Teacher Stories: Stories from the Edges of Language Teaching

CONTENTS

  Editor’s Introduction

  Monday Morning Dizziness by Sabine Cayrou

  Light a Perfumed Candle by Helen Waldron

  The Chicken and the Egg: Task-based Teaching in East Germany in the 1980s by Greg Bond

  Make the Most of Your Days by Paul Walsh

  Creative Leadership by Mohammed Qaid

  Another Darkness by Neil Scarth

  About the Authors

  Editor’s Introduction

  This book is an ode to the dog days of working teachers.

  Even though foreign language learning is a global, multi-million dollar industry, the people who labour to keep this industry running—working teachers—are largely invisible. We wanted to change this, to make visible the lives of ordinary teachers.

  We wanted to take a stand against the economic calculus that dominates our profession; the idea that the 'market knows best'; that self-interest is the prime, and perhaps only motivating factor. When our teaching community suffers under the weight of precarity; when we are asked to be 'self-responsible' for everything from healthcare to training; when we're burdened with endless lists of Do's and Don'ts, we wanted to create a new platform: a place where we tell our own stories.

  The authors have certainly succeeded in this respect. The stories presented here offer a glimpse of six different edges; edges where teachers—the bodies that dance across classrooms, performing the pedagogical rituals required of them—try to achieve some kind of balance and grace.

  Within the stories themselves you'll find morning tiredness, journeys, sadness, reflection—but also humour! Although we may be invisible, the disposable parts of a vast machinery, we're still smiling to ourselves.

  For the editors, myself and Theresa, the project has certainly not been easy—with its own highs and lows—but definitely worthwhile. We'd like to extend our gratitude to the teachers who gave up their time and energy for a project where success was not guaranteed, and which would certainly fail any individual cost/ benefit analysis.

  Finally, thank you, dear reader, for taking the time to read, and converse with the stories in this collection.

  In solidarity with wherever you are, with whatever story you're trying to tell.

  Paul Walsh and Theresa Gorman (editors)

  Monday Morning Dizziness

  Sabine Cayrou

  Monday morning, early in the German capital. There are moments in life when every minute feels an eternity, but this morning nothing appears more ephemeral to me. Seconds and minutes escape me. Since I got out of bed, I feel like I have been running for nothing, like mothers often feel.

  Each time I am about to begin an intensive course, it is always the same. On the first day I look like a work animal, able to carry three or four burdens all at once. Somehow so overloaded but at the same time so empty. I feel like a young, inexperienced beginner, having to learn pretty much everything, or like an expatriate arriving in an unknown land. Nevertheless, there is a mixture of fear and curiosity in me, in anticipation of a new group of learners.

  Will I be able to keep them awake this Monday morning? Nights in Berlin can be so long. Now, this morning in the centre of Berlin, a small French woman—me—still sunk into deep dreams, is trying to face this real challenge! In order to deal with this big question, I decide to use these few precious minutes left to do some deep breathing exercises, so that I can dispel stage fright. I nearly fall asleep on my neighbour's shoulders in the train, then I suddenly jump. I arrive at Berlin’s Friedrichstraße station, already backstage, ready to go on.

  As soon as I arrive in the classroom, my back suffering from the weight of teaching materials in my backpack, I immediately try to create an atmosphere that facilitates collaborative work. Psychology would say: “It seems to be important to first create an environment that encourages learning.” This does not take into account the daily gymnastics of a language teacher consisting of removing furniture, so that participants should at least be able to see each other while trying to speak and understand one another.

  A few minutes later, the first participants enter the classroom. My first impression is rather good, the group seems to be motivated and lively, except for a few among them, still dozing off in a corner. We are all standing in a circle, then dispersed, we occupy the whole space, speaking with each other. We laugh, I feel that my entrance on stage is successful, I have broken the ice.

  Next, I ask them to go back to their seats and think about the first topic: studying abroad. Having done a first oral comprehension task about the same topic, some of the students seem to be tired, but most of them are resisting Monday morning tiredness and continue the discussion.

  In a corner, one student, who has hardly spoken until now, begins to change his posture and lays his head on his hands. He seems to be taking the ideal position for a short meditative break, as Japanese businessmen often do.

  However, after a few minutes, we hear a light snoring from the corner. Some of the participants start smiling, others giggle and begin to make fun of the snoring student, who probably has to make up some hours of missed sleep. A few minutes later, the snoring amplifies and fills the whole room so loudly that we eventually interrupt our discussion.

  I suggest a coffee break and then ask two participants to help me wake the snoring man. We shake and rattle him several times, but he barely wakes up. We finally manage to keep him awake for a few seconds. I lead him staggering to the door and show him the way out for the break.

  He looks at me appalled, as if I were born in another world. I smile at him and tell him:

  "It's all right, you are in your French lesson, do you remember?"

  He nods and smiles, so I ask him: "Could you please bring me a real strong coffee, to chase snoring people away?" He doesn't understand me, so I repeat my polite request in his mother tongue, German. He looks at me, slightly embarrassed and answers me in German: "My French teacher often used to say that you can pronounce French much better while yawning. I have just been practising the nasal sounds!" I start laughing, quite loud, I find his reaction very amusing and his attitude rather pleasant. Then, his face darkens, he turns around and leaves, without saying anything.

  After the break, his seat remains empty. I never saw him again.

  Light a perfumed candle

  Helen Waldron

  Panorama windows, but everyone is far too busy doing important stuff to watch me approach. I hand over my ID card to be scanned at the desk and give the security people a nice smile, because i) they’re nice and ii) they’re invisible service providers, like me. And iii) I need them to open the turnstile: as a non-employee my card has no chip in it. Click click click click. What sort of a company makes its admin employees go through a turnstile to enter? They already perform random searches, though they haven’t singled me out yet (which is another reason to be nice to the security people).

  You have to dress the part to walk these hallways, and I’m not really a black slacks, white blouse sort of woman, so I’ve done my usual compromise which involves something I feel like wearing that day and something posh, like jewellery or heels.

  Click click click click. All the lost and lonely people sitting in front of the glass windows look away from the screens showing company products, hopeful at the sound of my heels. Have I come to pick them up for their job interview/supplier negotiation?

  I give them a smile too. The company should pay me for being their Goodwill Person. Job description: conveying an unrealistically positive company image.

  Smile, glass, chrome, sunshine city.

  Pity they treat their
people like crap.

  I heard it first from other suppliers and would-be suppliers. They’re so arrogant. Then I experienced it myself when HR decided they couldn’t be arsed to learn more than one name and simply chucked out the independent trainers. Our students protested and got us back, but I can’t negotiate conditions anymore. No one’s responsible for you. An index-linked pay rise? Additional compensation for specialist training measures? No need to ask, the answer’s no.

  Now the company is reviewing its own employee conditions. My students have started to envy me and tell me shyly they need some English for interviews or that they’d really love to work freelance like me. It has such a caring, we-are-family image, but it treats more people like crap every year.

  And still we dress to look the part. Really we’re all happy smiley people, propagating the company image, grateful for the prestige of working here. Prestige is nice, but it doesn’t pay the rent, let alone allow you to invest in the appearance it expects of you. And it has the company name on it, not yours. You can’t take it with you.

  The latest upheaval is that they’ve introduced open-plan offices. Now they’re sitting, miserable in huge foyer-like concourses. You can hear me click click clicking here too.

  “We have to go to the toilet to cry,” said one of my young, (blonde, ravishingly beautiful) students.

  “I have less responsibility than I had 20 years ago,” said another, (very nice, moved sideways) man.

  “You do it right: no bosses breathing down your neck, free to go whenever you want.”

  Well, I can go, but I’d just be throwing away money. It takes ages to build up a freelance business. And I earn much better than a lot of teachers. Being freelance is psychological freedom more than anything else. They’re such great people. I’m sad for them. At least I have freedom, even if I never seem to exercise it. Psychological freedom is better than nothing.

  “Go for it”, I say. “Open your shoe boutique. You’ll regret it if you don’t make the move.”

  And, “Does it really matter if you retire a year or two early? You’ve got your company pension no matter what you do. You’ll probably get a severance package too.”

  They look at me sadly. You don’t throw away a good job. Not even I can bring myself to do that. Even without the security and benefits. I’ve grown like them.

  I used to worry about all the glass and chrome catching the rays of sunlight from outside and drying up my soul. Maybe it’s happened. I’m so involved in the ins and outs that I practically work there, just without the benefits of paid holidays and sickness benefit and job security. I’ve sort of transitioned from a happy low-maintenance evergreen to a hothouse plant that is delicate and wilting. I’m fascinated by my students’ fascination for their work. I think it’s meaningless stuff, and suspect that those who think about it, think this too, but if they all stopped keeping up appearances, it would set off a whole chain of infinity reflections and the prestige would shrivel up and nobody wants to listen to an English teacher being negative anyway. So I smile and thank God I don’t work in an office, it’s bad enough listening to executives telling me their problems all day. I feel I’ve been listening to people’s problems for 30 years.

  Black slacks and white shirts aren’t generally my style. I don’t like chrome and glass particularly. I need to leave this company. Life is too short.

  Then I read it on Facebook. Light a perfumed candle for Joanne. A teacher colleague, older than me, we worked together briefly at a fashion academy. We met for lunch and she wanted to discuss curriculum but I told her I was leaving. She was disappointed. Either she was more conscientious than me, or my leaving was a kick in the teeth for her, or both.

  She told me she was ill, but I didn’t know how ill. She told me she was living on €50 a day insurance. You can’t live on €50 a day where we are. She was an American, stranded longer and further than me. Perfume because she was sensuous till the end.

  Light a perfumed candle. Dance. Go mad a bit. Life is too short.

  “You can’t leave. Tell me you don’t mean it.”

  “But I look forward to our lesson every week.“

  “This lesson is the only thing I enjoy in this company. It’s me-time.”

  All very flattering, but I know I’m replaceable. I don’t like it here anymore and it’s me-time from now on.

  There are huge plastic banners for Agenda 51 hanging from the few outer walls that are not chrome and glass. Agenda 51 is basically a series of slogans like WE ARE A TEAM and WE LIVE OUR BRANDS. Now that I have come to my senses I would like to dance, sing and comment that slogans like this make me sick.

  I’ve been coming to this company long enough to remember when the entrance was less chrome and glass and bombastic, and more low key, red brick and in keeping with the company’s then down-to-earth image. It was also further up the road. The company owns most of this part of residential Hamburg. It used to own more, but as it outsources its departments, it’s selling up the property. There’s a luxury fitness spa where adhesives used to be manufactured. The company employees get discounted membership, but it’s still too expensive unless you go every day, they tell me. And who wants to spend their evenings with their colleagues?

  Click, click, click, click.

  The Chicken and the Egg: Task-based Teaching in East Germany in the 1980s

  Greg Bond

  There is a photograph of me, aged around 23, wearing an old tie my father gave me. I still have plenty of hair, which is no longer the case today. I am seated against the backdrop of a painted mural, showing a naked lady diving among fishes of the sea. There is real netting to add to the atmosphere. A man is standing, holding a live chicken, towards which he is bent as if tenderly whispering in its ear. We are in a seafood restaurant in Leipzig, the year is 1986 or 1987. The occasion is a farewell party for a group of adult students I have been teaching English. The chicken is my farewell present.

  Like many, I fell into English teaching when it offered me the opportunity to work abroad. I headed from Manchester, UK, to Leipzig, East Germany, in 1985, when it still was East Germany. There I spent two years teaching English to students at the Karl Marx University, as it was then called. The first year I taught adults who had been delegated to go abroad and work in projects in friendly states—as doctors, architects, food scientists, administrators. I did not have much teaching experience, but like us all I had a lot of experience of being taught. That helps.

  I admit that my priority was not the classroom. These were exciting months and years in many other ways—for a young man exploring the other world behind the iron curtain. Nonetheless I taught some twenty hours per week and had no material provided. The brief was conversation. I quickly learned that politics and society were not suitable themes for the classroom—my students belonged to a professional and political elite and were hand-picked to go abroad. They were too wary of open exchange of opinion. Today I know that politics and society are not the best themes in most English-learning classrooms, and that there are better ways of getting conversation going.

  In those days, when I had to start teaching at 8 am, I would often get out of bed literally fifteen minutes before class began, dress and set off on the five-minute walk across the muddy walkways of an unfinished and decidedly unattractive new housing development on the outskirts of town. During those five minutes I would hastily decide what to do in class. I bought a bottle of milk on my way, usually then drinking it in the classroom. That was my breakfast.

  Around the table were eight to ten professional people. I had plenty of freedom, as they enjoyed off-the-ball topics, as long as there was nothing politically delicate. One morning I drank my milk in their presence and began talking about milk. I asked them a number of how to, where from and what can you do with questions. How is milk produced? Where does it come from? What can we do with milk? What can be done with this bottle, except use it for milk? And we had a conversation going. Without knowing it at the time, I was then developin
g the kind of task-based classroom activity that would be one bedrock in my future career as a teacher. It was born naively and of necessity—not least the need to sleep, due to an aversion to eight o’clock starts, which were unknown where I came from.

  From the milk we came somehow to eggs. I don’t remember how. But it is not a great leap of the imagination. Scrambled, fried, poached, used in cakes or in omelettes. Hard boiled or soft boiled? How, why, what for? Plenty to talk about and plenty of vocabulary to teach. From eggs we got to chickens, of course. It is amazing how much you can make of a topic once you get going. And then the class was over. I remember everyone enjoyed it, including myself.

  All my students in East Germany were very sociable, and I was often invited to join them in weekly meals out, mid-term parties and end-of-course celebrations. It was at one of those that I was given the chicken, in recognition of my teaching—in praise of task-based learning. After the party I went home with the chicken, which spent a night in my bathroom. One of the students came with me, willing to help me slaughter it. I couldn’t face that, and I chickened out when he had a knife to its neck. The next day I took the chicken to a garden nearby where I had seen chickens, and gave it to the lady who lived there. She asked no questions and accepted.