Snapping

One of those days which is paradoxically liberating and depressing. Actually, the last few days have been a bit like that.

I've flicked through Ellis The Study of Second Language Acquisition to the final chapter, which begins around page 600, and is on the subject of SLA and formal instruction. When you cut to the chase, it comes to this: everything you do in the classroom amounts to (almost) nothing.

And so it goes with the teaching here. I had a really bad do with Old Gomez first thing this morning. The "good morning" I got from the class was distinctly frosty. This is in part due to the stress they get from exams, even mocks, but mostly because of PTI's antics yesterday. He called a meeting for all of the students, with the object of berating them about punctuality. To underline his dissatisfaction, the clueless bastard began the meeting by slamming the door as he entered the room. We don't know exactly what was said, but proceeding lasted well over an hour, and scuppered our afternoon exam schedule. It left the students very pissed off.

The first evidence came yesterday, when Fester told LM that he thought I was not an "active" enough teacher. Fuck knows. Though actually I have been trying to take a back seat to avoid any outbursts from Old Gomez.

And so this morning. Like I said, a frosty reception. And as I started the lesson, eliciting as usual the day and date, Old Gomez kept on reading a letter he had in front of him. I asked him if we could start the lesson, and he said, after a very long pause, Yes, I am listening - and went back to his letter. I cannot explain it, but I snapped. I said, perhaps we could continue the lesson when he was ready, and left the classroom.

So, over the next hour or so, LM acted as go-between, I calmed down, and we continued with another morning's miserable teaching.

I later learned from LM that I hold the record for teaching this class - remember that they've had a year in England. Mostly, teachers beg to me moved on after a few short weeks. Often, they flee the classroom in tears after a few hours.

In any other situation, Old Gomez would be down-the-road. Not here. Not with the Government paying his wages, and a senior manager somewhere going to work each morning with a song in his heart because he managed to outmanoeuvre Gomez onto this project, and out of his own hair, into mine, and under my skin.

I also learned later, that LM, having an academic interest in motivation, took this job to see if innovations in teaching - particulary the use of a VLE - could motivate incorrigibles like the Addams Family. Unfortunately, he got to Libya and found that things like VLEs were figments of an SMT meeting's imagination, and that the reality is, you're stuck in-between a whiteboard and the Worst Class In The World.

Anyway, having got the gold medal for teaching these bastards for a record eight weeks, I'm to be given a break from them in a classroom reshuffle next week. Hamdullah!

Strange New Places

Yesterday morning's session was one of the strangest I've ever taught. We just got on with it, but it was like I wasn't there. We worked through the materials I'd provided, but without genuine interaction. Often, the class would talk amongst themselves in Arabic.

I can only assume that solidarity is being demonstrated with Old Gomez, whose authority I have been seen to ignore. This is a first, I've never had a class behave this way before. It's actually really interesting.

On the one hand, subjectively, I can't wait to see the back of these bastards. LM, who has already had a year of them, and takes them now for academic skills in the afternoons, understands completely, and has agreed to move the poisoned chalice elsewhere once we've gotten past this exam in a few weeks.

On the other hand: there is a big issue about these learners being colleagues, potential fellow teachers at the college. Which is fine, but this lot under the generalship of Old Gomez have set up an anti-authoritarian structure in the classroom as effective as anything you'd get from intelligent and rebellious teenagers in a brutal classroom regime. And they've done it answer to Old Gomez' ego, not to any oppression.

When they move on from English to studying Leadership and Management, under the wing of a sensitive chap like PTI. Oh, lordy lord. LM and I have wondered how PTI will cope, given the touchiness of all of these students on virtually everything, and given the extraordinary inflammatory dynamics of the Addams Family. And so, I comfort myself in the cool atmosphere of my classroom with the thought that I might be watching the early development of a Sudanese-teddy incident.

Precious Hours

This current course is scheduled to run until the end of June. The Addams Family are the least ready for exams. We had thought that they would get extra time but LM has let me know that this is not so, they must get to the required standard (City & Guilds Expert level) by then or they're down-the-road.

It's not too unreasonable, I suppose. These guys are employed and getting paid to attend, and, well, that's the breaks. It's going to be quite a task though. I reckon with some effort from them and from me, we can get them all through the next level down, Communicator, (these silly, uninformative names!) in the next month or so. But Expert, in three months, I don't know.

There are only five of them, and despite their frequent expressions of (to me) bizarre views about learning, they are motivated. Being in Damocles' sandals isn't necessarily conducive to learning, however. The deadline will focus me, but I'll try to avoid using it as a sword to scare them with.

Edited Class Notes II

Outline LP:

Intro	Lesson Aims	5m
1	Explain error correction proposal; discuss	5m
2	Yesterday’s vocab.: hangman; gap fill; new sentences	30m
3	IE Unit 2 (to p19)	90m
4	Set up writing assignment	30m approx

The class were a couple of minutes late, and I let this pass. After the concept of Lesson Aims was introduced they appeared to be relieved and Mustafa said that during their whole time in England they had never been given a “map” of their studies, and that it was very important to them to have one.

The error correction procedure was outlined and approved.

We began unit two of the SB, which “reviewed” the present perfect. This led to us getting mired down in an explanation of this tense, which the whole class seemed to understand only vaguely. (I have copied some exercises for their homework.)

We got into similar difficulties with used to + verb, which is inadequately presented in International Express.

The class claimed to believe that the homework due today was actually due tomorrow.

I gave the second instalment of the writing assignment (significant people).

Edited Class Notes I

The whole class were ten minutes late. I heard them outside chatting and laughing. I didn’t say anything, but marked them late.

We worked on explaining the curriculum, using a worksheet I’d prepared.

The teabreak stretched out to half an hour. Again, they were outside the classroom, but I did not try to round them up because the ill-feeling and resentment this causes is counter-productive.

We then worked on the background to their writing assignment. This is based on the City and Guilds’ descriptor, “I can write descriptions of personally significant events, people or experiences.” They have had and easy time so far regarding homework, and the plan is to get them up to speed by breaking this descriptor into three tasks over the course of the week. The first one, given out today and due back tomorrow is: Write a description of a personally significant event.

Festa objected that we had not used the book all day. I’ll spend much of tomorrow with it to ease his anxiety.

Another source of anxiety is error correction. Both Young Gomez and Old Gomez told me during this lesson that I “must tell them when they make mistakes”. I had thought of telling them that error-correction has produced thousands of academic words, but instead I’ll do a ten minute lesson on the point[1].

NB: I'm going to start blogging the notes I write about the classes I teach. They are edited for anonymity. I've started to write these as part of my lesson prep this week for several reasons:

Professional: To give me a space to reflect on the learning that has been, and should be taking place. To identify problems. To make a note of agreements and learner requests in the classroom.

Academic: This class will hopefully yield a Second Language Acquisition research paper for my MA, and this is part of the data collection process.

Arse-covering: I am acutely aware that failing students often blame their teacher, and I'm trying to paint a round unvarnished and contemporaneous picture of the class day by day, should it prove necessary in the future for the purposes of a what-the-fuck-went-wrong? managerial post mortem. Inshallah, this self-preservation motive will prove unnecessary. The need to arse-cover notwithstanding, I hope I'm being honest and objective.

Finally, I should like to explain that my rather unkind nicknames for several of the students are a common teaching phenomenon, a bit like picturing the office bully in his bath: a humorous psychological safety valve. I'd be mortified if they or anyone else put two and two together. This is an anonymous blog after all.

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[1] After talking it over with DJ, will instead use a notebook to overtly mark down any errors, and set aside ten (?) mins at end of lesson.

Boxes They Must Tick

I've pasted in entries made offline over the last few days in order to catch up. No workable internet connexion at the bungalows. Spoke to the management this morning. Apparently the theoretical connexion costs £800 pound a month, and I suggested they were being ripped off.

For the first time, this morning, I began to ask myself if I'll stay this course, and whether I should be looking for something else to start in the autumn, the 08/09 academic year. There are three boxes this company must tick over the next few weeks to keep me with them:

• sort out a reliable quickish internet connexion, which is indicative of their ability to get things done out here;
• get the second bedroom in the bungalow furnished: this will indicate their willingness to put their hands in their pockets to honour a commitment made at my interview, that this was a suitable situation for a family;
• provide a system to get post and packages from the UK, so that, for example, I can buy books and CDs online and receive them here

If these aren't sorted by the time I come back from my first UK holiday in early May, then I'll be looking elsewhere.

They're Creepy and Their Cooky

The Addams Family had an episode today. One of them is a bit like Gomez, only older. He started to question the value of one particular exercise because it had no overt grammar. I asked him if we should have missed it out, but he ducked that and got onto the old theme of the all importance of grammar, “words we can learn at home – we only need you for grammar. All was well until the teabreak, when they decided unilaterally and without tipping me off, I think led by older Gomez, that they should have half and hour, rather than fifteen minutes.

I don’t think it showed, but I was thoroughly pissed off with this. See, frankly, I couldn’t give a tinker’s fart if they took a whole hour – I’m feeling a bit frazzled by then with the back-to-back classes. But the tea breaks are set for 15 minutes and it’d be my balls on the block if management thought I was letting them have longer. So I told them that going over the agreed time was unacceptable, whereupon Festa and Old Gomez got excited and started shouting. I left the room and got LM in to sort them out.

Which he did, by conceding them a 20 minute tea break. Thereafter they were wee baa lambs.

T3 arrives tonight, and will take Brokeback Mountain next week, so that I can devote my energies, for now, to the Addams Family. I need to do a Second Language Acquisition paper for my MA over the next few months, and they should provide some marvellous data. I’m thinking of some observations on fossilisation, testing, or obsession with Grammar Translation Methodology. Objectifying difficult students this way is a real help.

How Many Irregular Verbs Are There in English?

There’s the first week of actual teaching done. I started with the books this morning, to the great relief of all concerned. The “Induction Week” was in any event plucked out of the air by LM as a compromise to get us past T2’s lack of co-operation. But I’ve got the two class’s levels, and the books were all sitting there, so I got started this morning with some proper teaching.

It all went very well. HUDC students like to go through a text book methodically, and hate dotting about, changing books, or dealing with other materials. The first class, Brokeback Mountain, received their Upper Int International Express with relish. Lots of overt grammar teaching – they love that. The stray-hair-plucking cowboy, said that he thought the book was better than Cutting Edge. I don’t know what he based this opinion on, because he hadn’t looked beyond the first page. Then he asked if I knew Streamlined. Yes, I do. “I think Streamlined is much better than this book.” How do you know? You haven’t looked past the first page. “Streamlined is better than Cutting Edge.” Oh good... After a lengthy presentation of the book’s structure and methodology, we proceeded to actually begin work from it, on a tense review. At the end of the lesson, Cowboy #1 pronounced himself contented if we continue to use this book in this way. The entire class burst out laughing in astonishment.

The Addams Family are also going with International Express, but Intermediate. Yesterday’s shouter, Uncle Fester, pored through the book and its accompanying bit and pieces, there’s a “pocket book” which contains all the grammar rules, and I knew he’d love that. But he still managed to find something to grouse about. “This list of irregular verbs is incomplete, I think.” I said I didn’t think so, that there were about a hundred there. Somebody else asked how many irregular verbs there were in English. I have no idea, but said, about a hundred. “There are only 88 here,” said Fester.

Teaching At Last

That’s two days actual teaching behind us now.

Until the arrival of T3, next week, perhaps, inshallah, whenever, I’ve got two classes, three hours from 8.30am, and then a break, and then another class 12 – 3pm.

The first class are nine in number, and the placement test and my observations over the next few days suggest that they’re Upper Int. The only problem is the Brokeback Mountain factor: two students who keep writing little notes on their jotters to each other, and whispering and giggling; this morning, I saw one of them remove a stray hair from his friend’s face, as a wife or lover would to a man. Nothing wrong with any of that, per se, except that they’re a pair of religious bigots, and a complaining pair of bastards to boot. I think I’ve managed to curtail the pillow talk, for now anyways.

The other class are more difficult. They have bees in their bonnets about being the only afternoon class. This has led them to be annoyed about every aspect of the course. I had a difficult hour or two today. One of them was raising his voice, and this led me to do the same. This would be totally unacceptable in England, no doubt, but shouting is the way of expressing dissatisfaction here.

By the end of the lesson, we were all on terms, and I shook hands with the shouter after he apologised for losing his temper. I privately restored my good humour by naming them The Addams Family – it’s a small class, some of them are a bit odd, and frankly their cussedness spooked me.

They do have several legitimate grievances – some bureaucratic nightmare regarding their wages in particular, I’m told – and it’s natural if unreasonable that I should get caught in the crossfire.

T2 has her own class, and is out of the road for now. Mostly she’s ok, but other times she’s just weird. Like yesterday, the first day of teaching in a new place for everyone, and I said to her, “Which classroom would you like?” And she said, “Why?”