Reflections after a year of teaching.

So here I am after a year of being an EFL teacher.

My apologies for the lengthy delay between posting. I could make all sorts of excuses about being very busy, having lots of lessons, travelling around, focusing my writing energy on a sci-fi competition and generally being tired, but it wouldn't really be that interesting, though it is true ;-)

I feel like I've run through a full year's worth of EFL teaching now since we just got back from the school's summer camp. I started here in Slovakia with the summer camp last year, jumping in a bit at the deep end, got my training from the school, taught lessons all year long for business, kids and adults, got a few private students and traded some of them for better private students, planned some great lessons and some crappy ones, winged it when I forgot to prepare and got away with it, winged it and had the lesson flop, dealt with great students, uncreative students, tired teenagers, noisy kids, grammar monsters and found where I work well in teaching and where I'm not so good. The year finished with a trip back to the same summer camp as before (Camp Wonderland for those who are interested).

This rather charming picture is me one year prior to the beach party disco at camp. The facial hair has largely been ditched (except when I'm feeling too lazy to shave), my muscles have also taken a bit of break since I'm not a regularly training martial artist any more and there might be a hint more of a tan now as the summer here was pretty warm and bright. When it comes to teaching though, there have been huge steps, learning points and more that came from just getting a lot of hours in the classroom. 

Here is a tired but happy me a year later at the same camp, on the same stage and near enough in the same spot. As before, there is a funky costume going on but that's the way of summer camp. What's really changed is the confidence and experience of the teacher, something that I hope, and think, is reflected in what my students gain from each lesson I teach now.

So, in a nutshell, what have I learned from one year of teaching. I intend to expand on these points in future posts.

• You get to meet a lot of really interesting people. You owe it to them to be genuinely interested in who they are and what they do. It can bring remarkable dividends too ;-)
• Lesson preparation is key, though not in the way that I expected when I started. Micromanagement generally comes unstuck, but without a framework a lesson can be very hit and miss. 
• Go and learn another language, seriously. You will learn a lot about how students think, feel and will come up against the stupidly illogical (to your mind) things that others feel about English. 
• Sharing and working with your colleagues will make your job a LOT easier. Build that team up and all of your lessons will benefit from it. 
• EFL textbooks can be fantastic to work from and will save your butt when you're short of ideas, but should be expanded upon to cover certain areas more or less. 
• You'll learn a lot about the English language.
• It makes it really easy to travel when you're an EFL teacher and a native speaker can be in quite heavy demand. As a side note of travelling, you'll see more of the city in a year than many people who live there do in five years.
• Teaching English is not going to make you rich, though you can save a surprising amount depending on where you live, but you'll have a really fun and interesting job.
• You will get tired as a teacher, you'll often end up working funny hours, starting early, finishing late, having dinner at 9.30pm or snarfing sandwiches on the tram.
• You'll realise that despite the annoyances, if you really enjoy teaching and languages, you will be doing a job that keeps you interested, challenged and excited. 

All the best to everyone and look out for more thoughts on the above coming soon.

Pete

Reduce, re-use, recycle

Until I started teaching full time I never truly realised all of the work that goes on behind the scenes in order to make a (good) lesson happen. I knew that teachers needed to prepare the lessons that they were teaching and I got a little experience of it when I was on my CELTA course but when the full time work hits....it's a bit different to say the least.

I teach about 19 hours a week for my school and have a couple of private students who have lessons as and when our schedules allow. We'll call it an average of 20 hours of teachin a week. Each of those lessons needs to be prepared and planned. Preparation time for a lesson varies quite a lot depending on what material you are using. The actual structuring of the lesson takes perhaps half an hour as you figure out the stages of teaching the subject or grammar point that you're covering. This is fairly easy to break into chunks as you deal with introducing the material, getting the students to use it in positive and negative sentences (e.g. I like football/I don't like football), then move on to question forms and more independent use, perhaps in a conversational setting or game.

What can really take up your time and make the job a lot harder is the preparation of the associated teaching material. This can include creating exercises, board games, flashcards, picture cards, finding writing extracts, making sure you have the recordings ready for a listening exercise etc etc. This is where lessons can suck up your time and make you feel like you're buried in paperwork. I try to make a dent in everything on Friday so I can have the weekend off but I often have to pop into Class at least for a little bit to finalise things.

My 'friend' paperwork. How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways ;-)


Now there are very good reasons to do all of the work associated with planning lessons. It's true that you can go into a lesson with nothing more than yourself, some pens and paper/whiteboard and teach a great lesson, but it's not easy. You have to be on top of absolutely everything that can come up, be ready with great examples to teach vocabulary or clear up points, have a perfect sense of reading your students' comfort and be able to time things so you finish at the end of the lesson having nicely cleared up all of the points you taught. I've done it once or twice (as has, I'm sure, every teacher), but it's a lot more stressful than when you have things planned and ready ahead of time.

So how do you go about reducing the time you need to spend on preparing lessons to a more manageable figure, especially with a full schedule and wanting to fit some kind of social life in there?



By stealing the oft-repeated environmentally targeted slogan for use as a teacher. You save time, and sometimes your sanity, by reducing, re-using and recycling your material.

It was suggested at that start by other teachers that I will benefit a lot by recycling and re-using lesson materials. It's amazing to find out how much variety can be created by using the exact same set of materials for different levels and subjects.

Let's look at an example that I actually used in several lessons. It was a set of flashcards with pictures of people doing activities (jobs and hobbies). I used this set to teach five tenses: Present continuous (He is dancing, they are cooking etc.), Present simple (he dances, they cook), past simple and continuous ("Yesterday?" "Aha, they were dancing) and present perfect (this week they have danced three times).

Of course I varied the activities using the cards from simple memory games for the lower levels up to more complex question forming and expanded sentences for the higher levels. One game that stands out in my mind is Pexeso, or memory pairs. You have two sets of the same cards, put them face down in two groups and then the students must match pairs. It can be very simple: Turn card 1 - "He is dancing." Card 2 - "He is not dancing. He is running." to make pairs or you can scale it up for questions. One student I teach in a 1 on 1 setting played this game with me using present perfect where he had to supply the appropriate time phrases to make it work e.g. Card 1 - "He has danced twice this week already. Has this person (card 2) danced this week too?" Card 2 - "No they haven't danced, they have eaten this morning though."

Sometimes it's a bit more complicated than that but I can't deny that following the old environmental credo is very helpful for my current career. It also fits nicely into the sharing ethic of Class and you will always find teachers swapping material, lesson plans, ideas and tips in the staff room (in between running to and from lessons of course).

All the best for the holiday season.

Pete :-)