I have been interested in Marek Kiczkowiak's position about the acceptance of teachers in our ELT profession for a few years, now, ( see Telf Equity Advocates) and felt sure that part of the problem was the fact that training courses did not offer a great deal of support for Non Native teachers post course. This is, of course, not the only problem needing to be addressed.
In my own little corner of the world I wanted to create change, if possible, and I consider myself extremely lucky to work for Trinity College, London , who allow a degree of flexibility when each centre designs their course.
I started from a position of strength; my school is more than happy to employ anyone with the right qualifications, regardless of nationality. We also often find non-native trainees on our bi-annual certTESOL courses, and do our very best to help them find work afterwards- in fact, often they stay around for a while and work for us, giving them more experience when they do strike out later on their own.
This time in my programme I made room for the changes I wanted to initiate.
On day 1 we finished with a session called Different Englishes in the Classroom, which included a look at ELF. This was to open the trainees' eyes to the variety of standard and non-standard language which they would be exposed to, and to develop a tolerance for linguistic variety. Language doesn't remain static in a box, and there is little need for grammar/ phonology police who believe in their own variety at all costs ( I have come across trainees who think like this).
In a session in week 2, looking at Exploiting Authentic Material, I included the teacher as a resource. We discussed roles of teachers and the benefits of having a native/ non-native teacher in a classroom. Agreement was reached that many clients were brainwashed by companies into believing the NEST was the better option, but in reality, there was no difference if both were qualified to teach.
By week 3 we had started to receive job offers online from a mix of sources. This often happens and in the past I shared them on a job wall without a great deal of thought. This time I analysed the language and was unhappy with the findings. Of the offers available, only 2 had no restriction according to nationality, passport, age or experience.
At the start of the fourth and final week, I set up a job forum. We discussed sensitivity to local conditions, the present roles of NEST / NNEST teachers and other information to help guide them in the world of work after the course. At this point I divided them into groups and gave them the job applications to read. They quickly found the same conditions that I had, so I asked them how they felt. The group had bonded extremely well, and, protective of Madgalena their resident Pole, were incensed on her behalf. I also had two older ladies on the course who would also be disadvantaged by the criteria stated.
I asked them to draft replies to the emails we had received. They were very clear in their distaste for such advertisements and explained that they believed the companies were wrong to stipulate these conditions, in some cases acting illegally.
Interestingly, they had a couple of replies. One company offered to remove the offending paragraph from their literature, and the other company said that they would henceforth accept each application on merit.
Others were not interested in replying, and one company suggested that we keep them in mind in the future, should WE change our mind!
As an experiment, this worked extremely well. It was easy to shoehorn the topic into other sessions, and to create an opportunity for discussion at all times. Having Magda there was an excellent way for the trainees to really think about the issues, and she was their go-to person for help with their own language awareness questions.
I would be happy to suggest that the idea of incorporating these ideas into a CertTESOL or a CELTA should be given consideration. It didn't disrupt my course at all- in fact I feel that it added value. After all, we promise that our qualification will open the world for our particpants- not just for some of them!
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