I’ve come to the end of the TESOL Diploma course now and what a year it has been. I never thought I’d be spending the last two months of the course in lockdown because of a global pandemic, but it seems the 21st century keeps throwing curveballs at mankind!

When I began the course, I wrote about a ‘knowledge gap’ to bridge. It’s important to keep learning in any profession but particularly in teaching and I have learnt a lot over the past nine months. It’s particularly satisfying to rekindle my joy of learning for its own sake, as that is probably the greatest pleasure of education.

The module in Language Awareness with Simon Wilkinson helped to cement my linguistic knowledge and covered some areas that I knew very little about, especially analysis at clause and phrase level, as well as a better knowledge of phonetics.

The methodology module was probably my favourite module of this course. I particularly enjoyed Paul Slater’s classes and really enjoyed grappling with different perspectives on teaching and the discussions these prompted in class. Studying alongside a lot of very passionate teachers has been a highlight. Teachers such as Jack, Adam, Nico, Jo, Jane, Rossa and others have all inspired me in different ways.

It has been very useful in the module assessments to investigate more deeply the issues that Arabic learners have in ESL. These students make up the bulk of my classes at present and I have feel I have gained a broader and deeper knowledge of the challenges they face as a result of my research for the methodology and second language acquisition modules.

I said in my opening statement that I considered my strengths to be an ability to entertain and activate classes but I realise that is me on a good day, not every day. It was quite a chastening experience to video myself on a bad day when students had not done their homework and there were discipline issues in class. We can’t be balls of energy all the time but this uncomfortable truth prompted me to evaluate the effort I was putting in to activating classes, and I was pleased with the results in following classes.

I have grown in confidence as a specialist in writing and EAP through this year. I was particularly pleased with my second teaching observation in which I focused on teaching paragraphs and counter arguments. I felt in full flow in that class and in my element. However, it has also been positive to gain a better understanding of other areas of ESL. I feel I have a more solid knowledge of teaching vocabulary. I recall in particular the peer observation of a colleague at the college, which I considered a model lesson in teaching and developing vocabulary usage.

The materials module has been particularly interesting. As a writer and author I’ve always had an interest in writing materials and have developed some of my own over the years. This module and the lesson observations enabled me to take a far more critical view of both textbooks and when, how and why to supplement and modify them. I am particularly interested in materials that help to scaffold knowledge. I’m also mindful that I have used too many materials in one class on occasion. I recall an observation by my manager over a year ago when I gave students no less than six handouts! The observation of my colleague teaching vocabulary was particularly eye-opening because he used just one handout and built on it over the course of an hour. Doing more with less is a solid teaching principle in my view.

I want to continue to challenge myself to improve in areas I am less strong. I know I can teach higher levels well and I know I’m strong at writing, study skills and communication skills. I’m less experienced in recent years with intermediate levels and below and it’s been good to rediscover the value of all those nuts and bolts that I learnt in my CELTA many years ago: eliciting, drilling, checking for understanding and in particular, knowing when to correct. I am aware of my tendency to over-correct and also my tendency to overload students and move too fast. Being aware of your own shortcomings is important and a first step to working on them.

An issue for me on this course has been that I strongly dislike being observed. I have discovered though that I mind far less when I know the person well, and felt far less nervous for peer observations than assessed course observations. It’s unfortunate that I often don’t show the real me in lesson observations because I feel a need to stick to a lesson plan and not improvise. This improvisation is a strength of my teaching but I haven’t shown it much in observations. In a class immediately after an observation I did a lot of improvisation including a spontaneous introduction of teaching and drilling pronunciation pairs when a student had trouble distinguishing between ‘want’ and ‘won’t’. This kind of spontaneity would be less likely to happen in lesson observations. There’s little I can do about that, and it doesn’t necessarily need to be documented in an assessment for me to know what works and what doesn’t. I can reflect on that myself.

I acknowledged in my opening statement that taking on this course would be a big challenge alongside two jobs at university and being a single parent of two children. It has proved to be challenging but until the Covid 19 crisis, I felt I was balancing things quite well. My tutors gave me some flexibility and I kept my schedule clear enough to do the necessary work. The biggest challenge has come since lockdown happened and I found myself struggling with getting to grips with teaching online in the middle of a pandemic with my children at home and all the demands of home life. This definitely affected the quality of my final two teaching observations. It’s a little unfair to have to tackle mastery of online teaching from a standing start while being assessed, but we live in unprecedented times that nobody could have foreseen. I can be quite hard on myself with high expectations so I need to take a step back and appreciate that I’ve done well to do the course full-time in far from ideal circumstances.

Overall, considering the current situation, I am pleased with a merit in my lesson observations. Two out of four classes went very well and the other two were strong passes. I feel I could have aimed higher if lockdown had not happened with all the accompanying stress and upheaval. I probably would have submitted a fifth lesson, but it can’t be helped. 65% was my target grade for teaching practice and I was pleased to achieve this more than once.

One of the most eye-opening pieces of feedback I have received on the course was following my second lesson observation, which went well overall. My tutor Paul mentioned that I was working very hard, perhaps too hard, and I should get my students working harder.

That was a lightbulb moment for me. I have been university lecturing for a long time and I have a tendency to take over proceedings. Especially when I’m being observed I’m putting in a lot of effort in classes. This is all very well but am I sometimes working very hard and not demanding or allowing the students to work as hard as they can? After all, it’s the students who need to be working. I am teaching them but the main aim is to facilitate learning.

I realise that, being schooled in the communicative approach, I place a lot of emphasis at times on the class being interactive, busy and full of life, when there is a crucial place at university level for students getting their heads down and doing the work – planning speeches, studying long texts, researching and drafting essays. I also realise that a cornerstone of the communicative approach is to reduce Teacher Talking Time (TTT), so I need to keep an eye on that in particular.

Now I am teaching online, I’m particularly aware of how hard I’m working and my enjoyment levels  dropped initially. I’m starting to bounce back now I realise I need to get my students working harder, both for my own wellbeing, but especially because that is what they need to do. So the conclusion on this point is: less TTT from me, and more facilitating. This could be the most important of my transformative reflections.

I finish the course grateful to have learnt a lot but also keen to learn more. That’s the way it should be.