# President's Message: April/May 1999
David C. Nunan, President of TESOL, 1999-2000, reflects on his first teaching experience and its implications for the present.

TESOL Matters Vol. 9 No. 2 (April/May 1999)

David C. Nunan, President of TESOL, 1999-2000

Most of us remember our initial teaching appointment and that first encounter with our very own class. My own experience was an unforgettable one. I was first appointed to a suburban high school on the outskirts of Sydney. Then, the day before I was due to start, I received a telegram (yes, this was a long time ago!) redirecting me to an inner-city high school in an unfamiliar neighborhood. The next day, I caught the wrong train, got hopelessly lost, and arrived at the school well after the bell had sounded for the start of class. Someone in the front office directed me to my class. As I later discovered, I had scored the class from hell, the one that no one else wanted--the dreaded 7S--a bunch of hardened immigrant kids. I hurried along the hallway, and I knew immediately which was my classroom--it was the one where all the noise was coming from! As I approached the room, I saw to my horror someone who could only be the principal coming along the corridor from the opposite direction. He went into the classroom and closed the door. I stood outside the door for a minute or two listening to him attempting to restore order, and then, because I had no option, I opened to the door and went in. The principal paused, turned to me, pointed to an empty seat, and said, "You--sit there!" I shrugged and did as I was told.

When order was restored, the principal turned to me and asked, "And who are you?"
"Please, Sir," I replied, "I'm the new teacher."

To say that credibility with 7S was zero is an overstatement. Some time later, when I worked up the courage to ask the principal how to establish and maintain discipline with my bunch of tough, inner-city kids, he replied, "Don't smile until midterm break!" He went on to add that I shouldn't be too disappointed if the kids didn't learn much. "They're not interested in learning anything," he said. "They're just occupying space until they they're old enough to leave school."

Like many novice teachers, I was so preoccupied with my own classroom survival that I didn't give the students the attention they deserved. It was several months before I had the confidence to focus on the learners rather than on myself. When I did, however, I began to notice some intriguing and puzzling facts. First and foremost was the fact that there was no one-to-one relationship between the things I was teaching and the things that they were learning. In my classroom, the equation teaching = learning wasn't working. This was a problem. At that time the school, with its intimidating principal, was in the grip of the current educational fad--mastery learning. Entire curricula were predicated on the assumption that learners were to master one fact or skill before being allowed to move on to the next. Sequential, step-by-step mastery of content was the cornerstone of the method. However, 7S didn't learn like that at all. Rather than learning one thing perfectly one at a time, they learned lots of things imperfectly all at once. Their way of learning didn't fit the model of schooling, and the model of schooling didn't fit them. According to the dictates of the method, they were incapable of learning. However, when I paid attention to what they were actually learning rather than what the method indicated that they were supposed to be learning, I found that they were learning a great deal. In turn, I had learned to pay attention to what was actually going on in the learners rather than focusing on what the system assumed should go on.

I began to look for ways in which my teaching could match the subtlety and complexity of the learning process. I didn't insist on complete mastery. I augmented the drill-based textbook we were required to use with material from richer sources. I encouraged more communicative and creative language use. Authenticity had crept into my classroom long before it because fashionable in English language teaching. Some years later, I came across an article by Dick Allwright (1984) entitled "Why Don't Learners Learn What Teachers Teach?" and read it with a shock of recognition. Dick would have felt right at home with 7S, and he would, I am sure, have dealt much more effectively with the principal than I had managed to do. (Not so long ago, Dick told me that the question should probably be "Why don't teachers teach what learners learn?")

Ultimately, the solutions I sought to the challenges that confronted me led to my downfall. One day, the principal sprang a surprise attack on 7S, taking over the class and administering one of the regular tests (which I had long ago abandoned) while I cringed at the back of the room. Of course, the kids did dismally.

"Has he taught you this?" barked the principal. "Has he tested you?"
"No, Sir."
A weary shaking of the head. "See what I have to put up with?" he asked the kids.

I didn't last long in that school. The principal and I suffered what might euphemistically be called pedagogical dissonance. As a result, he moved me on. At the end of term I was transferred to a school on the other side of the city. However, my last day at the school was not my last encounter with 7S. One evening, midway through the next term, there was a knock on the door of my apartment. I opened it to find a delegation from 7S. As I looked at them in surprise, one spoke up: "Sir, please come back--we need you." I can remember him now, after all these years. He was a large Croatian boy who once confessed to me that he wanted to be a doctor. Years later, I learned through one of the teachers at the school that he became a laborer like his father but then managed to get a mature-age scholarship to university, and had eventually become a teacher. What is the point of the story? Well, I'm not sure that our professional stories actually need a punch line. However, for me, looking back, the lessons are fairly clear, and are now reasonably well established in our field. In the first place, it's important to take pedagogical bearings, not just from textbooks, curricula, schemes of work and examination schedules, but also from our learners. Secondly, it's naive to expect a one-to-one relationship between the learning opportunities we provide and the things that our learners take with them from our classrooms. Next, and probably most importantly, we can and we do make a difference to the lives of the people we teach--often in unexpected and sometimes even profound, ways. Finally, from a professional perspective our stories matter--to ourselves and to others. On one hand, they remind us of where we've come from, and, on the other hand, they can also help show us where we should be heading.

References

Allwright, D.(1984). Why don't learners learn what teachers teach?--The interaction hypothesis. In D.M. Singleton, and D.G. Little (Eds.), Language learning in formal and informal contexts (pp. 3-18). Dublin, Ireland: Irish Association for Applied Linguistics.

David C. Nunan, President of TESOL, 1999-2000