Teacher Discussion Forums

:) I’m an Italian teacher of English ( I apologize for my non-native English!) and I’ m attending a two-year post-university training school for teachers ( basically consisting in a number of theoretical courses, together with actual training in real classes: the school name is SISS, that is Scuola di Specializzazione Interateneo per Insegnanti di Scuola Superiore…).I’m entering this discussion forum for two reasons: first of all, I was ‘obliged’ to do so by my tutor of the ICT course who asked us to try to partecipate to an international community (he suggested e-schoolnet communities…but they resulted to be rather a ‘waste land’…) – and here am I. The second reason is that, after reading some of discussion topic and the various interventions (don’t know whether this is the ‘right’ term: hopo you will understand anyway) I thought I could ‘exploit the occasion’ to ask native language teachers of English as a Foreign Language some questions related to the report I’m preparing for my final exam.
The report deals with the co-presence and co-teaching of an Italian teacher of English and a native speaker teacher in classes of English for high school students; the main problem is that, at the moment, there is often very little co-teaching and that native speaker teachers are mostly considered a sort of ‘technical support’ to the Italian teacher didactic choices and decisions and have very little freedom in proposing a different approach and different contents or materials. Some of us (teachers of English) consider this kind of ‘habit’ a terrific waste of all the potential professional and human resources that a native speaker teacher might bring within our classes and we are working for a different approach to become accepted, involving more cooperation and collaboration – and respect for the other and the different. I had some experiences with native speaker teachers in ‘scuola media’ and I myself learnt a lot from them – both from a linguistic and a professional point of view. So, is there anyone among you who’s had the exalting experience of teaching English in Italy as a native speaker teacher? Could you possibly tell me something about it? Your impressions, your point of view, your considerations. Your suggestions for real common designing and teaching.
Thanks so much.
Daniela Millini
Venice, Italy

My son works for the JET program, a program of the Japanese government that sends American college graduates to Japan to be native English co-teachers in middle and high schools. Actually, I don't know if you would exactly call them "co-teachers" as they are assigned to more than one school per semester, and really do different things depending on the teacher they are working with. I think you may get some interesting responses if you expand your question to include the use of native speakers in such classrooms in other parts of the world as well.

Dear Lorikeet,
Thanks for answering. I already knew about your son, as I read about him in your interventions under another topic (assessment- placement tests - maybe) and I found very interesting that discussion. Here in Italy, too, native speaker teachers work in more than one school during the different school terms –except when they assigned to a specific single school as foreign language assistants by Comenius (a European project supporting students and teachers’ mobility through Europe, and promoting foreign language learning). Comenius language assistants have an active part in lesson designing, selection of materials, students’ assessment and their role as linguistic and cultural mediators is fully recognized by their Italian collegues. Yet, this is the best situation of all. In many others, native speaker teachers are simply asked to imitate the Italian teacher’s approach to language teaching – though they are invited to speak in English as much as possible and try to make the students do so (which is often quite an impossible mission, if the students have always been ‘fed’ with grammar-translation sessions until that moment).
I talked about Italy because I know what is happening here, and just wanted to know other points of view on the Italian way of ‘managing’ native speaker collegues. Yet, if you can tell me something about how things go in Japan or in Poland, you’re welcome.

Hi Daniele,

I'm a Middle School teacher in southern Italy. I also teach at a few private schools, and I like the mix. I think the Middle Schools need to be improved. They need more organization and better classroom management policies. Too often, those few disruptive students can sabotage an entire class's learning experience. I find there are very few (if any) consequences for misbehaving students. As far as I'm aware, there is no detention or grade failure. Middle school students must be promoted to the next grade (or school, depending on which level) regardless of their academic and behavioral performance. Further, many students tell me that the "good" students and the "bad" students often end up with the same grade. So there is little motivation for a student to make the effort.

Anyway, some interesting things I've come across this year to motivate them: end-of-the-class spelling-bees, plurals contests and verb olympics. They all stand up for the last 10 minutes of class as I go from one to the next assigning words and verbs we've learned.

They have American PenPals in high school, and they love it! My Mom is a high school English teacher (all girls, private) in America, and they have been writing to her students for nearly a year. I have set up e-mail accounts for many of them at English webservers (so they must navigate site in English), like Yahoo and MSN. They can trade photos and messages, even in the summer when we aren't in class. This keeps the language fresh for them.

Near the end of the year (and we're still working on it). we compile a newsletter that will circulate to all of the private and public school students I teach (and their principals, directors). Each student chooses a topic, and writes a bit of "news" on the subject. It creates a community not only in one school, but in a network of four or five. The students are from private and public schools, and are on every level. The adults like doing it as much as the kids.

The middle school students are very passionate about music, so sometimes I will divide a popular English song into sections and have them work in groups on the translation.

I'm a first-year teacher, so I still have a lot to teach and a lot to learn, but this is my experience so far. Overall, I like my job(s), but I wish there were a little more organization and policy in the public schools. I would also like to see a little more creativity and energy.

Hope this helps!

Emi
Agropoli

For a first year teacher you sound like you have a lot going for you and more than a little background knowledge from your Mom.
I can sympathize with the difficulties with school discipline. It is the same in Greenland. There appears to be no overt discipline measures in the school system. You can't talk to parents very often and the situation is unequal when you do, due to the colonial history of Denmark. Unless you have a super supportive principal, which I do, you have to rely on your own classroom management techniques. Parenting books have a lot of good suggestions on this and what works for a family can work for the family of the classroom.
I have struggled with this problem of the native English speaker in a foreign classroom with the native language teacher in five countries now and of course, while it is different in every country, it has its basic similiarities as well.
Firstly, we have to understand our own education and what we have been through ourselves and value from that. We also have to understand what we will do in a crisis situation that we learned from our teachers and will probably do, even if we didn't like it as students.
Then we have to learn the values of the community we are visiting and what they do.
Then we have to find a third space where we can meet everyone and create a new little community that brings the best of both worlds together.
We also have to cope with methods, theories, curriculum that is imposed from above and how to fit that into our beliefs.
Then we have to cope with the students, their expectations, their realities of life at the moment in the classroom. Often that girl is more interested in the boy in front of her than the present continuous tense. Or the boy ... you know.
We have huge icebergs here in Greenland and can only see the one tenth that is on top. I always try to think of the students like that. I only get to see one eighth (because they have 8 subjects) of the one tenth of their lives that they spend in school hours. I often marvel that they learn any English at all with all that is going on in their lives and in their teenage bodies.
But they do and it is being done around the world and it is marvelous.
There is a lot of information on the JET program and how the teachers cope there. Isn't here a web site for them Lorikeet?

Hmmm, Sally. I googled it, and came up with this: http://www.jet.org/ It isn't the "official" site, but one started from returning JET alums, so I thought it looked more interesting .