Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

6.15 am alarm goes. Stretched, looked out the (open) window at the tall gleaming glass skyscraper reminding me I was not in Belfast.  7 am Jorge calls. Jaime barks ar me saying he’d arrived and I got up and splashed my face, still dozy. I had left some of my washthings behind and Jorge gave them to me and I climbed back up the two flights of stairs to be able to wash properly. I downed some cereal with milk and was walking out the door, apple in hand, at 7.17. Driving through the cool morning air of Santiago with Jorge at the wheel I started tto feel more alert. We got to the school, picking up Nick again at O’Higgin’s Park, well in time for the first lessons at 8.30. However in a scene eerily reminiscent of the “good old bad old days” back home in Northern Ireland, we were stopped and questioned at a military vehicale checkpoint. I suddenly felt slightly illegal, going to work in Chile as I still had no work visa. Apparently however that was OK up to 3 months. After that I was liable for a hefty fine.

There was not much to report as it was Friday and people seemed to be winding down. I spent most of the day in the office preparing material for classes and went for the odd walk around the corridors of the anti-seismic building.

 Saturday 16th March 2002.

I tried to work my way through a to-do list in the morning - to buy myself a cheap computer, to return to the airport for my (consiscated) penknife and find a doctor. So I found myself trying to figure out how to say,”Como se dice-”went on a wild goose chase”?? This after a fruitless journey to and from a second hand compuer shop I’d spied. I bought a kebab off a woman at Franklin Metro station, amongst a huge throng og people.  I returned to the flat “tired and weary”.  I had a shower using the trickle emanating from between some old dirty tiles. The drainage wasn’t good either. Jaime had positioned the W/M to drain out into the plastic toilet.

 At 7pm, on cue, Jorge reappeared. He was looking very dapper - corduoroy jacket, shirt, tie, polished brogues. Plus a stack of beautifully clean, ironed clothes (mine).  However he wasn’t looking so dapper so we could hit the town. Ricardo, one of the other teachers at La Misions had suffered the loss of his mum during the week. We were going to her funeral mass. In the cool evening were stood a small huddle of teachers all showing their sympathy for their colleague. I sidled up and tried to offer my sympathies in as gentle and sensitive a way as I knew how. Everyone was very polite and friendly. Inside there was a huge crucifix at the front and the stations of the cross along the side. All looked suitably sombre. Some were dressed all in black. I wore the darkest shades I could find in my rucsac. Initially we all sat at the back. Then Jorge took the initiative and led us all up to the front. The sermon lasted about an hour and I was pleasantly surprised at the down-to-earth nature of the message and the lack of pomp and ceremony from the priest - something I was not expecting.

 Some time around 6.00 my alarm went and I rolled over.Mistake. By the time I finally got up and went into the kitchen it was 6.45. Jorge was on the phone saying “we leave at 7.”. Somehow I managed to down a hot chocolate, two small bits of bread and a tin if peaches (yes a whole tin!) and found myself in the jeep, in a daze, heading through the rush hour traffic in Santiago. At O’Higgin’s Park Nick was waiting for us. He was looking disturbingly fresh. He hopped in and the “conversation” continued, in Spanish. As daylight established itself and we reached the city limits and then the countryside (passing thousands of commuters on the bikes along the side of the Panamericana Highway), we found ourselves engrossed in conversation as only Latinos (and Irishmen!) can… Jorge confidently asserted that the Falklands were not the Falklands, they were the Malvinas and belonged to Argentina. What were the British ever doing there??? Feeling aggrieved, I tried to counter with the idea of democracy but it was a dialogue of the deaf. Outnumbered I tried to change the topic. My first taste of the Latin American sense of “outrage” over “colonialists”. Was this why he had asked me out here to work?? To vent some spleen over some centuries-old feeling of injustice at the hands of European settlers?? Charming!

  At least the all-female department weren’t so eager to right centuries of political wrongs in an angry chat during rush hour. At 8.30 I was with Paola again. Not very inpspiring, I rather felt she was clock-watching. I a;lso still didnt feel quite alert what with the peaches and the war argument on the way in. I was treated however to watching Carolina with tercero A. Another inspiring class as she used TPR and engaging tones with her class. They all responded well and I felt priviledged to have been a part of it. After that I watched Rebecca show the same video to another class. Slightly better delivery but I was trying hard not to yawn I have to say… Lunch. Then another treat - quarto A with Carolina.

Nick kindly showed me the bus stop and I travelled on, zombie-like, on the first bus that came along. It tok me to estacion central where I got a bus back to Casa Yoland for my remaining posessions (not sure why I didnt take them the day before but that’s what I’ve writtne in my diary!) I found myself cheerily packed and ready to go back to Jaime’s just before 6pm. Jorge rang offering a lift but I said not to worry I could get the bus. I struggled out manfully, bowed somewhat by a rucsac, plastic bag full of maths books and a sports bag, not to mention my guitar.    When I arrived at the bus stp the plastic bag broke! I struggled onto the bus with everything and somehow managed. Struggling off again at estacion central I wadled along the streets and off at Santa Lucia. Why were people always giving me drole looks? I got to the flat and had to wait a while as Jaime arrived at 6.50. I was shown into the flat again - paint flaking off the ceiling, no bin, no bed covers, an antiquated old bath with a shower attachment, old plastic toilet. But clean and tidy. I  made myself some noodles and. feeling parched, asked where the neares t shop was which sold drinks. Jaime gave me an empty Coke bottle and said, “Ask for a refill - it’s cheaper.”. He gave me directions to a shop which turned out to be wrong. The bottle was filfthy so I binned it and bought two cans instead. An old woman begged some money from me,”dinero por la comocion!” . “Yeah, like I need some money for this commotion too!!” I thought inwardly. As I was trained at an MAYC conference years before I offered her tea or coffee. She stormed off in disgust. My efforts to apologise and explain that I didn’t give out my money on the streets as it was too dangerous seemed to fall on deaf ears…I finally arrived back at the flat, ate something more substantial and had to go out again as I forgot to get milk and cereal so as to avoid peaches for breakfast… Glad to say I slept well.

The next day I sat in on Rebecca’s class as she used some of the resources from the department’s library. At first glance it seemed amazingly well-stocked. However I was to realise later that a lot of the books were the same ones in a series and a lot of them appeared to have been given as part of a “deal” with a particular publisher.

  The kids were duly quiet and listened to Rebecca as she started the video but her lack of familiarity with the material was woefully apparent not too far into the lesson.

  There followed another observation of Miss Paola’s class. Slightly better quality teaching in terms of engagement with the class however if I had any hopes of seeing her calling her pupils by their names they were soon dashed.

I got a lift with one of the other teachers back to Yolanda’s where I napped then headed in on the long journey into town to buy stationery and try and maintain some contact with civilisation as I knew it. On these journeys I got to know more of Chilean culture. On one of the trips I tried to practice my Spanish and engaged in conversation with a chap sat next to me. He became more interested when I mentioned I was from ”Irlanda”.  Turning to me with a face flushed with passion as only a South American face can be he growled,”And what about the revolution, eh??!” There was no answer to that.

On this occasion the fellow passengers weren’t so ready to trumpet their (ill-informed) views. I got my messages done and was sitting in a McDonald’s eating when I looked at my watch - 7.25pm. I realised with horror I’d said to Jorge I’d meet him back at Yolanda’s at 7.30!! In a mild panic I ran to the Metro, burger and coke in hand, caught the train then got the bus and arrived, panting, at 8pm (a new record!)

Jorge had just arrived back from  the school with Yolanda and they were both giggling.He informed me I had 2 minutes to leave. ”Oh, don’t worry, is good for you, no?” were the words he offered me. He had however noticed my predicament regarding living with Yolanda and Pedro and had kindly arranged for me to be transferred to an acquaintance’s flat in the city centre.

 On the way back into the centre he stopped at Plaza des Armas and said he was “going to shop”, and returned back with a huge bag of KFC. I managed to down some of it on top of my Big Mac, as we went back to his flat then on to the “new” flat. It was at the junction of Santa Rosa and Alhumeda. Up several flights of stairs. Quite a small room but large living room/dining area. Terracota floor that was covered in lots of loose tiles, banging together when you walk over them. Still it was with an old guy on his own and in that respect quieter, more central and better. Best of all he had his own internet connection which I was free to use! Jorge sat and chatted amicable with my new “landlord”, asking about his pictures (one of Allende), complimenting him on them and enquiring what price they were. Outside Jorge told me he’d no intention of buying them:”I hate pictures like that!”. However the guy seemed a thousand times more reasonable than Pedro the cowboy. Until I saw the toilet…

OK, so I got through the first week, still finding my way around the school and Santiago. On Monday of the second week I was told to go in and observe the other teachers in action. What I saw was a little scary at first - Miss Paola didn’t know any of the kids’ names and just shouted at them as “boy” or “girl”. It was very much “lead from the front”, telling the students what to read and when. However to my pleasant surprise she got a group up to do some drama and they all loved doing that and participated fully. It was an, erm “flowing” lesson…

On Tuesday I was expecting to be given my “job description” by Mónica. What it boiled down to was I had to co-manage the soon-to-be-opened Self-Access Study Centre and teach two regular classes. I sat in on Monica’s 7th basic class, admiring the contrast from yesterday - a slow, well-spoken calm classroom teacher. The students seemed to respond with due respect. After that I sat in on Rebecca’s 6th advanced class. Similarly respectful but a little (no, a lot) less colourful.

The department had a “reunión”, the first of many. To be polite, and for my benefit,they started and ended the meeting in English. However most of it (the important exchanges) were in Spanish and I couldnt help but feel I was missing out.  We tried to deal with how we could all share the small space that was te staff office, office drawers, evaluation sheets for the classes, Then Carolina piped up saying there were different criteria for different classes. There was a reference to buying English books for the new centre and I was able to contribute that I had asked friends at home to send videos and CDs for the same. I thereby felt somewhat useful.

I had been kindly given a book, “Dos Mundos”, for learning Spanish, by Yolanda. It was a brilliant book  - with a chapter on “La clase y los estudiantes”. If I had a lot of time to spend on it, it should have helped ,u Spanish immensely. However I was still somewhat jetlagged, not to mention culture-shocked. Yesterday I had been introduced to six classes and brought what papers I had been asked to to the school for my work permit. Jorge was also ringing several schools in the Santiago area, enthusiastically, for me to take Spanish lessons…I had been told two friends of his were to be at the school today from the States also - Tom and Guillermo (Bill), both bankers.  However when we got to school he told me no, he’d got mixed up, it was tomorrow. I had also arrived home after another trip into town to see Yolanda up on a chair in the kitchen, screaming. Reason? Mouse.

  I was told to do more observation by Mónica and prepare. She suggested I do some crosswords on The Discovery Site. When I was doing assignments on structures and operations and how to teach mathermatics this was not what I’d had in mind as a job afterwards…(!)  Tim and Bill arrived. Bill and Jorge embraced and kissed as only South Americans can and at one point I thought they were crying. We all sat in the school canteen while classes were on, having a meal as if we were honoured guests. It was a very pleasant meal and I almost forgot I was in a school English department. I think Tim was glad of some English speaking company, knowing as he did next to no Spanish. At least I was able to follow the conversation between Bill and Jorge. All those hours of studying, getting books from the local library and reading my sister’s old Spanish novels was now paying dividends. At the end of the meal I had to pinch myself when Jorge said, “I love you, Bill” and Bill replied, “I love you too” befoer parting. After this I had to meet a man called George and get a mobile phone for Chile (my own wouldn’t work on the South American waveband) as well as visa papers and my work contract. Getting visa papers entailed queueing in the Banco Santander in town for quite a long time. Many South Americans arrive in Chile to work, having as it does a relatively robust economy and I was now one of them. However if you have enough money it is not a problem. Fortunately for me the school was paying my visa. I remembered fillling in the landing card on the plane and telling them I was not there on holiday but to work. When I then joined a long que that was patrolled by burly, heavy security guards with alsations on leashes I thought I might be about to be out back on the next flight to Europe however I was waved through with no questions asked. It was only later watching a TV documentary at Jorge’s I realised the extent of the narcotics trade in South America and what the sniffer dogs and drug enforcement officers were up against. I needn’t have worried about my work visa however I also realised later that many enter the country that way and are caught out by one of the many army patrols when asked for their work visa and promptly fined a large amount for not having one!!

  Bernardita was the most senior female teacher at the school - a very jolly large spinster.She became like a mother figure to me and on telling her of my difficulty in sleeping last night with the noise and ants, compunded by waking with cramp she, alongwith Vivianna told me a cure they were convinced of : “Eat many bananas and mch fluids!”…

  I was having difficulty adjusting to the house where I’d been given a room. Yolanda was a teacher at the school but had separated from her husband (divorce was illegal in Chile, as in Ireland pre-1995). She lived with her boyfriend, Pedro, who seemed to think I was now his source of free at-home English lessons, not to mention translation of all his favourite pop songs; whatever happened to be playing on the radio on the way in to the school in the morning. Breakfast was a couple of pieces of unleavened bread, jam and tea.

At the school I had been shown the ropes by Jorge. He had a large office proudly displaying his many certificates of education, to masters level and beyond. The English Department turned out to be an all-female affair : the lovely (if inexperienced) Gloria, Head of Department and (5 years my junior). Hmmm. Then there was raven-haired Rebecca, with the steel-tipped high heels. Then there was Carolina, who spoke the best English, living as she had in the States for a long time, She was the best teacher I had ever seen of primary level children, playing songs to them and miming the actions as if her life depended on it. Brilliant! Next there was Miss Paola, who used to be a DJ. After a few days of being shown where things were, familiarising myself with the SSR and a  time spent together with the other teachers reading Scripture and praying for the new term, she was the one who “checked” my opening “speech” to the kids of primero media.

In my best Belfast brogue(s) I stepped forward on a sunny Chilean morning and began. “Tengo mucho alegria de ser invitado de ensenyar al tu escuela despues de trabajo con el Rector (I had written “tu jefe” - this was one of the few corrections she made when I showed her my speech in the staff room), en Inglaterra. Ya he visto algo de tu pais - no va me olvidar nunca, pienso, tu sopa marinera (corrected to “paella marina”) ! Voy ser encargado sala audiovisual, es decir “SSR” (Self-study room) y allí espero voy ensenyar Inglés. Pienso que vamos aprender mucho y si vaís trabajar duro - mejorar mucho vos Inglés y yo mi Espanyol!

Pienso que aqui vos me llame “Gringo”. Bueno, soy de Reino Unido - soy nativo “Inglés” pero tambien de Irlanda - país de muchas batallas, historias, peliculas, canciones y musica - por consiguente pedais aprender mucho de cultura de mi país, como yo apriendo de lo vos. Gracias.

Welcome readers throughout the globe. Welcome to my blog on teaching English as a second or other language.

By way of introduction, I am a 37-year old teacher. My route into TESOL was via teaching GCSE and A-level mathematics initially. Whilst a secondary mathematics teacher in the West Midlands of England, I chanced upon one Don Jorge Farias, Rector of Colegio La Misión, a private Roman Catholic High School in Region Metropolitana of Chile. 2 years after being subjected to a prolonged recruitment campaign spearheaded by Don Farias I agreed to travel to South America and work as a teacher in the English Department of his school. There I taught classes of 15-20 pupils who were 15/16 years old.

In addition I was involved in setting up and managing a self-access language lab for the whole school, a unique room since it had 5 corners…

I returned to Europe in late 2002 to gain my first qualification in teaching English, the Cambridge RSA CELTA and found myself teaching, in my first European TEFL job, at the Paul Sprake School in Saragossa, Aragon, Spain, in early 2003.  There I taught groups of adults general English, classes of adults on the Cambridge First Certificate course, children aged 7 to 11 and “business English” in the HIAB plant on the outskirts of Saragossa.

I progressed from there to Servicios Idiomas Burgalesas, in the neighbouring northern Spanish city of Burgos. There I first encountered CALL on a large scale in TEFL. I taught smaller groups of general English, a group of unemployed people on the INEM project and business classes at a Panaderia, a local machining firm and a car components firm.

Following that I had my first experience of TESOL in the UK. That was with Stafford House in Edinburgh at one of their summer schools. There I taught classes of 12 students from 12 to 20 years. It was also my first experience of multilingual classes and I found it a little bewildering initially, however not so much as to put me off working in Edinburgh again in 2005 and 2006.

In late 2004 I made the decision,soon after the enlargement of the EU to 25 countries, to head east. I had been offered a job in the “Trojmiasto” (”Tri-city”) of Gdansk, Sopot and Gdynia and made contact via a church in Belfast, with a young pastor who had just moved to the outskirts of Gdansk. I started teaching in the Tri-city and during my first year in Poland taught various groups including :

-general English classes of up to 14 adult students

-first certificate classes of up to 14

-classes of up to 14 teenagers

-weekend classes of adults in Sopot

-business classes in MOLEX and ELE

-individuals

-young children as part of a community/church project

I returned to Poland in 2005 and worked briefly in Katowice teaching business people and general English with Profi-Lingua before being sent to Krakow where I worked until early 2006 and I continued with business English groups however this time with Motorola.

I moved to Warsaw in February 2006 where I worked teaching children again in a specialist English school for children, in an accountancy firm called TMF and with Matura English students.  In September of that year I began work on the MA Applied Linguistics and TESOL and am still working on that.

In 2007 I taught groups of office workers at a contruction firm called WAR-BUD and started free-lance teaching for a wide range of individuals from nurses and banking officials to foreign children living in Warsaw. Whilst I cntinued to teach groups until May 2007, after this I concentrated on individuals (including in businesses such as Tesco Polska)and doing some research for the MA.

In 2008 I began using new technologies such as Skype to teach people in Poland and England whilst based in Ireland. I am to return to classroom teaching in June this year.

Welcome to my blog!

I remember during many long weeks of lonely assignment writing and anxious pressurised teaching placements I was in the computer room at The School of Education in Birmingham University when I saw a group of men and women who seemed to have a darker tan than the average Brummie might get on a Spanish holiday. Not only that they were also conversing in Spanish! I decided this was a chance to practise my own Spanish (I learnt it when my folks had an apartment on the beautiful island of Menorca and I ran around with 2 bilingual kids). These people seemed pleasantly  surprised to have a fluent, if broken, Spanish speaker befriend them. I had my first taste of Chilean friendship and hospitality - within a few days I was walking round to the group’s flat, at their insistence, for supper together. There I had a Chilean rice and chicken dish as they showedme pictures of snow-capped volanoes, beauiful lakes, desert plains and the enchanting Andes Mountains. This group of headmasters were on an exchange to the UK where they were updating themselves on the latest pedagogical trends and developments in educations.  I exchanged my email addy with the chef, Jorge, and soon after he was inviting me to come out to his country and teach English. At first I was flattered but didn’t give it serious thought. However 2 years later, he was still asking…

   I had decided, very reluctantly, to leave the secondary PGCE course in the final placement school, after a series of problems and had returned to my native Belfast to look (unsucessfully as it turned out) for work.   My father had suffered a massive stroke that nearly killed him earlier that year, and I found myself torn between staying to help my mother and this clear call to go to exotic and intrigueing South America. Hard choice? Well, once my mother gave the green light it didn’t take me long to book my flight to Santiago, put it that way.

  It was the longest plane journey I had ever been on. There were 4 flights to get there - Belfast-London, folowed by London-Frankfurt, Frankfurt-Buenos Aires then Buenos Aires to Santiago. 13 1/2 hours on a Jumbo in the penultimate leg, sitting next to a backpacking Israeli teenager who I found rather hard to engage in conversation.

  The welcome I got in Santiago from Jorge was that  of a long lost brother. He had arrived with another teacher from his school and enthusiastically drove me off through the streets of Santiago. I had my first real experience of the sights and sounds of South America. And what an experience! This was a total other world to me. Alive, bustling with expresssion and colour and heat. Latino America! I was in at the deep end too. After the excitement of seeing the mixture of Hispanic and native indian faces on the street and the excited talk in Spanish from the driver and passenger, who was also my landlady I was brought down to earth when shown my room - cold concrete floor and one small window (with bars). Tin roof but it was so warm it felt like cavity wall nsulation would be a waste…