Further to my last 2 posts, this one is about the teacher. The French teacher is a great (learning) facilitator. She can easily get a CPF from IAF!
From the technical perspective, she is very resourceful. She used a ‘talking piece’ to direct attention. She sat at different place in the circle to dilute the ‘teaching’ sense and encourage conversation among all of us, and thus self-discovery. She fully utilized the space in the room e.g. conversation space in the circle, reflective / writing space on the desks. She asked questions and threw back questions to the floor. She paused without appearing impatient. She knew when to use the blackboard to slow down discussion and give clarity. And she wrote very clearly with structure. Of course, she can do the above because she is technically competent with the language.
From the adaptive (mental) perspective, she impressed me with a strong inclination to work with the emergence. She often started a session by inviting questions from the learners, and then she will build the entire session from it, instead of sticking to the pre-arranged material. She always worked with ‘where the learners are’ rather than ‘ where she is with the material’. Another indication of her ‘emergence’ mind-set, she was never disturbed by the learners’ late arrival and sometimes she even used the incident as resources. For example, whilst we were making sentences using different verbs, someone came into the room. Without sounding offended, she invited us to describe the action of someone entering the room. She also stayed playful all the time. She smiled and was ready to be amused by the learners’ remarks.
How did the institution manage to develop teachers like her?
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