We were asked to scribble something about the week's teaching, or an incident, what went well or badly, what did we learn from it.
We were only told later that this could be the first entry in our journal.
The logical (or swotty) thing to do then would seem to be to smarten it up.
The honest (or lazy) thing to do would be publish and be damned. Or download it and forget it.
So here's the original version.
Reflections on week 1
My first work related observation is that I have really no idea what goes on in a literacy class, who is in there, what led them there, really anything and that as it is a discipline clearly related to ESOL it will be interesting to see how the two relate and to learn something of that discipline—I have moved to the main site at my place of work and away from a small community centre and now work alongside a small literacy department. It seems entirely possible that there are things I can learn from their materials and methods, especially as the history of FE ESOL in the UK is so closely tied to that of literacy—with literacy taking the leading role, right back to Bob Hoskins and Move On(?).
The second was in the ‘look at this week’s teaching’ task.
My item was an incident in the classroom with my low e1 group.
The exercise was to explain some simple classroom tasks, eg: circle, underline, match.
One student didn’t understand the word ‘word.’ And I found it very difficult to explain – If I pointed at a word and said ‘this is a word’ he would see the word itself: ‘so a word is a circle, yes?’
I realised how difficult and yet essential it is to be able to explain abstracts, ( I didn’t find a solution to the problem of abstracts—my solution to the immediate question was to tell him the word in French) which led in turn to confirmation of why I am on the course. The CELTA lets us in the classroom, then we have to learn to teach and often we are busy and fall into a rut, repeating what works and not finding much that is new.
While I realise that the underlying theory helps, I hope there is practical ‘abc’ help: if you want to achieve, this, try that.’
What I really don’t want is a guide to educational paperwork and procedures. Keeping fingers crossed that isn’t what’s in the pipeline.
