Work, Study and Where the Twain Shall Meet

In the words every child of the eighties remembers from The A-Team, I love it when a plan comes together.

When I started my masters’ studies, the relevance of what I was learning seemed extremely remote to my actual day-to-day work. As my grasp of the field has grown over time, I have come around to seeing how this growing knowledge benefits my teaching. While I am opposed to academic snobbery, especially when it comes to teaching English, the depth and scope of the strengthening theory that underlies my every lesson is proving invaluable. The question of what to do with my students if there is time left has transformed into a new question: how do I best use my time in class and give students the opportunity to develop more outside the class?

What my studies did not seem to cater for, however, is the growing responsibilities of my job. The primary focus of the course thus far has been from the teacher’s perspective. This would have been fine, except that my responsibilities have recently been extended to overseeing other teachers, students and courses within a new academic programme. If the “Peter Principle” applies, well, I have risen to my highest level of incompetence, and boy, am I feeling it. My modest studies simply do not cover what I need to know. And need to know fast.

In a former post I mentioned the idea of being the master of one’s fate, and I thought I’d give it a go. My current assignment was set to cover a week’s worth of lesson plans for one class, with a theoretical justification. While this is valid and valuable, I am juggling lesson plans across the curriculum at work. In a flash of inspiration flared by the midnight oil, I decided to contact my tutors for permission to use the cross-curricular lesson plans I have been drafting at work in the assignment. The first tutor had no objections, and I felt quite optimistic. Today I received a response from the second tutor: he actually endorsed the adaptation to my actual practical needs. Positive feedback AND I get to kill two birds with one stone: my work is actually feeding my studies and vice versa.

I love it when a plan comes together.