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Dear Reader,

For lack of a more dignified way to describe this: this Wednesday, I sweated a lot.

Let me back up a little: a few months ago, I submitted a proposal for a talk for the Macmillan New Voices conferences. Out of over 200 proposals, they selected 13, including mine. Naturally, as the impostor syndrome commander-in-chief, my first reaction to this was:

Then, I slowly became acquainted with the idea, even became quite fond of it, only to realise that - hold on a minute, now I was going to have to talk to an international audience of god knows how many. Turned out, it was an audience of about 350 people.

And dear reader, if you don't believe that I started sweating profusely, you can consult the recording and compare it with the temperature of 16° in my part of England that day: I was only wearing a t-shirt.

Scary as it was, I got through it in one piece and even enjoyed it (my talk¹ and some of the others, too). But the experience made me think about some of the things I've felt insecure about as an English teacher throughout the years: public speaking definitely used to be one.

Because as much as you can project authority, deep down we're all a little scared, and I think that's a) a sign that we care and b) absolutely fine.

So today, I'm going to tell you about 5 things I used to feel insecure about as a teacher (and what I did to get better at them). Perhaps you can relate to some of them - in which case, I'd love to know.

Did you get your coffee and a comfy cushion to rest your head? Let's get cracking 🔥

1. My knowledge of grammar

I've been teaching English for close to 15 years and I've been learning it for about 25. And in all that time, I've always loved grammar, which I'm sure doesn't make people think "oh, she must be fun at parties". But it did come in handy, especially as I started teaching Italian learners, so, while I had to go and look up why articles work the way they work in English (maddening!), I knew the grammar of both languages and could compare and contrast.

Indeed, the idea that comparing the first and the foreign language can be a useful tool is related to the theory of "contrastive analysis". As Professor Jack Richards helpfully reminds us, contrastive analysis claims that

So, as a young teacher, I thought that comparing first and foreign language would be a really useful tool: after all, my students infuriatingly missed the third person -s because it didn't exist in Italian, right? Right?

Turns out, a little wrong: the number is debated, but only about 30% of errors in the foreign language is estimated to be caused by transfer from the first language. Which later in my life turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because all my lovely routine of explaining the present perfect by translating it into two verb tenses in Italian came crashing down when I started teaching multilingual groups in England. I was not only young and naive³, but when I started teaching groups including Czech, Russian, Japanese and Colombian students, I suddenly lost the "crutch" of referring to one first language that everybody understood.

👉 What I did to become less insecure: I'd like to say some divinity looked kindly upon me and I suddenly became a master of grammar, but the truth is: I took the Cambridge DELTA, which forced me to study what I still remember as The Monolith, a 700-page grammar manual (I'm not joking and no, I wasn't pleased). I also moved progressively more towards truly inductive teaching of grammar, so full-on grammar explanations became less frequently necessary.

2. My classroom management and authority

Managing students' behaviour is often reported as a key issue by teachers, particularly the ones who are just starting out. When I started teaching, I found that the training I had received was very good and neat when it came to things like lesson planning, but not so much things like keeping a bunch of teenagers quiet and engaged. Perhaps you've been in my shoes (I wonder/but not really)?

👉 What I did to become less insecure: I learned a lot from my first teachers' lounge, where I was fortunate to find both experienced and novice teachers who were happy to share and support little old me. Aside from learning a few classroom management techniques that work well for different age groups, what made a real difference was establishing routines, building rapport (even with the most difficult students, which is no mean feat), being kind to myself when some of my lessons inevitably flatlined and, quite crucially, relinquishing some control. This doesn't come naturally to me, but I started understanding that perhaps students being "quiet" was not the goal and I accepted some level of noise and mess as a trade-off for language production and engagement. After all, how can students be engaged if they can't speak up a little?

3. My voice projection

It makes me smile to think of how many times I've had to do this while observing teacher trainees while they teach:

Because the simple truth of the matter is that if all students can't hear us, their brains will struggle more: it's already hard enough to decode words in a foreign language, but if they can't hear them well, it makes it even worse. I unfortunately was not used to speaking up, but I quickly had to kick things up a notch when I started teaching in absolutely gigantic lecture theatres in universities: no way were the students at the back of the classroom going to hear me!

👉 What I did to become less insecure: I practised voice projection at home. Projecting your voice does not at all involve yelling: rather, it entails the judicious use of your breath and abdominal muscles to make sure your voice travels further without it being unnecessarily shout-y. Learning to project my voice made me feel much more confident as a teacher: even if I was talking rubbish (and I'm sure I was, at times), at least I was doing it with authority.

4. My acceptance of silence

Have you ever asked a question and then immediately started speaking again because the silence. was. just. unbearable? I call this the running commentary, and having experienced this as an outsider when I observed trainee teachers, I can tell you it's not pretty. But this used to be me: if I asked a question and nobody answered straightaway, I'd rephrase it, add something, or even answer it myself. As you can imagine, this deprived my students of the opportunity to speak and engage with the lesson.

👉 What I did to become less insecure: first, I learned a little about silence: you need to accept silence for various reasons, but most importantly because you need to give learners processing time. After all, they're processing a question in a foreign language, they have to think of the content of their answer and how to say it: no mean feat! Next, I made a conscious effort to notice my patterns: how often was I doing this? What could I do instead? Finally, I started waiting those magical 3 extra seconds, which research shows can improve the length, accuracy, and confidence of student responses. Instead of filling the silence, I took a breath, played around with a pen, took a few steps. Slowly but surely, my students understood that I wasn't going to fill their silence and started answering my questions more actively: again, I created a new routine for them. Another little, very useful trick: when you don't get an answer, ask students to first discuss in pairs for 30 seconds, then answer. You should definitely get more volunteers the second time around.

5. My age

Now, this one is truly baffling, because it seems to me like a battle I will never win. Early in my teaching career, I felt too young - which is not only to say I was inexperienced (though I was) but also that I was too close in age with my students. Of course, leave it to teens and pre-teens to make you aware that at 23, you are a dinasour to them (and I regret to say I'm quoting their words verbatim here), but when I was barely 25, I started teaching Master's students at a university, so the age gap was 2-3 years at most. When you're nonchalantly getting invited to their music gigs, how on earth do you establish your authority in the classroom?

Not to mention now: now, I do feel like a dinosaur compared to my students. This becomes apparent to me not only because they don't seem to get what I genuinely think are hilarious and on point pop culture references, but because, among other things, they are using AI in their work in ways that I cannot seem to keep up with.

👉 What I did to become less insecure: When it was about being too young, I made my classes a little more demanding than I might otherwise have because I wanted my students to know I was not messing around. In hindsight, this was perhaps not the wisest way to cope, but I'm only human and I think it taught me to be more confident in a fake-it-till-you-make-it kind of way. At the moment, I'm trying to get to grips with students using AI and how to support them so that they don't offload absolutely every cognitive task. I can't say I have all the answers, but I'm definitely trying. However, I will never ever accept their disregard for 80s and 90s pop culture - this is morally unacceptable to me.

And that brings me to the end of today's newsletter! Could you see yourself in any of my insecurities? What are your main insecurities as a teacher? If you can spend 15 seconds to tick a couple of boxes, that will help me decide what to focus on in future newsletters ❤︎

And now we've really come to the end of today's newsletter (?). Just two little things before we go:

1. Just in case you missed it on social media, I've put together a little pdf with 5 activities for the European Day of Languages: LanguagEd_5 activities european day languages.pdf. If you want to make sure you don't miss this sort of last-minute updates, consider following LanguagEd on Facebook.

2. It was truly a highlight of my week to see the amazing range of vocab you took away from last week's newsletter. Revise it and add some more from today - everyone is welcome!

Add your favourite words to the Padlet

And with that, I shall finally truly let you go to what I hope is a wonderful Sunday.

Take care, dear teacher ✨

¹ My talk was about 15 ideas to use literature creatively (in 15 minutes). AFAIK, they haven't uploaded the individual talks to the website yet, but if you're really curious and looking to kill 15 minutes this Sunday morning, you'll find my talk starts roughly at the 1 hour 1 minute mark in this recording. And yes, I managed to sneak in an impromptu pop culture reference even in a talk about literature.

² Again, if you're really interested, this might be a source for you to consult on what I hope is a relaxed Sunday morning.

³ On the plus side, I still had a full head of non-grey hair, though. Good old days.

P.S.: My weekly suggestion for things to listen to/watch/read to improve your English while relaxing: I have a couple for you this week. The first one is tangentially school-related but worth it. It's this US-based middle school teacher who has me in stitches whenever his videos come up on my YouTube feed. Take the start of this video: "I tried to move on, but these kids saw my exasperation on the horizon and they had all the willpower and austerity and audacity of a young Ferdinand Magellan as he's circumnavigating the world, just constantly going at it. And if they reach the shoreline but they've lost 98% of their crew, they've survived and they made it". Really hilarious and relatable. Captions on recommended!

The second is the one and only sponsor I've ever accepted. Every time they get a click, they support me to make this newsletter possible. 1440 is the self-styled "knowledge company for the insatiably curious" and I quite like that. They pick out fact-driven news, write it themselves (humans, can you believe it?!) and send it to you all for free. See what they're all about:

✨Cool things I heard this week

I finally understand the things I was doing "wrong" and needed to work on as a teacher. All because I started working with you. I didn't know what I didn't know!

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