h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Yesterday, in a panic, I phoned an experienced teacher friend of mine and asked her what I could do about first-day-of-teaching nerves.

"Nothing," she said matter-of-factly. "No, you'll be shittin' yourself. Your hands'll shake, you'll drop your whiteboard marker, and when you see 'em all sitting there staring at you and waiting for you to start, your mind'll go totally blank. Good luck."


Suddenly it didn't seem so bad.

"Just open your mouth and say *something*," she advised. "Once you start speaking, it'll all come back to you."

So off I went on the train today, to my first creative writing class. I had my lesson prepared: some stuff about parts of speech, and a creative exercise to make them think about how they construct sentences. Upon arrival, the social worker in charge said, "by the way, we've got a man with learning difficulties turning up today."



I didn't know what the hell I was going to do.



The lesson was in two parts: the first hour was being taught by someone else, who tried to teach everyone how to write a haiku. Nobody knew what a syllable was. After the teacher had explained, the guy with learning difficulties was at a complete loss, but everyone else coped fine. So he just sat there while the rest of us wrote haikus. I wanted to give him a hand, but thought that might be seen as usurping the other teacher. Finally, one of the social workers helped him, but she wasn't too sure about syllables either.

When the other teacher had finished her hour, I stood up to go to the toilet. I had already peed about 64 times already that day, but felt I needed to go again, even though I actually felt quite calm and placid. My legs gave way. Turns out it was only the top half of my body that was calm and placid. I pretended I had pins and needles, and staggered out.

As I sat on the loo, gazing in terror at the paper towel dispenser, the thought occured to me that I could just walk out of the building and keep going. Nobody would know I'd gone for a good quarter of an hour. Nobody would come after me.

I returned to the classroom. I opened my mouth in the hopes that words would come out of it and, to my relief, they did. After I'd given them some spiel about how writing is a lot like cooking, and combining words is like combining ingredients, I ran through some parts of speech. Not one person in the room knew what a noun was. One person knew what verbs were. Oh, boy. I'd been banking on the fact that *everybody* has heard of nouns and verbs. But I persisted. I got them all to give examples of 'naming words' and 'doing words', and I wrote them up on the board. The guy with the learning difficulties had shrunk into himself, but I managed to make him come up with a couple of suggestions along with everyone else. I did the same thing with adjectives and adverbs. He'd perked up by that time, and the women in the group seemed quite enthusiastic too. Only one guy looked as bored as all hell.

We looked at some extracts from books, to see what other writers had done with 'describing words'. Everyone decided that "less is more" when it comes their use. The guy with learning difficulties floundered again, so I went through it slowly with him. He didn't see where the adjectives were, but said he preferred the extract that was less wordy. The other guy gazed out of the window.

The exercise I gave them was to write a description of something familiar as though they've never seen it before--and without using any adjectives or adverbs. Boy, that had them tearing their hair out!

The guy gazing out of the window wrote a paragraph and then returned to his gazing. I was sorry not to have inspired him, because I'd heard that he was a talented and funny writer. Everyone else scrawled away intensively, until I called an end to it. It was clear that nobody had fully understood what adjectives and adverbs were, but that didn't matter, because the object of the whole thing was to prevent them from writing down the first sentence that came to mind, and rather to think about what they were saying. In that respect, they'd all done well and were pleased with their work--except for the bored guy. He was bored.

The student who experienced the greatest sense of achievement was the guy with learning difficulties. Embarrassed by his slowness, he'd tried extremely hard to pay attention and do the tasks. Where everyone else had written encyclopaedia-style descriptions, he had written a story about his first experience of drinking coffee. He had used fewer adjectives and adverbs than anyone else--and he had made it rhyme. How about that! I was thrilled. So was he.

When the lesson was over, everyone thanked me and then I had to go the toilet again. As I sat there gazing at the paper towel dispenser, I comforted myself with the thought that at least I hadn't dropped the whiteboard marker.

That’s great, I’m really pleased for you! I really hate first days, and can definitely relate to that realisation that you could just walk out while everyone’s looking the other way, and do something safe and familiar instead.

Are you going to have the same students each time? Building relationships is important, and it sounds like you’ve already instilled some confidence and trust in the guy with learning difficulties.

Now you’ve got the first day out of the way, so you think you’ll still be shittin’ it?

There was extra pressure on me for this session, because there's some bloke going for the same job, and the social workers can't decide who to pick. Each of us have taken an hour's class and now it's down to the students as to which of us they want. They told me when I'll hear whether I'll be continuing to teach there, but I was in too much of a state to take it in.

Maybe they'll pick the other guy. Touch wood.

Well at least you survived that session, regardless of the decision.

YOU DID IT!

The next one won't be half so nerve racking. If you get the same lot again, maybe just do the easy option:

1) revise what they did last time briefly

2) ask them which bits they found difficult, if any.

3) Go over those.

4) Ask them to do the same exercise again & compare it with their last effort.

IMHO maybe doing adverbs should be left until a bit later?

You could try giving them a picture, anything, stuff clipped from magazines & get them to do the same thing, once they get confident with each other it's fun to do that & make them hide their picture, then when they've finished writing, pin up all the pictures (different parts of the room; dont forget to supply pins or blue tack), get 'em to wander round & look at them (gets them talking & moving too!) then you read out the pieces & they have to race to see who can guess which pic it relates to.

The bored one will probably always look bored, it's either part of his ego trip or he will just leave. You could try baiting him if you are brave enough "OY!YOU! Whadddya think then HUH?" but it may get frowned on by the tutor!

zdt

That sounds great and you really inspired the guy with learning difficulties, it sounds as though he came up with the most interesting and original piece. Learning difficulties can be an advantage sometimes, as you can be truely creative if you are not dominated by doing what you think is correct.

Don't worry about the bored guy, we choose to be bored, if thats how he wants to live his life, its his problem.

Good luck on geting the decision you want!

Thanks for all the positive words.

Terri, excellent advice again: thanks. If I go back, I'll probably be doing two-hour sessions, so I could spend the first hour going over problem areas and revising what they've learnt, and the second hour doing new stuff.

"The bored one will probably always look bored, it's either part of his ego trip or he will just leave. You could try baiting him if you are brave enough"

&

"Don't worry about the bored guy, we choose to be bored, if thats how he wants to live his life, its his problem."

You could be right, though I kind of got the impression that he could bloom given some attention. He was stuck way off in the corner, and was the only person I wasn't able to have much eye contact with. He also seemed painfully shy. But when I asked him direct questions, his answers displayed an individuality of thought, a thinking-outside-the-box quality which I'd love to tap into.

I don't know if I made it clear before, but all the students have emotional problems and the creative writing classes are part of a scheme whereby they can get involved with life again, learn new skills and have some fun. So in this case, it's not necessarily just his problem, but a challenge for me as a teacher.

The other teacher in my session was actually one of the clients of this scheme, but has more or less recovered and is running the class sometimes as a voluntary thing to gain experience. She's less qualified than me, with the result that she and everyone else, including the two social workers, were deferential towards me.

I think we were *all* scared, in our own little ways.

Here's some guesses from the way I have seen people learn.

The structure of language is interesting, but perhaps he already knows it. I know that many of my contemporaries in high school didn't have a full grasp of grammar. Part of this was that it wasn't stressed, and part of this was because when it was taught only the very basics were taught and not how to used them. But I was screaming inside being taught the structure that I knew, again, during my last year of school.

On the other hand, he's probably been exposed to "but how do you FEEL" for longer than he really wants, too, and he is anticipating you to do the same. Not a good expectation if he writes with vulnerability.

I guess the only way of finding out would be to get to know him better. Which reminds me: I must invoice the social workers. Ker-ching.

Wish some of my high school teachers had been more like yourself and not just bored.

Have the students volunteered to come on this course, or been coerced into it by well meaning but possibly overbearing/patronising social workers? 'Cos that will make a huge difference to their attitudes!

IMHO two hours is a hell of a long session, you will definitely need to break it up, a "proper" break, ie toilets & ciggies & general stretching of limbs, after the first hour. Plus try & devise some means every lesson of getting them physically moving around, chatting to each other; the social interaction stuff is obviously even more important than usual with these sort of students.

If it was me, until i know them better i would be wary of "heavy" stuff, bearing in mind they have emotional issues, humour is very important, but obviously not all the time. Safeish neutral things might be taking a news story of the day, & re-writing it as if they were there, rather than from the reporters point of view; that will give you an insight into where they are at emotionally.

! keep us posted!

zdt

The course is supposed to be voluntary. In practice, who knows! The social workers seem lovely, though.

Yup, a break would be imperative for *me*, never mind that lot.

The room's not big enough to allow free movement: eveyone sits round a big table, though, which is good for a friendly atmosphere.

If I get the job, I'm not going to worry about "heavy" stuff. Everyone has different buttons and I won't see it as my job to second-guess what they are. (Though that's not to say I'll be asking them to write about the worst experiences of their lives or anything.) I like your news item idea: they could take that any way they want to.

I will indeed keep you posted!

Update.

Having not heard from the social workers for a couple of weeks, I had utterly convinced myself that I am Not Teacher Material, that I'd made a pig's ear of targeting my lesson to its recipients, and that I'd never hear from them again. So the email I just got from them was a big shock; they said: "our creative writing group was very pleased with your session and would like to invite you to run their group."

Perhaps the delay was because they had more people to try out.

Yes, I think that bloke they were trying must have taken the session after my one.

Nice one, Snailrind! Did they give you any idea when you’ll be starting?

Thanks.

I think they're hoping *I'll* tell *them* when I'm starting. I imagine it'll be in a week and a half.

Oh how fantastic, it's a great ego stroker to be wanted and stuff

Congrats