About a year ago, while at TESOL Greece Convention, I met a very young but yet wonderful educator, who I knew would make the difference. Today, 1 year later, I can say that I have gained a wonderful friend.It is my pleasure to present his first real "guest" post on my blog. Enjoy!
Theodora
Since this post is going to be an account of my first
experience as a novice teacher, I believe that I should start this blog-post in
a different way, so here it goes:
‘Once upon a time, there was a young man who was stricken by the great
Recession and decided to change his career course and settle in a new field -
that of the English language teaching.
Young and not at all experienced, he started his venture by distributing
his CV to all the available language centres. Fortunately enough, after a
successful interview he managed to get the position and was informed that he
would teach various, mixed-ability classes which would be comprised of false
beginners to upper-intermediate students.
Elated and overeager, he returned back home holding all the coursebooks
that would keep him company for the rest of the year and tried to prepare
himself. Not that this action of his bore any fruit. He was inexperienced and
with limited knowledge and awareness of what pedagogy and language teaching is.
Ultimately, the big day – Wednesday I think it was, he entered the
classroom. Now that I take stock of that day – after a persistent request, I
think that Gloria Gaynor’s ‘At first I was afraid, I was petrified…’ is mostly
appropriate.
I can still – to my surprise - recall that day! I had to teach a class
of 5 and 6yos that were extremely exuberant and naughty if I’m allowed to say. The
lesson, as you can guess, was about teaching children how to recognise the
first three graphemes of the alphabet. Even though, I don’t really want to
share with you my amazing teaching techniques, I’m obliged to do so!
So, I entered the classroom, smiled at those little and cute faces and
started my instruction.
Now here comes the interesting part, are you ready?
The procedure was quite simple. I switched on the interactive
whiteboard, pointed at the grapheme and sounded out the name of the letter.
Then I introduced three realias – an apple, a boat made of paper and a toy car.
I pointed at each item, pronounced each word and invited my eager young
learners to repeat after me. I definitely drilled and killed them. But that
didn’t actually prevent me from taking my excellent teaching instruction one
step further! To continue my recipe for disaster, I asked my students to
practice their spelling skills by writing these words on the board. A great
move of mine, indeed. I taught them A, B and C and I asked them to write words
that were spelt out with different graphemes. And when this stage was over, I
invited the whole class to sing along with me. What a wonderful song it was! It
went like this: A, B, C … A, B, C… Finally, I asked them to name the letters
again and recall the words we learnt. No seriously, wasn’t that a great
lesson???
My thoughts right after the ‘lesson’ were out of this world. I was
convinced that I did a great job and that I imparted my knowledge to the next
generation! Was I right? Of course not, but that is another story! I’m not
going to describe how I have advanced and enhanced my understanding of the
underlying principles of teaching, because the aim of this account was to
impress on you how bad I was as a novice teacher.’
Theodore has been teaching English since 2010. He’s a
TKT, CELTA and Diploma in Teacher Training holder. In 2014, he presented for
the first time at the 35th Annual International TESOL Greece
Convention and presented again with some success in 2015. He’s really keen on further developing
himself, and, thus he engages himself in any CPD opportunities.
My blog: https://lalostheodore.wordpress.com/Of course now that Theodore has showed me the "wrong" way, we all expect a sequel on how it's done "the right way"!!! To be continued!!
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