At a recent workshop I conducted at the American Corner here in St. Petersburg, I talked with a group of teachers about tides of change and innovation in education, specifically in Russia. I shared an experience of my own: ten years ago, when I was in graduate school at the American University in Washington, DC, Communicative Language Teacing (CLT) was still all the rage. We were taught to hep students learn English by providing them with a series of examples from real-world communicative situations such as asking for directions, ordering a pizza, etc., and ask them to practice and create their own similar dialogs and/or texts.
In recent years, however, CLT has been gradually replaced by Task-based Instruction (TBI), in which students are given problems to solve and/or projects to complete during which they are expected to develop real-world skills of conversation and text-creation independently. This is a very brief explanation, but you get the point.
In essence, what I told my participants was that all this hullabaloo about CLT was basically out of style and considered ineffective. I was, fortunately, able to change my approach, do some reading and experimenting in the classroom and have thus bought into TBI in recent years.
My point is that change is inevitable. Without it, our profession stagnates. So, I asked my participants to share with me some of the most drastic changes in education in Russia in last 20 years or so, I expected to hear mostly stories of upheaval related to the dissolution of the USSR, but instead got an earful of disdain for the new Unified Government Exam, a new single college entrance exam which now must be taken by every Russian student who wants to attend a university.
This new exam, in a traditional top-down fashion, has altered the very way English is taught in the classroom. Teachers have told me that they tend to go in one of two directions (you can guess which one is more common): 1) They can teach their students English as best they can and assume that their proficiency will serve them well on the exam or 2) they can teach to the test.
In addition to change from the outside (like the new exam), we talked about change from within and the usefulness of having dynamic schools in which teachers work together to decide on the direction they will take when faced with possibilities for innovation and change. As such as participants liked this idea, they admitted mostly that it is not very common. Teachers generally do not feel like they have enough power over the cirriculum in the school to effect much change on the local level.
But we also talked about the usefulness of joining a teachers’ association such as the St. Petersburg English Language Teachers’ Association, if only as a measure towards lessening the feeling of utter isolation that many teachers in this city experience. It is all to easy to feel like one is teaching on an island in their classroom, but if we are members of an association and are encouraged to share ideas and stand on each other’s shoulders, than our profession is improved and we are reminded of the reasons why we became teachers in the first place: to help others.
Finally, we worked together to write a list of ways that we can either 1) better cope with change in education and 2) effect the kind of change that we feel is beneficial to our profession. Here are some of the best answers:
1. More public teacher-training workshops in the city
2. More frequent continuing education opportunities within the schools.
3. Greater acceptance and encouragement of ideas from new teachers.
4. Joining a teachers’ association.
5. Familiarizing one’s self with the needs of L2 speakers of English in the modern world.
6. More travel opportunities for teachers.
7. More academic partnerships between Russian and foreign universities.
8. Frequent workshops on using technology in the classroom.
9. Better equipment in the classroom (basic and new technology).
10. Better access to online research databases for learners.