It’s interesting that the English teachers in my seminars aren’t fluent in English. It’s understandable: they learn English in school and likely have never met a native English speaker. And then they teach for fifteen years in a secondary school, their English limited to what they teach their students, their pronunciation and grammar mistakes passed on to them. Which, actually, is why the Peace Corps TEFL programs is here, to bring native speakers that might be able raise the level of English instruction in the country.
So I give my seminars in slow, well-pronounced English, which is frustrating to me because I like to keep the energy up. But after I gave the instructions for an activity in a seminar today, speaking slowly and clearly, three teachers in a little group that had been whispering the entire time said they did not understand the directions. I gave the directions to them in Ukrainian. “I can speak English” snapped one. I didn’t say anything, but I wanted to snap back: “then pay attention.”
Teachers are the worst students. They don’t pay attention. They talk in class. They loudly sigh to show disapproval or boredom. You know, all those things they don’t want their students to do. I’ve always found it extremely ironic that teachers at Hoover, those teachers that would complain that “these kids” had no respect, and “these kids” couldn’t stay quiet, that “these kids” were simply going to end up in jail, so what was the point of teaching them (seriously), would never shut up or pay attention during staff meetings or professional development seminars.
Admittedly, I’m a horrible student as well. If I’m bored, I don’t pay attention, especially during Peace Corps conferences. I found it ironic that, during these Peace Corps conferences with us sitting through seminars back to back all day long, we were taught about communicative methods, interactive teaching and hands-on activities by lecture. Very often I wanted to gouge my eyes out.
I understand, too, that I’m 20 years younger than them and yet am instructing them. I understand that they feel that they know how to teach and this is wasted time. I understand that they’re forced to be there. I don’t think I’m there to teach them how to teach, but just give them so more resources to use in the classroom.
Which is why I try to make my seminars as fun as possible. It’s entirely discussion and activity and I try to keep the pace going as much as possible. I play the role of the inexperienced teacher who needs them to explain to me why they need to use speaking activities or mixed ability grouping. I compliment a lot. I mock-flirt a lot (which they appreciate) and I do everything I can to keep them motivated for that 90 minutes.
The problem is days like today. The leave their home towns to stay in Zhytomyr for a week and attend training seminars all day long. On Monday, they were upbeat and ready to learn. Four days and literally dozens of lecture seminars later, they come into my classroom at 9:00 in the morning ready to go home.
“What are we discussing today?” I ask, knowing that they know it is speaking activities. “Our hard lives,” moaned one, resigned to yet another seminar. Hmm. Great way to start the class.
If you’re teaching kids and you come up with an interesting activity that teaches the lesson, they love it and they love you for it. Teachers, they don’t like to be shown these activities because that’s boring. They don’t want to do the activities because they’re not kids. Even just doing the first five minutes of an activity so they can see how it’s done is beneath them.
The only thing they are consistently interested in is me. The first two questions I get in any seminar are: “how old are you” and “are you married”. I now start my seminars with: “My name is Daniel, I am a Peace Corps Volunteer, I am 26 years old and I am not married”, which usually gets a laugh. But we’re not there to talk about me, we’re there to talk about speaking activities.
What’s been working is playing to their egos: what kind of activity should I use for this subject? I ask them. I have this problem, what should I do? And when they tell me what they do, I have “ah ha” moments and say “actually, I bet if we take that and do it this way, it’d be even better. Thanks!” And any activity that lets them talk to their fellow teachers, they enjoy doing, too, so all the speaking activities are geared towards that. Maybe they’ll actually go on to using them with their students.
So 90 minutes into class they’d actually done two activities and declared them “interesting”, I had demonstrated another, I had them share their own, which I massaged through comments closer to the communicative method they’re supposed to be using, and I had them “help” me on how to solve a few problems with students speaking (“I have a student who is really shy about speaking in my English club, what should I do?” The answer: “tell them to not be shy”).
Then I showed them some videos and pictures from America as the reward for sticking with me to the end of class (it was a bribe from the beginning of class and they knew it).
Man, I miss teaching kids.