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| Board Work: Must dust down my action plan... |
Last April, I embarked on a nine month journey
towards ELT enlightenment: the DELTA course. Just over a year later seems as good a moment as any
to reflect on how this experience has shaped me and my teaching.
Last April, I travelled to London to take part in the two
week DELTA distance learning orientation course at International House. I have
never felt as much of a yokel as I did on that sweltering spring evening at
Kings Cross Underground Station, tears welling up in my eyes as I struggled to figure out the
Oyster card vending machine.
I remained on the verge of tears throughout that first day
in International House, as my cohort and I were subjected to what seemed like
an endless barrage of acronyms: none of which I’d met before. LSAs, RSAs, LPs
all sounded meaninglessly in my head. Everyone else seemed to be nodding
knowingly, and making erudite contributions which hinted at years of experience
in exotic locations at prestigious institutions. Oh, what had I done?
Day Two was an improvement. Although the many acronyms still
baffled me, I began to feel the benefit of all the pre-course reading I had
done before leaving Shetland. My cohort was fantastic, and the small teaching
group I worked with, asides from being great fun, were the most supportive and
generous people I could have hoped to meet. By the time my first observed
lesson was in the bag, I was beginning to think that I might just get through
the two weeks alive. Unfortunately, it was not just a case of surviving the
fortnight. What came next was infinitely
harder: returning to “real life” in Shetland, and suddenly being faced with the
task of reconciling an almost weekly deadline to family life and my day job
(well, evening job in my case.) When I closed my eyes at the end of a long hard
day, the course time table seemed stamped behind my eyelids: deadlines looming
large and stretching to infinity.
The distance diploma course is equivalent in length to a
pregnancy, and the Delta was similar in many ways to my own ante natal
experience. In the first three months I felt sick and fairly crabbit for a lot
of the time. In my second DELTA trimester, I worried constantly and scanned the
forums anxiously, seeking consolation in airing and sharing my doubts with peers. Sleep eluded me, and I got into the habit of
fixing myself midnight snacks. On the
homeward run, December the 7th (my exam date) assumed a mythical
significance in my brain: it would be the end of a journey, but also the beginning
of a new one. Afterwards, there were cards and flowers and people telling me my
life would never be the same again.
Well, I can honestly say that embarking on the DELTA journey
was well worth the effort despite the curve it has added to my spine, courtesy
of all these hours spent hunched over a computer. When I started out, I’m not sure if I realised
how life changing it would be. My teaching has improved immeasurably: my
lessons have a focus that was missing before, and my ability to answer
learners’ questions on language has increased ten fold. Most importantly, my
DELTA year afforded me the opportunity to assess my teaching values. The year
enabled me to pin point not only the areas in which I needed to improve, but to
recognise my strengths, and to affirm my belief in the whys of my teaching practice.
While I am one hundred per cent convinced of the many
benefits that the DELTA has afforded me, I have to be wary of what Thornbury
has termed as returning to my “default setting.” I am an untidy, chaotic
person, and this is reflected in my board work. My local tutor repeatedly
flagged this up in observations, and I smiled, nodded, and in the heat of the
next lesson, forgot all about it- until the final (scary)
external lesson observation where I concentrated on the board work to such an
extent that I was almost in danger of ignoring what was going on in the class!
One year on is, indeed, a good time to take stock of all I have learned. It may also be time to blow the dust off my final
RSA and revisit these targets!
