First date with a new group – by Agi Enyedi

Is it a blind date?

After 2 CTS courses (one in Istanbul and one in Kyrgyzstan) I still feel a little in the dark when it comes to preparing for a new one. It’s exciting, as if someone set you up for a blind date, where you don’t know what to expect, how to greet or what present to take. Perhaps you’ll find that you need to change your hairstyle after the first hellos or that you have chosen the wrong dessert… The only thing that you can be sure of is that you’ll meet great people, devoted teachers and you as a trainer will learn as much from the experience as the teachers in the group. 

So who did I meet through the CTS courses?

When the participants arrive they do not always know what to expect. Some of them may have been told as much as that they must take part in some kind of lecture. About half of them have never participated in any in-service training before. A few may be novice teachers, freshly out of the training institute with minimal teaching experience. At the other end of the scale there was the teacher who proudly showed us about a dozen certificates from various courses, all kept neatly in a ring binder, waiting to be admired. A very mixed lot, indeed.

You can find out about your participants by doing a quick 'wants' analysis, like we did using 'the suitcase' activity. 

If you want to try out this activity with a group, we are going to post our own version in the next few days. 

CTS is the type of course where you can take away as much as you are ready to put in. So, naturally, the more experienced teachers may have a stronger sense of professional development than the ones who are still trying to find themselves as teachers and aim to play safe in the classroom.  They have a lot at stake when they do the microteaching, they can easily lose face in front of their more experienced colleagues. 

How can one approach such a mixed lot then?   

My number one suggestion is: let the participants learn from each other. Whatever they can share has a huge significance because their experience comes from the context all of them share. That's one reason why creating opportunities for group work is so important on a CTS courses. 

For the same reason, it’s important to make good use of the Rules and Expectations session on the first day, and make it a rule that participants must share ideas and no ideas will be rejected without thinking twice. If the classroom becomes a safe professional environment, it is easier to accept that they can experiment with techniques they never tried before; it’s less risky to come out of their comfort zones, to give and accept feedback on what they have done or to reflect on what they have learnt. Anette's group made the visual below in the Rules and Expectations session: 

This kind of experiential learning is possibly new for most teachers. Even if the contact persons in the schools pass on the basic information to them about the CTS course (not everyone does…), the kind of learning these teachers are familiar with and are good at is knowledge-based, it is done with a trainer with a high status.  The constant changing of roles in the classroom (being a student trying out an activity then being a teacher reflecting on the experience then a colleague giving feedback) needs openness to adventures but also a sense of security. Once this is established in the first few days, the rest of the course is much easier. This process of 'Attunement', as Daniel Pinker calls it, helps teachers see an issue from more than one point of view.  And without seeing  'why' there is not much reason to focus on the 'how'. 

What did I learn?

One thing I became very aware of was the devotion and the hard work these teachers put into their teaching. Expectations are high and students in these schools are often tried and tested in competitive situations. Teachers need to motivate them but also need to motivate themselves. Some of my participants had brilliant teaching ideas but needed to be reinforced that yes, they can break away from the course book at times and they are on the right track in changing their teaching techniques in response to their students’ needs.

Another important thing I discovered was that participants in CTS courses will be very unlikely to openly question an idea; they will listen, even pay lip-service to some novel thoughts but these ideas will take a long time to find their way to their everyday practice. So it is very important that, like in a real training situation, it is not the trainer but the participants who justify a certain practice, phrase the underlying principles or consolidate the learning outcomes.

The most memorable end-of-course ideas I collected so far were “I found myself as a teacher” and “I can see now how to stay happy in my job”. These are pretty good take-aways after two weeks and I’m looking for more such encounters.

And it's not just our idea - Kristina's response 

In fact all of these ideas fit into models of professional development/growth for teachers we find in the literature. Kathy Dyer in her post for the Teach.Learn.Grow blog says, “there are four critical elements that help make teacher professional learning meaningful and worthwhile”.

1. Choice: Teachers should be able to make choices within a framework.

On CTS courses we have a basic framework of sessions that were developed to answer the most pressing points arising from hundreds of observed lessons with primary and secondary school English teachers in our context.

At the beginning of the course (while the groups are doing sessions on group dynamics, setting rules and expectations and classroom management) trainers are busy creating a supportive atmosphere where participants can identify and talk about their needs. These conversations continue in tutorials after microteaching. There, trainers help teachers to identify areas they want to explore in their teaching. Four rounds of microteaching mean many opportunities for teachers to make choices they consider relevant.

In the final session of the course, the group discusses ways to continue professional development. The trainer helps each participant set up their own action plan for the months ahead.

2. Flexibility: The opportunity to move away from what teachers usually do in order to learn new skills or try new activity types.

During input sessions they see the trainers using the techniques. Teachers analyse the techniques and can ask questions about them.

Teachers get to experiment in a safe environment, away from the students, in the microteaching parts of our course. 

3. Incremental steps: We should remember that making changes in professional practice takes time and may come in small steps. Lots of small steps can equal big change!  

Over two weeks we typically can fit in four rounds of microteaching which gives teachers time to become aware of their teaching and make small, incremental changes that add up to a more satisfying experience for them and for the students. 

Typically teachers improve on using more pair and group work, involving the learners more, creating relevant presentations and practice activities, giving clearer instructions and more focussed feedback.

4. Supportive accountability: Teachers will learn better when they are accountable both to themselves and their colleagues on the course. 

Our groups bond well and support each other well.  Participants learn to reflect on their aims and how effectively they worked towards them. They receive feedback from peers and the trainers. 

Change

Change is hard. Changing what you do means unlearning one thing and learning something new in its place. These are two separate steps! 

Extra reading: 

If reflective practice is new for you, there are some ideas for getting started on the Teaching English website. 

This article with '21 Simple Ways to Improve Student Motivation' mentions all the points in this blog post and more. We work through and recycle and model these ideas continuously on our CTS courses.