CTS-English Marmara region courses begin

How do teachers know it’s the end of summer?

Because they are ‘invited’ to join some teacher development sessions, of course! 

This summer 120+ English teachers in the Marmara region of Turkey will be joining our CTS-English courses (for primary and secondary school teachers.) This course is our in-house version of CELTA for teachers of students under 17.

We have 18 experienced teacher trainers from around Europe working with us. For some it is the first time they are working in Turkey (although most have had Turkish students at their universities or teaching centres.) Others worked in Baku and have already had some experience of the CTS-English course.

Let me share some of what goes on before our courses begin. Then as the course unfolds we will share some of the insights we gain. 

Before starting:

We have two priorities at our end 

- arranging all the flights, accommodation, transportation and locations for the courses

- preparing the materials for the course, wherever possible based on the books teachers will work with

These practical issues are important because we want the trainers to be as comfortable as possible with the work they are doing. 

What do trainers need?

We know from Maslow's work that people need to have the areas at the bottom levels of the pyramid satisfied before they can focus on the higher levels. We have two groups of people to consider: trainers and the course participants. What do trainers need? (We'll talk about teachers later.) 

What do trainers need to be able to help the teachers become more confident professionals? to help them reflect on their own classroom practises and students? to be creative? to benefit as much as possible for the course?  

Typically the trainers want information. They want to know about the participants, the expectations of the stake-holders and information about the cultural background. Culture is an important part of adapting to life in a new location so we try to give some guidance about interpreting behaviours. Otherwise there is a danger that people filter all their experiences through their own cultural schemata and misinterpret what they experience. 

Here is part of a letter I sent round the group:

By the way, I would love to hear your reactions to these ideas in the comments section. 

“Although many women work in Turkey and there are is a very high percentage of women graduating with science degrees from universities, there is still a conservative streak in most people. They do sometimes find it very hard to understand how a woman can go to a foreign country by herself without her husband or family. It's a little easier for them to understand older women who are married with children but as for younger women, well it just seems odd to some people. They think that Westerners don't protect and look after the women in their family properly.

There are quite a lot of ways in which this culture treats women with respect which seem odd at first to foreigners. For example when you buy a coach ticket to travel from one city to another, they automatically put a woman next to another woman. It's marked on the computer system so that no one will make a mistake. I have travelled in rural areas and when a man has try to come and sit next to me I simply said no the seat is only for a woman, and he got up immediately and left me alone. Because he thought I was a foreigner, he thought he could sit next to me, chat me up, i.e. treat me differently from a Turkish girl or woman, but as soon as I reacted, he moved away. Don’t let anyone behave in a familiar way – they certainly can’t try that on a Turkish woman.

If you buy something in a shop, if the shopkeeper is male and is handing the bag to a female customer, he will probably hold the bag out to you in such a way that you can take it from him without touching his hands. This is a sign of respect, and also a sign that he does not want any physical contact with a woman who is not in his family. Apart from a small percentage of people who have lived abroad or are from very ‘Westernized’ families, males and females generally minimize the amount of contact that they have with each other. So two women will kiss and hug each other when they meet but a man and a woman might only greet each other verbally. I don't offer my hand (to shake hands) with a man. I wait and see if he extends his hand to me. Some men shake hands with women and some men prefer not to. This is also about being ritually clean for prayer. Even the concierge in our apartment building, who does the shopping for us, takes money out of my fingers without touching my fingers and puts the money in the palm of my hand without touching my hand. This is not meant to be insulting, quite the reverse it's a compliment and shows respect. Some taxi drivers try it on by deliberately flicking their fingers over my palm when giving me my change. This is the opposite behavior, and disrespectful.   

Many times I have been in clothing shop and the sales assistant has tried to interest me in something that I would never want to buy. I used to say, ‘oh well you know I don't really like the color’, ‘I don't really like that style’, etc. This way of talking is very British! I eventually realized the best way to stop a sales assistant from trying to push me to buy something that I really don't like is to say, ‘my husband doesn't like (leopard skin prints, glitter T-shirts, etc)’.  At first it made me angry that my word was not taken seriously but as soon as I mentioned my husband sales assistant backs off…. and then with time I realized that this all carries a different meaning here. Decisions made by husband and wife and the shared life of a husband and wife are given an importance which maybe has been lost a bit in Western Europe. Its quite normal that a husband’s preferences are given importance, isn’t it? But I doubt very many British women say that directly to a shop assistant. Culture…

One day I was talking to a taxi driver whose daughter won a place at a university in a city about 90 minutes from Istanbul. He requested his wife to move to the other city with their daughter. They rented an apartment for the two of them there so the wife could keep an eye on the daughter and make sure that she didn't get into any bad habits or hang out with the wrong kind of friends. He continued to work as a taxi driver in Istanbul for four years until his daughter finished university. This is considered totally normal. I know many families who moved to a new city, sometimes even retiring from their previous jobs, in order to be able to look after they university-aged children. Children are watched over until they are married, especially girls. The idea that for example UK families allow their children to go off to university and share a flat with other students, possibly even with male and female students in the same flat (!) Is considered quite bizarre by most people in Turkey. Not everyone, mind, but many!”

This is just one small area where the trainers may experience a bit of culture shock.... and of course there are many more.

Parochial care:

We try hard to provide support to trainers even if they are not close by. Using email, text messages and phone calls we try to maintain direct lines of communication. We give SIM cards to one trainer in each group so we can reach them. We also appoint a key contact person in their school who should follow them and help them with their questions. 

This year we called each person in the schools but I think for next year we should produce a booklet in English and Turkish for the key contact people where we outline the typical issues that come up and explain what we would like them to do. (This has been added to my to-do list)

Next.... we will consider the support and parochial care teachers need to benefit fully from a professional development course.