Humanising Language Teaching
Year 3; Issue 4; July 2001

The limits of Humanistic Practice

Interview with Katie Plumb

To guide you through this amazingly honest and self-revealing interview the sub-headings are listed below:

Discipline and Resources
Discipline and Methodology
Where Humanistic Teacher Behaviour did not work
Bonding with the kids and doing more of what I think will work
I have modified my humanistic teaching beliefs
Social class culture shock
Losing control- my biggest nightmare
Excessive workload takes its toll of Creativity

If you don't want to read linearly, you can scroll down to the heading that most interests you.

Mario: I believe you have recently switched from UK private sector EFL teaching to working in a UK State Secondary School teaching Spanish.

Katie: When I first thought about it, I thought, I knew it was going to be difficult, but I thought teaching-wise with the skills I had from EFL, there wouldn't be any problem.
I was worried about discipline and teaching groups of thirty kids but not dreadfully, I knew it was just going to be a heavy workload. But when I actually started the shock was tremendous, that I wasn't at all prepared for dealing with a huge group, um, and a very wide range of ability.
In all my EFL experience, um, I usually was teaching groups, sort of homogenous groups ability-wise and motivation-wise.
So, first of all teaching Spanish, a new subject, was difficult, um, the grammar, you know I've never actually studied Spanish grammar, so that was hard and I felt a lack of confidence …….
I was a native speaker but had never thought about Spanish as such and also the difference between Latin-American Spanish and the Iberian Spanish that was in the UK textbooks which is quite unfamiliar to me, (some of it). So, that worried me but in fact after a few weeks I realised that was the least of my worries.

Mario: So, if we pick out the most difficult things you had to face.

Katie: Um, number one: discipline, and asserting myself in the classroom. Two: the materials and the resources in the school which were pretty dire. I think Spanish coursebooks and the Spanish curriculum; the curriculum changed this year but I'm still using the old curriculum and it is just awful, absolutely dire. Um, the lack of resources in the sense that because the curriculum is topic-based, you jump from one book to another to use the topics rather than progress systematically. So, I didn't know where I was, and trying to find books and things that previous teachers had left in their schemes of work, um, it was just very messy; nothing seemed to hang together very well. After teaching EFL, where you had things like information gap and all these sort of activities, there's very little for Spanish. And just that the workload meant that I couldn't produce my own .

Mario: So the methodological support you had was much weaker.

Katie: Yeah. And the methodology I'd been used to teaching, um, in EFL, and in teacher-training, I couldn't transfer to teaching Spanish because of discipline. So even basic things like …………

Mario: Discipline seems to be central to the problem.

Katie: Yeah.

Mario: Could you give us some concrete examples of what that means?

Katie: Take a Year 8 group: you'll get thirty in a class of which five are on the code of practice, statemented level four or five.

Mario: " Code of practice", "statemented level four or five" are things that my international readers may not understand. Can you explain?

Katie: Alright. Code of practice means that, um, the system that the schools and educational system have to "statement" kids with special educational needs.

Mario: To "statement" means to declare that they have……..

Katie: …… that they need something more. It could be something quite simple as, um, a hearing problem or asthma or something very, very small or behavioural/emotional difficulties, and within any group I've got,….. I'll have three or four with quite severe behaviour problems. Now when you have four or five in a group like that, they tend to disrupt the whole group, and initially, I didn't go in heavy, because of the EFL private sector experience.

Mario: And because of the sort of humanistic bit……?

Katie: The humanistic stuff, feedback, and wanting for people to enjoy lessons, etc. I was very soft, and now, that's proved to be the most serious problem I'm facing, because they've got into the habit of being very noisy. Listening to a tape is almost impossible, because of the noise level. Listening to me, giving instructions, is very different. What I'd realised had happened previously: they'd had eight Spanish teachers in three years, so I don't know whether a Year 8 group had had two or three Spanish teachers in the last year, um, but they certainly didn't take Spanish seriously.
They can't, they don't see the point in it, their attitude towards speaking in class and oral practice is non-existent, you know, I mean they just don't, they won't, um, even try to use the language. If you speak to them in Spanish all the time, they…. they block you off. They won't respond. Um, so things like that, initially, were very difficult.
With a couple of the groups I've managed to overcome that, and I still use English a lot, um, to reassure them, and especially those with special needs, who are very frustrated, and can't maybe write very well or read in English. You sort of have to do everything at a very, very basic level. I go into every lesson assuming that they know nothing previously. And that's even with Year 11's, who are GCSE. Even "Como te llamas?" ( What's your name?)….. some of them won't respond even though they've been learning Spanish since they were eleven. So, preparation-wise, it's a nightmare because you have to go into a lesson and have an activity that'll settle them down within the first five minutes, but that doesn't require a lot of writing, because then you'll have some who might take twenty minutes, others might take a minute. Um, and then try and present new language in a way that's very quick, but also grasps enough of their attention to keep them quiet for a few minutes. Previous teachers, I think, used worksheets an awful lot. And there was very little listening and speaking. It seems, you know, that they progressed at their own pace, but how much speaking or listening went on I have no idea.

Mario: You've been doing this job - this interview is in January 2001 - you've been doing this job since last September - has there been any sort of movement, that you reckon, I'm thinking about the affective side, the emotional side. Have you got any kind of feedback from some of the kids, that something's working for them?

Katie: Yes, yes. I mean within, with every group, a third enjoy the lessons, progress, respond. I've also got to know the kids individually, and they've got to know me, and that makes a big difference, I mean in the lessons and outside.

Mario: They probably associate Spanish with a new face every ten minutes.

Katie: Yes, exactly. So now this is the second term, and quite a few members of staff, quite a few staff left just before Christmas - thirteen.

Mario: Thirteen left before Christmas!

Katie: Yes, yep. Out of a staff of fifty.

Mario: This is a problem school in the town.

Katie: Um, they left for different reasons………… It's bad, yeah. So, I'm now an old hand as far as the kids are concerned. But, um, and just before Christmas I got them doing things like Christmas cards, and practical drawing and cutting out, and that helped bond with the kids a lot because I could go round and talk to individual groups and um, I think that I've learnt that I've got to stop worrying about following this silly curriculum, and doing more of what I think will work with these kids.

Mario: Have your humanistic beliefs been very strongly modified by this very fierce new experience?

Katie: I think they have been modified, in a sense that it is tremendously difficult to be humanistic in the way that I used to be in teaching, um…… you have to control things so much more, it's so much more teacher-centred, than I'm ever used to. So, in that sense it's like learning completely new skills, in the classroom. All around classroom management, and, I don't…. I don't feel it's teaching.

Mario: So you feel it's what?

Katie: Crowd control. Most of the time. It's only maybe ten, fifteen minutes of the lesson is actually teaching,

Mario: And the rest of the half hour is…….

Katie: Is just trying to get them into a frame where they actually use the language and I'd love to do things to make them feel more motivated towards Spanish, like um, videos and maps and realia, and things like that but there aren't any resources. I mean a very simple thing is I've been told I can't photocopy now till Easter. The budget has run out. So, that limits things when these kids can't copy off the board,

Mario: Because they are not good at writing….?

Katie: Because they are not good at writing, and again, a third will do it very quickly but some just find it tremendously difficult.

Mario: What's the background of the kids mostly? Is it a mostly working-class school?

Katie: Yes. The majority of the kids come from one of the poorest Council estates in the town.. Um, and because the school is renowned for a very good department for dealing with children with special educational needs, um, you have a high percentage of special needs. It's sixty per cent, whereas in most schools in Britain the government would like it to be no more than twenty per cent, but in our town because of selection within schools, you tend to have this larger percentage. So it affects all the subjects and the way things are taught, um, and so it's not just learning to teach a new subject but learning to teach kids who have a wide range of ability and background and problems really. Um, and that's been quite an eye-opener, and of course initially the problems I had with kids in class tended to be with the kids who had emotional or behavourial difficulty. Now I understand where they are coming from a bit more, and culturally it was totally new to me.

Mario: Because your background was upper middle class in Mexico and middle class in UK.

Katie: Yup, completely. And teaching middle-class EFL students, throughout the worl So that was a real shock.

Mario: So there's been a social class change for you.

Katie: And cultural, I mean, finding out things about Britain that I had no idea about.

Mario: For example?

Katie: Um, I suppose the culturally very limited environment that some of these kids live in. No access to books or any cultural aspect. Having said that, they're all very good learners. It's just how you tap in on these individual kids.

Mario: They're all very good learners.

Katie: Yeah, kids are, I think. They have this innate ability to learn. But it's how you tap in on it. Games obviously help a lot. But then you've got the problem that as soon as you play some games the noise level goes up, and they start messing about, I mean I've had some lessons where there was very little control, very little quiet, I feel that I've lost complete control of it, the class, and I think that's a teacher's biggest nightmare really. It's my biggest nightmare. Um, but then it's not really control, because it's not a question of whether the teacher controls the lesson, it's what the kids are doing within the lesson.

Mario: As I listen to you, Katie, I feel the impact of the present reality as it comes at you very, very powerfully, mixed together with your previous frame of thinking, a kind of mixing together in interesting and exciting ways. I can hear Herbert Kohl teaching primary in New York, thirty years ago, and meeting Puerto Rican kids who, if anything, are even more complicated and de-motivated than the ones you're teaching. And how he, as a very creative teaching mind, came to grips with this situation.

Katie: I think this teaching has taken its toll, it's been very, very hard workwise. I mean the workload is tremendous, the administrative side is very hard. You end up filling in forms and mark sheets and God knows what. Most of your time is spent doing that.

Mario: Is that of any use in your view?

Katie: No. Very little, well, um …you do have to fill in forms for the children that are statemented, so that the special needs department can monitor their progress, etc and that is obviously invaluable because it means that they are actually supporting the kids.
Um, yes. Things like national curriculum levels which have been introduced in Britain I find very prescriptive and restricting. So, I've been told things like when I'm doing speaking practice with the students I'm supposed to tell them what national curriculum level they are at. "Oh, very good. That's a level three." And my worry is that some children might stay at a level two for two or three years, and it's very demotivating, so things like that again culturally are very difficult for me to adapt to in the educational system in Britain. A lot of the emphasis is on results, and we're being encouraged to push the better students so that when they come to take exams, when they are fifteen, sixteen, they achieve good results. And there's even an idea that our pay should be linked to that, through this new introduction of performance management.

Mario: That of course is totally unfair unless you take into account where the students start from.

Katie: Absolutely, and…..

Mario: Because if you were teaching in a grammar school, ie, one of the highly selective schools in the state system, you would easily get everybody through GCSE.

Katie: Absolutely. Absolutely. But what they are doing now is assessing kids when they are eleven years old, when they start in a school, and using the results through this examination called a cognitive ability test, they can then predict what grades these kids will get, in GCSE, and we're told who the children are who might achieve grades A-C, and we're supposed to be targeting those children. So the pressure academically………………

Mario: It also conditions your whole thinking.

Katie: Yeah, and that's happening nationally, in all schools. And it's frightening because yes, you can see that you want to push the brighter kids in a class and make the most of it, but in a school like ours that sort of makes it very difficult for the large percentage who can't keep up. And it's also very academic, whereas that style of….

Mario: isn't right for these kids.

Katie: No.

Mario: Katie, you've brought up lots of different things. What should be the title of this interview in Humanising Language Teaching?

Katie: Something like transferring from private sector EFL into a State secondary school, um, teaching modern foreign language in a secondary school after EFL or something like that, because I think the biggest thing for me is the shock of moving from private sector, middle class EFL teaching into modern foreign languages in Britain, in this specific school.
For me it's been the hardest job I've every done in my life.

Mario: Thank you, Katie, for an amazing frank and open interview.

( After a period of sick leave, Katie handed in her notice in May, 2001.)