I worked on my first overseas British Council project at aged 4 (no typo – it was with my father’s theatre company!) and have had a love of travelling and working in different cultural and geographical contexts since then. I worked in Portugal, Australia and Thailand as an EFL teacher, then in Thailand completed my Cambridge DELTA and took my first steps in teacher training. I moved to Chile where I became involved in language assessment, completed my Master’s in Language Testing with Lancaster University, and got more experience as a teacher educator. I then returned to the UK to work with NILE, where I have been fortunate enough to bring all my previous experience to bear on a varied and exciting role which incorporates teacher training, language assessment, digital technologies and leadership.
In the session I want to look at our preconceptions of language testing, examining and assessing, and explore where we as teachers and trainers have the opportunity and autonomy to influence how learners experience these aspects of their education. Clearly, this is not in every instance of assessment that learners will meet, but I feel that many which are in our grasp can be too easily overlooked. This will include not only assessment approaches themselves, including tests and exams, but also the learning and teaching time before and after an assessment event. I will also argue that there are not many actions and decisions taken by learners and teachers which aren’t in some way related to assessment. By demystifying the concept of ‘testing and assessment’, I hope attendees will see a new opportunity for humanising their work in this area, and be able to share this perception with their learners.
I think my most memorable single classroom experience was on my very first day of my pre-service teacher training course, a Cambridge CELTA in Devon in the UK. I was the one chosen first to replicate with the teaching-practice students one of the activities that we trainees had experienced that morning. I stood up, gave the instructions, nominated the first student to respond… and he looked at me in complete confusion and deafening silence. I felt the ‘rabbit in the headlights’ fear wash over me, felt the colour drain from my face, stared around me in panic, and wished for the proverbial hole to open in the ground in front of me. The seconds ticked by. Fortunately, something kicked in, and I invited a second student to respond, used their answer to model the response for the first student, and I’ve forgotten the rest of how the activity went now! I think that that ‘sink-or-swim’ moment has been repeated in so many professional experiences since, but that confidence that ‘there’s a way to get through this’ if you trust your intuition, experience and those around you, has always kept me going.
Of course there are many, but I feel I was incredibly lucky to have the opportunity to join NILE at a time when my colleagues in the academic team were Dave Allan, Rod Bolitho and Alan Pulverness. Being able to work with them for my first couple of years was a hugely developmental experience, the best of informal and formal mentoring, and set me up for taking on more and more responsibility and ultimately taking over the reins at NILE. All three epitomised the NILE ethos of “giving colleagues roots and wings” – that is, providing the support, resources, and knowledge to be able to do your job coupled with giving the trust and confidence to be creative and find one’s own style.
I am coach of my youngest son’s Under12s football team. While it’s a completely different context, and by turns wonderful and deeply frustrating, it’s still fundamentally about people, their experiences of learning and of working with each other, and about what it means to be a ‘teacher’ or literally, ‘trainer’. It gives me a great, alternative perspective on teaching and learning, and also on life!
