Teacher teachered

Image by Gerd Altmann in Pixabay

It’s been quite a while since I don’t write something here. Well, it’s maybe because last months have been kind of a mess. I’ve come back to the classroom and you can think, oh, cool, María couldn’t wait to say bye to the furlough she was in since March 2020. And that’s true, but I’ve come back as a student, not as a teacher. After 16 years of teaching, I’m officially learning how to teach. It may sound easy-peasy but it’s harder than I thought. 

The first thing you may find weird is that I’m writing in English… sorry to my followers who don’t get it, but this is a task for one of my classes, I had to write a blog entry and I couldn’t waste my ratitopami because this master is a big ratitopami. When all the Covid stuff broke out I saw myself about to be 39, with two kids, and with a really uncertain future as a teacher of Spanish for foreign people. We offer immersion programs, but our students couldn’t fly to immerse anywhere. It was time to think about a plan B: I could come back to my origins and be again an English teacher (those origins were only a couple of years in my 20s, though). But I wasn’t thinking about looking for a job in an academy, no way! That means working in the afternoons and being bad paid… no, I’m old as the hills for that kind of job. So, I needed this master so that if my school of Spanish can’t get over this situation, I can at least hand my CV over private or concertado schools. And that’s why this is a big ratitopami because I’m needing a lot of support from my husband and mom to be able to get everything done. They are giving to me tons of ratitospami… or pamymaster :)

And why did I say it’s harder than I thought? Well, basically it’s not easy to be a student when you have adult responsibilities. Time flies and, you know, time is gold. But I take this as teacher development because this is what I’m doing the most: developing myself. I thought that I knew English, and every day I learn a new word (‘scaffold’ was one of the latest). I thought that I knew a lot about Linguistics, and I have on my desk a book that reminds me all that I ignore, from A to Z. I thought that I knew how to prepare classes, and I realize that my lessons were outdated and didn’t take into account many important aspects such as diversity or learning styles. I thought that I know how to get along with students, colleagues, or administrators, but I wasn’t really conscious that in my context I didn’t have to deal with parents or inspectors, and that’s a big pressure for teachers. 

My professor compared teaching to driving, and I think it’s a very good comparison because there are many things that you can only acquire when you start doing it. We learn how to walk by walking, how to drive by driving, and how to teach by teaching. And I was at that point, in a comfortable position of someone who already knows how to walk but only with certain shoes. I've been teaching my native language for many years in small and big groups, at Secondary and University levels (and even kids, OMG it was so cool to teach the Crawford Family, kids and parents together!), to beginners and advanced students. But I have no idea of what step should I take at a public Spanish school as an English teacher. So, that’s the master for me: the scaffold (😊) to take one step and then the other in an unknown path that can lead me to new opportunities. 

I feel a bit Dorothy in her way to Emerald City through the yellow brick road. I’ve met my own scarecrow, tin man and lion who are some of my classmates, and we all walking together will get till the end of the road with more brain, more heart and more courage. Because that’s teacher development, the capacity for self-directed growth and professional well-being, but we can never walk alone (nor Liverpool supporters can either), we need the whole bunch of professors and classmates to work and grow together. 

But you know what is the most, most difficult part of all this growing? Dealing with legal documents. I had no training at all about that and to walk that road I’ll need to leave Dorothy’s red shoes aside and put on a good pair of sneakers. Why are they so complicated and sooooo long? Would it be simpler if laws, decreets and syllabi were a few pages rather than hundreds? Yes, of course yes. I’ll have to dive into that gibberish and do my best, because we want it or not, we have to jump through those hoops. I’m too used to work in non-regulated education where I can design my own syllabi having into account only the contents I want to teach, the time I have, and my students’ goals and interests. I don’t have to care about competences, criteria or standards. And for assessment I can do whatever fixes the group. So yes, I know that to stick to all these legal issues is gonna be a headache for me until I get used to them… I hope.

Oh, well, this is coming out too long for a blog entry and I have to say sorry to all of you who don’t give a monkey’s all this educational stuff and on top of that I’ve made you read all this in English. You can kill me, stop following my blog or take it as a reading practice, ha ha! I think I can’t stop being a teacher no matter what. If I listen to a song I’m thinking if I could use it in class to review the past tense or something, if I write a personal blog to tell you about my recovered status as a student, I end up saying this is a reading activity since most of you who read me are Spanish natives… But if I’m a teacher 24/7 it’s okay because this is what I’ve always wanted to be and what I’m trying to develop to my best.