Coming full circle

Autumn on campus

It was seven years ago last week that I started my first EFL teaching job, as a language assistant with the British Council, at the Universidad de Talca, in Talca, a medium-sized Chilean provincial city about three hours south of the capital, Santiago.

Me at the Universidad de Talca.

I still have very vivid memories of that year in my life:

• how much I enjoyed teaching and spending time with my students (I’m still in contact with some of them now);
• how Talca felt like a different world from Santiago, where I’d previously lived for a year as a student (and how I enjoyed living there so much more once I got to know some of my colleagues and students much better);
• the feeling of being thrown in at the deep end (I taught my first day of classes without ever even having met my boss or having been shown round the department);
• how little training I’d had for the job I was doing (I had had no EFL training whatsoever, and the British Council induction day we went on focussed almost exclusively on admin requirements; I didn’t get any training whilst I was working there, either);
• how patient my line manager was and how she trusted me and was happy to let me experiment;
• how frustrating the bureaucracy was (I was often paid late, once up to 3 months late, due to problems with paperwork, with the British Council either unable or unwilling to do anything about the situation at my host university).

At the end of that year, I said goodbye to Talca with very mixed feelings. I had a place to do a Masters in Latin American Studies and I didn’t imagine that I’d ever work as an EFL teacher again.

Fast forward seven years and (after a Masters, some time back home, a CELTA, teaching in Poland and the UK, and Delta) and I’m now back in Chile, working in Santiago as a teacher and CELTA trainer in a private language school. And last week, two British Council language assistants arrived at the language school branch that I teach some General English classes at.

Unlike when I was a language assistant (I started teaching on my very first day but “only” taught conversation), they get to observe classes for a term before starting to teach (but then could be asked to teach any class, which is less than ideal….). They’ll have a more-or-less fixed timetable of observing the teachers who work at the branch, including me, but no other formal training (neither have CELTA but I believe that one of them has done an online course). I want to help them as much as possible and give them some training, both for their sakes and for the benefit of their future students (“The British Council Language Assistant program promotes a native speakerist ideology. Discuss.”). My boss is very happy for me to do this, but there are certain practical difficulties, mainly involving a lack of time and a lack of structure.

So far, my ideas are along the lines of:

• getting them involved as much as possible in the classes, participating in speaking activities but also monitoring students;
• giving them observation tasks (possibly similar to CELTA observation tasks) so that they can really focus on teaching techniques;
• eventually working towards them planning and carrying out some activities with one of my classes, with me observing and giving feedback.

I managed to briefly discuss this with both of the language assistants and they are keen to get some training but (understandably) don’t really know of any specific needs they’ve got (although they’ve admitted to being nervous about teaching grammar, which isn’t really surprising).

I’ve only been observed by one of them so far (with my B1 young adult class) and it went reasonably well. I got my students to interview him, and then he observed the rest of the class, taking part in some of the speaking activities. As I didn’t have time to prepare an observation task, I asked him just to write down things that surprised him/were different from his previous experience of learning languages, and we discussed them after the lesson.

I’d be grateful for any other ideas (or ideas for specific observation tasks)…

Chile, one month in.

The view from my flat (with the Andes in the distance!)

It’s 1am and I can’t sleep for the thoughts swirling round my head, so I thought I’d try to write them down.

• I’ve been in Chile for just over a month now –  and what an amazing, overwhelming, exhausting month it’s been. In this time, I’ve met up with old friends, made some new ones, found a flat to live in (and bought furniture and moved in)…and, of course, started my new job (as well as teaching, I’m now training to be a CELTA tutor, designing a TKT methodology course and helping to design an in-house coursebook – all of which are interesting but challenging in their own right).
• One of the biggest things I’ve learned about myself in the past month is that I really need to be more patient – patient with others, patient with the never-ending bureaucracy that comes with moving to another country, but most of all, patient with myself whilst I settle into my new life here. Arriving in Santiago a month ago felt, in some strange way like coming home. I lived here in my early 20s and have a really strong emotional connection to the city. I was incredibly excited to be here for the first couple of weeks, only to then be floored by a intense bout of homesickness (which was made worse by how guilty I felt about it – “I’ve lived here before, I shouldn’t be feeling like this”). I’m starting to feel much better, but am still not sure how I’ll cope with being away from home for 2 whole years.
• To me, learning a language has always been about communication (ever since I was a child, I’ve always wanted to travel the world and be able to talk to people in their language). It’s only recently that I’ve started to realise how closely language and power are connected – and how much being able to speak Spanish fluently affects my day-to-day life. I feel so much more confident and independent than I did when I lived in Poland (and didn’t speak Polish well).
• Teaching in a different context has given me the chance to re-evaluate my beliefs about teaching. I feel very strongly that, as a language teacher, I don’t just teach a subject, I teach people – complex, beautiful human beings. And my job is, as far as possible (given the constraints of the classroom situation) to help my students learn in the best way for them (which often involves try to boost their confidence first). One of my students paid me the loveliest compliment the other day: “Emma, I feel that you know that we are all different in this class and you plan the class thinking about this”….well, I try, at least!
• Even (especially?!) after Delta, I’m scared of observations – of having all the work put into a lesson weighed up, analysed and spat out into a grade out of 100 (yes, that really happens here).  Of not meeting people’s expectations (even if they’re only my own).  But I also think, in some ways, that it’s good that I feel like this – as a large part of teacher training involves observing people and giving feedback, I need to know and remember what being on the other end of the process is like.
• I’m still trying to figure out what professional development means for me right now. In some ways, I’m quite involved in other people’s professional development (apart from training to be a CELTA tutor, I’ve also been designing methodology courses), which perhaps makes it all the stranger that I don’t quite know what to focus on next myself. The process of moving here and getting used to my new job has been so all-consuming that I’m not feeling as energetic or motivated as I’d like to at the moment; nor do I really know what’s possible (in times of time, money, resources). I miss having geeky teaching conversations…
• That said, training to be a CELTA tutor is great – I’m learning so much and really enjoying working with the trainees. It’s also pushing me to improve my own teaching, which can only be a good thing (practising what I preach, eh). The most difficult thing for me at the moment is trying to guide the trainees rather than telling them too much – hopefully this is a skill that I can develop quickly! And I’ll soon be delivering my first input session (exciting!).

  I realise that some of this is quite personal, but I’ve decided to post it anyway – I reckon it’ll be useful to remember how I felt at this point. Buenas noches!