#teachertraining

Free yourself! Forget about the coursebook!

by

It is quite likely that the next few posts to come will be (heavily) influenced by the very intense experience of tutoring on the IH CYLT course. I train up teachers throughout the whole academic year, in one way or another, but that particular course is as engaging and absorbing as it is demanding. And, naturally, inspiring. Hence this post.

First of all, we love our coursebooks. We love our authors. We love our publishers. We would never give up and teach completely without the coursebook because we appreciate the curriculum, the ready-made activities, the photographs, the audio and the ideas. And we are beyond happy to be able to have a coursebook from a recognised publisher who has been in the business for decades and who is putting a lot of effort into putting together a coursebook. We have worked without coursebooks (not fun), we have worked with horrendous coursebooks from aspiring local publishers/writers (not fun) and, having been in business for decades (oh dear), we have experienced the coursebooks of the 70s and 80s (not fun) and it is obvious the coursebooks have become better. Much better, in fact.

But.

My favourite metaphor

A hammer is a very useful thing, no doubt about that, but would any carpenter let the hammer decide what the table should look like? A knife is a wonderful tool, too, but no chef would be asking the knife for advice on how to cook a steak. Scissors, another amazing creation, but no hair stylist would let the scissors take the lead and make decisions about the haircut. They are all tools and what matters here is the human that manipulates them, a human who understands when the tools contribute to the aim that he or she has and then they don’t and have to be put away (fixed, sharpened, and so on, depending on which part of the metaphor you choose).

In the same vein, with all due respect and no offence meant, the coursebook cannot make the decisions about the lesson. It is a tool, a great tool but only a tool that has to be used wisely.

‘Easy for you to say. You don’t have to teach and you won’t be assessed…’

…is actually something that one of my trainees actually said during the lesson planning session when I suggested (yet again) to put the coursebook aside. On a few other occasions not a word was said but I caught a glance or two that did express the same thought. As if I was the meanest creature in the world, asking the drowning man to let go of the swim ring they are desperately holding on to…

It is, of course, true, I am not teaching to be assessed (well, not on the course) and yes, it is easy to (carelessly) suggest putting the book aside. Why would I want to do that? Ok, here are the reasons:

  • The coursebook authors do not know the children (or the students) who sit in your classroom and, try hard as they may, they will never be able to come up with the activities that suit those students’ needs. Only the teacher who works with them can do it.
  • The students for whom the coursebooks are written belong to some non-existant category of children: they never cause any problems, they never misbehave, they always come energetic and motivated, they are always focused, they understand and follow instructions at the first attempt, they always match the coursebook level and the ministry description of what a seven- or ten-year old should be like and they are interested in all the possible subjects in the world. Unlike our Pasha, Sasha and Fedya.
  • The coursebook authors choose the texts or vocabulary or listening or grammar practice activities based on the principles that might not go with the abilities or interests of your students.
  • The summer courses are a perfect opportunity to let the hair down and see what teaching can be like, when the student is at the heart of everything that happens in the classroom
  • The training teaching practice on the course is even a perfect-er opportunity because forgetting the coursebook is done under the supervision and with the help of a tutor who will help to make sure that this grand experiment does not get out of hand and that there is a happy ending to that story. There will be also your peers and, obviously, seven heads thinking together are much better than one.
  • Forgetting the coursebook also means that the teachers set themselves free and start thinking about the lesson (or the course) in a more organic way. What topic do you want to teach? What vocabulary would you like to include? Which grammar structures will go well with that? What can be the main productive activity? What do you need to prepare your students for it? Do you want to include a song, a story, a video? How much time do you have for all that? And when all these questions are answered (and only then!), opening the book to check how many of your personal dreams can come true with whatever is in the coursebook. Not the other way round.
  • Adapting, creating or finding all the missing element will take time but the final product – a lesson that you want to teach, is definitely worth it. Even if it is not the best lesson you ever teach. Learning from mistakes is as important as learning from the great achievements.

The happy ending (because there is one!)

Breathe, dear teacher, it is not forever, of course. Nobody is taking the coursebooks away (we love them, remember?) but I can (almost) guarantee that one summer like that, at a teacher training course, at a summer city camp or at a regular summer camp in a far-away forest can change your approach to teaching forever, with young learners or with adults, with the priorities set right: the teacher and the students, the lesson, the coursebook and lesson planning will never be the same!

Happy teaching!

Instead of a coda, a song by the Chemical Brothers which inspired the title of the blog. I am thinking that I will have to a lot more of the Chemical Brothers’ songs

P.S. My trainees on the course were amazing and I managed to convince them to let go of the coursebook at least once while on the course, partially or fully. With great results. So there.

Teacher roles, teacher personalities.

by

This is not a serious post.

There is no need for anything else serious now, not with the amount of work related to the end-of-year procedures, the amount of work related to the summer programmes kick-off or the very important teacher training course that has just taken off. If there are any posts to come in the next few weeks, they will be all of the following kind: light-hearted, frolicky, with a giggle.

A teacher = a chameleon, a teacher = a jack of all trades, a monitor, a manager, a mediator, a diagnostician and a teacher, experienced or not, talented or not, on a good day or on a bad, this very person juggles all these roles and a teacher multi-tasks, playing a few roles at the same time.

But there are the other roles that a teacher plays in the classroom. Here are mine.

I’m a coach.

I work hard with my players. Whenever they are there, I am there, at every single training session, those technical ones, those devoted to developing speed and agility, those before the important game. I have been a player myself, I know what it all feels like, I have learnt how to share this knowledge. I am sometimes light-hearted, sometimes very serious but I know what our aim is and I am going to do everything to get us there.

But, at the same time, I am not the one who is going to play this important game. I am preparing my sportsmen but they are the ones who will be performing themselves. I will not be able to be there and always hold their hand, not on the pitch. They will be on their own and they need to get ready for that. Our time in the training session has to focus on that, on giving them skills, developing their independence and confidence. And then they go.

I’m a gardener.

I have my patch, my garden, my orchard. I plant my seeds and my saplings. I hope for the sun and good weather. I water, every day or even twice a way. I protect from the insects and birds. I check out for the weeds. I look and check up on them regularly. I wait. I wait. I wait. I wait. I wait. I wait. I worry about the wind, storm, temperature drops.

After a very long time and a lot of waiting, the day comes when a leaf appears, a flower, a raspberry here and a carrot there. And when it does happen, it is the best day every and I rejoice. And sometimes, I need to water more or move the pot into the sunnier place, or back into the house. Sometimes, I have plant the seeds again.

I’m a (kind) witch.

I am sweet (or so I would like to believe, at least when I am in the classroom:-) I smile a lot and I laugh a lot. I can turn a lot of difficult situations into a joke, to disperse the clouds. I wear funky socks and funky masks. Funky earrings, too. I am kind. I laugh a lot.

But I am also a witch and there can be no doubt (never ever) who is in charge, who is the boss and who has got all the superpowers. Which she will not hesitate to use. When necessary, the smile will be put away, on the shelf and the witch will do the witch’s things. If the world really needs it.

I know that these might be also referred to ‘teaching personas’ or ‘teaching personalities’ but I am going to stick to the concept of ‘a role’ here. Because ‘personality’ suggests something more serious (and that’s not the word for today, remember) and something more permanent and these described above are not traits, only characters that one assumes while entering the classroom. They can be different on different days, more or less prominent or obvious, they might appear every day or be held in the cupboards, kept for the special day…Perhaps we change as people because of the fact that we teach and that we teach English and that we teach English to kids and because of how we do it. Perhaps we choose our teaching roles based on what we are. Perhaps both. That is a conversation to be had on another day. Maybe.

In the meantine, if you want to share how you see yourself in the classroom, there is the comment box below. I am really looking forward to reading these.

Happy teaching!

Those who inspire OR How did you become the teacher you are? (part 1)

by

I have no idea how I found myself in that mode, a bit like Alice who fell into the rabbit’s hole and kept falling. And reflecting. That’s me now.

Maybe because we are making a full circle in the online-covid-offline-rapid changes-uncertainty-new reality? Maybe because I started to run again and when you run, your brain wanders and comes back with ideas? Or maybe I took part in Anita Modestova’s series of interviews EFL Around the World and was invited to reminisce and to reflect? Maybe all three. Maybe none of them.

Teachers and foreign languages

…and among them my first foreign language teacher who was not even a teacher of English. My first foreign language was Russian. From the first ‘здраствуйте’ (zdrastvuyte), it was like this new world, that you could enter through some, until then unknown words and a completely new set of letters. I don’t remember much about the lessons, I could not comment on the methodology and activities or even the coursebook. But I do remember my teacher, miss Janina, who was the first language magician and it was thanks to her that I did fall in love with Russian. Love at first sight.

Among them is also my first English teacher, miss Ewa who put together a most random group of kids of all ages, when the lessons of English were still a rarity and a luxury. There were no coursebooks for children so we used what our teacher could find and share.

Such as? Such as a magazine for kids, Mishka, made in the U.S.S.R, teaching the kids around the globe about Snegurochka, Baba Yaga, A.S. Pushkin, Red Square and what not, which was published also in English. Today, it makes my head spin, but back then, as a beginner, I was ploughing through and the unabridged text would not stop me because I was in love with the language. Again. We set me off and then we met again in the final year of my high school, to prepare for our A-levels and to help me get to B2+ level.

Mis Ewa was a strict teacher but a fair and inspiring teacher. In her lessons, every single minute had its own purpose and it was used effectively. Once you experience that, there is no going back.

History?

It is actually a beautiful coincidence that almost all my school History lessons, from the middle and high school, seven out of nine years, took place in this very same school and in this very same classroom. With me sitting on the very same chair. Probably.

It was in this classroom that our teacher, professor Janusz Merchut, a real maestro, taught us about the past. His were not lessons, but a performance and I still remember how quiet the whole class were, how focused. We did not listen, we lived it. Maybe it was when I got spoiled and started dreaming of lessons with a few grains of magic, lessons that are not a lecture but an experience.

In the same classroom, a few years later, I met professor Krystyna Kradyna and a new adventure began. Naturally, we did have coursebooks and the curriculum objectives to meet but these were just an idea. It was the time of change and transformation and there were many, many things that were yet to make it to the coursebooks. She introduced them and she did let us think and talk about them.

Enter Hieronymous Bosch

There were two other people that I do think about when we talk about ‘My teachers’, both of them my university professors. University of Wroclaw in Poland was my first Alma Mater during the very special five years of my MA in History programme, a long time ago, in the pre-EFL life.

Dr Piotr Oszczanowski appeared in our lives for two terms because, apart from all the obligatory subjects, we were eventually given a chance to choose a few optional modules and one of them was the History of Art. Initially, there was a lot of ‘whatever, let’s take this one’ rather than an informed decision but the best thing since the sliced bread.

Today I would say that dr Oszczanowski knew his subject and had an amazing teaching personality and classroom presence. That he engaged his students very effectively throughout the entire lesson and the entire course. But this is me, a teacher trainer at work, today. Back then, I just loved being in his class and so did the rest of the group.

He taught us how to look at art and how to read it. And it was not the case of getting the one correct answer, and memorising facts. There were different interpretations and ways of approaching the topic. Our second term was devoted to the history of art of Silesia and we spent our class time out and about in the city, looking the past in the face. Plus, we were allowed to choose what we wanted to be assessed on. For me it was Hieronymous Bosch.

‘Miss Zapart, I have no idea about jazz but this is a good topic. Go.’

….is what my tutor, professor Stanislaw Ciesielski said during the first class in our 4th year when we met to discuss our MA dissertations in modern History.

Professor Ciesielski probably sighed when he found out that he would be taking care of us since we were an inheritance from another teacher who had left.

We, on our part, we did panic because people had been saying things and it was not panic the type of a storm in a teacup, it was panic the size of a proper hurricane. Professor was said to be very strict, very accurate, very serious, a great scholar and a great brain and, in general, a force to be recognised. With time, we learnt that all of it was true but these were exactly the things made us respect him for and, really, feel extremely lucky that we were thus ‘inherited’.

I mean, it was not a bed of roses. Professor was tough and there was absolutely no way of cutting any, even the tiniest, corners throughout those two years of my research and dissertation. The job had to be done. Not getting things done was not an option. The very thought of not getting things done was not an option. It’s not that he would shout or get angry, he was the calmest person ever. You just did not want to disappoint him.

We were made to work hard but Professor was with us every step of the way, supporting and guiding and no wonder that we got great results. I also personally got spoilt for years to come as regards the role model for mentor and supervisor, strict but fair and supportive every step of the way. No idea if professor Ciesielski read about Vygotsky and the Zone of Proximal Development but he rocked it.

Coda

Today, I only wish, I could travel (or travel back in time) and return to all these classrooms to say ‘thank you’ and to tell my teachers that they did an excellent job and that they did inspire.

Does it mean that I was the one happy child in the entire universe who was taught by the amazing teachers only? Ha! Of course not. There were teachers who made me cry, who humiliated me, who shouted at me, those who made me scared or very angry. Teachers who hated their job, those who were unfair and those who simply wasted my time. In some cases I knew it back then, in a few other cases, I realised it only when I became a teacher myself.

Alas, all these will remain anonymous, although, I guess, I should be grateful, I had a chance to learn ‘What not to do’ and this counts as ‘experience’, too.

To be continued…

Those who inspire OR How did you become the teacher you are? (part 2)

by
My Mmy

This is the second part of the post. The first episode can be found here.

A huge part of the everyday inspiration are …

…my students. There is reading, there is research, there is the continual professional development, webinars and conferences presentations and the conversations in the teacher’s room, all of it very useful. The real source of power and of inspiration is the classroom and the kids in it.

If they are not an easy group, that makes you start planning with a sigh and enter the lesson with taking a deep breath (or a prayer), you will be looking for solutions for your problem and sometimes you will end up successfully reinventing the wheel and taking the game to the next level. They might also be a teacher’s dream and, because of that, you really want to go ‘bigger, better, faster, more!‘ and you create, re-create, experiment and, again, become some EFL Gagarin.

I don’t remember the names of all the kids (and all the adults) that I have thought over the years but the thought that there have been at least two thousand of them in Poland, Italy, Spain, the UK, Brasil and Russia does put a big smile on my face. I would like to think that all of them did learn something with me but I know that I have learnt a lot with them and because of them. My state school kids, my summer schools students, my IELTS students and my Business English engineers, all of my pre-schoolers and all of my teachers in training.

Why? Because sometimes, when I ask for feedback and I ask ‘Did you like the lesson? Why?’, I get back real treasures, such as ‘Yes, because I am not scared anymore’ from one of my teens (there must be a post on that story) or ‘Yes, потому что тут Анка’ from my primary. (Yes, because of Anka).

That is more than enough to motivate me to make an effort next time but I usually say is ‘Great students make great teachers’. I really do believe it.

The everyday support aka ‘On the wall in the office’

It might make me look like my teenage version of me, with a bedroom wall all covered in posters. Thankfully, the pop music posters (Europe and Limalh, my dear Lord) gave way to Hieronymus Bosch, the photos of Land’s End and the map of the UK. The huge Trainspotting poster was added a bit later. The thing is, I do like to have something to look at, ‘My favourite things’, in one interpretation or the other. This is how these five end up on the way, all my private superheroes, the source of inspiration.

Batman, the only real superhero here. He is my favourite one because he is ‘only’ a human, without any accidents and mutations, he saves the world only because he’s got access to lots of resources. I mean, he is ridiculously rich but still – a human with appropriate tools. A role model number 1.

General Kutuzov, a field marshal of the Russian Empire and the hero of the Battle of Borodino. During all the teacher training courses and projects that require lots of multi-tasking (which I hate to bits), I do find myself staring at the picture of Mikhail Illiaryonovich, thinking of the troops management, provisions management, morale management and whatever else general was obliged to take care of. Simultaneously.

Leo Semyonovich Vygostky or, simply, Leo. I cannot think of any one that had a bigger impact on what I think about teaching and education. The more I read about him, starting from comments and references in other sources, to articles by Vygotsky scholars and followers, and to Leo’s own papers which I am still going through, the more I agree. Reading and repeating ‘Yes, absolutely!’ or ‘I could not agree more!’. Literally. Because of the conviction that every can, with appropriate support, because of the role of the teacher who is only supposed to be the lighthouse, not the leader, because of the attitude to the level of challenge. I am in love. Plus, we are almost birthday twins with Leo. Which is random but kinda cool.

There is Yuri Gagarin, too, of course. If you ask me, ideally, there would be Yuri on every wall in every classroom. He is on mine, too. And there is Zima Blue, the creator. If you are not familiar, look up Alastair Reynolds or Life, Death and Robots.

The other side of the coin

The superheros have been on the wall for a few years now. When I first took a photo and showed my friend, she said ‘There are only guys, here. Where are the women?’

At first, I just shrugged it off. I didn’t know why. But the question stayed with me and it was bothering me for days on end. Until I finally figured it out and sighed with relief. The answer is actually quite simple, ridiculously simple. As simple as it is beautiful.

I don’t have any photographs of inspiring women on the wall above my desk because they are all real women that I have a pleasure to know and to have in my life. All the photos are in albums or in folders on the computer. And when I need inspiration, I just talk to them. That’s how blessed I am.

There are a few great mums here, some stars who make the world a better place by helping people, a few teachers, a few translators, a few chefs, a few Leos, a photographer, a biker, and a creator.. All of them are strong, intelligent, funny, beautiful, creative, or, in just one word: amazing.

Also, represented here by some random trinkets. Some of them, at least.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for being in my life.

P.S. It was easy to write these post and it took a lot longer than I had planned. As soon as I finished, I started to be bombarded with thoughts of my teacher trainers, supervisors, colleagues, family members, writers…In one word, enough material for two more posts. I think it is better to post what I have ready now or else this post will never really happen. But, as Terminator used to say: ‘I will be back!’ And on that note…

Happy teaching!