Learn to Train, Train to Learn by Dave Dodgson

There was a time many years ago when I was a complete novice in the world of ELT, about to start work at a dershane in Turkey with nothing more than a Trinity Cert TESOL in my hand. I was very much aware (with the point having been reiterated many times during the training course) that I still had a lot to learn. I had been told that this would come with experience of being in the classroom, shadowing senior teachers, attending workshops, and so on.

So, I was aware that I needed to learn how to be a good teacher and I was keen to do so. However, looking back now with the benefit of hindsight, I can see a major flaw in that early eagerness – I assumed that after a certain period of time, maybe a couple of years, maybe more, I would become an expert. After that, everything would be easy, I would know all I needed to know, and I would be officially good at my job. 

Luckily with time I realised that this was not the case. Far from it, I started to realise that teaching is a profession in which I would always be learning, developing, and becoming better at what I do. I understood that there would be no end to this cycle and that would be a good thing. Becoming a better teacher is truly a case of valuing the journey over the destination. 

And so, fast forward to the very recent past, with me finding myself in Almaty, Kazakhstan about to lead a teacher training course for the first time. I had led many workshops before as well as some one-day training sessions but this would be my first ever extended training programme. Once again, I was a novice with plenty to learn. However, this time I was also aware that this learning process is one that will continue as long as I work as a teacher trainer. I was also aware that my ‘critical learning moments’ could come at the most unexpected times from the most unexpected sources. Of course, I benefitted greatly from working with two such experienced trainers as Krzysztof Strzemeski and Kristina Smith but I also found I learned a lot from my group of trainees, despite the fact that the vast majority of them were novice teachers with nothing more than a few months of working experience to draw upon, and I would like to share some of the things I (re)learned from them in this post. 

posters with feedback from microteaching 

Be prepared

One area where my trainees struggled initially was lesson planning. Some of them didn’t see the point, others struggled to express their aims succinctly or identify stages of their lessons. Now, I’ll be honest with you – I haven’t written formal, detailed lesson plan in years. I try to enter the class with a general outline of what I want to do, an open, and a willingness to be flexible. And so, at first, I struggled too to help them plan lessons efficiently and effectively. And so, I decided on day two that I needed to plan my training sessions in a similar way – I sat down in my hotel room with a piece of paper and defined my aims, planned out the stages of the session, what my role would be in each stage and what the trainees roles would be, how I would organise groups and so on. This really helped me help them as I reminded myself of the process and what it is like to write a plan when you don’t have a lot of experience of being the teacher (or in my case, trainer).

Getting off to a strong start

Observing my trainees in their teaching practice, it really struck me just how important it is to get off to a strong start when teaching a lesson. The trainees who got everyone’s attention at the start of their micro-teaching sessions, and/or got everyone involved in a task quickly generally had more successful sessions than those who gave a long or hesitant introduction. By the second round of micro-teaching, I had my trainees start their sessions from outside the room so they had to make an entrance rather than just get up from their desks. This helped them focus on giving off positive body language signals, getting their students’ attention, and starting the lesson with a routine and/or student-based activity. It also forced me to think about how I start off my lessons and whether or not I follow my own advice! 

Demonstrate-repeat-review-repeat-review...

The ‘classroom context’ in Almaty was, of course, very much different to what I am used to. I have worked with young learners in Turkey for many years and have trained in-service (mainly private) school teachers as well. But now, my group of ‘learners’ were student teachers who had either just graduated or were soon to graduate. However, some things stay the same despite the differing contexts. Just as my students in Turkey need time to practice and use simple language structures, my trainees in Kazakhstan needed some time to get used to implementing basic classroom ideas like T-P-S (Think-Pair-Share). We did this through a cycle of demonstration as I modelled the idea, repetition as they tried to reproduce what I had done, and review as we focused on what was done well and what needed improving. We then repeated this cycle, each time getting closer to the goal of my trainees doing it without input or support. It struck me that this is the same cycle my primary school students go through with new language and the same cycle I go through with self-reflection – some learning practices are universal whatever the age group and context. 

Some ideas I’d like to try out in the classroom

And then, of course, there were some ideas I saw when my trainees were micro-teaching and thought ‘hmm, nice idea – why didn’t I think of that?’ and they are as follows:

·    Emailing resources – with only an input session at the end of the day and perhaps the evening to plan, it was difficult for my trainees to prepare hand-outs and photocopies for use in micro-teaching. One group hit on the idea of emailing the images they wanted to use in their lesson to the other participants ahead of the lesson. As they all had smartphones and tablets, that meant they all had easy access to the materials. I started to do this too as I emailed the hand-outs and notes to go with each day’s sessions to the trainees in advance – a great way to preview, be organised and save paper!  

·      Poster paper – I came to the sessions armed with poster paper. We made rules and stuck them on the wall, we kept track of what had been done well and what needed to be worked on in teaching practice day-by-day, and we displayed the results of group work. But then one day I came to the room ahead of micro-teaching to see some poster paper on the board – it turned out that day’s first group had prepared the board in advance and covered up information they wanted to save for later. The next day, another group stuck up four blank pieces of paper around the class thus giving each group their own personal ‘board’ for a group discussion activity. They then brought the papers up to the board for easy comparison of ideas. Simple but effective.

·      Making a learning moment out of making pairs – I showed various ways to make pairs and groups, stressing the need to mix things up and get different students working together instead of just having the same partner all the time. Most of the methods I showed were random but one teaching pair surprised me by combining making pairs with pre-teaching vocabulary! They handed out 6 words from a text they had chosen and 6 definitions on strips of paper and asked everyone to get up and match the words and meanings together, thus finding partners for the next activity at the same time. 

I made sure I told all my trainees these things at the end of the course. This was not just to encourage them by saying I liked their ideas but also to help them realise that we are always learning and we can learn from those with more experience than us or from those with a fresh outlook. Most importantly, we can also learn from our students (and trainees) and we should always be open to doing so.