PST Reflection

This is a formal PST reflection, which I thought might provide better insight into the professional and reflective aspect of TEFL technical training.

Molly B. Douglas

Assessment Journal

March 22 – 27

PST Core Expectation: Prepare your personal and professional life to make a commitment to serve abroad for a full term of 27 months.

Comment on core expectation: I am still wrapping my head around this week’s core expectation. We are just starting to chip away at the (dense, heavy, sometimes intimidating) block of training material. Honestly, I feel like a sponge that has reached the point of information leakage. Full absorption for this week has not only been attained, but also surpassed.

Major learnings of the week: Following this week’s informational sessions and school visit, I now have a good idea of what constitutes the average Albanian classroom in a semi-rural setting. Thanks to Ymer (TEFL trainer, a university lecturer in English and English literature), I also now have a complete picture of the educational system, from the bureaucratic and administrative to the beginnings of educational philosophy to curriculum and textbooks. My biggest challenges will be: the poor state of available textbooks (produced outside the US, lacking in concept introduction and explanation, mixture of British and American English, abundant inaccuracies, inconsistent and random themes, outdated material, etc.), team-teaching with a potentially reluctant counterpart, and creatively compensating for resources I would ordinarily use to make a lesson more colorful, interactive, and just plain exciting. No markers, crayons, paper, whiteboard, projector, and more! I will just have a blackboard, box of chalk, and myself.

My TEFL group visited a secondary school in Bishqem, a neighboring town, where we observed the only English teacher (a twenty-something year-old young woman who is responsible for the entire student body’s English language learning) in a school of 400+ students teach a sixth-grade class. I really enjoyed the classroom visit! I like observing the quintessential 45-minute lesson play out in a real-life setting: introduction of topic and then detailing of concept; presentation of challenge and independent or group exercise; sharing of student efforts; check for accuracy; review together; address outstanding issues; assign homework and move on. The teacher we observed was great. I was aware of her lesson’s weaknesses, but I was also appreciative of all its strong points.

Teachers are definitely under-appreciated in this world. They grapple with a diverse array of students, at different learning levels and with a wide range of backgrounds, and somehow propel them forward to a higher level of knowledge and greater self-confidence. Assisting and inspiring others to take hold of their own lives, to make their own decisions, and to create and pursue their own opportunities is a worthwhile pursuit.

This week we also had a training session at the hub in Elbasan on Development 101; nothing new here, but definitely an excellent reminder that the role of a TEFL volunteer is two-fold. I will not only be a classroom instructor, but also a development actor. I am a proponent of the bottom-up approach to development, so I am looking forward to the opportunity to exercise all that I have learned in internships and in the classroom on the ground at my site.

How I will apply my learning: Where it concerns textbooks, I understand that I will have to juggle adhering closely to the schedule dictated by the units in my grades’ selected textbooks with exercising creativity to render the applied material both engaging and fully comprehensible for my students. Frankly, this is not a major surprise. I definitely have been down this road before in previous teaching situations and welcome the challenge. I plan to coalesce all of the creative teaching techniques and lesson plans I have used, or have noted others (peers, colleagues) using, in order to brainstorm independently and with my fellow trainees to develop “a plan of attack” for the Albanian classroom. Developing hypothetical plans and then exercising them in later weeks will be a great opportunity to check the efficacy of my plans.

The development session serves as a reminder that I need to apply all of my development learning (both the theory and practical experience) to my teaching experience. For example, I need to look for ways to demonstrate and link students to opportunities beyond secondary and university-level education. I need to look for ways to deepen their families’ involvement in education and to perhaps even open opportunities to non-school age family members. Maybe I could find a way to extend English language education to adult learners, to enrich early childhood education, to link students to other students around the world for cultural exchange and international cooperation purposes, to broaden school resources, and more.

This is what interests me the most – broadening my students’ visions of the world and helping them to identify or develop the opportunities and tools necessary to carve their desired paths through that world. It is frustrating to reflect that often, regardless of desire, dreams will remain unrealized when the pressure and pull of socioeconomic and cultural realities is sometimes too great. Plus, the desire to attend to university may not trump the desire to take care of a family at home or to respect a certain aspect of gender roles. And hey, what’s important me as an American may not be important to an Albanian. Values differ across cultures, and no one set of values is “right” or “wrong”. It is important to consider that the individualistic drive and concentration on self-propulsion is a typically American vision of “progress”. Almost every other culture in the world values the family unit over the individual unit. Community development—-moving a whole family, just as moving a whole under-served socioeconomic stratum, towards its dreams—-is the focus in contemporary development theory and practice.

New questions and ideas about which I would like more information: Still pondering.

My performance this week: I am constantly working on divining as much about Albanian culture, language, people, and history as possible. My host family members are the biggest contributors to this personal pursuit. I am incredibly happy with my host family, and that comfort and sense of welcome has also gone a long way to making me a more productive trainee. I am extremely grateful for the hospitality extended to me by my host family and enjoy spending as much time with them as possible. They tease me, I tease back; they press extra bananas on me when I leave for school; they pass the baby off to me and are confident that I can lull her to sleep; they slow down their conversation so I can participate... I know this is the honeymoon period, but right now I am not sure for what else I could possibly ask.

I feel relatively pleased with my language progress thus far, considering that difficulties, frustrations, and anxiety about my ability to grasp and retain new material are normal. I am currently working on stringing together simple sentences. My sentences tend to be overloaded with prepositions and un-conjugated, tense-less verbs (yikes!). I am aware of weaknesses (ex. definite versus indefinite articles) and have identified those sectors to which I ought to devote additional study.

My primary personal concerns regarding performance this week are two-fold; specifically, I know that I should attempt to diminish the amount of English spoken at home with my family, and I am deliberating how to more effectively balance family, study, and TEFL training. With regards to the first point, I would, however, like to argue (to myself or to whomever it may concern!) that falling back on the occasional English phrase to clarify a persistently elusive point has in fact mostly served to further propel my understanding of Shqip. Mostly, we only revert to some English words when an impasse is reached in communication. Sometimes, though, when I initially fail to understand something that is said simply because it is spoken too quickly, the person speaking responds by automatically reverting to the English translation. So, I have to be quick to ask for that individual to repeat the Shqip, just at a slower pace.