How do you know that you are ‘an experienced teacher’?

Based on real events.

This week’s story

I am on the move, resembling Snufkin from the Moomins now more than ever. It did so happen that this week I was asked to teach a demo lesson. While on the move.

Here are the details, just to give you a full picture

• The lesson was supposed to last 30 minutes
• The kids were 5 years old
• There were eighteen kids in the group
• I had not seen the kids before
• I did not know the level of the group
• Since I was on the move, I had no resources of any kind, no flashcards, no ball, no dice, no magic wand.
• What is more, there was no flashcards at the school and I was not aware of any options related to the access to any electronic resources. I had to assume that there were none.
• My laptop with its screen was just not good enough for such a big group.
• Buying any new resources was absolutely out of the question
• I could not consider any written work or craft for the same reason, no photocopying and getting enough markers and so on.
• My performance was supposed to be evaluated. Of course.

There is a happy ending to this story…

…is probably the next thing that I should say while telling this story.

Desperation came first. And how else? I had a lesson to teach, a lesson that I wanted to teach but no tools to do it, no tools whatsoever. None. I could not use anything that I had ready and, because of my crazy timetable, I could not really set aside any time to produce the flashcards or to wander about a new city to look for resources… So, it started with desperation and anger and the foulest of mood followed. And then I just gave up.

Not on the lesson as such, although, of course that was an option, too. I could have just called and, in an attempt to be a reasonable adult and a professional, I could have called it all off (‘My apologies, that is all just plain impossible, I will have to say no.’) and forgotten about the whole business.

However, either because I do rejoice the unreasonable or because I did enjoy the idea of a challenge, I decided to go on with it. As soon as I ‘gave up‘ (on the resources, on the safety blanket of the experience so far, on the idea of a traditional lesson), I calmed down and things got interesting.

The first thing I did was to make a list of all the available resources or rather ‘resources’ aka junk, stuff, things that could be used in class and to come up with a topic, an aim and a set of activities that would match them.

The list included:

• my magic trousers (red genie trousers with purple elephants, a sovenir from Portland, Maine)
• my toy hen, Angelina, who travels everywhere with me anyway
• and a set of random objects which I have gathered around Ola’s flatt (a shell, a towel, a straw hat, a storybook, in Polish) and my rucksack with a water bottle and a few coins.
• the Invisibles and Intangible: the experience, the charisma, the presence

The thoughts accompanying me in the taxi, in the morning were of the following kind: ‘It’s either an amazing challenge or an attempt at the professional self-destruction’. I would want to say that I was nervous or anxious because it was really difficult to predict the outcomes here, it could really go one way (aka the success) or the other (aka a complete disaster).

But I was calm. So calm, in fact, that I started to suspect myself of having given up on the entire project and of sabotaging it subconsciously by not preparing meticulously.

While in the taxi, I was on life support from my best friend and in response to my list of resources, I got a comment along the lines of ‘The magic trousers and Angelina? That is a killer combo!‘

I arrived at the kindergarten running…

…almost late. I washed my hands, I kicked off the trainers and there I was, on the carpet, with a bunch of kids, left to my own devices and to my random resources. It turned out that the killer combo is just that. We had a great lesson.

I decided to go for the topic of the beach and things we do there, to introduce a few verbs and chunks in the Present Continous and to be able to use them in a game of the actual going to the beach and playing on the beach, to focus on TPR and movement and to avoid any handouts or paper altogether. The language was presented through realia since the five-year-old kids are ready to make a connection between two coins and ‘I am eating ice-cream’ or between a towel and ‘I am swimming’. I carry all my songs and chants, real and made-up in my brain and I do not hesitate to use them and it was great to have Angelina and have her help me keep the lesson in shape.

We had fun, we ‘went to the beach’ and we produced the language. The lesson aims were definitely met. I would also like to say that I love the fact that now I can say that my most fun job interview (because that’s what it was) involved me lying on the carpet with a bunch of kids. We were sunbathing, after all…

If anyone wants to look at the lesson notes, you can find them here.

To be perfectly honest, I am aware that apart from the Invisible and the Intangible that were obviously there, I was lucky: the kids were old enough and I could at least hope that they would be behaving more like students in the context of the classroom. Plus, the novelty value did work to my advantage, this crazy lady, in colourful pants, coming in, talking for herself and the hen, laughing a lot, that is enough to keep the kids interested for thirty minutes. I also had the safety blanket of the impossibility of the set-up, the reasonable trainer would always be able to say ‘What did you expect? That would never work’…

Only it did.

Conclusion: How do I know that I am ‘an experienced teacher’?

I know it because, when faced with an impossible challenge, I do not panic and I am able to get over the initial and the unavoidable discomfort, I can focus on planning, without bending over backwards but rather taking stock of what is available and making do, in order to meet my aims and keep the standards where I want them.

I know it because, when the conditions are favourable, I am willing to experiment and to go for it, in order to push myself, on the one hand, and in order to push the boundaries a little bit, if only possible.

What about you?

Somewhere through this post I realised that this conclusion is a very personal and a very subjective one. What is more, the answer to this question will be changing because I myself would have answered it differently a week or two ago. I caught myself thinking that I am unbelievably curious about what my fellow teachers think. I decided to ask and this is how this post got really interesting.

It quickly turned out that there are as many approaches as many people and the answer to this question is and will be very subjective, personal and precious. It can be measured in the number of years worked but only in the eyes of our employers or according to the labour law of your country and it has got nothing or very little to do with what we think of our own skills and abilities.

Here are some of the ways in which you can get the bagde of honour. You can call yourself ‘an experienced teacher’ because…

• ‘when the lesson plan works’, not necessarily beacuse the lessons have to go plan but because it can be taken as evidence that we understand the group and their needs and because we can prepare activities for this particular group of kids
• you can teach a good lesson even when you do not really have enough time to plan. It is not because being experienced gives you a green light to take the preparation lightly but because when it is really necessary, you can get by with the Invisibles and the Intangibles and still do a good job. You can handle it even with zero prep whatsoever in case of a last minute cover or some class details confusion.
• you are observed by a senior teacher and you get a great feedback
• you are observed by a peer and you get a great feedback
• when your students start using the new vocabulary and grammar in class, especially when it is not in the tasks directly related to this grammar point and without the teacher’s reminders to use these
• when your students get great results in the external exams or in their regular classes or in any context that could be labelled as ‘outside of the classroom’, especially, as Maegan said, because the fun in the EFL classroom translated and transferred into progress in a more traditional approach in the school
• ‘not sure about that’ was also one of the answers that I got. Perhaps this is something to work on, perhaps not. I will just leave it here.

While chatting about with Maegan we also bumped into the idea that this feeling of ‘I got this’ is not a long-lasting one and perhaps it should not even be. On the one hand, because, at least partially, it is based on the external factors. On the other hand, due to the fact that we live in the moment, in every single lesson and every single activitiy, focusing on that is a lot more interesting than the constant feeling of pride and confidence. I am also thinking that perhaps this is how we protect ourselves from feeling complacent. Perhaps.

If you have something to add, any comment, question, story, please, pretty please, add it in the comments section below! I will keep asking and researching)

Happy teaching!

Big thanks to my contributors: Irina, Michael, Vita, Maegan, Anastasia, Nina, Aleksandra.