First night
24-May-2005
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Well.....where do I start? Have just come back from first night of course -bizarre! Course tutor was small, blonde (probably dyed - could see the roots) woman called Jen. Definitely not what I expected - her or the course.
We all trooped into this room, which was clearly signposted, but thought we were in the wrong place. Nothing was ready - the chairs and tables were stacked against the wall, beamer and projector not connected, nowhere to put our coats - it was chaos. Remember thinking that HP would have a coronary if we were that disorganised in our centre.
Anyway, we are all standing there like idiots and without so much as an introduction. Only person I knew was Lars. Thought of suggesting to him that we cut our losses and went off to the pub instead. Funny, I’d never noticed he looked like Homer Simpson before.
Then her-with-the-roots says to us we are going to be working mainly in small groups of 4 or 5, with some input sessions for her and please will we organise the furniture and the room so that we feel comfortable in it. What a cop out, I thought, just because she didn’t get there early enough to do it herself.
Well, we shuffled things about a bit, got chatting to a nice machine knitting lady who carried a table with me and we ended up with little clusters of chairs around a table a bit like a cafe. (Quite proud of this -this arrangement actually worked rather well. Maybe I’ll try it with my lot - make a change from having them in a circle.)
So then she, Jen, (only we didn’t know her name at that point) says to us
“How do you actually feel right now? What are you thinking?
How have you been feeling since you got here?”
Bit of a silence, which didn’t seem to bother her, but then people started calling things out and she wrote it all on a flipchart.
People were saying stuff like
“really nervous”
“apprehensive”
“worried”
“excited”
“curious”
“wondering where I fit in - will the others be better than me or worse than me?”
“who are all these people? Will I like them? Will they like me? Are they going to be really boring or a bit of fun?”
Which is more or less what I was feeling really.
Then she said “Well, guess what, that’s exactly how your students will be feeling at the beginning of your course.” I suppose they would really.
Then the next question was about what we were worried about - could we identify the barriers? What was going to stop us learning?
That was a bit harder but came up with quite a long list on the flipchart.
“worrying whether I’m going to pass or fail”
“my husband has just been made redundant and I might have to give up and look for an extra evening class to teach”
“ it’s ages since I did any formal learning and I think I’ve forgottten how to”
“my English might not let me keep up with the discussions - especially if people are too fast” (that from Lars - must remember not to be too fast....)
more follows....
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