The CELTA Crisis or Busting the Box
Marie Dixon Frisch, Norway
Marie Dixon Frisch MD is a retired physician, therapeutic clown, language trainer and writer. Her essay Classroom Clown appears in the 2009 Adams Media Anthology My First Year in the Classroom edited by Stephen Rogers. Articles on clown attitudes, personal growth, family and community can be found at www.oneupmagazine.co.uk or www.selfgrowth.com
E-mail: mdsun001@yahoo.com
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In the beginning
Main story
The moral
It’s popular to talk about thinking outside the box nowadays. But may I share a secret? THERE IS NO BOX!
I should know. I’ve lived in a box before. As a premature baby, I spent the first weeks of my life in an incubator, balancing on the edge between life and death. I don’t remember it consciously, but I have fantasies of my early days as a so-called blue baby. I must have had a lot of support from many dedicated helpers. And I am grateful to them all.
The oxygen deficit I experienced at birth may account for some of my peculiarities. I have always known that I was not quite normal. In fact, in my experience, few people are. Long before I’d ever heard of multiple intelligences, I suspected that the “normal” distribution of intelligence—and other characteristics—usually illustrated in bell curves was quite simply wrong. Or inaccurate. Or at very least incompatible with the empiric evidence I was able to gather in my limited way: observing people in real life.
I was lucky. Although I was often the odd one out, I usually landed on the top side of the down curve called “above average” instead of “below.” I passed standardised exams fairly easily, once I understood what the examiners wanted. I coasted through primary school, secondary school, and then came college—and there the conflict began.
You see, my head began to change. It began most obviously with maths. I used to be a mathematic whizz. But when I turned 16, I began to lose it. One day, I woke up and realised I no longer understood. Sums came slowly. I barely got a B in the Additional Mathematics Cambridge exam, whereas when I had started the course, it was A++ all the way. And it got progressively worse. I had to drop physics at higher level. The laws I thought I had understood no longer applied. I took intensive German instead and did really well. I also aced Spanish and studied Spanish literature at university.
Medical school was agony. There were many things I didn’t believe in. It hardly helped that research kept producing conflicting versions of fallacies and fables accepted as the status quo for years. The only salvation was developing a rapport with clients and colleagues. Medical training taught me humility and respect for different viewpoints in a paradox way.
Psychiatry seemed like the least harmful option, so after a doctoral thesis in preventive medicine, I chose that. I worked in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, learned about Carl Rogers, resource activation and eventually became a clown.
Most teachers don’t do it for the money. They proudly say how poorly they are paid. Why should qualified teaching professionals earn less than those in industry, commerce and other fields? It is a mystery to me. When I considered the option of an English Language Training job, money was a main motivator. In Germany, English trainers earn considerably more than I was getting for my writing and clown gigs.
It is possible to work as a language trainer with the sole qualification of being a native speaker. But I wanted more. I wanted to know how the experts say it should be done. I registered for an intensive CELTA course. And this changed my life once more.
We were a mixed bunch of adult students. Most of us had had previous careers in very different branches: logistics and transportation, fashion industry, catering, housewife and parent, musician and there was even another medical doctor, like me. Only two were recent university graduates. And even they had worked in restaurants, as sales assistants and as translators. There was a wealth of knowledge and experience gathered in that CELTA classroom. Yet, apart from using our background information for an introductory mixer (the popular “find someone who...” activity), the course made precious little use of the resources we had.
I modelled my first lesson on my tutor’s demonstration. The disaster that ensued was probably the best mistake I have ever embraced. Details are described in the Classroom Clown essay mentioned above. The main lesson I learned was that I had a lot more to offer than could ever fit in the boxes of a CELTA lesson plan.
“You’re too much,” my tutor told me in the feedback session afterwards.
My feedback to her was to glue the DINA4 sheet that held my lesson plan in the centre of a flipchart. Around this, with multi-colour pens, I noted some of the ongoing cognitive, emotional and interpersonal processes that had gone into the preparation and execution of the lesson. I explained how I had tried to mimic her, but how my logic and approach to learning and teaching differed from hers. I sketched bits of the creative process. In the end, I looked at it from the back of the classroom and realised that I had created a work of art.
I delivered a passionate discourse on how the lesson was perfectly inter-related with everything I am. How it was my duty as a clown to produce a first lesson that was a disaster, because it made the students see that we can all make mistakes and survive. Who better to demonstrate that than me, the clown teacher? It wasn’t intentional, or a show, it was real, a work in progress. I was the subject and the tool, learning as much as the students. And it was a chance for my colleagues to learn, too. It was close to divine. I rarely know when I am fulfilling my greater purpose in life. But that first lesson was one of those times.
When I was finished, my colleagues sat awed.
The room was filled with the sense of something more.
My tutor cleared her throat. “Yes, Marie. Thank you for your feedback. In future, please use the DINA4 feedback forms that we’ve provided.”
Okay...
The best thing about stories is that everyone comes away with a moral of her own. Sometimes, there are several morals in one. Here are a few things I have learned from my own story— in DINA4 format, if you prefer:
- Other people are important to help me survive and learn.
- Everyone learns differently; my intelligences have changed over the years and are still changing.
- I am not the only one who knows some of the things I know, but I am the only one who knows everything I know the way I know it.
The more I think about it, the more lessons I find in this story. And it’s not over yet. My immediate response to the traumatic CELTA experience was to seek interpersonal support. I commiserated with my colleagues. We gave each other mutual respect and validation. We listened to music together and had lunch under the trees. We supplied the human element missing from the rigid structure of the course plan. I have stayed in touch with some of those colleagues and maintained lasting personal bonds.
Another immediate consequence of the disastrous lesson was that the atmosphere in the class was warmer, less strained. Our students laughed more. In the end, they brought cake and we had a small celebration. They did not do that with the other group of teacher trainees. One of them shook my hand; others were consoling after the disaster. They had a chance to show emotional competence and to sympathise. We became something like friends.
In some ways, I knew more than my tutor. Based on her feedback, I down-regulated my interaction and avoided overwhelming her with “too much.” But I had seen the lesson in my own feedback: the CELTA course was only a very small part of my reality and I learned to treat it as such. I put the tools gathered there in my CELTA box and can take them out and use them whenever I wish. But that’s not all I have.
My USP (Unique Selling Proposition) is too big for a DINA4 format. But I might summarise the main points as follows:
- Language training based on cognitive behavioural therapy and client-centred resource activation principles
- Underlying clown consciousness, multiple talents, creative ability to learn and adapt
- Writing that comes from the heart—sometimes from the soul.
During a brief two-week course at Pilgrims in Canterbury, I found a marvellous community of like-minded educators. They have helped to heal the trauma of my CELTA course. They know and understand about multiple intelligences and didn’t try to restrict me to just one mode. It was like paradise for a misunderstood soul. I am just beginning to develop and grow; I know if I can do it, anyone can. And if anyone can do it, so can I.
My message to teachers, students and anyone in the world is that it is okay to be whatever, whoever, however you are. You can have a box, or several, if you want to, but you don’t have to stay in boxes at all. You are much more than a box, and who knows what imaginary borders you can overcome, if you try? Good luck and safe travels as you enjoy the exploration of the best, one and only you there can be.
Please check the Train the Trainer course at Pilgrims website.
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