I'd been losing sleep for weeks over the Christmas & New Year holiday, about an invitation I'd accepted to be a panelist for OUP about teaching pre-primary children.
I think they asked me because everybody else was busy (shopping for daughter's wedding dress or at a conference in Turkey...instagram is insightful!)...
So this time last week I strapped into presenter chair with my ideas printed out (large font, don't want to squint to camera!). I really appreciated the rehearsal we'd had a week or two prior, to get the idea of the flow & pace to expect, and to actually 'meet' the other people involved (Taiwan, UK, Korea, Japan). Who would speak when, and trying hard to relate with what other speakers were saying naturally.
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| Behind the curtain! |
In the green room - what's that?! Just me. Am I in the wrong meeting? Does my camera & mic work (they did, my speaker decided to mimic the inside of a submarine though) and then boom, off goes the rollercoaster. Don't fidget. Don't fold your arms. Slow down. Use names. Don't talk over people. Relax - there's only 1,000 or so people watching this webinar (and they're recording it for Youtube) ...no stress. Don't look in the chat column!
"...and thank you to our experts, Yumi & Jim, goodbye!"
Fastest hour of all time.
What was I talking about? With quite a bit of on the floor experience at kindergarten, how to survive, basically, teaching pre-primary learners. There is not a lot of professional training available to language teachers for this age group, and any teacher new to this part of the market is daunted by a myriad of unknowns...When I did my CELTA in the last century, I was asked to give an expert opinion on the last afternoon of the course for 'teaching children', as I was the only person who had done so previously. So, a bit like that! The publisher had noticed me tagging their product on instagram I think. It is a great product, and makes my life every week a lot less stressful and a lot more predictable.
What could possibly go wrong, working with little kids?! Now that's where you need strategies! Be it music, transitions, behavioural rules, achieving realistic expectations, self-preservation...working in an unfamiliar environment with things you have to carry/plug in/not break...wifi you can't access or no screen to project onto...someone just ate your flashcard and/or their crayons...the homeroom teacher disappeared to cope with a 'code brown'. Here's a topic I could keep going on for quite a while without referencing childhood psychology, methodology tags, curriculum design etc. How to get to class number 32 in a year's time, with a smile still on everyone's face.
The product? Toy Team from Oxford University Press...recommended bookseller = English Books because Colin Bethell is a great bloke, really helpful, and a mate since before I suddenly got famous(?!).
Get yourself noticed by sharing the good, the bad and the ugly from your lessons. Share your aspirations, your fears, and your fails. Connect, network, tag products & publishers, fellow teachers & people you want to meet. Am I an expert? No, my classes were 'quite ordinary' yesterday with a dead laptop + no wifi, nauseating hayfever ;)
