My Encounters with Classrooms and Students and My Teaching Endeavours: A Sentimantal Look Back on How It All Started

Milenko Pecanac, Serbia

Milenko Pecanac is an undergraduate student of English language and English literature at Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade, Serbia. After his third year at university he happened to start teaching English at a Grammar School and did so for two years and a half. Afterwards he moved to teaching English at language schools ending up establishing a language school of his own. At the moment, Milenko is studying to complete his studies at the Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade.
E-mail: milenkopecanac@yahoo.com

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Introduction
The first lesson
A Great Revelation

Introduction

This introductory paragraph may sound a bit psychoanalytical since I am going to begin referring back to my childhood. I often wonder why it is that somebody chooses to become a teacher and whether there is something common among all teachers regarding their motivation for such career choice. Is there a particular psychological profile of people that need this profession as some sort of psychotherapy? Isn’t teaching some kind of therapy? To me, it has helped very much.

Among other games, I can remember being a teacher in one of my childhood games with my playmates. Was that my first encounter with the classroom and students? Was it when playing individually and filling in a form register with names and marks of my imaginary students, some of them being my peers? Perhaps it was over a summer holiday after my third year at the Grammar School while I was being taught Physics and Russian by my schoolmate, which was preparation for my make-up exams, while, at the same time, I was teaching English to a lady two years younger so as to help her pass her make-up exam. Eventually, at the end of August, I managed to pass my two make-up exams and my first student passed hers with flying colours. What mattered to me most at the time was that her mark was much above the minimum necessary to pass the exam. The important point was that, during the lessons I taught to the young lady, in some moments I would be aware of sounding like a teacher, of being a teacher and enjoying it. For me, it was one of those experiences when we feel something and say “That’s it!”

My later encounter with the classroom took place at a state primary school when I was in the first year of my studies at the Bulgarian department of Faculty of Philology in Belgrade and it lasted only for a week. I entered the classroom determined to be strict whereas on some subconscious level my personal frustrations were probably fighting their way out to take revenge on ``the enemies from the past.`` I was just what I had been witnessing through the twelve years of my primary and secondary education. I think I was a teacher which was a combination of many different teachers I had encountered throughout my education. Was I good enough? Certainly not! Was yelling at students OK? I remember explaining Comparison of Adjectives, which was just an ordinary lecture. I also remember giving a dictation. And then it finished. Still, there was something I liked in the whole experience. Once again I realized it was highly likely I was going to become a teacher.

The following encounter with the classroom full of students has lasted for ``a little`` longer and may do so for a lifetime. It was at the very beginning of 2002 at Grammar School "Branko Radicevic" in Kovin.

At the time I was twenty-five, wore earrings, was dressed casually and was not much older than my students, which made it easier to establish a great rapport with the students.

It was January, 2002, the beginning of the second term. I was assigned two groups of school leavers. I was given the coursebook, I was told what page their previous teacher had done last. At the time there was not a single qualified English teacher at the school, which meant I had nobody to help me and monitor my work but it also meant a lot of freedom for me to create and make experiments. My lesson planning was mere studying what was on the following pages. It felt easiest to stick to the book like to a crutch. When I look back at this period I think I was more of an imitation of a teacher rather than somebody really teaching, which I believe is something that can easily happen to all beginners and is a dangerous trap. Instead of teaching one becomes an actor playing the role of a teacher. On the other hand, is it possible for a teacher of any sort to spend time in the classroom doing nothing? I do not think it is. Also, I believe my students could benefit from being exposed to English. At the time I was desperate to show off my English and my TTT would take a lot of time.

My teaching vocabulary was far from being up to scratch. I would write words on the board telling Serbian equivalents. As for teaching grammar it was also done in that deep-rooted traditional way: demonstration on the board, definitions in Serbian, and what followed were the coursebook exercises. I regret not inspiring students enough to use the new vocabulary in any way so as to make it a part of their `active knowledge`.

My tendency was to let each of the students say or do something to help everybody both to take part in the lesson and retain their attention, which was not that easy bearing in mind the fact that state school classes have a large number of students. All in all, the end of the second school term arrived soon, my students left school, it was a good experimental teaching period after which I was offered the teaching post on full-time basis and I was looking forward to the beginning of the following school year. Is there anything as great as a beginner’s enthusiasm bearing in mind how much one learns in the period.

At the beginning of this school year I was responsible for third and fourth grade students. Both my previous encounter with the same school students and being familiar with who their previous teachers had been helped me very much in terms of decision taking, determining my approach and making both written and mental plan for the whole school year. As for the written plan it was not of much use for two reasons: 1. when writing it I was forced to meet demands of our state schools policies which was not in accordance with reality. 2. students had not acquired the level of knowledge which they were supposed to have acquired up to then. This had everything to do with the shortage of English teaching staff. Most of my students` previous English teachers had been those qualified for other professions which means English was one of secondary subjects at their universities.

The first lesson

So, I was given that outdated coursebook and an old state school syllabus and the school bell rang…

The very first lesson was a great chance not only to meet the students formally but also to learn about them and about their English too. The conversation topic was ``summer holiday`` and each of the students was supposed to say what their holiday had been like. (At this point I would like to say that before beginning a language course students` knowledge needs to be tested and the choice of coursebooks, teaching materials, determining approach and planning should be based on the testing results.) After this activity I was trying to explain how to learn English. Here is what my recipe was like:

Writing:

• You should copy every new text that we do.
• You should use each new word in a meaningful sentence of your own.
• You are going to be asked to write essays and short stories.
• You should look for a native pen-friend and keep up correspondence

Reading:

• You should practice reading by reading texts aloud at home
• You should read texts as if they were a newspaper articles
• You should read newspapers, stories and novels in English

Listening:

• You should listen to your teacher who is speaking in English
• You should listen to your fellow-students who are speaking in English
• You should listen to tapes, CDs, radio and TV programmes in English

Speaking:

• You should not be shy to speak
• Do not be afraid of making mistakes while speaking in English
• After you have done writing, reading and listening of a word, phrase or a grammar item it is very important for you to use it in both written and spoken English
• Look for both a native and a non-native companion for communicating in English

Homework:

• You are always going to have a lot of homework to do
• Good luck! :)

Afterwards, throughout the school year I was constantly reminding my students of the importance of doing all the four above mentioned learning techniques and was also trying to keep myself aware of them for both my teaching and my personal language learning.

The following important issue for me was to do a phonology lesson; the aim of which was to try to develop the students` ear for English and let them copy the sounds of English and to enable them to use the dictionary independently, which I believe is an important step towards developing an independent learner. While drawing phonemes on the board I was making fun of pronouncing sounds, which helped students feel more relaxed and really take part in the activity. The whole thing made me realize how important it is to create a friendly and fun atmosphere in the classroom and to use games. (The sad thing was that sometimes, in such lessons situation, I was wondering whether it was ``too crazy`` and I even feared I could get sacked due to ``such a silly behaviour``, which of course was just one of bad consequences of the rigid education system I had gone through. As we all know frightening kids and using their fear was one of the means of the system to keep things under control. Is it possible for language learning to take place under such conditions in the classroom? )

After these two things I decided to meet the students` needs by ignoring both the coursebook and the syllabus and I started to teach tenses instead. How did I teach tenses? Well, there are different types of lessons as we know. These ones were lecturing which I believe sometimes is necessary. So I began by explaining how a tense is formed, spelling changes that take place as a consequence of adding suffixes, the situational contexts of the use of the tense doing comparison with Serbian equivalents acting out the situational contexts. Afterwards I would provide example sentences for each of the definitions on use of a tense. As homework, students were supposed to make up sentences to illustrate each of the definitions. Practice would happen the following lesson. Since the course book could not be used at this stage I had `Grammar in Use` grammar pages photocopied and used it for the practice.

Afterwards students were asked to come up with more example sentences of their own. Then a test came. The test was just like many I had done while a student: `Put the verbs in the brackets into to correct form (tense). (HOW TO TEACH GRAMMAR? At this point of this writing of mine I would like to say that I am not entirely certain that the above mentioned method is good enough and that I need further studying of methodology.) Another important discovery for me at the time was how important and how beneficial continual assessment is for both students and teachers. Having done past tenses I learned my students did not know many irregular verbs so I tried to motivate them by giving a test that contained ten irregular verbs. Students were supposed to use each of the verbs in past simple, past perfect and present perfect tense, which I thought was a nice way to revise these tenses and at the same time help to students to make the difference between the aforementioned tenses.

Later on I started using the coursebook and I was following it to a very great extent. It was an old-fashioned coursebook published by "Zavod za udzbenike i nastavna sredstva". It contained various texts and various grammar exercises with not many vocabulary exercises. When doing texts with students I would read it and let them have a look at the text and ask about new and unfamiliar words, most of which I could predict. I would write the words on the board as well as their phonetic transcription telling mostly Serbian equivalents, also writing synonyms if I knew some though I must admit my vocabulary was not too rich at the time. Having realized that, I comforted myself by saying to myself that it is not only a teacher’s knowledge that matters but the teacher’s methodology and things a certain teacher asks their students to do, to experience and to learn. At this point I would like to add that I regret not doing listen and repeat activity and drilling words. That is something I have learned recently at my last teaching post, after some four years of teaching. While still talking about texts I would like to add that my students` usual part of homework was copying texts in writing each time a new text is done. Contemporary school would probably disapprove of this but I still do not feel willing to give up this activity since I believe it can be greatly beneficial for students` English if done consciously and conscientiously and not mechanically and absent-mindedly.

As for vocabulary I regret only advising students to use the new vocabulary in meaningful context of their own in writing and not insisting on it and not checking it as a part of homework. Though, after a couple of texts had been done and having become aware it was not all about grammar I introduced giving a `vocabulary test`` which contained ten words chosen from the texts. The task was to use each of the words in a sentence that would show students` understanding of a word.

An also important issue for me was to do dictations after each new text. Afterwards students would be asked to correct their dictations themselves by comparing what they had written with the text in the coursebook. Dictations are so powerful. It is not all about spelling but there is listening and understanding which I believe is interesting if familiar language is used by the teacher for this purpose.

Later on I managed to get tapes that had recordings of the texts. That was when I realized I needed to do more listening. Unfortunately, the coursebook was outdated and the texts did not arouse much interest among students. Still they did listen and I think had satisfaction of recognizing the language they had already encountered, since listening was done not only as a first encounter with the text but also after the whole process of text analysis and all other activities with the text.

A Great Revelation

One day a letter arrived. The letter was for English teachers and it was an invitation for a seminar held by Longman. To be honest, I did not expect much and my main motive for attending the seminar was to listen to a native speaker talking but much, much, much more happened that afternoon: CONTEMPORARY COURSEBOOKS! It was the first time I was introduced to contemporary coursebooks that, of course, appealed to me very very much...

My first step was asking the schoolmistress to have sample coursebooks, teachers` books and tapes for us teachers bought so that we could have a better look at them and decide whether to start using them the following school year or not. I showed the books to my very dear Grammar school English teacher and she approved of the whole idea and said her school was considering the same idea. Afterwards I suggested the change which was approved after some time. The following school year my students had their new colourful coursebooks, the classroom had posters, CD player, TV, video and a computer and fifteen new dictionaries in its cupboard. I do not think there is need to write about the advantages of contemporary coursebooks no matter whether they are published by Longman or some other such publishing house but I can not resist of saying that in many moments, while going through the teachers` books, I would think that almost anybody could teach English with such coursebooks and with such detailed instructions in the teachers` books. But one problem remained unsolved and that is large groups of students, which would often make it difficult to do things according to the book. The coursebooks seem to have been meant for teaching under ideal classroom circumstances. After I had given up my teaching post at Kovin Grammar School and after a short period of teaching at a language school, I established my own language school named “SUMMERHILL” and did not have that problem any more since there was a round table in the classroom with only six chairs for students and finally everything seemed perfect apart from the fact that teaching adults is an entirely different thing. Here comes the question of the nature of their motivation for learning the language, and of course, the consequences of many of adult life matters that make life complicated and affects learning process, which, in some cases often resulted in their not doing their homework, which made me ``keep trying to make it all happen at the lesson`` and keep it that way. Unfortunately, the adult life matters, I have just referred to can affect a teacher’s extent of devotion to their teaching.

There is only one more of my teaching experiences that I would like to mention and that is teaching kids at a private nursery called "Pinocchio". The children were aged from three up to six years. The whole experience required plenty of games, songs and drawings and was endlessly wonderful. Still, I do not think I was good enough for a couple of reasons one of which was my not being certain and decided how to do it and the other one was lack of time for learning all the songs and games since at the time I had a lot of work in total. Apart from so far mentioned things I believe LOVE and ENTHUSIASM are necessary for a teacher. The rest follows through the very process, as Jim Scrivener has said “You learn teaching through teaching”.

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