This is a precious part of my work which I cannot let go of, and I am grateful to be able to work with adult learners so regularly, meeting a whole range of people each time a new course begins. Working with adults can be incredibly rewarding, and the challenges never ending. The frequent need to sift through years of firm and set beliefs of how learning takes place, and not allowing space for other ways of gaining knowledge is often the first obstacle to shift. This sifting process to reach once again, the core of the adult learner is one I delight in attempting to satisfy. When the core is reached; when the open-minded and eager to learn student comes forward, and when a firm belief in one’s true capacity suddenly leads the dance; it is at that exact point I find working with adults incredibly rewarding. Managing to tap into the adult learner’s curiosity; to reconnect with their childlike ability to imagine; and gently lead them to their sensory skills in remembering, renders the fruits of adult teaching rich, ripe and delicious. Teaching and learning become joyful, playful, and uplifting. I love the challenges teachers need to face to somehow get to that place.
My teaching career began with both adolescents and adults. The young adults I worked with in the 1990’s at the then Park Language Centre, Sheffield, UK – for the most part young Japanese students away from home for extended periods of time, living with host families in the city, and learning English at the centre – were the beginnings of my work experience as a language teacher. I taught French evening classes to adults, and enjoyed daytime TESOL teaching with the younger students. As a 22 year old graduate in the early summer of 1993, I stumbled across the opportunity to teach well before considering any kind of ‘career’ prospects. At the time, academia was my world; my languages degree having taught me nothing of the world of work, but the prospect of earning some money in other ways than through hotel or bar work was an attractive option. I gave it a go, and began tinkering with language teaching, often without much of a clue as to where I was taking a group of students in the hour we spent together; more often than not unsteady and nervous; self-conscious as I faced a class of students; for the most part only a few years younger or else years older than myself!
And yet, amidst the trials and errors, the messy beginnings and failed endings of classes, I vividly recall the feelings of happiness and satisfaction which constantly kept me from falling too many times. A part of me simply wanted to carry on. Not just in the classroom, but I was feeding too on the contact with experienced teachers who were clearly the holders of the wisdom I wanted to share. Kirk, Mark, Sarah … gifted teachers I now recall as my mentors, showing me the ropes and ladders I would eventually be able to swing on and climb with agility.
Looking back, teaching even in those early, raw days was feeding me. A blurred, undefined ‘thing’ led me back into the classroom month after month, as I would sign another contract in the centre’s office. I didn’t have my teaching qualification, but I had something, and I was discovering it at the same time as my students, and within myself I knew I was doing just fine, actually more than “just fine”; good enough to go further …
TESOL and other teacher training courses came later. A child learns to speak before she can read, write or comprehend any of the grammar or technicalities of her native language; so was my initial teaching experience. I know today how privileged I was to have been able to learn in this way. None of it was planned – not by me, anyway – and I am eternally grateful to all those students, colleagues and employers who stayed with me and patiently waited for the next chapter…
Over the next twenty years or so, I took on teaching contracts in all shapes and sizes, working with students from 5 to over 75 years old, carving out my teaching career little by little as I began to get more of a taste for certain types of teaching, age groups, class sizes, ‘school types’, and so on and so on. The ‘carving’ never really ends; I still frequently reassess where my preference lies and it comes and goes, as I believe in my case, it should; and so never allowing me to become ‘stuck’ in one type of teaching, or excluding one age group for another …
Today I work with adults in groups, and run English Language Classes ranging from general English classes, to workshops with a whole range of themes – my weekly book club classes or voice workshops at the “Université Populaire Européenne” in Strasbourg being amongst some of my favourite adult classes.