On Tuesdays, the Teach First participants meet at college, part of the requirements to receive our teaching certificate at the end of the school year. I love Tuesdays; not only is it a break from my hectic school week, but a chance to see the ninety other trainee teachers in the same position, a chance to moan, gossip and compare stories. After the morning lectures, we split into our subject groups, and our professor, Ilana, takes the six English teachers on a surprise trip to Eric Cohen Books, (http://www.ecb.co.il) the largest publishing English textbook company in Israel.
It is so wonderful to walk into an entirely English speaking environment, and we immediately gravitate towards the bookshop filled with glossy, hardback textbooks, over excitable at the propsect of so many learning materials. There are memory games, cds with tests, listening exercises and vocabulary quizzes, books for non readers, literature and of course, the trusted Oxford dictionaties. Resisting the urge to just throw them my credit card and buy the lot, I try and be rational. My professor Ilana, is keen on learning centres, insisting that one standardised textbook is problematic for our heterogenous classrooms, and we should instead compile different learning materials from various textbooks to suit each student. The class has the same objective, (for instance, learning to read and write about their hobbies,) but each child is able to work with materials that cater to their individual level. This would mean preparing each student a pack to work on at their own pace, but I am concerned that this is a huge task and in addition, involves no frontal teaching. In this way, would my role as a teacher be diminished? However, as I look through the textbooks and spot a page of grammar I love in one and an exercise that supports it in another, the idea appeals more and more.
Ultimately, I leave confused, but with my bank balance still intact. I have the ECB catalogue and am determined to think about what I want to use and how I want to teach it. The problem is not a lack of material, but what to do and how to do it with the many different resources available.
- nicole.h's blog
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Comments
You're so right, Nicole.
Walking into a book exhibit with a credit card is like walking into a supermarket after you've been fasting for a day.
As for the huge amount of great materials-- wouldn't it be nice if somebody would just sort them out for us and we could walk into ideal lessons perfectly prepared!
Nicole! Thankyou for this post, it has raised an important issue which I believe merits more discussion.
In my school, the Junior High classes have been split into two levels. I teach the lower level, which is, at least for my 8th and 9th Grade, a mish-mash of different levels from near-native accent perfect speakers with very poor spelling and writing skills, to non-speakers who struggle to understand even a word I say in English and would rather be anywhere else than in class. At the start of the year, I gave each class them two different textbooks and thought 'I'll create a pack for each student!', but preparing for students on an individual basis is a mamoth task, especially in this country where often teachers are working three or four jobs to make ends meet. Also, when teaching in 'small grouped classes' rather than frontal teaching one big class, one feels (especially as a beginner high-school teacher who wants to be challenged and achieve mastery of frontal teaching children) that one isn't 'living up to the job'. In my school we are lucky enough to have volunteers. At first I was 'ashamed', as a teacher, to use them - as I felt maybe it meant I didn't have the organisational skills to teach a big class, but now I've decided that if it helps the students, why deny them the chance to learn. I even have one student who should be with the 'main' class, as his level is up to it. Unfortuanately he has had problems at home and fails to concentrate in the class (basically causes mayhem, fights etc) On his own intitiative, he suddenly turned up in the volunteer's very small struggling group, sat quietly, and worked from the book with a little help from her. My first thoughts were 'this undermines me as a teacher' but I realised that if he is working, if he feels calm and concentrates in this small group, then why deny him the chance to improve?
What are your thoughts on this?
Michaela