Success Condition: Student Fires Me.
So one of the big life changes I’ve been trying to deal with lately has been that I’m no longer working full time in an office. I’m now partly a freelance teacher who is trying his best to start up an English consulting business.
I’ve been thinking about many things as I prepare myself for this venture. I’m working a business plan. I’m thinking about who I’m after, what sort of classes I’d offer, what that would look like, and where they should happen. I’m thinking about brochures and websites to help promote my services, and I’m talking with graphic designers who will help get a "look" for these services - business cards, website, brochures etc.
All this thinking has been leading me to reflect on exactly what I’m trying to offer a prospective client. What is my service, and how will I offer it? What is my USP? (Unique Selling Point.)
Ever since I started blogging, about a year ago now, my whole philosophy about teaching English has undergone, and is still undergoing, a very slow, but steady transformation.
If you talked to me in my pre-blogging days, I would have told you that my objective as a teacher of English was to form a strong relationship with my clients, and keep it that way. Success would be to keep your students for as long as you possibly can, ensuring your regular income and economic stability. Yes, student success mattered to me, but more than anything, my monthly paycheck was king. I think most English teaching companies subscribe to similar thinking: I get you to be my client for as long as I possibly can.
But all that has started to change for me, and I can link that change to this post by Will Richardson way back in September of 2005. This post got me thinking about what successful English teaching really is, and what it isn’t. Are you a successful teacher if you form a student/teacher relationship with the same person for years? Are you a successful English teaching company if you have the same clients, and the same students filling your classrooms for years?
Economically, this is good. It’s safe. It’s predictable. You know that student "x" or company "y" will be with you for the long haul. That means regular money, and saftey.
But is this sort of practice really successful? Does the present, and very classic structure of ESL classrooms actually help its students succeed? Can fluency be achieved taking 1.5 hour blocks of English class month in and month out, or are we wasting teacher and student time? (Not to mention money.)
Going back to Richardson’s post, and the discussion about what makes a successful English teacher, If it’s not about building long-term relationships with students and clients, what is success as a teacher about?
The new thought that is slowly working its way into my life as a teacher: Teaching should be about equipping students so well that after a while you’re not needed that much anymore. One aspect of teaching success should be putting myself out of a job.
I’m a regular reader and fan of AJ’s Effortless Acquisition blog. A few days ago he posted something that just resonated with me, and all that I’ve been pondering as I prepare to launch out more on my own: Small Is Oh So Beautiful
I really like his ideas:
"Students too fall into a kind of hypnosis when they enter a class. Its like they walk through the door and automatically surrender their autonomy and responsibility to the authority figure." (Small Is Oh So Beautiful. AJ.)
Autonomy and responsibility. That’s pretty important isn’t it? Teachers, in general, are well versed in their responsibilities as teachers. We know that we need to plan our lessons. We know we need to be responsible to come prepared for our classes. We know we can’t depend on anyone else to do our teaching for us. But how much do students take on this type of thinking? How often do they, through years of "school training," come into class thinking as empty vessels that need to be filled by the teacher? How often do they expect their teacher to teach them English?
Sure there is a major role for the teacher to play here, that is obvious. But I think we may have swung too far in this direction. I think I need to change the way I teach. Instead of the usual focus on vocabulary, grammar, conversation etc, I should be spending more time teaching my students HOW THEY can and should be working on their English outside the class, and on their own.
"Small is beautiful. And the smallest possible learning unit is ONE. That’s you- the learner. No one else. No teacher. No school. No authority figures to surrender to. No one else responsible for learning but YOU." (Small Is Oh So Beautiful, AJ)
I think we need interaction to help process and refine what we learn. Teachers shouldn’t strive to create isolated language learners, but what does need to happen, and happen on a very deep level, is the spirit behind this quote from AJ; a spirit that burns with the idea that my success as a language student largely depends on me taking responsibility for what I learn.
And as I consider how my freelance practice will be, I find myself in 100% agreement with AJ’s closing reflection about his own teaching in light of his self-study discoveries as he learns Spanish. "At this point, I can’t imagine returning to a traditional classroom– stuck in a desk listening to somebody give obtuse explanations about textbook grammar points. Ugh! Such a brain-antagonistic way to learn! So damn borin {…}In learning, small is indeed beautiful.
(This experience, by the way, is profoundly changing my thoughts about my role as a "teacher". I now think the best service I can perform for "my students" is to wean them off me until they are autonomous leaners. In other words, my job is to teach my student-customers how to fire me 
"(Small Is Oh So Beautiful, AJ)
That’s what I want to be about. Not creating life-long student-customers. Not creating dependent relationships. I want my freelance work to be risky in that I help the people I work with to not need me anymore.
And that ideal is now in my business plan: Success Condition: Student Fires me. Fired not because of bad service or poor teaching. Fired me because I did my job correctly, and effectivly equipped my student-customer with the skills they need to develop their English apart from me.
Perhaps we’ll still work together, but I see the relationship as something very different. It’s not about me feeding them everything they need. It’s not about me coming up with content and vocabulary words to dump in their laps. Now I think it’s about me coming along side as a true trajectory coach. Their journey is already in progress. They may just need some encouragement. They may just need some direction to keep moving in the right direction. They may just need to test out ideas about what they’re learning. The point is this: The interaction I’m seeing here, and I’d love to hear what you have to say about this, is no longer a long-term thing. It’s momentary and it’s empowering.
Shouldn’t this be how we describe our success as ESL teachers?
