What is a teacher?

It’s a big question. Let me explain how we have worked as a learner > teacher setup for the last 6 weeks with K, our Arabic teacher.

We have the book, we do a units work (3-4hours work in the evening after work, food and Eastenders ) and then visit him on Saturday. He goes through the homework, corrects what we have written, does a bit of drilling to improve our pronunciation and, that’s it. Then we go away and do 4 hours homework the next week. We return to his space and the cycle repeats. We are learning quite alot, but all the real teaching and certainly the learning is done by me, my girlfriend and the book in a social-constructivist space on our sofa when we really don’t feel like it.

I certainly feel that the routine is really helpful. We were useless on our own as ‘independent learners’ (prior to having a teacher) we never opened a book or played with the DVDS, we messed about on youtube, did a few photocopies and that was about it. So the whole setup; having a teacher; a routine; assistance; feedback on mistakes; a space to go and ‘be taught’ all these things have helped.

Our teacher is confident in his ability to do what he does, because he has done so, alongside his main work as a translator, for 2 years. However, his role in actually teaching us is limited. He provides us with a routine, he assists but I would argue he rarely explicitly teaches us. For me a teacher would teach you something, set you on your way and then set some homework for additional practice. I don’t want to do down on this guy but if you are going to call yourself a teacher, teach. Don’t just correct us. Lead us. Make materials for us. Create a game for us to play. Give us a dialogue to do. Write on the board. Focus us on meaning then form. Manage the time. Set lesson aims. Get us to write on each other’s backs. Make us stand up when we are tired. Focus on accuracy and fluency. Be a teacher. Or be a homework tutor, perhaps.

I am fairly straight up when it comes to this question but I am not sure if I am being fair. How would you feel if you were in the same position? Would you say anything? Do you think I am moaning about having to do some work? Is 90mins too short to do anything but correct homework? I must say that we are on our way to achieving our goals and he’s been good at focusing us on this. So if we are learning is he teaching? Is the fact we are learning enough?

Where were the Swiss Arabic Teachers?

In late autumn, Lady Love phoned around local language schools and did some web searching and we came up with a potential school.

Optimistically I arrived at the address in the centre of town and went upstairs. It was a residential style door and I was welcomed by a short shrewy, lady who ushered me in and gave me tea. She only spoke French and I was struggling, but she was fairly aggressively trying to get money out of me; that was for sure.

Lady was late. I was introduced to our teacher, a very smiley, young Tunisian guy. He was nice enough but he seemed a little inexperienced. His 'teacher voice', tone and mannerism were what were described as “talking to me like I am a child”. This was off putting and his approach was unclear and muddled, I didn’t know what was going on. There were no aims for our class. We weren’t asked in any detail by him about what we needed and why. We did our one lesson, an expensive hour, and never called them back.

It seems mean but neither of us were happy with the set up. I felt a responsibility as a fellow teacher to say something that could help develop this guy but I was cautious of the cost of getting dragged into a situation where I am paying to develop my own teacher, who was not really a teacher (by title and qualifications) but an American Studies student. I guess defining what a teacher is, is a part of this whole equation and I will talk about that later.

It was after this initial disappointment that things got a bit stressful. We came across lessons on you tube for example – learn Arabic with Maha have a look

Although this is great fun; she’s easy on the eye and gives a great insight into cultural aspects of modern Arabic speakers. I wanted a teacher-teacher, a real one, a professional who lived and breathed teaching, someone passionate about their job, reflective in their practice, someone who makes plans; adapts and makes materials for their classes based on their students’ needs and interests. We were getting nowhere.
Although we found intensive Arabic courses, these were in Geneva at unsuitable times. We were stymied.

I even stooped as low as to spam my MA coursemates. This was perhaps a little out of order but I went through the course list and wrote to anyone with what I thought was an 'Arabic' name or who was based in a possibly Arab speaking location, asking them if they knew someone who would teach us online over skype (my MA is in Educational Technology and TESOL). No one replied, and I am not sure if I would have answered to such a random message either.

The search continued, Lady Love’s former landlady’s ex-boyfriend, a Moroccan, recommended that we go to Lausanne’s’ mosque on Friday and ask around. We didn’t fancy that much. Perhaps it was the link between education and religion but it didn’t seem like how we wanted to proceed.

One final web search brought us to our current teacher who was suggested to Lady Love via a friend. He is a nice man, slightly older than me. He’s an Iraqi interpreter and has been in Switzerland for 15 years. We met and he explained his method, pointing to the book aliif baa (A, B in English), “this is my method” he said. I was a little reticent about this, knowing full well that a book is not a method. A book is a book.

I didn’t mention this but did mention that I am lacking in experience as a learner and that I am probably quite a difficult student in many respects =O). We agreed a fee, he kindly agreed to teach us on Saturday afternoons (which is regrettable now the six nations rugby has started) and we agreed on aims. These were that we would be able to read and write Arabic and say a few basic phrases by the time we left for Damascus. This was in early January. We are 2 weeks away from departure now and it looks like we are on track to meet this, surprisingly.
So we found a teacher, 6 weeks ago.

So just to recap it seems that choosing a teacher was heavily effected by contextual factors, time, location, the network available, the lack of schools for this purpose, the limits of our research. We both wanted someone live and alive, not to have asynchronous communication. It was also important that French English and Arabic were spoken by our teacher.