the path of a high school teacher

In our interview series on professions related to English, this month we turn to high school teaching, a field which is still most often associated with a degree in English. Probably, due to our own experiences of being  a teenager, locked up in (high) school, there is a strange attitude toward returning to high school, as a profession. Very often I hear university students, enrolled in language programs, as they talk with some kind of fear and disdain about being a high school teacher. I asked Edit, an experienced secondary school teacher of English, to help us get an insight into what advantages and what obstacles this profession really offers.

Hello, Edit. Thank you for your time. As a short introduction, could you tell us where you work and for how long you have been there?

I have been working as a language teacher since 1978 after finishing college in Pécs, Hungary. At first I was a primary school teacher of English and Hungarian in a crowded outskirt elementary school in Újpalota district of Budapest. From 1990 onwards I have been at a high school. First it was a state school; later it became a religious non-state school run by a Catholic Order, the Congregation of the Divine Redeemer.

Have you taught or considered teaching in any other environment?

While I was staying at home with my children, I had the opportunity to try myself out of public teaching. I managed to work for different language schools such as Budapesti Gyermeknyelviskola for lower elementary school pupils and London Stúdió for adult students. The only reason why I joined them was to earn money.

Then, I guess, you didn't quite fancy this type of education. Why, what do you think to be the main differences?

I didn't really like this form of teaching, because I couldn't accept to fight for having groups, to keep students from one term to the other. I felt pretty well among either young learners or adult ones as well, but to tell the truth sometimes it was a bit difficult to motivate the young ones late in the afternoon after a busy school-day. However, the adult learners took language learning very seriously. For a few of them, it was a must to take up classes for their headway. This experience of mine didn't last too long – just for a year or two.

I understand. Now let's turn back to high schools. What do you like about being a high school teacher? 

To feel being safe and sound, this is secondary school for me. It means I don't have to organize my groups and my time-table; continuity is guaranteed. Students learn for their final exams, and in most of the cases they want success. Those who would like further studies go to after-school lessons and pass state language exams or A-level final exams sooner or later. Motivation doesn't seem to be very difficult. Students get marks, and marks are important for applying to universities. Younger students, on the contrary, don't care a lot about marks, so motivating them can cause problems sometimes. As I have experienced for long years, the method the teacher chooses will keep their interest awaken. But of course, what method to choose depends on how complex the group is. Different coursebooks, teacher's guides, and other materials can offer a wide scale of methods either for younger or older learners.  

What are the main challenges for a high school teacher, generally and specifically for you? 

The main challenge for a foreign language teacher is that students don't know their mother tongue. They don't understand grammatical terms, and they are not able to recognize structural elements. If they don't know their native language properly, they won't discover the structural differences in the foreign language either. On the other hand, some students have serious difficulties in learning methods and thinking in general. For a few of them it is very hard – almost impossible – to learn the words on their own. They don't even do it. Not to mention speaking! It seems to be  one of the main challenges to pursue students to speak in front of their classmates.

To speak about myself,  I have to state that the hardest factor of teaching a foreign language is being up to date at language knowledge. Acceleration has made it impossible to follow the latest terms and expressions – they rarely can be found in modern dictionaries either. Spoken English is difficult to use without staying at a native language area. I think a language teacher should spend some time in a foreign country to keep up with the development of language usage. Then, it would be much easier to teach non-natives.

Fair enough. As a final question, let me ask you, with your long years of exposure to the high school environment, who would you recommend a career in high school education to?

I don't really know what a 'high school teacher' is like. But I think I know what she should be like. The most important characteristics are as follows: patient, empathic, affectionate, educated, and humorous. I warmly recommend this profession to those who possess these features and can easily tolerate teenagers. 

Thank you!

expa-riences

It is now six months that I started this blog and, as part of it, I launched a monthly interview series which aims to address people who have decided (or are deciding) to live abroad for a longer period of time. After half a year of collecting personal stories, I felt it was time for us to summarize what we have learned about going abroad.

More and more people decide to live and work outside of their countries, because, as they claim, going abroad offers them better chances, financially or socially, than staying at home, but the main explanation for the growing numbers is not so much the economic crisis or deeper inequalities but much more the higher degree of mobility, which makes such a decision easier than before. Nevertheless, with these widening opportunities, an increased consciousness is rarely coupled. Few people are prepared for the complexities of what their seemingly all-positive choice really entails. This interview series was created to serve as a platform which offers you some of the ideas that are worth considering before making up your mind and trying yourself abroad. By no means do I try to discourage you -- I am pro choice :-) -- but I do encourage you to see things clearly before you make a big decision, and this is one big decision.

The TEA interview series hosted people who migrated for professional reasons, like Bori, and those who followed their heart, like Reka. We read about people who stayed closer to their homeland, like Danijela, and those who crossed oceans to reach where they are now, like Aaron. Meeting Stan, we got to know someone who not only lived in 3 different continents but he also ended up in an intercultural family. Last but not least, we had the chance to talk with Eszter, who went abroad for very specific reasons: to earn enough money for a trip that she had been dreaming of (and make no mistake, she made it -- see photo below :-).

Even from the above, quite limited, list, you can clearly spot out the diversity of the expatriate. The motives people go abroad for are endless. The distance and the duration vary a great deal too. The experiences, as a consequence, cannot be identical either. Then what to prepare for, you might ask. While each of the people I interviewed highly recommended to try living in another country, in order to see the world, to open up, to test yourselves and your beliefs, to redefine difference, in short, to enrich your life, they also warned us about several difficulties. Although in many places foreigners are welcomed, some parts of the world are less tolerant. You need to consider that once you cross borders, you will not be "a local" anymore but "a guest". Almost every interviewee underlined the importance of acquiring at least some knowledge of the local language. Even though English is the new lingua franca, thus, a must to know, many doors will still remain closed if you don't know the local "code". 

It is not only being accepted that can be a challenge; another serious obstacle can be the opposite, accepting, a culture and a set of customs that appear foreign and illogical from your culture's perspective. Many of the speakers had stories about funny or frustrating situations that were the results of a cultural clash. You need to be prepared to bump into new -- and at first strange -- customs at every corner of your journey, even when you think you can take something for granted. Nothing can be taken for granted. On the one hand, such a lesson is a very useful one; on the other hand, you can get tired and insecure after a while, which is easier to bear if you count on it to happen.

Finally, a last crucial point I'd like to make, based on the six interviews, is that you mustn't forget that by travelling you are leaving behind most of what you knew as your life. While some people go exactly for that, for the others this will be an overwhelming challenge. Our TEA guests, however, encouraged us to say yes anyway, because in our digital age, skype and chatting can help you get through the days of loneliness and homesickness, which are all parts of the journey.

So, in short, dare for more, but stay realistic.

chai

Share a tea with me, my blog keeps saying. Well, it is not just a virtual invitation, at least in a certain amount of cases. Some of my students have the privilege to share and enjoy a real cup of tea with me, instead of the cyber tea parties I am organizing for you, rest of the world. Sometimes I serve herbal teas (chamomile is good for the belly, mint is refreshing and helps digestion, lemongrass calms your nerves, and the list could go on). Other times we have black tea, like Earl Grey or English Breakfast, to pay tribute to Britain, a tea giant and an English-speaking civilization. Occasionally, we take an Oriental trip to China or Japan, for some non-native adventure, and sip green tea, such as gunpowder or sencha. Last time, however, I thought of trying something less popular and well-known: I made us some Indian spicy-milky chai.

I searched the web and found a bunch of youtube videos about how to make this delicious beverage. I figured, why not kill two birds with one stone? Not only did I use the video as instructions for making the tea for the class, but I also incorporated it into the lesson plan. I prepared a warm-up task (jotting the ingredients and the instructions on small pieces of paper) and made a guessing-listening exercise, just to lead to the ecstatic moment of tasting the chai itself.

As always, I served the tea in the beginning but I didn't introduce or comment it. We just started the class with the planned warm-up. My student had to guess, based on the ingredients (like ginger, milk, cardamom, etc.), what it might be for. He felt it was some kind of tea but wasn't sure. Then, to get closer to the solution, we moved on to the instructions. He had to put the different steps of its preparation into order. More or less he got it right. Afterwards, we watched an authentic video, made by an Indian woman, to check how much his guesses were adequate. 

Finally, when the instructions became clear, he finalized his visual collage about "how to make chai". As a true reward, we could complete the exercise by even tasting and enjoying what we learned about.

women wariations

February 8, tomorrow, is International Women's Day. I conducted a small research on what kinds of images exist and pop up on the Internet if I type in "women's day". While there are, for sure, recurring symbols, like hearts, flowers, community, girl power, the color pink, or figures of Barbie and Rosie the riveter, accompanied with the respective motivational message (of embracing your beauty or standing up for your rights), the collection that I hereby present to you shows nicely: women (and for that matter, men) are not one group and not one kind.

Enjoy the witty verbal-pictorial metaphors, which will not only entertain, enrage, or encourage you, but they will also reveal to you a multitude of faces and voices that call for celebration, every day.

Women's Day: The Fight

Women's Day: The Celebration

Women's Day: Men For Women

Women's Day: Women For Women

Women's Day: Be Yourself

Happy Wo/men's Day for all.

prezi vs ppt

I already brought up Prezi a couple of times before, but since I feel many people are not familiar with it, at least as compared to, say, PowerPoint, I wanted to dedicate some posts to this topic. It is especially high time, because, you may have heard, Prezi made a deal with the US government, pushing the cloud based software to American schools. As the first post of this series, let me compare and contrast it with the rival presentation tool, PowerPoint.

Prezi is a tool for presentations, just like the above mentioned MS software, but it is quite different. Contrary to PPT, it is dynamic and spatial, not static and linear. Prezi has less limitations and restrictions, offering an unlimited canvas as a starting point, with which you do (almost) whatever you want to. PowerPoint, however, operates with slides, samples, and fixed constructions. Both have disadvantages, of course. If you don't have ideas, because you are a beginner or lack time, you will be lost in the infinite space of Prezi. Nevertheless, if you want to present visual structures and complex relationships, you will feel the world of PowerPoint like a cage. Lately, I find Prezi more and more inevitable for my work, may that be creative, academic, or educational.  

At the same time, we can witness a growing trend that using Prezi is cool. It is rare, however, that presenters use it in an effective way. If it is not the zooming function that is misused, then it is its very essence that is misunderstood. Now let me point out one way of mistreating this wonderful but not easy tool.

Many people get scared when they realize how much more time it takes to put together a good Prezi than making nice PPT slides (in fact, good visuals take a lot of time, whatever you make them with). So, what they do is that they just copy their PowerPoint slides into Prezi (as there is such an option in Prezi). Or, if not that, they use Prezi completely as if it was PowerPoint. In the end, you have 10-15 slides on the infinite canvas. Presentational suicide.

Here is a prezi I made when I wanted to show a group how not to use it. The original presentation was a relatively nice PPT. The prezi just sucks.

After the don't-s, next time we'll take a look at the do-s of making a prezi.