A Baby Teacher at 47

Bianca Tino
E-mail: bianca_tino@hotmail.it

"Professoressa, this is the list of the students who will be attending the course, you can use room X, they are already waiting for you. Good luck!!"

And so I started my teaching career. It would seem normal: a teacher, a list of students, a room available. Except that the students were all adults, there were at least 60 of them, the only thing I knew was that it was to be an English language course, and the room was one that could comfortably seat 20-25 junior high school students (ages 11-13). And last, but certainly not least, that I was not a young enthusiastic 25, at the beginning of a working life, but was a "ripe" 47, on the verge of changing career outlooks, due to necessity and extreme desire of doing something!!!
I had been contacted some weeks earlier by this school that offered various evening courses to adults who wanted to further their education. One of the employees in administration by chance knew me (the usual chain---a friend of a cousin of an acquaintance of someone who…) and remembered that I was Canadian of Italian descent and that just maybe I would be interested in teaching in this course. The fact was that the year before, a similar course had been given, but there had been a large percentage of drop-outs. And since in this part of the country, just about everything is done with public funding, the fact that the course was not exactly successful gave a negative tone to the school's efforts to boost its image within the community and left it open to controls from the funding offices. When they called me, they just asked if I would be "eventually" willing to teach English to an adult class- I said yes, and promptly forgot all about it. At the time I was working for a firm, doing the usual things a bilingual person does in the area where I live: a little bit of secretarial work, a little bit of accounting, and by chance, every once in a while, you get to do what you really trained for and hope to do: public relations with foreign companies. I was highly unsatisfied with what I was doing, so when the call came, out of the blue, to start the course, I jumped at the opportunity to do something new. Little did I imagine the beginning what I would be faced with!!!

I had never taught before. I can't really consider the few times I had tutored someone through an exam, or mid-term blues. Those had been one-to-one occasions, done more as favours than as real jobs, so I truly did not consider myself a teacher. However, an essential, and I think, fortunate characteristic of my personality is that there is very little that daunts me. But believe me, when I walked into that hall, and saw all those people and read all the emotions on their faces when they found out I was the teacher the first temptation was to turn and run! As fast and as far away as I could!

Then a thought struck me, and I felt like those cartoons, where the light bulb turns on above their heads: whatever I do, whatever I say, however clumsy I can manage to be, I know more than they do! They are here to learn English, not on a social spree. And really just like magic, I entered into the role of a person who cannot do wrong! I just had to find the way to do it right!
The hardest thing to overcome was the need for personal approval. In the normal working world (school is not a normal working world!), approval is very important immediately, as I see things. If the person you are relating to in that moment does not approve of you, of your way of speaking, standing, gesticulating, if that person does not like the type of language you are using, it is very difficult to carry out your task. Instead, a teacher doesn't have this initial obstacle to overcome, the way I see it. Just the fact that you are standing up in front, and the rest of the people are sitting down opposite you gives you a psychological advantage. But of course, deep down, I knew that I had to have some sign of being approved of, if only to let me know that I was doing the right thing!!! And these weren't \children! Some of them were older than I; not only, there were some who were quite important in their jobs, or in the community (there were some lawyers, two doctors, an engineer, primary school teachers, an assessor in the provincial administration).
Anyways, there I was, alone, in front of a group of 60 people in a room destined for 20! My supports? A blackboard, a piece of chalk!!! And silence. Ever been in a room with 60 people, where you can hear a pin drop? Terrifying to say the least! There they were, all those eager faces!!! But behind the eagerness I could sense their diffidence. I couldn't forget that the year before the course had failed! So I was under double pressure-show these people that I could teach them something and show that this year, the course wouldn't be a failure!!

I took a deep breath, held on tight to my piece of chalk and plunged in! And want to know the interesting thing? I didn't sink, I swam. And want to know another interesting thing? I am still swimming!

How did I do it? I don't know. To this day, I still don't know how I did it! All I know is that I decided that in some way, any way, what I knew had to be transmitted to those people!!!
And I did it in the only possible way I could imagine-human contact. I started out talking about me-I joked a little, I used English constantly interspersed with Italian (I couldn't forget that many of them had never had contact with the English language) I asked, coaxed and cajoled everyone, and I mean everyone, in saying at least a few sentences in English and miracle of miracles, by the end of the two hours amidst feelings of surprise many of them realized that it wasn't that difficult after all!

I managed to convince the school that 60 was not a number which made for comfort, and this meant that I had two courses of 30, which was a bit more manageable. My methods? I apparently didn't have any. I felt like a boat without a rudder! All I was sure of was that I had to start from scratch, and that I had to make it fun! But I also had to keep track of what I did, so as not to repeat myself uselessly, but more important, so as to not fall into contradictions! So I decided on a very logical method: first I would teach something, example introducing yourself and others, and then the next time I would bring in notes on what had been done. I thought that I had to make them as interesting as possible too, so I added cartoons and images and comments in a lot of colours and shapes and sizes. The students were enthused by this made to measure text book, mainly because it didn't confuse them and also because it gave them a vision of what they had just heard. It comforted them to have a written support and to see that that support wasn't any different from what had been said and done in class. In this way, by the end of the course, there were two written documents: the fun booklet, colourful with drawings and comments and what have you, and a more serious booklet with all the "boring stuff" put out in a very clear sequence, a sort of "vademecum" of grammar rules at your fingertips.

And I sang. We sang. Every lesson finished with a song, from "Row, row, row your boat" to the Beatles and Simon & Garfunkel and negro spirituals and campfire songs and Sinatra and Louis Armstrong and Bob Dylan and Christmas Carols and nursery rhymes. (One year we put on a musical: Discovering America through music, starting with Columbus rowing his boat across the Atlantic, and the Pilgrims getting off the "Mayflower" and counting the "one, little, two, little three, little Indians" and finishing off two national anthems: Star Spangled Banner, and Oh, Canada.)
I managed to get through that first course. When I went to draw the conclusions, of course there was the percentage of students who had dropped out, the percentage of those who just couldn't manage a foreign language, but the majority of them, about 80%, stuck with me till the end, and even managed to pass a very rudimentary exam. Even that was a first, for me and for them! Pioneers all the way!

What went through my mind? Well, the thought that never left me was the preoccupation if I was doing the right thing in the right way. I had no sounding board, except the students in front of me. Little did I know that that was the best! The English teachers I knew (very few) were the traditional in-classroom teachers, following grammar books, very little speaking, a lot of translations. None of the ones I knew had ever taught adults. English language teaching for adults was the sole responsibility of private schools. And as for certifying competences, I had never heard of Trinity or Cambridge!!! I just was not part of the teaching world.

But I must have done something right, because by word of mouth, the news went around that there was this teacher who taught in a "queer" way! So, I started getting calls from schools, to support the usual language teachers in oral language activities (didn't know that they did that either). I kept doing things in my "queer" way because of two reasons: one, it seemed that the students liked it; two, I seemed to be getting results!

What were my "queer" ways? Well, by chance, after a couple of years, I went with a friend of mine to a seminar, held by some person from some organization called "Pilgrims". Never had heard of them before!!! It was love at first sight!!!! I listened enchanted to this man (Simon Marshall) talking and gesticulating and getting us involved and I realized that it was much what I did in classes. I felt good!!! I hadn't been making that many mistakes after all!
After that, I tried to get to as many seminars held by Pilgrims as possible, and the more I got to know them and their methods, the more I realized that even without knowing anything about teaching I had been on the right track! The most important thing is to get people involved with you in what you are doing. And you can only do that if you take time to actually see who is in front of you. And try to figure out the best possible way to transmit what you know to them. And get them to remember it!! Which is the difficult part. But I realized right at the beginning that everyone has a different approach to learning, and if someone says "what a discovery!" may I just remind that I had never given a second thought to how people learned? So, the fact that everyone had different learning habits made me realize that I had to have different teaching methods for them. Some of my students (adults) couldn't tear themselves away from grammar rules and repeating endless exercises. Ok, but I added chanting, or singing rhymes, so that they could get the idea of pronunciation. Some students (children) hated memorizing (irregular verbs), so I tried word association, or action association, and after seeing that first seminar with Simon, I realized that I had hit on the right button, by chance.

I've been teaching now for 7 years. I've taught conversation and oral language as a support to the usual "English language teacher". I've taught regular courses in schools, I've kept on teaching adults. But when people ask me what I do, I still answer: "I pretend to teach English!" because that is exactly how I feel. Being a native speaker, the language is natural for me. And maybe because I don't have to work hard at thinking in English, I don't find it "a job" passing on to others what I know. Seen in this perspective, therefore, I am not a teacher!
Word still goes around about that "strange Canadian woman" who teaches English. Unfortunately we are still tied to the traditional role and behaviour of traditional teaching, so anything different is looked upon as "strange". But I plod on, some days I feel in seventh heaven when my younger students manage to overcome an obstacle, other days, I feel deep down in a coal mine, when for the umpteenth time I've explained and shown a rule, or a way of saying things which just doesn't seem to stick. I still teach adults. And if I am asked which do I prefer, I honestly couldn't say. Children are buoyant with enthusiasm, but when an adult decides to start on the hard journey of learning a new language, there is awareness and determination. To that I always feel I must add "fun".

Of course, I have had criticism. And it does hurt. But what hurt most was a comment made by fellow teachers: she wastes her time singing in class!!! Maybe so, but I think that when a group of people, whatever age, are together to achieve a goal, it doesn't hurt to make it fun. And nowhere is there a set of rules that says that language teaching excludes singing. Or laughing. Or acting. Or jumping. Or clapping your partner on the back.

I still consider myself a "baby teacher". If I only stop to think of all the things I don't know, my knees shake. And there never seems to be enough time to read up on new things or to go over old things. Life doesn't stop to let you catch up!!! So I don't stop either-I just keep on going, doing what comes instinctive. I still take time every time I am in a class, or with a group of adults to really look at them, scrutinize their moods. And one thing I never forget: they are persons, individual persons, not a bunch of people.

Perhaps the part I like least is the bureaucracy which surrounds teaching: lesson planning to an exasperated exactness, yearly programs, term programs, assessments, testing. I could do with more flexibility there.

A baby teacher still!!! At 53 now! Still waiting to become full-fledged (if ever that will happen!)