Starting point
I have recently been asked to do tandem teaching (known as teaching assistant) at a mainstream school and it has been an enlightening experience.
I will share my impressions on how this has provided me with an invaluable opportunity to develop professionally and to see how English is taught in a very different context to mine. Hopefully it will also help anybody who is or might be in the same position as mine.
I have always worked in language schools with small groups, where students come to us to work solely on their English. It is an optional extracurricular activity. Therefore, this new setting and this new kind of teaching was very new to me.
A new world
In my new role as an assistant, teaching was a totally different kettle of fish.
I started working in a semi-private school (‘concertado school’ in Spanish) where the students receive their formal, mainstream education.
There are 25 students in the classroom and the school is considered to be a bilingual centre (Spanish and English). It is a religious school and students are taught subjects as well as values. Students are there because it is compulsory education and they do a wide range of subjects apart from English.
This is the first time I have taught 25 students at once and for me it is a rather large group as I have always been privileged to work with a maximum of 15 students.
This has meant that discipline, instructions, classroom management and the setting up of activities needs to be tightened up due to the fact that there are so many students with different language abilities, interests, backgrounds and motivation levels.
All the students are grouped together according to age, not level (which is what would normally happen in a language school like mine). As a consequence, you have students who excel at the language (either due to an innate flair for languages or because they might attend a language school in the afternoon) and others who struggle with English.
There are also students who have learning disabilities and students whose first language is not Spanish so they are struggling with two languages different to their L1.
I come twice a week and, as an L1 English speaker, I’m expected to assist and provide students with the opportunity to interact with somebody new and to provide them with a real model of the language.
My experience
Co-teaching (or assisting!) has been an incredible experience because having two teachers in the same room has enabled me to focus more on individual students. This was possible because the other teacher would either be teaching the rest of the class or be dealing with a smaller group.
Additionally, the main teacher was always on hand to deal with discipline issues. This was invaluable as I had been asked not to use the students’ L1, so if there was a behavioural issue, the class teacher would nip it on the bud by using Spanish. This meant I could focus on the actual lesson and not be distracted by students misbehaving.
It has been a rewarding experience where (I hope!) all parties have benefitted mutually.
The students got two teachers with different teaching styles, enabling them to receive personalised attention as well as being exposed to a different approach in teaching.
The main teacher was also exposed to a different teaching methodology, whereas I became more familiar with what students were doing in mainstream education (sometimes private language schools and formal education are two worlds apart).
Two very different teaching styles
During my stint as a teaching assistant, I realised that I was more the happy-go-lucky kind of teacher who tends to go with the flow, enjoys rowdy activities, movement, outdoor and more communicative activities, whereas my fellow teacher was the more reflective type of teacher who would be thinking about the welfare of the students and reining in my more flamboyant activities.
She was definitely the brain while I was more the endless energy. She would think more about the logistics (i.e. ensuring students had the right materials and organising ways in which an activity could run much more smoothly) – and I would carry out the activities (which I had always done with smaller groups).
Initially I didn’t realise that with larger groups the class dynamics changed – I had to learn to adapt activities to suit these larger groups in a very reduced space.
I also had to be aware of the fact that, being a religious school, I had to be more sensitive to the school’s set of values (at Christmas when eliciting vocabulary I had planned to introduce lexis such as Santa, Rudolph the reindeer or presents but the main teacher insisted on teaching very different words such as manger, nativity, Jesus and Mary).
The main teacher who I was assisting naturally spent more time during the week with the students, so she would provide me with invaluable information regarding their backgrounds, their learning styles and their difficulties.
We both came from very different backgrounds. I was the crazy English teacher who came twice a week and allowed students to leave their seats and manipulate the language more creatively. I was moved by the belief that language lessons should be communicative, whereas my colleague was a mainstream teacher worried about curricula, the syllabus, targets and school requirements – and was, therefore, much more practical.
We had an interesting conversation where she mentioned that, although I was friendly and polite, I was distant and reticent to accept the kids’ hugs and signs of affection. This contrasted with her more Mediterranean style, which was much warmer and affectionate towards the children. I had been trained to never touch the kids, to keep my distance and, possibly as part of my cultural origin, was more reserved and aloof. She was much more caring and hands on (never better said!).
Despite our differences, we both learnt to accept each other’s teaching style and embraced the different methods wholeheartedly.
What did I gain from this experience?
We both learnt to work together and accept our peculiarities (or shall I say just mine?!). There was, however, something that we had in common, a guiding principle: our students’ interest and our desire to provide them with a meaningful lesson.
I also learnt (and I imagine my co-teacher did, as well!) to be more tactful, tolerant and more open minded when expressing views and methodologies.
Another very valuable lesson I learnt was to be able to react accordingly and to think on my feet. There were always unexpected and unforeseen events taking place which forced me to take quick decisions and to adapt accordingly.
It is undeniable that this is also the case in my small language school, but it seems much more frequent in a mainstream school. You come to realise that a one-hour lesson is actually much shorter in terms of teaching time, as collecting 25 students, taking the register or performing morning prayer cuts into your lesson.
You might also be told at the last minute that students are going on an excursion or they will be involved in a school activity which you will have to step in and supervise.
Keeping calm, thinking about different options and simply going with the flow are useful skills that will come in handy for other settings (i.e. summer schools where things change so quickly from one moment to another).
Final words
I strongly recommend co-teaching wherever possible, as you learn so much from your colleague. It is an opportunity to be exposed to a different teaching style, different ways to handle discipline issues and different beliefs.
There are, of course, teething problems at the beginning, especially if both of you are new to one another, but it helps if you establish communication channels and both of you express your thoughts openly.
It is also important to highlight that the roles both teachers play need to be very clearly defined. It is vital to ensure that both teachers realise they are expected to carry out their duties impeccably.
The lead teacher needs to be able to count on the secondary, assistant teacher or support teacher. At the same time, the second teacher needs to know the main teacher will be fully involved in the lesson, so simply follow the lead teacher’s instructions.
This experience was definitely an eye opener for me. I had taught for years and, although I must admit that initially I was a bit offended that I was going to become a ‘mere‘ teaching assistant for a year, I decided to take things in my stride. I reached the conclusion that I would take advantage of this opportunity to see another side of teaching I was not familiar with. Two for the price of one definitely works!
