Learning from Colleagues

Focus on Simon Marshall
Chaz Pugliese , Paris, France
Mario Rinvolucri, Pilgrims, UK

Mario writes: I would put my own learning sources as an EFL teacher into this order, starting from the least important and going to the most important ( this list is not exhaustive) :

Books on methodology by so-called "applied" linguists
ELT magazine articles
ELT teacher resource books
Books from outside our field that I draw into our field ( eg from Drama, sports training and psychodrama)
People from outside our field whose ideas I learn from
My ELT colleagues
My students and trainees
My book collaborators
My parents

This article focuses on learning from colleagues, but I wanted to first put this source in the context of the many other sources of learning I feel I have as a teacher and as a trainer.

One way in which I have formalised my learning from colleagues is by doing paired, mutual supervision with them. On intensive courses the two of us spend half an hour a day talking to each other about our classes with each of us talking for 15 minutes. If my colleague starts, then I try to totally absorb myself in her story of her classes for 15 minutes . She does likewise while I empty my heart about my triumphs, setbacks and questions about the people I am teaching.

Another useful way of learning from colleagues is to view one of their lessons with the sole aim of "what I can learn from this, steal from this , lead onto from this." Since I learnt this idea from Jill Cosh ( Anglia University) I call it the "Cosh Technique". People who are used to having their lesson observed for their sake are often amazed the first time you do a Cosh observation in their class. They are horrified by the grabbing egoism and your lack of interest in evaluating their lesson or giving them brownie points.

I also learn oodles from colleagues through stray conversation, from reading what they write and from inviting them to teach in my classes. To show you how this has worked for me I want to offer you an example of one person I have learnt a huge amount from and this is Simon Marshall, currently Director of Studies for Pilgrims Teacher Training.

I asked Simon to come and do a poetry lesson with my advanced class on an English for Teachers course. I got to the room four minutes before time and observed Simon already there, in silent meditation, preparing for his readings of Yeats, a poet he greatly loves. These minutes of silence and self-grounding were so intense that I dared not interrupt or ask him exactly what he was doing inside. What I do know was that a really centred, masterly Simon was ready to pleasantly greet my students as they came in, and that he then went on to do some lyrical readings of three or four Yeats poems. As the students fell into his rhythm and warmed to him I could see some of them becoming inhabited by the " trance of clarity" which he had previously induced in himself.
I concluded that one mark of a master practitioner of EFL teaching like Simon is the work he does just before he meets the group.
When circumstances permit, and when I remember, I try to imitate this pre-class self-management that I have marvelled at more than once in Simon's work.

I have also learnt much from Simon that I find very hard to apply to my own work. Let me take an example from the area of his and my beliefs and convictions.

Simon writes ( Outside the Circle Dance-towards a more principled humanism, HLT , Yr 3 Issue 2, March 2000, old.hltmag.co.uk)

...This brings me to humility and doubt, two essential elements for a humanism of principled integrity. To remember constantly that I am not a perfected unchanging entity that gives me licence to dispense wide-eyed and cliched remedies in the name of "helping others". I need to be a "good egotist" before I enter the dreamland of being an altruistic saviour- to be able to work on knowing myself more and to examine with sincerity the limits and possibilities of my present state of being...
As Ouspensky writes in In search of the miraculous: " In order to be able to help people one must first learn to help oneself. A great number of people become absorbed in thoughts and feelings about helping others simply out of laziness. They are too lazy to work on themselves; at the same time it is very pleasant for them to think they are able to help others."

I find it very hard to really comprehend and digest that my best work for others ( as a teacher and trainer) is to work on myself. I understand intellectually but this is thinnest of all understandings and does not mean that my will is ready to act on the new knowledge..
Thank you , though, Simon for getting these huge and clear ideas at least into my frontal cortex, even if you have not yet driven them into my limbic brain, where my emotions live.

Chaz writes: I, too, consider learning from colleagues instrumental to my own development as teacher and trainer. By learning I mean here 'allowing change to happen'. I have always believed good teaching goes beyond the technique, well beyond the expertise. It is much less about the what and the how, and more about the who. I think good teaching is about power, energy and presence. Anyone who wishes to communicate, from writers to musicians, to painters to teachers, seeks to have power not only over the material but over the craft itself. Master communicators have the power to impress and the power to sustain attention. I remember feeling this when I was in a workshop run by Simon Marshall some years back at an IATEFL conference. What I saw then was someone who was massively focused, clearly in touch with himself and the audience, and in a genuine, intense state of flow. To participate in a workshop led by Simon for me means above all, experiencing unique moments of presence. To watch Simon work is to watch a true leader in action.

Last year I had the immense pleasure of sharing a group of trainees with Simon. It was an enjoyable, fruitful three days at the foot of a lethargic Etna volcano. At the end of a very intense, beautiful first day of training I found myself writing about the experience over a cup of cappuccino :

" … I have understood that what I find inspiring, what thrills me, what moves me, what rattles me intellectually -if I allow myself to receive, that is- has nothing to do with the quality or the amount of information. No, it's rather the kind of spirit that you feel through the words, the gesture, the silence, the eyes of a colleague deeply immersed in his work. Watching Simon work his magics on the group this morning brought me a sense of discovery, a strange but sweet feeling that all of a sudden things started making sense in a new way ".

There's something that master teachers and musicians have in common and that is the skill ( sometimes I think it's a sense) to have their audience embark on a journey and then bring them back somehow changed. With both, the audience have sometimes the feeling of being lost, only to discover later that that is a conditio sine qua non to achieve greater awareness. I have felt this way while listening to Charlie Parker's flights. I have seen Simon do that times and again.

There comes a time when you just have to blow a colleague's horn. Thank you Simon, for your integrity, for your generosity and for years of inspiration.