Some More Reflections

I was lucky. I started to teach two days after I finished my CELTA training. What happened was that, on the final day of my course, a job came in for BABSSCo at Rugby and I telephoned about it only to be told it had already gone. They did give me another number for BABSSCo at Harrow where there might be a job. I called it, was interviewed by phone, had the job confirmed a couple of hours later and two days after that stood in front of a real class for the first time. Standing there in one of the rooms in Old School surrounded by kids expecting an experienced and professional teacher and getting me instead was the very definition of a baptism of fire.

By the end of the three hour session I was completely drained and completely elated that I'd actually done it. Until then it hadn't actually felt as if my career change from I.T. to teaching was real. But I'd done it. Taught a class. I was a teacher.

In my subsequent training for my Certificate of Education, I had to prepare an assignment called "Being a Reflective Practitioner" where I noted that J. Nais had written in "Readings For Reflective Practice" that it is "possible to teach for years…without incorporating "teacher" into one's self-image." Well there's no worries there now. I've been teaching for long enough that I think of myself completely as a teacher, but back in that first lesson in Harrow I definitely didn't think of myself as a teacher. I still didn't by the time I finished that summer job and started the proper job at SBC. I'm not sure where and when I started to think of myself as a teacher but somewhere along the line it happened.

Since then I have taught every summer but one at BABSSCo (one year I was out of the country at a wedding) and I like to think I've managed to build a good reputation there. They certainly keep on asking me back. It's very different to the job I do for the rest of the year, though both are teaching English. In some ways, perhaps because it's shorter and more intense, the summer job is more enjoyable. There is a lot less administration and paperwork involved and that means there is a lot more time for preparation. My preparation is therefore rather more detailed. I enjoy it a lot. It's what I thought teaching was about before I actually started doing it. Nowadays, it sometimes seems as if what teaching is about is record keeping for the Government. Certainly, in adult education, the only purpose that the Government considers education to have is to reduce the unemployment figures. If the education isn't aimed at getting people into work then it is completely valueless. My summer job, in contrast, has an aim of improving the English skills of my pupils. The education is the purpose. That's how I think it should be.

I think that's why I keep going back to the summer job year after year, because it renews my belief in what I'm doing, a belief that sometimes gets eroded by all the non-teaching stuff that my other job entails.

I have a lot of loyalty to BABSSCo. They gave me my first teaching job, they keep on giving me more work, they renew my faith in education and they give me some very entertaining and enjoyable summers. I hope to be back there again this year though whether future years will be possible, when I am living and working in another country, remains to be seen. I hope I'll still be able to do it though because summer just wouldn't be the same without my trip to Harrow.