WHAT IS REALLY IMPORTANT IN EDUCATION – THE SEQUEL

In the past post I blogged about a vital aspect of education outside the classroom: extracurricular activities. This post looks at a further key component of successful education: developing teachers.

Like most TESOL teachers abroad, I stumbled onto and into the profession (a reason, indeed, to question the relevance of that word?) without much prior training. Although I have been lucky enough to gather a growing collection of knowledge in the field, I am aware that professional development is seldom a high enough priority in TESOL, despite the fact that so many migrant English teachers have little training. This keeps TESOL practitioners in a rut, and limits the basic level of our performance. In short, we often have a bad name, and there are often few grounds to defend ourselves on. Staff development is, however, a two-way street: professionals are responsible for their own development, but employers are most certainly accountable for supporting this and, where possible, providing opportunities.

In something of a surprise move, our staff were presented with a great PD opportunity yesterday. A ministerial arrangement with the AMIDEAST organization allowed us to host a workshop by Dr Liz England of Shenandoah University (US). It was astonishing to see how hungry our teachers were for a chance like this. They all gained new insights – often from themselves and each other – and left with renewed faith in each other, restored hope and the vim to tackle the remaining half of the semester.

This led me to a great many questions regarding my own role. The position as coordinator is one that has no job description as yet, and until yesterday it seemed to me like an administrative function, which is what is ostensibly required from above and below. Yet the greater investment of my time in this job has been in setting up systems that will allow teachers to connect with each other, self-train and hopefully inspire them. What makes the work meaningful for me is not administration but leadership. Until yesterday I was questioning my own legitimacy in this focus – at the workshop I suddenly felt that it has not been great enough.

Among to the many ideas that struck me about the workshop (even though I could only attend short segments), this new questioning of my role is perhaps the most important, especially as I prepare to leave this employer. I would like to leave with a sufficient handover period, all my things in order, and not a burnt bridge in sight. But there is more than that: I would like to see what can be done with the opportunity I am presented, though I never asked for it.

Crashing with Krashen

No job is all blue skies and sunny days. In fact, as a teacher, I have come to expect unpredictable weather and learnt how to keep from being blown off course. It takes some steady steering sometimes. Today I had to hold on and steer for dear life.

Teaching-wise, actually it was not such a bad day at all. I added more to the modifications I had made to yesterday’s first lesson, and the third and final class went remarkably smoothly.

What went wrong was based not on teaching, the core of my job, but on the accumulation of several non-teaching tasks which, despite my well-reasoned appeals to distribute them evenly within the department, continue to be allocated to me. This is as unfair to other teachers, who feel left out of decision-making, as it is to me, who completely forgot how to execute the breathing process today. I shall omit the tantalizing details regarding more than one last straw that broke this camel’s back today. Fast-forward to this evening.

It all left me wondering what goes wrong: in every workplace there are struggles, but my own experiences, and others I have heard of, seem to suggest that TESOL (abroad) workplaces are exceptionally dysfunctional. Is it because the industry is not really- if we are to be honest- professionalized? Is it because cultural clashes are par for the course? Is it because no self-respecting, sane person would ever consider packing up to embark on an Anglovangelism mission? All of the above? Surely, the sheer lack of professionalism I have seen tolerated here would get a MacDonalds clerk fired. And we are educators?

Suffice it to say that my affective filter is on double-glazing this evening, and I am finding it very difficult to focus on my studies- or anything else, for that matter. What did help was flipping back to the goal sheet I had the rare prudence of drawing up before I started this course. It reminded me that I am going somewhere with this. I can, at least, aspire to be the lotus flower rooted in the mud.