No, I'm not a 'proficient English language speaker'

I’ve just been on Dave’s ESL Cafe. Not because I want to work 60 hours a week in a ropey kindergarten, but to see how companies are wording their recruitment ads these days. And amongst others, I found:

______ is recruiting female full time native-speaker teachers of English (Saudi Arabia);

We are currently looking for a full-time native English speaking teacher (Thailand); and

A small independent school in ______ is looking for experienced NATIVE English teachers (Japan – the caps are theirs).

So it seems that, yes, in spite of brilliant recent work from TEFL Equity Advocates and others, teachers are still being sought on the basis of their mother tongue instead of their qualifications. I want to say categorically that I think this is wrong. Utterly wrong. I’ve learned foreign languages from native speakers (NS) and non-native speakers (NNS) and it’s been an insignificant factor in their competence. The former are quicker on collocations, perhaps, while the latter tend to have better grammatical awareness – but really, these are just stereotypes that cancel each other out. I want a teacher who knows what they’re doing and doesn’t stress me out. That’s it.

Click for bigger cartoon (credit http://www.itchyfeetcomic.com/) 

But the debate is taking an interesting turn. Last month, Laura Soracco wrote a popular post about doing away with the NS/NNS dichotomy altogether, which was picked up this week in a heated (OK, gas mark 2) Twitter exchange between Russ Mayne and others. Russ tweeted:

NS and NNS may be ‘flawed terms’ but that’s no reason to stop using them.

…and to be honest, my first reaction was oh Russ come on. So were several other people’s, apparently. Then I thought a bit more and realised we’re in danger of conflating two separate conversations.

For recruitment purposes, it’s pretty clear we should stop using the NS and NNS labels. They’re vague, they’re used to discriminate, and the non- prefix can’t help but imply deviation from the 'normal' or the desirable. Laura suggests proficient English language speaker, bilingual or multilingual as preferable terms to NNS, which any sensible person would surely struggle to disagree with.

However. For real life purposes, you know what? I’m not a proficient English language speaker. (Hang on, wait for the rest.) I’m a native speaker. I’m a native bloody speaker, like a Dane speaks Danish or a Turk speaks Turkish. I can emit sounds in several other languages, but I'm far from bi- or multilingual. English is the language of my dreams, my crap jokes, my blazing rows, my memories, my 3am confessions. For better or worse, it's the lens through which I see the world. Does that make me a superior teacher? Emphatically, no. But English is a massive, integral part of my identity that also happens to be the international language. Do I recognise all the unfair advantages conferred on me because I grew up speaking it? Absolutely. But I can’t truly be sorry about something as random as the circumference of my head, nor can I adopt, without hypocrisy, any made-up word that obscures or downplays what I am. I am English; hear me roar!

The real point, I suppose, is that we should have each others’ backs. It's not a zero sum game in which one group must be quashed for the other to rise (see also: feminism). At work it matters not one iota whether we were, as kids, read bedtime stories or histoires or 物語, and it’s all of our responsibility to challenge prejudice against bilingual English teachers in job adverts, from colleagues and students, or in the wider world. But by the same token, when we’re out of school we should respect each others’ right to define our own language use, however we see fit – and however flawed the terms may be.

Don't mention the blog

I had a frustrating interview on Thursday. It was for an 11-week job teaching peacekeeping English in Burundi, and given the unusual nature and duration of the post I thought we’d probably have a chat about the specifics of the work, and how stuff I’ve done before could be relevant. Which was naïve, as I’ve worked for this organisation on and off for five years, and I know that’s not how they roll. This organisation uses a set of ‘behaviours’ to recruit staff, asking every candidate the exact same question and awarding points based on how many boxes your answer ticks. It makes the process transparent; I get that. But all too often it becomes a game of guess-what’s-in-my-head.

I mentioned it once
Click for image source

The interviewer asked me, ‘Can you tell me about a time when you went the extra mile to seek information?’ I thought for a moment and told her how, as a teacher mentor in Bornean primary schools, I’d often felt disconnected from my colleagues. There was no mid-morning chitchat over Milo since the other mentors worked miles away from me. So I joined Twitter. I slowly cultivated a PLN (personal learning network). I started reading and commenting on ELT blogs. After a couple of months, I felt bold enough to start my own. I wrote about what was happening in my schools and got really useful feedback that I could use right away in my work. Based on recommendations from people in my PLN I began to read more widely, watch conference presentations online and attend webinars. Basically, I spent months of my free time connecting with people in the virtual world to improve my professional practice, because a gap in the real world needed plugging.

I could almost her ears glazing over (it was a phone interview). There was a pause, and she said, ‘OK. But can you tell me about a time when you really went the extra mile to get information?’

Excuse me while I stab this (four-colour) pen into my thigh. You mean that time I hiked across the savannah to get the final clue to Stephen Krashen's Best Treasure Hunt for Girls? I heard your question the first time. Did you hear my answer? Or did you just hear, ‘Blah blah internetz blah blah’? Because now all I'm hearing is, ‘I don’t use Twitter and I don’t blog, so I’m choosing not to understand what you said. I’ll repeat the question to see if you can give me one of the examples on my list right here.’

I dunno. Maybe my answer really was crap and I should’ve come up with something else. But I didn’t. I said (less eloquently than this), ‘Perhaps I made it sound easier or quicker than it was, because it was also enjoyable. I’m sorry, but I don’t have a better answer to give you.’

I’ll find out today if I blew the interview. I suspect I did, and it’s kind of fine, as I’ve been having second thoughts since a friend said to me yesterday – and was right – ‘You know, if you want to be a writer, you need to write more and stop taking teaching jobs for the sake of seeing interesting places.’ But it’s also annoying. 

Although I blog less frequently than I used to, I’m a Twitter evangelist to the point of irritation. I’ve learned more since I joined than in 10 years of inane compulsory INSETs, and I want to tell the world! Except that half of the ELT world, including a lot of managers responsible for recruitment, have little idea what I’m talking about and apparently little interest, either. It’s not that I think everyone should be on Twitter. If it’s not your thing, fine. But it’s my thing, and interviewer, I think candidates deserve to be listened to when they give valid answers that happen to be outside of your experience.

Where's the pleasure in teaching?

A long time ago, in an ESOL context far, far away, I asked a colleague to cover my class because I had to take an exam …

Lovely colleague: Sure.

Me: Shall I leave you a lesson plan and some materials?

Lovely colleague: I'll do my own thing, if you don't mind. Teaching someone else's lesson feels a bit like wearing someone else's shoes.

… and that analogy has always stayed with me. Because that’s exactly what it’s like.

Lydia Mann, "teaching_5052" September 29, 2005 via Flickr, Creative Commons Attribution.

At the organisation where I’m working now – for three more days – we’re piloting a new project. How it works is this: adult students can enrol online for individual classes of 90 minutes. They can see which teacher will deliver them, and what the content will be. Each lesson is standalone, so learners can attend every day / once a week / once a month / just once, as they choose. The materials are pre-prepared, so teachers can simply turn up and print them off, and divergence from the materials is not allowed.

This blows.

And presumably it’s too late to sack me for saying this, so I will say again: THIS REALLY BLOWS.

The title of this post – ‘Where’s the pleasure in teaching?’ – is not facetious (i.e. ‘Where’s the fun in that?’). I mean, literally, what is it that makes teaching pleasurable? I’ve been thinking about it a lot recently, because this pilot takes away three conditions that generally make teaching a great job: the scope for autonomy, creativity and connection.

Autonomy

I don’t want to wear someone else’s shoes. It just doesn’t feel right, even if they’re limited edition Converse, and to be honest, more often than not, they’re Bata sandals which could do with re-heeling. Sound the analogy klaxons!

The teachers at our centre are being asked to use materials designed by people who work in different contexts from ours, who may or may not be professional resource developers. This would be of no consequence if the materials could be adapted, but they can’t, so in many cases experienced teachers are delivering lessons of a lower quality than they otherwise might. Which seriously doesn’t make sense.

Maybe, just maybe, when I was fresh off my CELTA I would have appreciated this zero-prep, one-size-fits-all approach. But more than 10 years down the line, to have it imposed as a modus operandi with no consultation is frustrating and diminishing.

Creativity

I’m slightly biased, perhaps, because I’m also an ELT materials writer. Turning complex ideas into coherent activities makes me very happy (oh yes, I shall impose my bento box order on the world). But of course, that’s not the only way to be creative. Braver teachers than me enter their classrooms with nothing more than a board pen and an idea, and run with whatever their students throw at them.

There’s an enduring cliché that most TEFL teachers are failed actors. Whilst I’m not sure that’s true, I think an awful lot of us are frustrated creatives. Some of the most brilliant people I know are underemployed TEFL teachers who only stay in the job because they have the freedom to experiment, and to design engaging programmes of learning based on what students actually want and need. When you take that away, you take a good chunk of teacher motivation away with it.

Connection

The biggest downside of this pilot is that you never know who will be in your class. OK, I can see how, on one hand, this might be an advantage. It keeps things fresh. But developing a rapport with students is one of the most rewarding and, I would go as far as to say, necessary elements of good teaching. There’s a reason why it’s assessed in observed lessons. It’s also important for students to build rapport with each other so they become more confident and take more risks, and it makes me uneasy to work on a project that immediately alienates more introverted students.

I want to find out over time what makes my students tick: what factors in their personal lives might keep them away from class; what kind of learning experience will bring them back again. I want to feel, at the end of a term or an academic year, that we’ve all somehow moved forward together. I just want to remember their names, frankly. But within this system, I can’t.

*  *  *

I always worry that I only blog to vent. I can’t pretend I’m not vexed right now, but in fact I just wanted to get my thoughts straight and take away something positive from this job. And I think the positive thing is that, if we consider what makes teaching pleasurable for us, we can ask better questions in interviews and find posts that support our individual priorities. So I guess mine would be:

* Will I be allowed to work autonomously, or are there systems in place which limit this?

* What opportunities for creative work are there for teachers?

* Are classes timetabled to allow teachers to develop a connection with their students?

For you, where’s the pleasure in teaching? What questions should we all start asking in interviews?

Give it everything, or get out of the way

Photo by @CliveSir via @ELTpics

In two weeks, I’m leaving the sixth teaching job I’ve had in five years of working overseas. That might seem reasonable to you. Nobody stays in a job for life these days, right? Six jobs in five years is no cause to throw yourself under a tuk-tuk. Except I know why I have such trouble staying put, and this confession does not exactly cover me in glory.

I can’t make EFL matter to me. I’ve spent – wait – 14.3% of my life doing something for the sake of fancy apartments in sunny climes (with the exception of Tbilisi, where I lived in an ice-encrusted cave). These jobs have all been a means to an end, i.e. living abroad and seeing the world. They haven’t kept me awake, or made me cry, or made me proud. They have just been … jobs.

Before I left England in 2009 I worked for five years in ESOL, which some people might take to be an artificial distinction from EFL, but I cannot. In London, what happened in morning classes was directly relevant to what happened in the real world in the afternoon. The immediacy, the usefulness of what I was doing, kept me working 50+ hours a week for a salary that barely kept me in popcorn and lentils. On top of that, because 80% of my students were refugees or asylum seekers – and this is hard to say without sounding like a hand-wringing grief vulture – I felt like maybe I was actually doing something good for someone else. Teaching women to read and write from scratch, because as girls they hadn’t been considered worth educating. Offering a more or less consistent adult presence to teenagers who’d arrived in the country with no family. Since I’d had the random good fortune to be born in a politically stable country, wasn’t it the least I could do?

  

But I left. I left for the shits and giggles (quite literally, in fact, as my first overseas post was in a highly sociable teaching centre in Sri Lanka). The material conditions of my life improved immeasurably, but the sense of self and purpose I once had never really returned. Which is not to say that I stopped enjoying teaching, or trying to get better at it: I still get a kick out of being in a classroom. I’ve had some fantastic students, and I know how wrong-headed it is to say that because they could afford to be there, I somehow cared less about them. But I guess I am wrong-headed, because – with exceptions, like the woman in Colombo who attended for three months each year and spent the other nine saving for the course, or the man who got up at 3am three times a week to get to my 8am lessons – I did, and I do, somehow care less.

Like I said, this post doesn’t exactly paint me as the kind of teacher I want to be. It was over a year ago that I first blogged about needing to get out of EFL, and yet here I am, faffing about with Primary Grammar Box and wishing I was somewhere else. I need to stop doing what I’m doing. The choices I've made in terms of roles and organisations were perhaps less than judicious, but there are so many people who could have done these six jobs so much better than me: the phenomenal teachers of my Twitter PLN, who think so deeply and blog so eloquently, and who doubtless improve the lives of every student they encounter; colleagues who are still in the staffroom at 10pm on a Sunday laminating cardboard ants because it Just. Might. be the thing to get those disruptive kids engaged. There are too many half-arsed people in this profession already. And I’m figuring, all too slowly, either give it everything, or get out of the way.

Having said that, I’ve no problem with short-term teaching to keep a roof over my head. Freelancing ain't gonna keep me in popcorn or lentils either, and after 10 years I think I’m competent enough not to actually waste anyone’s money if they pay me to teach them English. I'd also be a pretty crap ELT writer if I didn't spend a bit of each year in a classroom. But what I should be doing with most of my life is writing, because I want so badly to do it better and that's what will keep me jumping ('jumping') out of bed each day, and probably volunteering with refugees, because that’s just the sort of leftist dishcloth I am. Watch this space, I guess. And oooooh wow cardboard ants can I -

I'm a teacher. Can I still be me?

I had to invigilate a test yesterday. I hate invigilating (and testing, but I’m coming to that later) so I armed myself with a copy of How Languages are Learned from the DELTA reading shelf* and reluctantly sat down in front of my thirteen – unlucky for some – advanced level, adult students. We discussed International House rules about not talking, not showing your paper to other students, etc. So far so standard. You may begin.

About fifteen minutes into the test (or halfway through ‘behaviourism’ in HLAL) two students at the back of the room started discussing an answer. I gave them what was, I thought, a no-nonsense sort of stare, and they desisted. Uh-huh. But ten minutes later (‘innatism’) I looked up and realised that three or four other students were merrily checking out each other’s papers.

“You guys, seriously, test conditions,” I said, not sternly enough.

Silence returned until someone else put up their hand and asked me to pretty much translate the reading passage, and that was it. Domino rally.

“I need to go out,” said a student who has previously presented me with a drawing of a cobweb with his name in it**, and assuming he was going to the bathroom I nodded. He stood up, took cigarettes and lighter from his pocket and headed for the door. Before I could protest:

“I also need to go out,” said a student who has never drawn me anything.

“What does ‘summary’ mean?” asked a student who was about to fail the summarising task.

“Okay, enough!” I shouted. “Don’t make me write C on your papers.”

(I would never write C on their papers. Teachers are meant to write C for Cheat on the paper of anyone who speaks during the exam, and they lose 5% of their final mark. Ha frickin’ ha.)

I tried to go back to ‘interactionism’ but the momentum was lost, plus I was wondering when / whether Cobweb was coming back. What was going on here? I mean I can see how, on the face of it, this looks like the very picture of classroom management incompetence on my part. But I’ve been there, and it’s not how it felt. It felt like all fourteen of us were trapped in a stupid situation.

The students hated doing the test as much as I’d hated writing it; as much as I hated saying things like “Don’t make me write C on your papers” when in the real world that C might just as easily have stood for Collaboration; as much as I hated furrowing my brow at grown people who were bored and antsy and would, like me, rather spend their Wednesday evening chatting and smoking than sitting through a zero-stakes progress test. In short we all wanted out, and the ridiculousness of the whole thing made me confront an issue that’s been cantering through my head lately: how do I square the requirements of the job I love with the human being I am?

It was serendipity rather than drive that led me to this career, and however much I later came to love it I’ve always considered myself an accidental teacher. Can this be right? Can something as consequential as your life’s work (forgive the pretension; I’ve been a teacher almost as long as I’ve been an adult) really be down to a series of happy accidents?

Well, yes, because I just happened to start a temp job at the Department for Education and just happened to work for an amazing former ESL teacher who opened all kinds of doors for me. But also no, because I don’t think I’d have become an accidental anything if I’d needed to increase shareholders’ profits or promote right-wing politics or even, at the sillier end of that spectrum, wear a suit and heels every day. Like most people given the choice, I didn’t want to sacrifice my personal beliefs for a paycheque.

What does this have to do with ‘teachers vs humans’? Well, if I was never prepared to do a job that swallowed up my identity and spat me back out to face the world in a pair of black court shoes and a grimace, why have I recently been feeling this tension between Being a Teacher and Being Me?

On one hand, English language teaching allows for a whole lot of authentic self. Not only can I wear purple Converse and rhinoceros earrings to work, I get to do most of my favourite stuff on a daily basis: ponder and discuss the infuriating beauty of the English language; attempt to convey my love (of English, although perhaps this could also work with a romantic partner? You are welcome) through stupid mimes and voices; spend a goodly amount of time reading geeky articles on Twitter; and quite literally labour under the apprehension that I am being socially useful. It’s tangible and dialogic and nine times out of 10 I don’t mind getting up in the morning.

On the other hand, I’m supposed to coerce other grown-ups into taking tests I don’t believe in, and I’m meant to bite my tongue when a student says that gay people are the biggest problem in Georgian society, and that is absolutely not my authentic self.

Well, a sort of diversion. It's related.

There’s a good deal of conversation about LGBTQ in ELT right now, including two particularly readworthy posts by Tyson Seburn (here) and Michael Griffin (here) respectively. It was even the theme of this year’s NATECLA London conference so I don’t think, at this point, I can bring much extra to the party by recounting my own ‘Uh-huh, really? You hate gay people?’ stories, but a comment by Funky on Tyson’s blog really struck me:

"I simply say [when faced with homophobic comments] that this is not an acceptable view in Canada...and that this discussion is over. My only response is to shut it down because I cannot stand to listen to it...but at the same time, I feel like this is insufficient."

Me too. ME TOO. This is exactly what I do, and exactly what I feel. I mean the Canada reference would be somewhat lost in the Caucasus, but you take my point: Teacher 0, Human 0. It’s a massive cop-out. Do I really have to suck at being one or the other? Or both?

I suck as a teacher if I don’t allow space for opinions to be aired, and I suck if I abuse my relative power in the classroom to chastise someone for holding those opinions, especially when they generally stem from ignorance rather than thoroughly considered malice. But I suck as a human being if I don’t stand up to prejudice. You know what? You’re wrong to (say that you) hate gay people. You just are. Because what we’re talking about here is the right of one person to love another, and love is good, and hate is bad, and if that sounds facetious it isn’t meant to. I honestly don’t think it’s any more complicated than that.

That's enough of that.

To go back to testing, I must kind of suck as a teacher if I can’t fulfil the basic administrative duties of the school I have, after all, chosen to work for. I suck if I don’t give my students the chance to see what they’ve learned and to feel good about that – although I would still maintain that testing is one of the least effective ways to go about it. But I suck as a human being if I ask a group of people who I basically like and respect to jump through a series of hoops I’d be none too keen to jump through myself. Heck, I’d suck as a human being if I made a group of people I didn’t like or respect do that.

So what to do? Is authentic - in the existentialist sense of the word - teaching a workable reality? I guess the answer is yes, but only inasmuch as being an authentic human is a workable reality. I’m doubtless less authentic as a human than I’d have myself believe, since I daily forgo opportunities to tell people that I don’t understand (must appear smart) or that I love them (must not appear vulnerable) or that actually, I don't take milk in my tea (never mind). In the classroom as in life, maybe the best we can do is adopt a policy of Do-As-You-Would-Be-Done-By, and try to share our thought processes with other people even when those thoughts are difficult.

I read an article this week by a librarian/teacher called Carrie Donovan that blew my mind, and I’m stealing a paragraph of her blog post here to finish my own, because it’s better than anything I could say on the subject even if I had months to write a conclusion. 

Let’s go out and keep it real, yo.

“Authenticity. Something that is so central to the success of one’s craft could take an entire career to cultivate, without ever truly reaching the pinnacle of achievement. But, librarians out there, if you’re anything like me, you revel in your teaching escapades because they are the one aspect of the job that is challenging beyond all expectation, shaking both body and soul, and making you all-around better and stronger. If it were easy, everybody would do it. But teaching, like so many things that are worthwhile, will break you down before it charges you up. It offers up the sweetest rewards for those who are willing to take the hardest hits. Nobody could do it really well without the reality and rawness that comes with self-disclosure, which can be at times a breathtaking walk on a tightrope and, at others, a freefalling leap of faith.”

* Currently have DELTA envy. Been wondering if there’s an argument for doing another one since mine was six years ago. There isn’t, but hear this: I will be stealing your books and infiltrating your reading group wearing a high-quality synthetic moustache.

** What does this mean? I just don’t know.