WHY I DECIDED TO UNDERTAKE THIS CHALLENGE

I am a primary EFL teacher, a graduate in modern languages and literature, with some experience in the Teaching English to Young Learners field. My experience is derived from a combination of working interactions, personal skills and development of interests, research, reflective practice and co-operation within work teams of work and local workshops.

I heard about NILE from a personal research on the MLA professional development programmes in UK and also from the IATEFL/YL SIG newsletter. That is why I welcomed the chance given to me to participate in this MLA69 course in Norwich, jointly led by UEA and NILE, having obtained a scholarship offered by the British Council. I felt excited, and proud, too, to have been chosen from lots of colleagues sharing the same training path and the same enthusiasm to be allenged by a new training experience. I decided to leave my family (enriched and enlightened by a 10 months toddler) to give time to myself as a developing, ever-moving TEFL professional.

My expectations about the IPG (MLA69) course do not really go beyond my usual attitude to grasp the best of each experience I am offered. That is, in this case, that I am really willing to grow professionally through:

I know that this MLA69 course is intended as a starting point in each teacher’s career, in terms of professional development, cultural growth, personal involvement.

We soon started our work with our teacher trainer, Simon Smith.

In the meantime the NILE administrative staff organised the access to all the facilities and opportunities provided by the UEA campus.

Hence has started a period of exploration in terms of:

• Knowing each other with the other within the group of trainees and with the other participants of other courses;
• Discovering the location and the opening hours of the services offered by the campus: catering, accommodation, instruction, communication, transport, shopping, libraries, resources and computer centres, and so on.
• Beginning to face the issues of the course and getting involved in the training, through a program consisting of a full-time set of sessions based upon a variety of activities:

written inputs <---> oral inputs

micro-units <---> staged lessons

group-work <---> individual work

reflective thinking <---> lectures

Simon Smith’s sessions have focused more on the communicative aspects of teaching and training than on the techniques, and have been well outlined, presented, and led to our reflection. We have also been given several inputs about the teaching styles and about the ability to match and mix different learning styles, all this through carefully planned sessions leaving enough space for feedback and reflection.

Sue Leather’s sessions have gone deeper in the metaphorical, holistic and personal beliefs, and have dealt with models of teaching styles.

Nick Owen’s session on NLP was rather lecture-centred, even if informally led, on the whole self-contained and quite exhaustive.

As we progressed, the different aspects of the course, the problems raised and the tasks required have been more clear. I begun to work on the theoretical and practical aspects of the different inputs given, to develop and increase awareness about the different issues presented and the different skills to be trained.

It has required hard work and organisation, which has started with the posing of some essential questions:

Firstly we must consider that teachers have a lot of experience in planning learning and educational tasks for their students, and have also developed a particular attitude to research new, better, more effective ways to do that. In order to develop a Teacher training profile we have to extend the skills that we already possess and add other dimensions to our work.

The sessions attended have succeed in conveying this message and all the trainers involved, Simon Smith, Phillip Prowse and Sue Leather, have given positive advice about the powerful tools already in our hands: organisation and flexibility.

The hard work required during the previous two weeks has borne his fruit during the last weeks. Personally I managed to complete two of the Portfolio pieces of work that have to be done by the end of the course: the review of an EFL book and an INSET session plan jointly planned with three colleagues of mine. In the meantime I focused on the area in which research for the 3000 words assignment: CALL and Hypermedia in the Primary Italian school.

The session that I preferred and could be defined dense and relevant has been the Melanie Williams "Cognitive Development", that has given us plenty of information about the theories underlying our current practice.

CONCLUSIONS: WHAT I HAVE LEARNT FROM THIS EXPERIENCE

I’ve learned to explore the Teacher Trainer area taking into account the different points of view (Student- Teacher- Trainer) and the Pros and the Cons of each situation both the dynamics and the theory.

I have learnt how to observe group dynamics more objectively.

I have discovered myself to be more self-confident and aware of my professional and personal power points, above all because I have managed to manipulate effectively all the inputs and data offered by the working sessions.