the child in us

My beginner adult learner is progressing nicely. I realized not only is she motivated but she is also diligent. To keep her going, all I need to provide is enjoyable and simple tasks. Irregulars and "but"s don't work with her competence (she is not used to learning) and for her goal (in 2 months only survival, not perfection, can be the realistic aim). So, I started thinking: what would kids like doing? Pictures, colors, manual activity. Every time we need to practice a certain structure, I try to place it in some visual context, for example.

 

This above was an intro to the use of "be", which, in our native language is practically non-existent; therefore, it needs repeated clarifications and drilling. With the first pictures, she was still hesitant, but by the end she amused herself with the handsomeness of the fish.

we all need a champion

Here's some inspiration for us all. Even on a rainy day she makes me believe that it is worth to go out and fight that battle. And we have quite a few rainy days, and not just now in the autumn. Teachers face a great amount of difficulties these days (probably just like before). It takes a lot of energy to be with people, may they be children or adults; beginners or professionals; you need to be present all the time and give the best of you, so they can find the best of themselves. At the same time, educators are far from being respected and/or compensated. Our job is not a constant success story. It is not a rapid victory. It is the hard work and close interaction of months and years, filled with moments of failure and success, ups and downs. But we need to be persistent and believe that at the end of the day it will be -- it is -- worth the investment, for them and for ourselves.

Rita Pierson is an inspiring teacher and speaker. She makes the battles of teaching so tangible that your heart starts to beat faster, uncovers the complexities of the profession so vividly that you almost feel like being there in the classroom, and convinces us all that education is still the best thing. Because it is.

We can do it. We are born to make a difference. We are educators.

pride and prejudice

What comes to your mind if you think of these brands?

Well, for me, elitism. I must say, I was prejudiced when I got an offer to hold classes in one of these brand-stores. I didn't like the philosophy of the brand -- for me, elitism is about superiority and exclusion, two things I fight against. I assumed, I wouldn't like the people associated with it either. 

I was wrong. The employees were kind, simple people, and one of them gave me a memorable lesson. As we were discussing the customers of the store and the brand, I couldn't hide my negativity about elitist people. She said, That's right, some of them are arrogant. But, then she continued, not all of them. They are like everyone. There are nice people, and not nice people. As simple as that.

That day I looked deep into myself. I felt like Elizabeth Bennet, ashamed of the blindness prejudice pulled over my eyes.

a way out

I started to coach an adult who wanted to acquire basic English in two months, so she could change jobs. She was highly motivated (she wanted to leave her job badly and language competence was a must in the other position) but she had serious difficulties with focusing and learning new things. Never before have I encountered such severe problems with the comprehension of basic things, so in the first couple of classes we were struggling. At one point, just when I saw her eyes were getting watery, I instinctively changed strategies and gave her the small, colorful cards I noticed next to me, which I use with my kid learners. Her face brightened up and in this creative process she forgot about worrying about the deadline and her disbelief in herself. Next class I made her a creative colorful task about pronouns: she had to put them in the right order, column, and color, then she was asked to indicate each pronoun she finds in the example sentences with the appropriate color. Slowly she started to see the point and by the third class she climbed the mountain that had seemed out of reach: she learned the pronouns.

We still have a long way to go but we are on the right track. At the end of the day, some of us only seem to have grown up; we are but children.

authentic experience

These days English has a special significance and a privileged position. It is indispensable to be able to use it if you want to go see the world beyond your village. Most of the learners are aware of this, but every once in a while it is worth reminding them of the benefits these efforts will bring them.

A couple of months ago I spent a short week in Dublin, Ireland, and I was amazed by the experience. I had never really looked forward to seeing Ireland, because of the weather, the cold attitude that I associated with the British and their neighbors, and the lack of any knowledge about the country except for Michael Flatley (whom I didn't fancy). In short, Ireland was somehow out of my sight. And it's a shame. Wonderful country, wonderful people! And I must add, wonderful accent!

Driven by my excitement, I put together a prezi to share the experience with my students -- and people around me -- and spread the word: not only Paris but also Dublin "is worth a mass." The viewers agreed and went to pray (for cheap air tickets).

theory of relativity

These two events happened on the same week, so it was inevitable that the penny dropped for once and for all. Everything is relative.

Situation 1. Bright, fresh graduate, with serious ambitions, she had been a student of mine for not a long time. Sure I had my assumptions of what she knows! We started to talk about national festivities held in the spring, like St. David's Day, St. Patrick's Day, and that of the Dragon. To tone down the overwhelmingness of the new input, I wanted to bring up something related that she is also familiar with. So, just by the way, I ask her about our national holiday, March 15 (in cultural embeddedness, July 4 would be the US equivalent). She turned red. It was shame that came to her, not the answer. She had no idea. Gee, I would never have seen this coming! I thought I asked the obvious. Thank god, I recovered from my shock quite quickly, explained briefly what happened on March 15, and moved on as if nothing had happened. In reality, it was one of those surprises I will not forget. I wanted to make her feel better but ended up reminding her what she lacked. Score!

Situation 2. It happened in a class held for IT professors at a leading university. We were about to start an oral comprehension exercise, namely, watching a series that I feared would be too progressive in content for this predominantly middle-aged group. So I decided to dedicate a longer time to the intro. We address the question of family and gender roles, then, when they already seem relaxed, I pose the question: Who can tell me some more stereotypes? Silence. Silence. And still, silence. What, haven't we already covered some? What is the difficulty, I didn't get. Then someone speaks up, Yes, I can, but what is a stereotype? Just like above, I had thought stereotype was a term that didn't need an introduction. But I was wrong; while I come from humanities where every second discussion gravitates around stereotypes, they socialize around algorithms, another key term many of us would googletranslate. Anyways, fortunately, I was fast to collect my humanities jaw dropped, sparing them from feeling IT stupid.

What is to learn from these? Count on surprises, be flexible, don't take anything for granted, and never make your students feel that they should have known something. They come to feel hope, not stupid.

where there is a will, there is a way

Every month I plan to post an interview I made with a person who had decided to live in a foreign country, thus, for whom English as a foreign language is not an abstraction but an everyday reality. Each of them has a story to share, which may serve as an inspiration or a reality check for us language users and global citizens. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome our first TEA guest, Danijela from Slovenia, whose beautiful and small home country we so often mistake with Slovakia. Ljubljana = Slovenia. Bratislava = Slovakia!

Hello, Danijela. Thank you for accepting my invitation for a TEA talk.

It's a pleasure.

So, you are from Slovenia originally. Where do you live now?

Now I live in Budapest, Hungary and I must confess I fell in love with this city since I first came here two years ago. It did take me some time to get used to the fact that my new home town is as big as my ex home country, with a population of 2 million. Despite this, bigness did ware off after a while, so much that I stopped feeling like a tourist and already feel comfortable as a local. It is now tourists that stop me for directions. 

How do you feel as an expat?

It feels great! Really, having the chance to observe a new country and participate at the same time. People do still treat me as a foreigner, but with tremendous respect and admiration. I honestly cannot say one single bad thing about being an expat, not next to all the special treatment I have received, be it at the doctor’s office or the work place.

Is language a barrier? Do you manage to communicate with the locals?

Surprisingly enough, I can manage with the language despite the fact that I don’t speak Hungarian. What I learned early on - where there is a will there is a way. Most of the people around me do not speak my native language nor do they speak English, so I was forced to adapt my communication skills. This means I act out my message mostly by using my hands. I have also become an expert on animating conversation with my facial expressions. It’s basically a word guessing game, like charades for example. Physical rather than verbal language proved to be more effective, and even more, a lot of fun!

Share a memorable experience of yours related to language use. 

I have a huge number of those, and they happen daily. Once for example I was involved in a rather unfortunate event when I needed to report two bullies harassing my friend on a train. They kept making sexual verbal remarks to her so I decided to fetch the ticket inspector before it got out of hand. Unfortunately he did not get a single word I was saying in English, which is why I took ‘matters into my own hands’. In order to illustrate the problem, I grabbed the ticket inspector’s butt and pointed to the cabin, which made him realize that there is something inappropriate going on. Thanks to my body language he immediately intervened, stopped the bullying and saved the day. 


What is your experience about Hungarians? 

Hungarians are amazingly open and positive. Sometimes even Hungarians themselves have trouble believing this. It seems they want to believe the stereotype that they are one of the most pessimistic nations. Perhaps this is what hinders them from believing in themselves and expressing their own opinions. When it comes to foreign languages, they are extremely shy. Nice exceptions to the rule are older pensioners I bump into. They don’t worry too much how it sounds, they are happy to practice; even if only with a simple ‘Thank you very much’. 

What advice would you give to someone considering to live abroad?

Free your mind, the rest will follow :)

..Be color blind, don't be so shallow! Thanks for the talk. I hope you enjoyed your tea.

Sure, I did. Tea is en vogue. :-) 

pinterest: pin your interests

As a teacher, one needs to be handy with online tools, because it is impossible to be always creating; you need to get comfortable with curating as well. One great tool is Pinterest (www.pinterest.com). It is simple, practical, and social. Once you registered and added the red icon of the pin to your browser (as a Chrome application for example), all for free, you can start creating boards, let's say, folders, of your interest, and then, you can start collecting your pins, let's say, visual files, from the internet. They can be images, animations, talks, films, etc. (though not documents). By doing so, you can sort your materials and keep them in one place; and what's more, you can check other people's collections and pin them, that is, add to your own.

Check out my boards. You may find stuff you like.

Teaser: I have a nice collection of some inspirational TED talks on education. Well yeah, who doesn't know Ken Robinson's hilarious talk? But do you know Rita Pierson or Tyler DeWitt? You'll love 'em!

a good start

I got a 10-year-old kid for private tutoring because her parents felt her school classes were not sufficient enough. In 2 years, they basically didn't practice anything but coloring their notebook. She was my first kid learner, so I went by instinct not by experience. We started with creating the alphabet: she had to write the letters on colorful stickers, glue them on the sheet, collect words with the letters she already knows, then glue pictures next to the appropriate letter.

 

By the end, she realized she did know quite a few English words; she learned to say the alphabet which she hadn't known before; and she made herself a fancy board to take home and practice the words from. When waving me goodbye after the class, she said she wished school classes were this much fun. (As for me, I felt to say I wished all my students were this enthusiastic and honest -- but I didn't say it. Because I am like most of my students: adult = reserved and polite.)

And next week she told me the ABC by heart.

dynamics

I love situations when I have the chance to teach the same material, or something similar, for several groups. It is always very inspirational and insightful, not only making me understand the material deeper and from more perspectives (students' questions and struggles teach you a lot) but it also sheds light on the importance of the group setting.

I taught presentation skills at the university for two years. In the first one, I had two so amazingly different groups that it took me some time to get used to them (the fact that the classes followed one another immediately didn't help). One was composed of diligent, soft, clever, but timid girls (and some friendly boys). They always wrote long and analytic papers as home assignments, were supportive of each other when they had to give a talk, but they rarely initiated debate or provoked each other in the Q&A session. They were reserved, polite, non-confident, and grateful for my support. At the end of the semester, they gave me a football as a present. The other group, however, was composed, miraculously enough, of active boys (and some loud girls). They had lively discussions, often I was just an observer or functioned as the moderator. They were not always on time with the home work but I didn't have to encourage them too much to provoke and be OK about being provoked in the presentation sessions. In the end there was no emotional goodbye; we rather cracked some jokes.

Later in a semi-academic, semi-business context, something similar happened. I had two small groups, both composed of two young academics, strangers to each other, whom I had to tutor in academic English and presentations. The groups were set according to the results of some previous test, whose accuracy I was quite dubious about, but in the end the pairing proved to be beneficial for all. In one group, the B2 (the lower), there were two quite talkative, opinionated, active students. We had endlessssss discussions about everything, from education, through gender, to pop culture. In the other, I had two shy students, who, although their language competence was strong (B2++), didn't dare to communicate with each other. Usually what happened is that I posed a provocative question, calling for an opinion that can start a dialogue; they replied individually, looking solely at me; and then there came silence. For them, the discussion setting didn't work. What did work was putting the story into the context of a grammatical task, something that had a clear, non-subjective, answer. And at that they were great. It was only after a couple of months that they started to open up for communication, to share their opinion with me, and with each other. Comparing one group to the other, that is pushing free discussion here or stopping debate there for grammar drills, would have been a failure.

prezume

The first couple of classes are about getting to know each other. Whether it is a one-on-one class or a group session, it is my duty to take the lead. In most cases I start with this prezi.



 
(You liked my cat, didn't you?)

Why do I use a prezi?

Firstly, some of my students are not necessarily strong at oral comprehension. If they have visuals to support what I say, that makes a big difference. 

Secondly, it breaks the ice if you introduce something funny and visually compelling, which also shows you take your job and them seriously. I frequently get compliments, not necessarily because it was the most beautifully designed prezi, but mainly because people rarely make efforts where I did.

Thirdly, I love giving trainings on presentation skills, because I believe whoever interacts with people, which is the majority of us, needs these skills and we are rarely confident in them. I do end up teaching presentation skills to many of my students at some point of the course, and I bet this intro has something to do with it.

tea time

Why would you read this blog, you might ask. Indeed, there are as many blogs as fish in the sea. Plus, reading is boring. Monotonous, slow, lacking interaction. 

I don't invite you to read my blog. I invite you to join me and my community, twice a week, for half an hour, like for a tea. It doesn't take more time and we need to drink, don't we? Why tea? It's just hot water and leaves, a friend summarized scornfully. See, so simple, yet it offers so many potentials! Refreshes your mind (ancient Oriental people used them to keep themselves awake during meditation), cleanses your body (herbal teas have a long medical record), and tastes nice (the wide variety makes it possible for everyone to find their favorites). 

But, anyways, it is not the tea that matters. It is just the context. What matters is that we aggregate in this cozy online tea room, with our different backgrounds, different stories, different perspectives, and share ideas. I only start the discussion by posting a short prompt and then you all join in by writing comments, sharing experiences, posting links, and participating in polls, and we'll see where it leads us. The farther, the better.

Still, why would you do this? Why would a tea room benefit you? Give me 4 minutes and you'll be convinced.

 Then, see you around!

come and share a TEA with me!

Hey, everyone, I'm Anna. I've been out there in the world of wonders (in a more common term, education) for more than a decade now. It's not a piece of cake, but I'm gluten-intolerant anyway. :-)

I started this blog after a conference that made me realize, sharing, a direction our world is taking, is emphatically important for us teachers. Sharing experiences and stories, joys and challenges, materials and tools, in short, this complex world of ours in which we so often feel alone, both in our achievements and failures, is invigorating. Let me encourage you to share your insights, by posting comments or setting up your own site.

I started this blog also as a learner. We all learn from the stories and the people we bump into. Diversity and not uniformity, surprise and not predictability, lead to personal (and let's add, professional) growth. What I most cherish about education is that it inevitably makes you see that we are all different and unique, and it's alright.

Let this blog be the celebration of uniqueness. Let it be clear that it's about all of us, for all of us.

Come and share a TEA with me!