The other day I was reading this article on millennials’ identity crisis and I came across a statement that got me thinking and spurred the will to write this piece. It read, “Millennials mainly derive identity through either work or romantic relationships.” – quite the statement, isn’t it? However, I believe some editing is due for the sake of accuracy: “We mainly derive identity through work and relationships”. I believe it to be impossible to separate work and life and identity because I see them not as opposing terms, but as part of a unity. Don’t worry, I’m not here to advocate in favor of workaholism or a no-rest-let’s-produce-24/7 mentality. We know this kind of behavior only benefits the rich and burns everyone else out.
The way I see it, our work realizes us, it makes us real. What we do exports into the world and into the lives of others who we are. In that sense, I believe our identity is inseparable from what we do. I love the way we talk about our profession, “I am a teacher”. Teachers are teachers wherever they go. Have you ever caught yourself watching Netflix and thinking of how you could use that show or episode to teach something? Me too. So this is why I believe that the search for identity is so deeply connected to our work and, another millennial dilemma, authenticity. In this article, we are going to look at authenticity from three different perspectives: interactions, materials, and teacher identity.
Authentic interest is the key to authentic interactions. Part of my work involves lesson observation and feedback for teachers’ continuous development. One aspect of teaching that has recently caught my attention is how inauthentic teacher-learner interactions can be. I’ve written an article for this blog some time ago talking about the ‘Dora explorer effect’ – the situation in which teachers ask learners too many display questions and too few authentic, real questions. In Teaching Unplugged, by Thornbury and Meddings, the authors advocate for a teaching approach that is conversation based, meaning that learners and teachers would engage in authentic conversations and the language that emerges from this act would be the focus of the lesson. This has since been a goal of mine, to design and stage lessons that feel like guided conversations with on-the-spot teaching of language at the point of need.
This can be achieved when the teacher realizes that real language use is a powerful tool for additional language learning. And doing so doesn’t require much change in our lessons, but rather, on how we think our lessons and how we interact with learners. From a more practical point of view, two changes can profoundly influence how conversational our lessons feel: see the learner as, first of all, a person, and ask real and authentic questions. People love talking about themselves, their wants, their needs, dreams, fears, hobbies. It might be a good idea to harness this inert potential for engagement and interest by asking students open-ended questions and, more importantly, questions to which you don’t know the answers to but want to know. It is only by noticing your authentic interest in their stories and life that learners will actively want to talk and share a bit of who they are with you. Also, don’t forget to see yourself as a person too. Your life, your stories, your hobbies are also lush soil for authentic language and learner interest. Both learners and teachers ought to be seen as active conversationalists so that authentic conversations can take place – and relationships can be built. This way you’ll be allowing your learners to positively affect who you are and, thus, what you do. This intertwining of relationships and stories are what we become. After all, what are we but our memories and stories?
Another way of engaging learners in class is through the use of authentic materials. Authentic materials are defined as those not created specifically for classroom use. These are YouTube videos, Netflix series, articles from The Economist, restaurant menus and so forth. What makes them authentic is the fact that they were created with real language usage, with a proficient audience in mind, and involve the authentic interest of communicating a message. These materials are a fantastic source of real-world language and can give learners a real sense of self-efficacy when they manage to decode the material and achieve the communicative intention in it. Much has been said about “grade the task, not the text” when it comes to communicative language teaching; however, I believe that should be taken with a grain of salt. No task grading is able to overcome the frustration of working for half an hour on a text and not being able to understand it – even if the task set by the teacher was accomplished. In my opinion, we might have taken the “grade the task, not the text” too much to the letter. When choosing an authentic text to expose your learners to, make sure they have enough background knowledge and language to understand most of it. As a rule of thumb, I get the feeling that learners should be able to understand 75% or more of the text so that it doesn’t frustrate them.
Also, I believe we can only truly tag materials as authentic if there is also authentic learner interest involved. That is, if the text, audio, or video brought to class can instigate real interest from the learners. To aid in this search for truly engaging authentic materials, my suggestion is that learners are encouraged to bring these to class themselves to be worked on the following class or that same class should the teacher manage to Dogmefy that lesson.
The third look at authenticity I’d like to take in this piece is teacher identity. We’re all blue in the face from hearing empty anthems pro authenticity in which the central message is something in the lines of “be yourself”. However, if we derive our identity from what we do and from our relationships, I believe the best way to realize one’s own identity is to (ironically) copy. But when you decide to copy, do not copy one other teacher alone, that would be plagiarism of identity, and we wouldn’t want that. Instead, copy several teachers, hundreds of teachers if possible. Find mentors and stick to them. Observe them and pay attention to what they do and what you could do yourself. Watch them in class, watch them in workshops and courses, watch them when they interact with others in a conference. Not in a stalky kind of way, of course. When doing this research, you’ll find that by curating pieces of other teachers’ work, and selves, you’ll be creating a forever changing teaching identity of your own – and that is uniqueness. This is the reason why I strongly advocate for teachers’ communities and associations. Even though teachers live most of their lives surrounded by people, we know that the profession can feel quite lonely at times.
My final suggestion here would be: do not try to weather the storm on your own. We’re all in the same storm, some in rougher boats than others, but together we can make it feel more like a gentle summer drizzle, even if only for some time during a teachers’ conference, a course or a happy hour. We are what we do and we are our relationships. Find your crew and hold on to that mast because you are not alone, I am because we are. And we are teachers.
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