First Year Teaching English

One year ago at that time, I was struggling to pass the competitive exams to become an English teacher in France. It was the end of a much-hated year in Paris, fighting the craziness of blending the preparation for two major teaching exams and working half-time to cope with my rent and living expenses. It turned out fine, since I passed both exams, and I was sent to Caen to teach high-school students for my first year.

The irony of it all was that preparing to sit for a very competitive exam to become a teacher did not involve facing REAL students. I loved English, I loved English literature, English history and culture, and I had this immense desire to share it with others. So I took a leap of faith. And on September 2, 2014, I faced my first class ever.

Looking back on this year, this has been one of the hardest years of my life. I had 3 10th grades, one 11th grade English literature class, and another 11th grade. Learning about my classes only three days before going back to school, I had to juggle lesson planning when I didn’t know how to plan for a class, tests, marking and discipline, with NO TIME to breathe.

And yet. I struggled for months until the Christmas holidays. I finally got some time to think, and tried to prepare things ahead of time. And through an accidental Pinterest click I discovered the Edutopia website and PBL. I remember feeling immediately elated. I am a creative person, although this side of my personality had been buried under years of undergraduate and graduate study. And I could feel that I could make it alive again, and use it to spark the interest and creativity of my own students.

I started shifting the way I saw and conceived my classes, and the way the students interacted in it. In France, language classes are already changing and beginning to see the interest of a non-teacher-centered classroom, but here it is carried out on a larger scale. I started asking my students to work in groups, to collaborate, to help one another, and I started involving them – for one of my 10th grade class, I invented a plot for a Crime Scene Investigation where the victim was one of the student and they had clues to find and interrogations to conduct in English to find the murderer. Others had to create a “Carpe Diem” digital poem about themselves, and the results were surprisingly good.

Asking them to collaborate was a hard thing. But they gradually learnt it and I could see that they all benefited from it. The best students were taking charge, leading the activities, helping out and organising. The ones who were struggling could find help quickly and were improving at a fast rate. In turn, they were also becoming more confident. If they could speak English in front of 3 or 4 students, they could do it in front of the class! They were also learning that everybody has a talent they can lean on.

I have many regrets about this year. I didn’t do enough grammar, my tests weren’t always properly thought-out, I wish had had done more English-listening sessions with my 11th grades, I wish… but this was my first year, and it wasn’t perfect, and I’ve come to accept it. I know what my weaknesses are, and I intend to work on them.

I asked my students to fill in a feedback form for me on the last day of class. Quite a few of them loved the group settings, the collaboration and the fact that I always tried to push them. Some of them told me that I had allowed them to express their creativity and that it was the only class where they had been able to do it. And I am proud of it. It’s also funny that only at the very moment when I started reading their feedbacks did I feel like a real teacher.

Since I have completed my first year, I am now considered a real teacher. It also means that I have to move to another school where I will have my first official teaching position. It will be yet another beginning for me in September. New high school, new city, new students.

So, as a new teacher, I am going to use this blog to reflect on what I do in class, and try to improve my teaching, along what I hope will remain central concerns throughout my career: teaching students, creating things with them, and loving them.