Is teaching English a professional career?

[woodcutter]

What do you mean by a perfect execution of the technique of showing flashcards Lori? I would think that either you do it like a human or a zombie, it isn't especially boring or bad in itself, and if the class won't respond to a little bit of flashcard showing then they are idiots, and there is no educational reason to switch to an idiot friendly plan B. Now it may be that this teacher had needlessly alienated the class in some way or other - possibly by massive overuse of flashcards - but that is the kind of very important background story that most observers never seem to bother with. Of course, it is hard to know the real stories, but it frustrates me that most observers seem compelled to draw massive judgements and rather dubious judgements from very small snippets of action and phases of student mood.

Of course, the main problem I have personally is that I have some beef with the underlying ideology of ESL. If the observer thinks that a well executed headway/grammar/particiaption games lesson is great, I'll probably be OK, (and I haven't had a bad observation for a long time). My method is generally demonstrate - let the students practice - demonstrate - let the students practice - finish on a high note, much as in the books. However, some people, spurred by the inanity of ESL theory, do not value the demonstrate part of that, and if the students appear bored during the "boring" part, will criticize.

Actually the bigwigs of ESL are usually better than the minions though - see this from Rebecca Oxford for example
http://ilearn.20m.com/speakers/roxint.htm

[Lorikeet]

Well I was just referring to the old "mark the flashcards on the back and take them from the back to the front so you know ahead of time what the picture is, and don't have to look around to see" method. And if you have 40 flashcards and you are asking students "What is she doing?" and they seem to get it after 20, it's not necessary to continue to do all 40 just because that's how many you have. I've visited many classes, and this particular one was many years ago. I don't remember the particulars--I just remember it was obvious to me at the time that the teacher didn't realize that the students had mastered it already and were ready for something else.

I don't make snap judgments when I visit classes; in fact, when we visit classes for evaluations we stay for the whole period, which is usually two hours. I think I can tell whether or not the students are engaged and interested, and they almost always are.

I very rarely see a class that isn't acceptable, and I usually come away with a good idea or two. I don't know what kinds of evaluations you have suffered through, but you sounded rather defensive.

[lolwhites]

However, some people, spurred by the inanity of ESL theory, do not value the demonstrate part of that, and if the students appear bored during the "boring" part, will criticize.

Here I agree entirely. However much we might want to be all-singing-all-dancing, getting any good at anything has to involve a certain amount of knuckling down and actually doing some work. Part of being an adult is accepting that learning, like life, sometimes has boring bits and the students who expect the teacher to entertain them all the time are never going to get anywhere.

[woodcutter]

The main difficulty I had was in Mexico, where the teacher before me had taught riotous classes bilingually in Spanish/English (and took the students out drinking all the time). I think that romance language speakers tend to be more of a problem for me, because the students don't necessarily think that any dullish donkey work is required, due to their culture and due to the fact that the languages are so close to English.