One of the things that I love most about teaching is that I never stop learning. My father, a teacher of thirty-seven years, says "You can never know it all." While I endeavour to progress professionally and academically, I am always reminded of the state of constant learning teachers experience, and for which I am grateful. These are some of my reflections on just a few of the many things I continue to learn.
Silence is ok: When I first started teaching, I felt that the space I was in needed to have sound to provide evidence of 'work' and of 'learning'. I was afraid that if no one was talking, no one was learning. I found I was especially aware of this in 'speaking' classes, I thought that communicative classrooms had to be in a constant state of productive noise. I used to think that if they weren't going to talk, I should at least give them listening practice, so I would keep speaking, ask more questions. As I became more experienced, I realised the need to allow students time to formulate thoughts, opinions, responses and even sentence structure. I transitioned from feeling silence was the enemy to accepting it as a necessary element of student preparation. I could see correlations between my Grade 11 English classes and my adult esl classes. Students needed time to prepare and organise when English was their first language, so of course this was even more crucial in an unfamiliar language. I became more comfortable with the idea that there doesn't have to be 'language' and 'noise' every minute of every speaking lesson, that it's ok to give students time to reflect and prepare. I feel much less pressure now to provide continual input or expect continual output, that a silent class isn't always an unproductive one.
Learning is a partnership: One student in particular taught me this lesson, and it has proven to be a very valuable one for me. About five years into my esl career I came across the first student who really challenged me. He was a fifteen year old Taiwanse student, an only child, and on the national tennis team as a child prodigy. He was, without question, very talented, very smart, and very privileged. He was in Canada for a year recieving intensive coaching, but his parents didn't want him to fall far behind in school and wanted him to learn English. He had never been told 'no', been given everything he'd asked for, and other than in tennis, hadn't been expected to 'work' at anything. He would come to class late or not at all, and when he did come, it was with homework unfinished, no textbooks, paper or pens, and with an attitude of disinterest, disengagement and non-cooperation. I saw these characteristics and habits as something I needed to 'fix'. If I were a good enough teacher, he would want to come to class, would want to participate and do homework, and love English. But for the first time in his life, he had some freedom. No one to tell him when to go to bed, what to eat, when to train, how to budget money, or how to take care of himself. He was responsible to no one, and that was appealling. So I designed my lessons around him. What topics would he want to talk about, what songs could I use to teach grammar, what movie clips could we use in writing class? All to engage one fifteen year old in a class of twelve. I made everything into a game, it had to be fast-paced and exciting to hold his attention, I spent hours preparing materials and hunting for new resources, I lost sleep when he didn't come to class because I thought it meant I was a bad teacher. After about three months of pulling my hair out and nearing a meltdown, I began to realise that it wasn't only my fault he was not in class or was unprepared. I had heard from other colleagues that what I was doing, while noble, was unsustainable, unrealistic and unwise. I let one student dictate the kinds of classes I was teaching and how I assessed my teaching 'success'. After numerous consultations with school counsellors and administration, I allowed myself to admit that I couldn't learn for the student, no matter what I did, or how badly I wanted it. I had been working as hard as I could, but I could only do so much. I finally understood that the student was part of the equation. He had to meet me half way. When I realised that, it felt like a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders. I could go home at the end of the day knowing I had done my best and given everything to the students, but if they didn't make an effort, I couldn't learn English for them. Since that experience I have had a very small number of students who also lacked motivation and didn't particularly want to be in class, but I made the effort to get to know their interests and reasons for being there and try to make classes as engaging or relevant for them as possible. However, I no longer take it personally when a student doesn't excel or doesn't embrace English with the love I feel for it. I can only do so much.
Language is expression and expression is identity: I once had an elderly Korean gentleman in a low- intermediate class who was struggling with English. He was surrounded by teenagers who had better pronunciation, picked things up faster, and could express themselves more easily. He didn't say very much. I could see he was frustrated, so one day after class I told him about my experience with German. I had gone on exchange for a year only speaking English. At 15 years old, I didn't need any more reasons to feel insecure so I preferred speaking English and at least sounding intelligent. It was either that or be reduced to three word phrases with no grammatical structure. I didn't want to sound 'dumb' as I would have had I tried using German, so I stuck with sounding 'smarter' in English for the first three months. Naturally my host family was getting a little annoyed and reminded me why I was there. I eventually decided that if I ever wanted to be able to give my opinion I would have to start somewhere, so I accepted my status of someone with the linguistic ability of a toddler and went from there. It was frustrating, humbling, and difficult, but when I could finally talk about more than the weather, it was gratifying. I re-lived my whole early childhood while I was a teenager and it was hard. I could empathise with my Korean student all too well. Here was a man, 64 years old, and a supreme court judge in Korea. He was respected in his community, had achieved great things, had the responsibilities of an important person, and was contributing to society. In Canada, no one could tell how intelligent he was, no one knew what he thought about the state of the world. How frustrating to be forced to be someone you weren't just because of language. So I tried to encourage him as much as possible and I told him "I know how smart you are in your own language, I know you are capable of many things, but you have to be patient." Because of my stubborness and insecurities, I lost three very valuable months, not practicing German. I try to prevent my students from sabotaging themselves in the same way.
