Sarah Jones' Diary

Well.....where do I start? Have just come back from first night of course -bizarre! Course tutor was small, blonde (probably dyed - could see the roots) woman called Jen. Definitely not what I expected - her or the course.

We all trooped into this room, which was clearly signposted, but thought we were in the wrong place. Nothing was ready - the chairs and tables were stacked against the wall, beamer and projector not connected, nowhere to put our coats - it was chaos. Remember thinking that HP would have a coronary if we were that disorganised in our centre.

Anyway, we are all standing there like idiots and without so much as an introduction. Only person I knew was Lars. Thought of suggesting to him that we cut our losses and went off to the pub instead. Funny, I’d never noticed he looked like Homer Simpson before.

Then her-with-the-roots says to us we are going to be working mainly in small groups of 4 or 5, with some input sessions for her and please will we organise the furniture and the room so that we feel comfortable in it. What a cop out, I thought, just because she didn’t get there early enough to do it herself.

Well, we shuffled things about a bit, got chatting to a nice machine knitting lady who carried a table with me and we ended up with little clusters of chairs around a table a bit like a cafe. (Quite proud of this - this arrangement actually worked rather well. Maybe I’ll try it with my lot - make a change from having them in a circle.)

So then she, Jen, (only we didn’t know her name at that point) says to us

“How do you actually feel right now? What are you thinking?

How have you been feeling since you got here?”

Bit of a silence, which didn’t seem to bother her, but then people started calling things out and she wrote it all on a flipchart.

People were saying stuff like
“really nervous”
“apprehensive”
“worried”
“excited”
“curious”
“wondering where I fit in - will the others be better than me or worse than me?”
“who are all these people? Will I like them? Will they like me? Are they going to be really boring or a bit of fun?”

Which is more or less what I was feeling really.

Then she said “Well, guess what, that’s exactly how your students will be feeling at the beginning of your course.” I suppose they would really.

Then the next question was about what we were worried about - could we identify the barriers? What was going to stop us learning? 

That was a bit harder but came up with quite a long list on the flipchart.]

“worrying whether I’m going to pass or fail”
“my husband has just been made redundant and I might have to give up and look for an extra evening class to teach”
“it’s ages since I did any formal learning and I think I’ve forgotten how to”
“my English might not let me keep up with the discussions - especially if people are too fast” (that from Lars - must remember not to be too fast....)
“I might not always be able to get a baby sitter on a Monday night”

Which, as she pointed out, were all things that were probably barriers for our students too. Hmmm. S’pose.

Went on to say that a lot of the course would be about developing our reflective skills and developing an empathy with students’ experience – like getting inside their heads

Then we had a sort of debriefing on how we had felt about the exercise. I said I was a bit shocked when I walked in but moving furniture round had been quite good for breaking the ice. Other people felt the same.

Jen said there was a more serious point to it, which was really IMPORTANT TO REMEMBER! (Think I’ll have to write these Very Important Points in bold or something – will make revising easier).

What she said was that all too often teachers did not involve their students in making any decisions about how their course is run but then right at the end the teacher tries to involve them in the evaluation process and asks them to make decisions about whether the course was any good. Well obviously, if this is the first time they have been asked for their opinions, they’ll be a bit shocked and a bit tongue-tied. So… involving students in decision making early on in learning process is a prerequisite to involvement at the evaluation stage and proof that the teacher is taking the involvement process seriously.

VILP: You cannot expect students to engage with the evaluation process and contribute useful suggestions if they have had no previous experiences of making decisions about how the course is run and no opportunities to practice expressing their ideas about the processes.

Or in my words, you have to give them lots of chances to express their ideas about how things should be organized from the very beginning so that when you get to the evaluation bit they are used to doing it.

OK – Think I’ve got that. Seems quite logical really.

(She also said giving students something to do in the first few minutes gave the teacher a bit of breathing space to see what they were all like. Sneaky.)

Then she asked what would make us feel better right now so we said knowing people’s names.

So each group had to think of a way of doing that and then try it out. We were rubbish and told everyone to put their names on a sheet of paper in front of them. One group said talk to a partner for two minutes then introduce them. Another group made everyone say their name and one thing about themselves (I’m Sara and I’m trying to stop smoking) then the next person repeated the previous one(s) and added theirs. Like I’m Lars and I have 3 children [DAMN], she’s Magda and comes from Bucharest, she’s Sara and is trying to stop smoking’ etc etc. Was OK except I was nearly at the end of the circle! Another group got us to throw a jumper around between people and shout out the name of the person we were throwing it to.

Then we had a break and had to introduce ourselves on video. This was another weird bit. Jen says she is going to use the course as the basis for an e-learning programme. Asked us if we'd mind if some of the sessions were videoed as well. Funny, she doesn't look the sort who would know how to turn a computer on (in fact I was wrong. She got her computer out later. But she had a furry print cover from it and carried it in her handbag. How tasteless!). Don't mind the video myself (although noticed some of the others disappeared the moment the camera came out). I was a bit nervous. But not half as bad as Jenny. She just said "Hullo my name is Jenny and I am the teacher on the course". Then she ran. And it was her idea. But the video is another thing to worry about - going to have to find time to do my makeup before class. Still, Jenny did say I had have a copy of all the videos to use on my blog. You can watch a copy of the introductions here.

Other thing she says is that she's going to put up the things on a flipchart on a wiki. Then we can go back and add to them afterwards. Now that makes sense. But wonder how she knows about all these things. Bet its that Magda telling her how. She seems a geeky type.

(Didn't really believe her. But I've just got an email from her and she's done it. She's done a short introduction page telling us how to create an account and she's made separate pages for the Learners' Hopes and Fears and for Barriers to Learning. She's made it so that we can go into the wiki and add extra ideas. I'm impressed - didn't think she would work so quickly.

Then we did an exercise in groups where we had to make two lists – called Hopes and Fears about the course and looked at the lists and talked about whether the list would look the same if our students did it which was Ok. You can see the Hopes and Fears video here.

Then we got the only real bit of teaching for the night on something called Johari’s window. She gave us a handout on Joharis Windows so we could use t with our own students (these handouts could be useful even if the course is crap). Anyway what you have to do is look at each square and think of your students’ needs and work out what goes in what square or something – like I thought of smelly Ken. He needs to know how to cook for himself now his wife has died – he told me. I think part of why he comes is because he’s just lonely but of course he wouldn’t tell me that. Then I know he needs to think a bit more about how he looks (and smells!) but he obviously doesn’t realize he’s got a B.O problem and no one ever works on the same table! Then there must be stuff going on neither of us are aware of which can be the dodgy bit so we need to think about making that as explicit as possible. At least, I think that’s the gist of it.

After that there was just some general stuff about the course – how it was going to be structured and what principles it was going to be based on and what the learning objectives were. Had a hand out on this! I've added all the handouts to the bottom of this blog entry.

The biggest thing I remember was that she said there was going to be no role playing – thank God! I hate role playing. Then we had a bit of a chat about the advantages and disadvantages of using live material vs simulated experience vs reported experience vs role play on trainer training courses which was quite interesting. Except the only bit I remember was something about ‘reflexivity’ which apparently means “Walking the talk” – like the deal is we are real adult students on a real course the same as our students so we can use this course as a case study to “capture the here and now, generalize some principles and apply the to our own teaching environment”. Doh! Then there was another load of stuff on the “ importance of shared learning experiences”. It was all a bit jargony for me so I switched off.

Anyway, the one bit that stuck in my brain (must have woken up for a minute) was

“If you cannot evaluate your own learning effectively, who the hell do you think you are telling others how to evaluate their learning.”

Spiky bitch.

The other bit I remember is we were drifted into talking about teaching in general and she reckoned teaching was about making informed decisions rather than following rules and prescriptions and knowing what the strategic decision making points were and what were the options available and which do you select - and when - and knowing what you have selected out. Dee dah, dee dah.. Then the usual stuff on ‘there’s no right or wrong – just appropriate and inappropriate’ - yeah, right, - try telling my head of department that.

Last going off we had a sort of timetable which was a bit wooly and very weird – more a flow diagram of what might happen with arrows and cartoons and thought bubbles. Very pretty but can imagine the reaction if I handed in something like that! J saw we were a bit sceptical about this and said she believed that

“students want an overview of the learning process they are embarking on - they can cope without detail as long as they have direction.”

Yeah. If you say so.

Oh – just forgot! We have to keep a log book of our experiences which can be done any way we chose …….so my blog it is!!