The first 10

These are the first of 20 questions I often ask myself as a teacher. There are hundreds more but I thought 20 was a good number for now. I was going to put them in a post a few months ago but got hijacked by 20 different questions here.

Anyway, I have added random thoughts as part-answers to my questions. I could probably write a book if answering them in whole.

It would be interesting to know if you ask yourself the same questions and what your answers are. Comment if you can.

1. Will I ever be happy with myself as a teacher?
Probably not, although that’s a good thing. When I taught my first classes back in 1989, I had no teaching experience or any qualifications. I thought I knew everything and left the school every day with a smile on my face. After my CELTA in 1993, I realized I knew almost nothing about teaching. I left classes wondering whether my students would learn. Ten years of teaching and an MA in TEFL later, I had amassed a good bit of experience and the theoretical underpinnings I really needed a decade earlier, which meant if I wasn’t happy with myself as a teacher, I could now be reasonably confident I knew why. Teaching is a profession in which you can really beat yourself up. I think you need to be happy with the fact that you tried your best planning and teaching a class suited to your students’ needs. Even the best plans taught by the best teachers can go awry with the dozens of classroom factors that can at times conspire against us.

2. Will they like the lesson?
This is a lesson I ask myself before and during every lesson. It so often feels like you are only as good as your last lesson and if your last lesson wasn’t great, then you start to wonder what students might start to wonder. A few factors will always work in your favor when trying to ensure students will like the lesson. Being well-prepared, happy, flexible are a few of these. Others include making lessons fun and personalizing texts to your students’ culture and personalities – which I find always increased motivation. Showing every student you are working for their success, even if that success is completing a small grammar activity, gets the students on your side and makes for a better lesson.

3. Will they understand the lesson?
It’s a delicate balance to make sure the lesson content is pitched at a level that is not too easy (so they learn little) or too hard (so they switch off). The level at which materials are graded, the degree of linguistic complexity their varied interlanguages can cope with, and your instruction giving are all essential in getting students motivated and engaged with their learning. It takes a while with a large class to know who needs slower explanations or which stronger students can be paired to help weaker ones. I try to explain instructions one step at a time and checking that all students are with me – even at the “OK, take out your pencils” stage.

4. What if it’s way too easy / difficult?
This question is directly related to the one above. You need to have back-up activities if you have pitched the lesson at the wrong level. I usually find the easiest way of doing this is to use the text or activity I have prepared in a more or less challenging way. If a reading text is obviously too easy, base extension activities around it (get students to make a vocabulary quiz on it, ask them to prepare a match phrase, try working on pronunciation in a reading aloud activity). I do the same if a text (listening or reading) is too difficult. I tell the students it is a text from a level or two above theirs and ask them if they would like to work on parts of it – different groups can be set to work on dictionary work, quizzes, working out the meaning of one sentence each and then sharing it with the class…

5. What if I run out of time?
My biggest fear for over a decade. I was always terrified of that moment with 20 minutes left when the students have finished everything and they all stare at you with that “what next?” look. My Master’s provided me with plenty of ideas, strategies and tools to take into class for this question to disappear. It now seems to be impossible to run out of time. Any lesson content can be extended into another skill if the students have finished. Dozens of 20-minute-to-go activities can be employed – reflective writing on the lesson, pairs/groups prepare questions on the lesson for others, Internet work, letting the students decide what to do (in English)…

6. Would I like to be a student in my class?
I think the answer to this would be ‘yes’. When learning Japanese in a classroom situation, I frequently thought how I’d love to break out into pairs to speak, do a vocabulary activity on the text I was reading, or check my answers with my partner’s and peer correct. I guess if you wouldn’t like to be a student in your class, you could be in trouble :-0

7. Will I meet or exceed students’ expectations?
This is a difficult one to know. The only way to find out is to regularly ask students for feedback on your teaching. This could be a quick question at the end of each lesson or a more detailed poll. You must try and understand their needs to be able to answer this question – find out the reasons they are studying, how they like to study and what kind of content, strategies, activities they like. Providing them with a variety of content, strategies and activities will perhaps provide them with a better basis on which to assess you. I think providing them with feedback on their learning is also a critical channel of communication to gauge each other’s expectations.

8. Am I a bad teacher because the other teachers get Kit-Kats?
There’s always one teacher who is bought Kit-Kats and coffee by his/her students, and it could, perhaps, sometimes, on occasion… lead you to ask “Where’s my Kit-Kat? and “Am I doing something wrong?” The answer is probably “no”. I’m usually happy I have taught a good class and that the students have enjoyed it. That’s enough. There are usually more than enough things students do that are better than Kit-Kats, like coming to my desk after class to ask questions, putting an effort into their homework, getting on with their work with enthusiasm.

9. Why do they dislike the textbook?
I’m not a big fan of textbooks myself. I have to use Anglo-centric books with my Arab students – too often the two are ill matched. Students cannot bring their own cultural knowledge, schemata, etc to get excited about a text on something so alien to them (a lot of the content of international course books). A lot of the content is simply culturally inappropriate. I have to use a lot of supplementary material with the course book and incorporate my own material with that of the book’s content. I try as much as I can to create mirror texts based on my students’ own culture that are similar in form and style to those in the course book. These can be used as a lead-in to the book content or as an extension of it.

10. How do I overcome observation nerves?
In my very first observation on my CELTA course in 1993, I lost control of my lips – my students and those observing noticed and kept looking at them; my heart pounded so hard I thought the class would see it; my voice hit octave levels I thought had disappeared in my early teens; I knew from the heat I was emitting my face was red; I wanted the ground to open up so I could escape. Strangely, all of that happened only in the first 20 seconds of the lesson (it seemed a lot longer), after which I got into the full swing of things and forgot about observation nerves and even the fact I was being observed. It never happened again. I still do get nervous before an observation and that is totally natural. I overcome this by telling myself the nerves will automatically disappear two seconds after I start the lesson. It’s also a good idea to ask the observer to focus on some aspects of your teaching to suggest improvements – it’s so important for the observation to work to your benefit and not just be an admin procedure. Of course being well planned helps a lot. I also find teaching a lesson for the first time increases your adrenalin and performance. I can remember teaching a “tried and trusted” lesson which I felt didn’t go as well as first taught. And most importantly – don’t try to read too much into the totally blank face of the observer – it’s called “looking”.

Coming soon – Questions 11-20

Not the game – Just questions I ask (asked) myself

I knew everything when I first started teaching. Mwaaahahahaha.

I’ll say that again…  Mwaaahahahaha.

No need to ask questions about what I was doing in the classroom. It was easy – you just stood at the front of the class and explained for one hour what the present progressive was and then asked if there were any questions. :-0

That was in 1989 and I was a cowboy teacher in Bangkok. I loved it because I had just quit my job as an accountant in England. It was the first job I’d had that left me with a smile on my face when I went home every evening. I did that Bangkok job to earn some cash to save up money for the flight to Australia so I could continue backpacking. I worked every day for 11 weeks and decided I wanted to be a TEFL teacher.

After 2 1/2 years of living in cheap guest houses, tents and sleeping underneath buildings, I went back to England. I wanted my CELTA to continue my travels. I went to Izmir, Turkey to do my CELTA. And then the questions started coming. Thousands of them. The first one was – Just what was I doing in Thailand with a 99.3% teacher talking time?

More followed:

First peer-observation questions (Izmir):

1. Why isn’t the floor opening up so I can make my escape?
2. Why are my lips quivering uncontrollably.
3. Why do my peers have to stare at me like that?
4. Why aren’t all students answering all of my questions using the form I’ve just presented?
5. Why did that 28-minute role play take 28 seconds? What now?

Post CELTA questions (On the plane from Turkey to Japan):

6. How in the name of all methodologies and dangling participles can I teach English?
7. How does one become a butler?
8. What happens if they ask me to explain the difference between phrasal verbs constituted by a verb + particle + object(s) + wh-clauses, and those taking a transitive verb + preposition + pronoun + wh-clause. …….. What’s a phrasal verb?
9. Will they sell Jeremy Harmer books in Japan?
10. How many TEFL teachers drive BMWs?

First job interview questions (Osaka, Japan)

11. Why a question on how to teach the passive? He knows I just finished my CELTA. Grrrrrrrrr….
12. Will my 11 weeks of experience be enough to get this job?
13. Am I really being interviewed for a job in one of Japan’s biggest schools?
14. Will I have enough money left to survive to the next interview if I don’t get this job?
15. Why doesn’t he know what a CELTA is?

First lesson questions (Japanese conversation school, Japan)

16. Why aren’t they laughing at my really very hilarious jokes?
17. What’s “Are you having a good time?” in Japanese?
18. Why do they all nod when I ask them “Do you understand?” and then look confused when I say “OK, go.”?
19. Should I go for sushi after this lesson and then do karaoke and then go back to England?
20. Ahh… wait… someone answered… could there be a career  in this for me?

Well, they weren’t the 20 questions I had in mind at all when I started this post. They suddenly appeared from nowhere. The 20 questions I had thought about and written down will come in the next two posts.