I felt identified with what you said when you mentioned how you learned from your trainer, being an accepting, humours and never judgemental teacher. I had a similar experience with my teacher trainer, she was like that and was also showing us all the positive things we had and how valuable we were. She was not “teaching” us, she was giving us tools to help us find our ways.

How important teacher trainers are!!!

I really enjoyed the interview. Thanks

Arq. Mercedes Viola Deambrosis

Directora

4D Content English

Circunvalación Durango 1429 of. 501

Montevideo - Uruguay

Tel: (598 2) 9161496

www.4d.edu.uy

Dear Mercedes Viola,

First of all, thanks for writing in and also for telling me where you are writing from...Uruguay! It helps me to tune in a bit ! And thanks for enjoying the video interview. My interviewer and the cameraman were so relaxed and helpful it made it easier to talk into thin air about myself and my job so many things. (Not something I do a lot of!)

I am really happy that you too were fortunate to have, in your words, an accepting, humorous trainer who was never judgemental. What a gift! You never forget those people for getting you started, do you!

All the best

Tessa

Dear Iryna,

Thanks for your message!  Nice to hear from you and thanks for all the comments. I am happy my work has been useful to you there. Yes, adapting ideas is essential! You are the one who knows what works with your classes, your style, your culture! Variations are great!

Thanks too for all your questions! Can I take them briefly one by one?

1. Pictures.

I have just moved to a classroom with internet access so I am going to work on the idea, tomorrow morning with my intermediate class, of choosing a Google image and talking about it. I will start off with a picture of my home town. Then I will ask a student per day to do likewise. They already have a back up sheet from another session on talking about pictures ( how to say where things are, why they chose the picture etc etc) to help them language wise. As well as being great solo talking practice, I hope we will all slowly learn a bit about each other.

2. Music

Yesterday it became apparent (via a course book quiz) that an unusual number of students all liked jazz. So I brought in a compilation jazz CD to play just as welcome music today and once (very quietly) during a reading passage. So the role of the music was to show I had heard their preferences, to give them pleasure and to relax me too as I love music!

3 and 4. Effective Teamwork

I wonder if you are interested in this because you know a lot about it? If so, do please write back and share your thoughts on how it can be achieved!

As for me, I think we can TRY to work with anyone. But of course we all know it is easier with some combinations of teachers/trainers than with others!!

So what can we do to up the chances of success? In no particular order:

-limit the joint task by time length, complexity etc?  So, we could start by discussing a (part of a ) lesson plan but not teaching it together. Then plan another one together and talk about it after. And then, if that goes okay, plan, teach and discuss a lesson or part of one together. Starting small in other words.

-swap groups/pairs a lot to start with so that everybody has a chance to find those they naturally trust and fit well with?

-do a bit of reading and discussing first together so that everybody's ideas about learning and teaching and work are out in the open and similarities and differences can be noted?

-discuss some groundrules together first? e.g. we need to listen well, stand on the same side as each other, give equal amounts of talking time to each person ....or whatever else seems appropriate as a groundrule in your team. And then, it would probably be a good idea to discuss, every so often, how well we are all doing as a team at sticking to our own ground rules? Then we could add new ones or adapt the old ones in the light of experience

Dear Readers...not just Iryna (!) ...this is such an interesting and important question. We all work in and with groups all the time. It is the basic stuff of our working lives. Team work is essential and also a real hot potato sometimes! So please do write in if you have a thought on this!

Thanks Iryna for such an interesting question!

All the best!

Tessa

Hi Tessa,

I would just to say that it is a great pleasure for me to meet you! I personally would have like it even better if we had time to chat over a cup of coffee and share our teaching experiences, but I must say that technology has made things much easier for people for talk and get virtually together!

I watched and listened to the whole interview, and I especially loved the example you gave of a memorable teaching experience! I must have been a shock to the child to see snow!

I am looking forward to reading your blog!

Best,

Aneta,

Macedonia

Hi Anderson!

Well! I had no idea when I said, "Yes!" to this blogging lark that I would meet so many old friends by it!

So nice to hear from you again!

Glad you enjoyed the course and are enjoying 'Ways of working with teachers'.  Thanks for saying so (Blush blush!)

Cheers!

Tessa