a result of my attitude, a tired ‘Yeah, whatever’ that turned into bored or openly dismissive as the conversation went on. Apparently, I should have been very excited and proud.

It is not that I did not enjoy these lessons or that I did not do a good job or that I was not grateful for the enthusiasm with which my students came to class. I did and very much so (you can read it about here) but that was nothing special, just the everyday.

Take baking, for example. If you bake and if you have been baking for some time, a batch of cookies or a batch of brownie is not a holiday, it is a must. It doesn’t mean that you will eat delicious cookies every single time, things go wrong, of course, but more often than not, if you take out your flour, soda, sugar and chocolate out, you can expect that at the end of the road, there will be good cookies. You have this experience, nothing to celebrate and nothing to write home about.

Same with teaching. After all these years, putting together a good lesson for an exam class or for a C1 group is kind of a must, not a special event. And yes, the respectable clients add a layer of fine veneer to the whole experience or, if we are to go on with the baking metaphor, a layer of icing but that’s it. And, really, students are just students and everyone deserves a good lesson, a top-notch businessman, an bank CEO or a five-year old boy.

That is why there is no special pride or excitement. It is a job well done. Still, it is only a job.

Teaching kids is not only a job.

It is also a job but it is not only that. It cannot be only a job when you are not only teaching your subject, whatever it is, but you are also taking part in bringing up the little human and helping them to understand the world, to learn how to function in it and how to interact with the rest of it that is not you. It cannot be ‘only a job’ when you are surrounded by the stories of these lives, the joys and the dramas and when whatever you are planning to do in class might be affected by everything that happened out of the lesson time and that simply because the little people cannot yet disassociate. It is not only a job when you get to sing and jump to the songs or to get your own hands dirty practising for the art classes.

The things that make me gasp, the things that make me get excited.

  • My kids doing a pair-work activity: it can be a very simple activity, just a ‘guess my flashcard’ game that involves nothing but reciting all the words from the set, until you get the right now. All the exciting elements, like asking a full question, taking notes of the answers or repeating the activity with a new partner, they come later. But to see them work on their own, keeping the conversation going and moving from point A to point B of the activity, this is precious. Introducing it is a process, it does not just happen, it does not happen overnight and introducing it takes time, a few lessons, weeks or months, depending on the child’s age. But it is possible and it is beautiful. When it finally happens, it is yours and can be used forever and ever. Here you can find a post about my experiment and a controlled and conscious way of introducing pairwork with my pre-school group. A successful one, too!
  • My kids creating their own songs and producing the language because of a song: I realised (and not such a long time ago) that I introduce some songs only because they contain a pretty chunk of the language, hoping that soon (or even sooner), these structures will become a part of what we can say. A good example here can be ‘What’s your favourite colour?’ by Super Simple Song. It is my favourite colour song, not because it is the easiest (that would be just ‘I can sing a rainbow‘, because that is, mostly, just a list of the words, ideal for a beginner group) but because it includes a very good question ‘What’s your favourite?’ and a very good answer ‘I like’ which, when mastered, can be used with any topic. I love singing and my kids love singing (not everyone loves the same songs, of course) and I say that right now, six months into the course, singing and creating our songs based on what we have sung already is one of our favourite activities. Right now, we have a habit of creating a song for the month and many version of it and we also love creating our own versions of all the other songs we sing. Here you can find a post from four years ago about un-singing the song. We still do it!
  • My kids beginning to do their task truly independently: What I mean by that is the shift and the huge stepping stone from doing a task, in the coursebook, workbook or any handout, step by step, led by the teacher, not copying the teacher’s answers but taking the exercise or the task in small bites, moving on together as a group of individuals, waiting for everyone to a situation when the teacher sets the task and everyone does it at their own pace and in their own way, choosing for example parts of the exercise that they deal with. It is always a big day for me and it is a sign that kids are becoming more independent learners. The expert is right next to them but they don’t need the support that much. Why? Because their zone of proximal development has expanded a little bit! Hooray!
  • My kids making decisions: I cannot tell you how many times, in this academic year, I have used the phrase: ‘It is your decision’ in response to anything that my students did, said or asked, as regards their English, Maths or Art lessons or any actions in class or during the breaks. I actually started to wonder if they know the phrase or if they can produce it as I always use English and Russian when we talk about it…It is necessary to include opportunities to make decisions but it is also necessary to develop the awareness of the fact that some things belong in the category ‘we do it, I cannot opt out’, such as tests. It is an interesting process and I am getting a lot of joy out of it. And pride.
  • My kids improving their literacy skills: The literacy skills and their development are probably the greatest challenge of the first year of English in primary but at the same time, they are the source of the greatest joy, passion, hype, reward and happiness. Firstly, because it is a long-term process and you can enjoy bits and pieces of it throughout the entire year, every single lesson and in many different variations: blending and segmenting, writing your own name in English, checking out our alphabet poster for reference, shared reading, looking at the materials and reading things themselves, just before they saw them, not because we were actually doing it, applying the phonemic awareness that they already have, choosing to write anything in English, especially when not induced by the lesson and the teacher and so on and so forth…Or, because they are able to, they proceed with the task independently (see point 3).

The life outside of the classroom

You can easily imagine that all these stories would not be enjoyed as much by anyone who is not a teacher. I am visualising me coming back home, meeting friends or getting in touch with my brother and sharing the story from this week:

‘Guess what happened today in class? Sasha wanted us to sing ‘Danny Go!’ in class and he asked to add it to the lesson plan. And he wrote it himself, almost 100% correctly! Look at the photo! (see: above). He only started to learn English with us in September! And now he writes all two words and I only help him letters, he writes them from memory!’

I think it is fair to say that the response would be, most likely, a polite smile or a nod, or, if the people are used to these kind of stories, maybe even a funny meme. Only a fellow YL teacher would appreciate it more. Or the readers on the blog, perhaps. It is all good. These are the stories that I bring from work.

What about you? What are the things that make you happy in the classroom? Please share in the comments!

Happy teaching!

Teacher up, dear teacher!

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This is the second episode in my Made-up Phrasal Verb series which deals with the different aspects of being a teacher who works with kids. The first one is devoted to stepping out of the shoe of a Miss/Mr Serious Teacher in order to become a human in the classroom, who, first and foremost, cares for the child’s well-being and who takes care of the whole child, which sometimes means putting some (or all?) of the methodology principles on the back burner. You can find the post here.

As it often happens, right after I wrote the post I had an opportunity to ‘practise what you preach’. One of my little students got terribly upset about something she didn’t manage to and right after the class ended, she crawled under her desk and, as a result, I spent some quality time on the floor, in my freshly-washed jeans, under the desk, just hanging out and keeping her company in that difficult moment, until she calmed down. All things considered, it was the most useful thing that I did as a teacher last week…Teachering down full time!

But teachering down is the solution for some of the days and for some of the situations. Sometimes, the teacher needs to do the contrary, to be the real teacher and even more than that. Hence this post.

Teacher up!

Like many of teachers, I follow the social media in order to keep my ears to the ground and to find inspiration for teaching. Then, there are activities that my colleagues and teacher friends share and those that my trainees bring to the course, too. Up until a year ago, there was also the monthly intake of the ‘things I saw in the lessons I observed’ but at the moment, I observe less frequently. Nonetheless, there is a steady inflow of ideas or, in other words, lots of food for thought.

Statistically speaking, a lot of brilliance that can be taken into the classroom directly or after some minor adaptation and it is just great! And if you have any doubts, think about the teacher’s life ten or even twenty years ago when googling ‘ideas for a snowman craft for kindergarten was not an option. Nor was raking through your favourite and trusted bloggers’ accounts for insights. Or sharing a story about a horrible day at school to get a few virtual supportive pats on the shoulder. How did we even live back then?

At the same time, the amount of the seemingly educational material out there is just worrying. There are so many ideas that, at a glance, look like something that would work well, that, on closer inspection turn out to be only ‘the Instagram teaching’, high on the WOW factor, and ‘scraping the bottom of the barrel’ low on methodology and appropriacy as regards the child in the classroom.

Looking at these, the trainer’s eyebrow raises and the teacher’s muscles twitch. And a plethora of questions floods the mind of both. Why did you think it was a good idea for a group of preschoolers? What is the aim for that activity and how is it even connected to everything else in the lesson? Is it in any way appropriate? Generative? Safe? Is it in any way methodologically justifiable? Is there anything to it apart from the WOW materials and WOW photographs that you will be able to post on the social media or send to parents?

Entering the classroom full of pre-school or primary school students, we assume many roles. We become in loco parentis, sometimes a mix of a nanny and a baby-sitter, sometimes more of a governess or a nurse, sometimes a coach, sometimes a witch, sometimes an actor. But, despite all that, first and foremost, we enter the classrooms as teachers.

Teachers who have clear aims for the lesson, linguistic, personal and child development aims, teachers who have thought of the lesson as a whole and all of the puzzles in it, teachers who selected activities and materials with a full awareness of the children’s needs and abilities. There is nothing that ‘just happens to be there’ and even if there is some fluff, it is a well-thought-out and justified fluff that also has a clear aim.

It is a happy coincidence that the first post and these ponderings came at the same time as a series of posts from @abc_academia_ (Katerina Balaganskaya) and @ginger_teacher_efl (Evgeniya Kiseleva) and their project ELT Expert Hub, especially the one about the need for the teachers to focus on good quality continual professional development (see the link in the bibliography). This is all came together. Enthusiasm is great, passion is a must-have, great ideas are precious, optimism and energy in a human make the world go round but, first and foremost, in the classroom, we are teachers. And Michael, a teacher friend, kept sharing the ideas he came across.

Examples? Yes, please. Here are three.

When you are reading them, please remember about my background and context: I am a teacher and a teacher trainer, I work with pre-schoolers and primary school children, who come in groups, possibly fifteen at a time and for most of my students, English is a foreign language whereas for some it is becoming their second language. With some students we have only 2 academic hours of class a week, with some of them we have a lot more but it is in response to a more demanding curriculum. None of my students has a bilingual background or a full-time exposure to English at home. The time in class is precious.

Craft (but NOT for craft’s sake!)

If you are looking for reasons why craft should (and must) be included in the lessons for primary and pre-primary students, you have come to the right place. The best place, I could even risk saying. I love craft at home, I love craft in my classroom and I have already spent a considerable part of my life trying to convince teachers to be a little bit more excited about it. You can read about five reasons of using it in the classroom here and why craft is so important in the VYL world here.

BUT.

Regardless of how much kids love craft activities and of how passionate teachers might be about them, not everything is a lesson-friendly idea and not everything is feasible. Even in a lesson with pre-schoolers, the choice has to be made in connection with and following the methodological principles of teaching English. We are teachers and we walk into classrooms to develop linguistic skills, first and foremost. We need a language aim, we need language production, we need staging and the coherence with the rest of the lesson, the rest of unit and the curriculum. It cannot be ‘just something that we will do’, just something to kill the lesson time, to keep the kids occupied and that will make them go ‘WOW’.

As an example I decided to use the ideas from the video that I found on youtube, on the Gathered Makes channel, here. I actually love all of the ideas presented here but not one of them is a craft that would would work in the language classroom. The tissue paper wreath is pretty and it would really look good on the door or on the window but preparing them would take a painfully large portion of the lesson and it does not offer any opportunities for language production, not even as regards the functional language. A huge part of the task is repetitive and involves sticking on the green tissue and a lot of it so the kids would not be required to ask for different colours or different resources. This would, naturally, lead to a lot L1 in the classroom and, potentially, to some unwanted behaviour. You cannot even ‘talk about’ the different elements of the wreath because it is all just green. The finished product cannot be used in any speaking activity either.

Button candy canes are perfect for the fine motor skills development but I would not want to give out pieces of wire to a group of children, even with a teacher assistant and I would need lots and lots of buttons for the whole group. I am afraid, the little fingers would need help and assistance in the final stage, with tying and fitting in the candy canes and that would simply not work. What’s more, no communicative purpose here and that is one more big disadvantage.

Paper plate Christmas trees look so pretty and they require only the basic resources (the little pompons could be replaced with paint or stickers) but, again, the process is too complicated for a group of primary and pre-primary students. I love the trick with the paper clip here, to keep hold the tree in shape until the glue sets (although I would still use a stapler because I have some serious glue trust issues) but even in the video the child needed the adult’s help with the shaping of the tree. Exactly the same thing would happen in the classroom, and that could mean one pair of two adult and skilled hands AND eight or ten pairs of little hands in need. I have already tried a WOW Christmas tree craft and I simply have to say no here.

Lolly stick snowflakes. No, sorry. Glitter does not enter my classroom. It is probably the single resource that I personally hate. No matter how hard you try and how careful you are, it is tricky to use, it is accidents-prone and it stays with you forever, on the tables, on the body, on the clothes, everywhere. Even if you are using the glitter sticks. And that’s on top of all the other reasons, similar to those mentioned above.

Easy paper decorations are, indeed, easy and fun, as a way of transforming a 2-D shape into a 3-D shape. There is a little bit of cutting (5 circles for a child in the group) and I am not against cutting up things in large quantities to prepare for a lesson but I do when this helps me get lots and lots of language from the children in the proces (for example here). Here, this aim would be difficult to meet. I am not sure about the staging here as painting of the 3-D finished product would be just too messy and, potentially, too frustrating as it would involve holding a half-painted piece and getting fingers dirty and destroying what already has been done.

As mentioned above, I do love all the craft activities but the effort made, the potential complications and the potential for language and the kids’ safety and well-being are absolutely crucial to be taken into consideration. The WOW effect or the pretty photos on the social media cannot be the driving force behind the decision that a teacher makes to include or not to include something in the lesson plan.

If you are looking for any ideas how to plan craft lessons, please have a look at this blog (Chapter: Craft) where I share the ideas from the classroom, tried and tested. I would also like to recommend MadFox which is Carol Read’s creation and six word manual to the principles of craft activities in the classroom. You can read more about it 500 Activities for the Primary Classroom.

Games. Because educational fun is important

‘Fun’ is one of the most popular words added to titles in education. ‘Young children learn through play’ is probably one of the first things that you will hear in different courses, workshops and trainings devoted to teaching children. It is true, of course, and it applies not only to languages but to all the other skills. This makes our lives much easier and it helps to get the kids interested and keep them involved in the tasks that, at a glace, might be less exciting or those that might involve some hard work. For that reason, only this week, I have decided to teach subtraction to 100 through colouring dictation, through puzzle and through a bunch of reindeer with a serious problem. That is why we have been developing our reading skills through jigsaw puzzles and through Petya, my new invisible student who needed help with his English and that is why I made up a chant about classroom rules. Yes, in a way I was a marketing specialist and an advertising expert, I wanted to sell my product. I did.

In one line: games are good, we need them.

And here is a game that a teacher played with a group of kids in kindergarten. If we had an observation report with the certain standards to observe and to meet, the observer would certainly be able to tick the box: game. Yes, indeed, the teacher prepared a game for the lesson. And that would be all.

Naturally, that is only a small part of the entire lesson and there is no way of knowing what happened before or after and what the aim for the lesson was. However, judging only by this short video, there are quite a few areas for this teacher to work on. It is very difficult why this particular activity was even included in the lesson and what its aims could possibly be. There are no linguistic aims as the kids only do some counting and they use only one colour (orange), only one student is involved at a time while everyone else is watching and it is impossible to figure out whether there were even any child development aims. To be perfectly honest, none of the children taking part seem to be enjoying it and some are even forced to be in, despite their intentions.

If we had to describe the game for someone who did not watch the video, we would have to say that ‘the teacher brings one of the children into the circle, to blow up a balloon and to let the air out right into the children’s ear while the other children are watching and laughing’ and that really turns the category of the activity from a game into ‘a game’. If I had been the observer and the assessor of this lesson, the comments section on the lesson plan or the obervation report would simply say: ‘Please, don’t do this again‘.

A few years ago, there was this tendency at the YL conferences that I happened to attend. Everyone seemed to be criticising the idea of fun in the classroom and replacing it with some other, more serious, methodology-worthy words such as ‘enjoyment’, ‘motivation’ or ‘pleasure’. Maybe it was a trend, maybe just a coincidence but I did not like it. I am up for fun in the classroom, although, for my own personal use and for this blog, I have coined the term: educational fun, to differentiate it from the carefree merry-making.

There is no denying that this carefree merry-making is very necessary in life but since we are teachers, we are obliged (oh-o, the serious words have entered the building) to ensure that we happens in the lesson is deeply rooted in the methodology and child development knowledge that is not only there ‘because because’. Maybe it is true that ‘girls just wanna have fun’ but teachers want to have fun and they also want to smuggle something more while doing it.

To continue with the advertising metaphor from a few paragraphs above, I did have fun but I also had a real product to offer and to promote: a set of classroom rules, a pile of sums and lots and lots of sentences to read and to improve. My students would have done them anyway, we would have to, basically, but it was easier and more pleasant because we did it through and with fun.

Project. What’s love got to do with it?

Here is one more example of the educational path to hell that is paved with very good intentions and the social media teaching that has nothing to do with real classroom methodology but that is extremely photogenic and has ‘WOW’ written all over it. I give you: a CLIL / STEM project devoted to the moon phases.

This is a real example of an activity that one of my teacher friends, Michael, was asked to do with his group and that he happily shared with me, having his own human-adult-fatherly reservations about it. As with the craft activities above, I have nothing against the activity per se but taking it into a classroom full of kids is something that I fail to imagine.

Food allergies aside and the fact that some parents might simply not approve of teachers dishing out sugar portions in class (as, presumably such issues would be dealt with beforehand), there are a few other things that might turn this seemingly amazing and wonderfully appealing project into a complete disaster.

  • somebody needs to buy Oreos and in a situation when a school struggles with providing scissors, glue, paper, plasticine and markers, asking for Oreos is just not worth it and might simply not happen. Purchasing them by the teacher is out of the question.
  • separating the cookies into two even halves, without breaking them and with the cream staying politely on only one of the sides is…well, I don’t know. It’s been years since I played this way and not with Oreos but with my delicious local equivalent and I just don’t remember. Anyway, we separated them for fun. Our main aim was consumption and we would devour them regardless of how much cream there was on either side. At best, no one can guarantee that all the Oreos for all the kids will comply.
  • shaping the cream into the required shape to reflect the phases of the moon is not easy either and it does require something close to surgical precision. And a tool of some sorts (a popsicle stick).
  • you are allowed to eat the final product and, hopefully, there is time to talk about the changes and to admire the work done but, ideally, there has to be a lot more Oreos than the number of students x 4 Oreos. Otherwise, we are going to be the cruel people to have the kids work on the cookies, touching them, smelling them but without eating them for a long time and it is a guarantee that not all the kids will be able to stay strong. In the lesson that my friend was asked to teach, the cookies did not last and the model was never made. Either the kids were too hungry or the smell of the cookies too strong, they could not resist. The resources were eaten before the completion of the project. And, to be perfectly honest, I do get it. As an adult, I would struggle myself and I would be tempted to nibble. Or to do a full-on Cookie Monster.

Perhaps it is a fun project to do and a great way of learning about the phases of the moon. For me as a teacher and as a trainer, there are simply too many ‘but’s’ that make it simply not worth the effort. Especially, that there are plenty of other, less high-maintenance and less high-risk and more methodology- and teacher-friendly replacements that can be done with paper, paints, plasticine or ping-pong balls, craft activities and projects that would be more beneficial for the kids.

Coda

We are teachers. We think about the activities that we bring to class.

We are teachers. We respect the parents who trust us with their children and who pay for our teaching skills and the educational process that we provide.

We are teachers. We walk into the classroom with clear lesson aims, linguistic, child development and personal aims, too.

We are teachers. We want to have fun but not for fun’s sake.

We are teachers. First and foremost, we are teachers.

Happy teaching!

Bibliography

Carol Read, 500 Activities for the Primary Classroom, 2007, Macmillan Education

ELT Expert Hub, Evgeniya Kiseleva and Ekaterina Balaganskaya, Teachers’ CPD. https://t.me/eltexperthub

The end of the world or Surviving the bad lessons with YL

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A folding surprise by Kolya (Renamed as: Teachers in September)

This post, like many many others, starts in the classroom when yours truly spends countless hours every week. Some of those hours are happy hours, some are very much not. Sometimes, no matter how passionate and dedicated you are as a teacher, no matter how much time you have dedicated to preparing amazing lessons, resources and activities, it is just not coming together and it does feel like it is the absolute end of the world. But, definitely, it is not. But it feels like it.

In the sessions devoted to classroom and management behaviour, there is this one activity that we do: ‘Look at the picture of the classroom. What is wrong with it?’ My trainees usually have lots of great ideas but where I am trying to get them is the fact that, beautiful as it is, this photo, a real class and a real lesson does not really look like that 100% of the time. So google, with all its amazing visuals, this time helps us create unrealistic expectations regarding our professional life.

Pre K Peoria IL | Reliable Childcare for Peoria IL Children (palschools.com)

I am not saying that it does not happen, that kids never get fully interested and involved in the task or that the teacher never has the full attention of the group. They do and when it does, it is the best thing ever, cloud number 9 and the top of the world. But, to be perfectly honest, a day like this one in the Kindergarten Cop, this is also a part of the teacher’s life.

Those bad days are perhaps more likely to happen when you are less experienced and somewhere at the start of your teaching career but (and I am sorry to be saying that), no matter how many years you have been teaching for, bad days can still happen. Although, indeed, as experienced teachers, we are more prepared for them and better equipped to deal with them, on the spot and in the long run. That is why, in this post, I decided to share how I resuscitate myself and get myself back on my feet from having crumbled into pieces after a bad day at school.

Prevention first

Apart from lesson planning and keeping your resources organised, it is very important to remember that a teacher needs to be alive and feeling well in order to remain happy, smiling and passionate about the lesson and in order to be able to give a good lesson. That means that a teacher needs to eat and drink, breakfast and lunch and snacks, and, a teacher must find time for her / his own breaks.

I know very well how easy it is to skip breakfast, lunch or the mid-lesson snacks (or, even more impotantly, the mid-lesson toilet runs) because, well, because things just happen. Kids lose things, kids need help, kids have a bad day and a meltdown and a teacher, more often than not, just brushes off her/ his needs and does whatever is necessary to help the kid. It’s just in the blood.

Then there are the unplanned meetings with the headmaster, the admin, the parents and sometimes it is possible to put them on hold or to reschedule them and sometimes it is not. Again, the break (whatever its purpose) gets cancelled or cut short. The teacher goes on teaching without food, coffee, water or worse and, naturally, that has an impact on the level of tiredness and / or stress and on the lesson.

When the bad day has already happened…take time out.

Most of the time this will be a very short time out slot, a few minutes in the teachers’ room, or even in your classroom, looking out of the window, wasting time, listening to your favourite song, or, if you are really lucky and the breaks are long enough to allow for that, you will be able to get out of the school to pick up a coffee somewhere round the corner or simply to take a walk, somewhere in a slightly different environment.

This will help to see the world from a different perspective and, naturally, to regain the peace and quiet for the teacher.

Talk to your teaching buddies

As soon as the opportunity arises, chat to your teaching buddies. It doesn’t matter if they themselves had a good day and will be able to act as the source of the energy or if they had an equally disastrous day and there will be there for you to compare the levels of the educational catastrophy. The most important thing is that this will be a chance to talk to someone who fully understands how horrible it feels to have to walk home after a bad day at school and who can offer an ear if not a real solution, although the latter is also an option, too, because the school life is full of fiascos, tragedies and all kinds of situations and, quite likely, your friends have it already happened to them and might be able to tell you about how they sorted it out. In any case, listening to their stories will help to understand that you are not on your own and that’s a lot!

Talk to your VIP, whoever they are

For me, personally, equally important is talking to my Very Important People, not only because that is what they are, but, also, because they have absolutely nothing to do with education, teaching English and teaching children.

Getting valuable advice or even having someone to talk to, in order to relate all the horrors of the day is not the main aim of these conversations. On the contrary, these help me get a completely different perspective and go back to basics, to everything else in life that matters an that is as far as possible from the young learners EFL/ ESL. Just to check that the world outside of it still exists and that it is doing great.

I love my job and I cannot imagine not teaching kids but, on some days, I need to forget about children, parents, child development, methodology and everything related to it, specifically in order to recover and to recharge my batteries, physiological and psychological.

Get a hug (real, virtual or metaphorical)

Well, yes, just that! The hug can be real, the hug can be virtual as not everyone huggable might be available physically but it can also be any way of pampering yourself and doing somethinggood for your body. A nice meal, a pint of beer, a quiet evening, an evening with your favourite music, a piece of chocolate, a walk with a dog, a bunch of flowers, a cup of coffee, a sports game, a round of your favourite computer game, exercising, a combination of a few of those or all of them together. Whatever it is that makes you feel good and that brings a smile to your face.

For example, I am a real public transport supporter but, on those really difficult days, I like to take a taxi home and being in the backseat, driven home, with my favourite city in the world blinking on the other side of the window, it really does calm me down.

Sleep on it

Or, in other words, not being too harsh on yourself and taking time to reflect and to see the whole day and everything that happened from a different angle and from a distance.

The world looks a bit different after a proper night’s sleep and only then it is possible to reflect on the day, to connect the dots and to understand better the reason behind the kids’ behaviour or the explanation why the activities fell flat on their face. Finally, this distance will also help to see the good things that also happened because they always do, although, admittedly, they are easily overshadowed by the disasters.

Try again!

Last but not least, there is always tomorrow, another lesson and another day to have another go and see what happens. With young learners especially, the first time we play a new game or try a new activity, in a new format and with a new set of rules, the very first attempt is just a reconnaissance, for the teacher, for the resources and for the kids. It is almost bound to be a failure and it is a big mistake not to give it another shot.

Happy teaching!

What a difference a teacher makes! A post for all the novice teachers

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The beautiful tiles shown to us by engineer-history.ru

We are approaching a new academic year, new groups, new kids, new beginnings. What a happy coincidence that it is right now that I found this particular report and got to reminisce about this particular lesson that I observed many (many) years ago. Here is my start-of-the-new-academic-year post!

A quote from the report

‘It was a pleasure to watch you with that class and you have no idea what difference it makes to have a teacher who actually feels at ease in a PW class and who wants to be there. The kids can sense it and respond to it. There were many great activities and clear evidence of routine and good classroom management. Well done!’

And it was a memorable lesson for a number of reasons…

The were two teachers working at one of the branches of my school. One of them got in touch asking for help. One of her groups was a group of pre-schoolers and it wasn’t going very well. She went through the initial orientation and lesson planning with a senior teacher but, somehow, as it sometimes happens, it was not coming together. She requested to be taken off the group. It was an option that was being considered but, we wanted to see first if there was anything to be done and I went to observe the group.

Admittedly, it was not the easiest group. It was quite big, by our standards, filled up to the maximum (we had 8 as the maximum number), the kids were beginners but as it sometimes happens in language schools there were of different ages, there was a four-year-old and two six-year-olds and one of the children was also dealing with some attention disorder (according to what I could observe in one lesson).

It was not the best lesson. The teacher was trying, doing her best but, at heart, she must have already decided that this is not something that she wants to do and it was obvious, to the observer and, apparently, to the kids, too.

Two weeks and three lessons later, this group had a different teacher…

And that’s because we were lucky. During one of our training sessions, I literally bumped into the teacher and, in the hallway, in-between the training sessions, snacks and coffee, she asked me if I know of any ‘homeless’ group of pre-schoolers because she said, she would really really start teaching one. She had never done that.

And although I try to avoid doing it, this one time, I found myself observing the teacher in her first lesson with a group. I was sitting at the back of the classroom, with a piece of paper, taking notes and I could not believe my own eyes. Literally.

There must have been some magic done, some spells cast or, during these few days between the two lessons and the two teachers, these kids were tranformed into focused, well-behaved, engaged pre-schoolers! There were a different group of kids.

Everyone came, the older and the younger and the suspected ADHD, a full house! The teacher got some information about the group and the course from the previous teacher, she had some time to prepare. The teacher did her best to follow the routine of the pre-school groups that we had at the school and to manage the class. Nonetheless, it was her first lesson ever, with this group and with this age group.

Great teachers are made, not born and it was not her best lesson and it could not have been. She was just starting with the group, she was still at the stage of memorising the kids’ names and faces and yet, it was a good lesson. Not so much because of the appropriate tasks, instructions, staging and materials but because the teacher wanted to be in the classroom and, somehow, the kids knew it and they appreciated that and, as a result, they responded well to whatever it was that she brought with her. Everything else, the great results, the pleasure and the Above Standard lessons came later.

Why it is good news for all the teachers starting with a new group / level / age group / coursebook

  • Great teachers are made, not born. Even if the beginnings are complicated, stressful and scary, things are going to get better and they are going to get better thanks to the number of minutes, hours, weeks, months and years clocked in in front of a group of students. These number of minutes has its beginnings in the very first lesson.
  • You as a teacher, you can really (really) make a difference by planning the lesson and by preparing for who and what you might encounter in the lesson. By choosing the appropriate activities, by considering the things that can go wrong, by writing the lesson plan for your primary or pre-primary students, with a lot of variety, by reading about the first primary lesson survival kit and about the first pre-primary lesson survival kit, or about all the things that I wish I had known before my first lesson in pre-primary.
  • You, as a teacher, you can really (really!) make a difference by preparing yourself mentally for the first lessons and by believing in yourself! The one piece of advice that I always give my teachers about to step into the pre-school or primary classrooms is this: SMILE! That is because a smile can get us far and further! It is not so much about maintaining your muscles pulled into a shape of a croissant but about remaining cheerful. Things might not go to plan in this first lesson but it is absolutely necessary to remember that they will get better in lesson 2, 3, 4 and 5. As it is necessary to remember that we are great teachers and we love what we do. And that we do our best. When we do our best, of course, although, I personally think that most of the teacher try to do their best, on daily basis.
  • We are all a little bit stressed and feeling uneasy before the first lessons, all of us. Even those who are experienced teachers and trainers. Sorry! It is true the levels of confidence go up and the levels of stress go down with time but it is never completely relaxed. The only difference now is that at this point I am aware of the fact that things might not be perfect but I will know how to handle it. It is not ‘Oh, no! What if…’ and more like ‘Oh, ok, bring it on.’
  • Power to you, dear teacher!

What other advice would you give to a teacher who is about to start teaching Young Learners? Leave a comment in the comments box!

Happy teaching!

Lessons from a year of teaching adults. A YL teacher looks back.

by

The bigger picture

A great majority of the time that I have spent in the classroom as a teacher has been with young learners, those aged 3 and those aged almost 18. I have worked with adults, too, both beginners and advanced, exam and general or business English, in EFL and in teacher training, and here and there. However, there is no doubt that if I ever had to choose between these two, I would always choose kids. This is what I like most of all, this is where I can be really creative, this is where I find the challenge and the pleasure.

Over those 11 years that I spent as the ADOS and the YL and VYL Coordinator at BKC IH Moscow all my classes were kids’ classes, with a few exceptions of random cover and summer classes. It became kind of a joke between me and my brain, to pose the same question, every single August, when the new academic year was approaching, ‘Well, maybe I will ask the timetabling department for some adult classes this year?’. I never did, not once over those 11 years. Mostly because it quickly turned into making a choice between teaching my kids who I taught for a few years and taking on some new, unknown adults. I just wasn’t interested enough. Simple as that.

However, last year, a few unsolicited changes were introduced into my life and I went to in the motherland, picking up the pieces. As a result, I switched to the online, became a freelancer for a year, and found myself with a timetable in which about 80% of classes were with adult learners.

Now also this chapter in my life has come to an end and I could pack it up, label it as ‘mission complete’ and move on to reflecting on it. Hence this post.

I am a YL teacher and even though the changes were unsolicited, I really did make an effort to make the most of it and to find something that I could put on both sides of the chart. I took four months to write that post but it is finally here.

The highlights aka making the lemonade of all these lemons

First and foremost, the real hightlight of this year was the ability to impart knowledge and to rejoice the fact that the students were making progress, becoming more accurate, more fluent and more confident about their English, those who were beginners and those who were advanced, each of them was progressing and improving. Although, it has to be said, that it is the general highlight of teaching English. Your students’ achievements are a source of joy and happiness, and it has got nothing to do with their age group.

In the same vein, it was very rewarding to be receiving a positive feedback from my adult students, although again, that is always true and it has nothing to do with how old the students are.

It was an interesting experience for me as a teacher and as a human to work with students coming from a variety of professional backgrounds, true experts in their own area, be if finances, IT, banking, coaching, psychology, food manufacturing, car manufacturing or printing and. I was a kind of a privilege to become a part of their professional world and to learn about it, about the area, about the corporate world and about my own country, too, in a way. I met many interesting people and we got on, well or very well with some of them. Some of the lessons, apart from being a good product, were also lots of fun.

That also means that my resume looks even prettier than before because apart from the plethora of achievements in the area of YL EFL, I also have a nice paragraph about Business English and corporate English and a long list of high-profile companies that I have worked with.

I suppose that for me, personally, the most exciting part was the fact that, although, seemingly, I was like a fish out water, in a new area, in which I had less experience than in YL EFL and, in many ways, out of the box, I could find my way there. Teaching Business English, teaching Banking and Finance, teaching corporate English (which is the term that I personally coined for the general English classes in a corporate environment in which the traditional materials related to travelling, health etc are not the best) in a way that was effective and interesting for the students and also interesting for me was a challenge and I am proud to say that I did rock it. Over this whole year, I created and adapted materials, I experiemented with different techniques and resources and, as a material creator and a planner, I did have fun and I developed a lot. Hooray to that!

The other lights aka ‘Breathe, Anka, breathe’

I have to admit that, despite the whole year and a lot of opportunities for developing this particular skill, I (still) find it difficult to deal with the adults in class revealing their inner child. Naturally, I am trying to be a professional and I have a lot of patience and understanding. However, when something like that happens, I quickly become aware of how much of my resources and energy, I use up to deal with these situations. How thin is the ice on which I am walking.

For example, there were the situations in which the students would get stuck and who would give up instantly, even before they have even tried to do anything at all and even before the teacher even got a chance to explain, to scaffold and to support. This would happen regardless of the level, with some beginner, some pre-intermediate or some upper-intermediate students and what would trigger me especially effectively was the defensive ‘It’s so difficult‘, ‘I don’t understand‘ or ‘I don’t know‘, not when it is merely a piece of information signalling a problem but when it is used as a more polite version of ‘I will not do it. No. No. No!‘.

The same applies to the insecurity related to learning a foreign language, the lack of confidence in own skills and the fear of making a mistake, especially if they are paired up with a position in the company and age. Praising, reassurance and support, something that is easy and absolutely natural when it comes to kids or teenagers, all of a sudden becomes a real task requiring conscious effort and focus in the classroom with adults. I would like to believe that over the course of the year I got better at managing such situations and managing myself in such situations. It was interesting to realise that my patience batteries go flat much faster with adults than they do with kids.

Another thing that I found out about after a few months of teaching these groups was that peace and quiet in the classroom is not my favourite kind of environment and that, fortunately or unfortunately, I thrive in commotion, in noise, in a whirlwind, in a mess that is so typical of YL classes. Teaching my adults I found out that peace and quiet quickly leads to stillness and that quickly leads to routine and that leads to something dangerously close to boredom…I feel really guilty saying it because many of my students were amazing people, fun and intelligent but I have to admit that there were a few occasions in class when I would be teaching, listening, taking notes of all the emergent language and, on the margin, writing down notes for the lessons with kids because my brain would get bored and start wandering and coming up with ideas.

Last but definitely not least, there is also the question of oversharing. As a teacher of a language I do spend a lot of my days and weeks getting people ready to communicate. Naturally, what all the students are really interested in communicating as the things related to their life, private and professional, their opinions and views. However, sometimes it gets a little bit out of control and the conversation with the teacher may turn into a conversation with a friend or a barman or even a therapist. Personally, I do not feel comfortable with it because we are not friends, this relationship should remain within some professional framework. I don’t really feel comfortable with sharing any details about my life and, even more so, I don’t feel comfortable with receiving someone else’s emotional load, even if it is done in English. It doesn’t mean that we don’t share at all but there were quite a few occasions in which I felt the line was being crossed and some contingency plans had to implemented. Although, again, perhaps this is another thing that needs to be worked on and a skill to develop.

This paragraph will finish with an anecdote (for that is what that has become): Monday, evening, the end of a very hot day in July, the last lesson with a 1-1 professional in the area that will remain unnamed. We say hello, how are you, the student switches off the camera and it is only after a while that I notice that, due to the temperature, he chose to appear in class without any garments covering his upper body. I said nothing mostly because of the shock I was in, thinking ‘Well, there you go. I bet you not a single one of my kids would think that it is ok to arrive in such a state to a lesson. Even my teens have the decency to switch off the camera when they don’t want to be seen…’

Anyway, as I was clambering out of the state of shock, getting on with the lesson and coming up with different courses of action and when I had just decided to send the student an email after the lesson to ask him to either wear a t-shirt or study without the camera on in the future, all of a sudden my student switched off the camera and, after a few minutes, reappeared in a t-shirt. I suppose that even though I said nothing and even though I did my best to keep on my professional demeanour, there must have been something in my face that send out the right message. And it never happened again.

Coda

I don’t want this post to be a simple exercise of weighing advantages and disadvantages. This is an account of my personal experience and both things are true:

  • this past year of teaching adults (almost) full-time was an interesting experience and when I look back I still smile thinking about some of the lessons and some of my amazing students and although a teacher should not have any favourites, I wish I could wave from here to all of them but especially the amazing IT people, all the boys and all the girls.
  • although this can change in the future, right here and right now, I am a teacher of young learners.

If you are interesting in reading a little more on that, here are some other posts inspired by this year of teaching adults: the first impressions from the YL teacher who went back into the adult classroom, what my adult students could learn from my kids, and a whole series on discourse development tricks that was created during that year. I would still like to write a proper post on the corporate English but that will have to wait until the following weeks…

Happy teaching!