Situation

Before coming to China, I trained as a TEFL teacher in a London school based in Earl’s Court. A big part of the training is doing complete cycles of planning, executing and evaluating lessons, both individually and as a group. This particular course was full time over the course of a month, and because of the rather full timetable, planning often needed to be completed in one night. If you miss vital parts of the lesson out, then a record of that is taken. Do it too many times and you can’t receive a pass.

Task

On one occasion I was given the task to teach a rather large and complicated point of grammar to some intermediate learners. I can’t remember exactly what it was now, but something about subtle but distinct differences between words in different situations. The course co-ordinator assigning tasks to be taught, hadn’t fully considered the depth of the task he’d given me, and the time available for actually teaching was quite short, only half an hour.

Action

I undertook the planning in a very thorough way, as had been taught and becoming my habit. It took me a really long time to prepare fully for it. I had started in the evening after arriving home and eating, at around 6.30pm, and finished the plan at around 1.30am. It was really a large piece of work for me, as I had considered a lot, and spent much time preparing exactly as I had learnt, preparing as much detail as I could conceive. My attitude was really to make full use of the money and time I had spent on this course, and I would pass, so that my future in China could be assured.

When it came to the actual teaching of the class, the next afternoon, I got up and did my lesson as planned, but the material was simply too much to cover, and because I had planned for that, I had made assumptions the night before of which parts I could cut short, and which I should skip. Not knowing that I had chosen to skip a part that was considered vital as part of the assessment.

Result

The result was that according to the information known to me, I had been successful, but the reality was that I hadn’t been. In later discussion of my lesson, I was praised for being fully prepared and giving a useful lesson, but had failed in this part of the assessment because I had missed something vital out, and that my lesson timings could use some work. I learnt that even with working so hard, and even with being so prepared, I can still make mistakes and fail. A large part of the failure in this situation was not knowing what the expectation was, and for business, requirement capture is critical. I also learnt that even with the best of intentions and preparation, the time isn’t always enough. The situation has to be seen calmly and dealt with in the same manner, and knowing better next time.