Teaching Teachers and Principals

An Interview with Ian Schneider

When we think of English language teaching (ELT), we usually think of teaching language learners and of learners who are still young. But ELT goes beyond teaching English to the young. It expands to the training of pre-service teachers and in-service teachers, and it encompasses school principals, vice-principals, supervisors, and other administrators in ELT contexts. The Jeollanamdo International Education Institute is a training center for such teachers and administrators, and Ian Schneider, a trainer at the Institute, agreed to talk about his teaching experiences there. That interview follows.

Interviewer: To start off this interview, Ian, could you tell our readers a little about yourself – things like where you’re from, what you did before Korea, when you came to Korea, and what you’ve done in Korea?

Ian: I grew up on the west coast of the U.S. – mostly in California. Before coming to Korea, I earned my BA in linguistics from the University of Kentucky and worked as a substitute teacher for K–12 public schools in my hometown of Sacramento. After arriving in Korea in 2017, I started as a native English teacher (NET) at Namak High School in the new Jeollanam-do capital district east of Mokpo. After two years in Namak, I moved to Yeosu to work at the Jeollanamdo International Education Institute (JIEI), where I helped Korean English teachers develop greater confidence in their listening and speaking skills. And finally, last February, JIEI promoted me to coordinate a team of five fellow NETs.

Interviewer: At JIEI, I believe you’ve taught in-service English teachers. What are the differences and challenges in teaching skills courses to them as opposed to the general English learner?

Ian: At JIEI, my primary goal as an instructor has been to help Korean English teacher-trainees (KETs) develop greater confidence in speaking and listening. In other words, every trainee I met was exceedingly bright with mountains of language knowledge piled up in their minds thanks to years of formal study. My job was to create a safe and supportive classroom atmosphere where KETs could unlock that stored knowledge through self-expression.

However, I didn’t start out thinking this way. When I first started work at JIEI in August of 2019, I felt like an impostor who had to flex his linguistics degree in order to conduct a class that KETs would find worthwhile. But I soon realized that KETs’ advanced language knowledge liberated me to teach topics I found interesting in English rather than teach about English.

At Namak High School, my teaching goals were limited to encouraging students to produce English discourse and fostering more positive attitudes towards English language learning. However, with KETs, my focus shifted from teaching English as a subject to teaching communication skills – a topic I’ve studied intensely due to decades of socially awkward feelings and a will to improve my own communication skills.

But the freedom to teach more advanced topics also brings more challenges. More advanced learners have more advanced expectations. This shift in learner needs forced me to consider my course goals and requisite scaffolding in greater detail. For example, one of the more popular and useful assessments from my course was podcast interviews – where trainees had to both conduct and give interviews on their topics of choice.

A former supervisor, Kristy Dolson, once suggested that I “plan with the end in mind” – a tip that I took to heart to reverse-engineer the practice and skills trainees would need to complete this summative assessment task. For example: As an interviewer, what makes for effective open-ended questions? How do I ask effective follow-up questions? How can I use pauses and silence? How can I demonstrate to my interviewee that I’m listening? As an interviewee, what kind of details would add intrigue to my message? How can I make my message simple yet compelling for an audience? How can I use pauses in order to add power to my message?

This job frees me up to bring in the mindsets, ideas, and techniques I read about in books or listen to in podcasts into the classroom – ideas that KETs may not have encountered in past English linguistics or methodology courses. And trainees’ elevated expectations in the classroom pushed me to elevate myself as an educator in a positive feedback loop of professional development.

Interviewer: I believe you also teach courses for school principals and other administrators at JIEI. They’re most likely more familiar with grammar-translation methodology and memorization of vocabulary and grammar rules from their school days, as well as large, teacher-centered classes and authoritarian teachers. How receptive are they to the more modern teaching practices that your courses most likely promote?

Ian: I found principals and administrators’ pre-existing assumptions to both work for and against me as an instructor during workshops.

On the one hand, these “traditionally educated” learners seemed to accept underlying assumptions that those who were seated were students and the person standing up was the teacher. Moreover, teachers have value and should be listened to. Despite my underwhelming credentials as an educator (especially compared to principals and vice-principals), I found most of these learners more than willing to suspend their disbelief and assume the role of student. This bought me enough time to build my own credibility through well-organized lessons and engaging activities.

However, I also experienced some trepidation about how to subvert administrators’ expectations of a lecture-heavy, grammar-centric class. And in order to do that, sometimes I go against my own personal philosophy and play games. Simple guessing games where principals use their hands and place various people around a laminated “school” and ask me questions like “Where is the principal?” really helps lower some initial anxiety or concerns about being in an immersion-level English class. (By the way, the principal is in the cafeteria!)

Once we hit cruising altitude and settle into class, I appreciate these folks’ open-mindedness. Even administrators who initially folded their arms and said “pass” at every opportunity to speak would soften up over time. While principals may have appeared ill-at-ease over more student-centered, production-oriented approaches to language education, they didn’t shy away either.

My favorite activity toward the end of the workshop involved randomly assigning each administrator a school-themed idiom like “teacher’s pet” or “pass with flying colors” and watch principals who I might at first glance brand as a “curmudgeon” light up and chuckle as they research and explain their idiom with their classmates. To me, it spoke to the vast possibilities of language education and how sometimes exploring less conventional content or methods could open their mind in otherwise uncomfortable or unfamiliar situations.

Interviewer: Teaching anecdotes are always interesting to hear. Would you like to share any anecdotes that you might have about teaching at JIEI?

Ian: I had a co-worker, Ashley, who specialized in reading skills and methodologies. He taught me that our aim as educators shouldn’t involve providing information but facilitating experiences.

That hit home for me when I watched him spend a whole class period playing Monopoly with the trainees. After the game, he conducted an informal poll on Google Forms asking the trainees the degrees to which they agreed or disagreed with the following statements:

“My friends are kind.”
“My friends are kind when they play Monopoly.”

The results were striking. Trainees who won the Monopoly game rated their classmates far more favorably than trainees who lost. He followed up with a profound discussion on how competitive games, while good for stoking a palpable “buzz” in the classroom, may actually be demotivating for a majority of students’ in the long run.

Kristy had a similar approach, taking well-deserved pride in an experiential lesson where she teaches trainees how to speak “I can” and “I cannot” sentences using TFF (Teaching French in French) in order to give trainees the experience of an immersive classroom environment in an unfamiliar L2. In short, trainees are in a unique position as teachers to re-assume the role of student – an excellent opportunity to use experiential learning to help them reconsider alternative perspectives.

Following both of their examples, I began to overhaul my own curriculum to orient more towards experiences than concepts – or more precisely, to teach concepts through experience. For example, rather than telling trainees about the advantages and disadvantages of a flipped curriculum, why not give them the experience of learners in a flipped classroom? Instead of sharing tips on how to manage the discomfort of silence, why not practice it by holding silent eye-contact with a partner for 30 seconds? Okay, that one seems needlessly cruel in hindsight, but the point stands.

Trainees don’t remember what you taught, but they will remember how you made them feel – and experiential lessons are more conducive to those feelings.

Interviewer: Has your approach to teaching changed since starting work at JIEI? If so, how?

Ian: When I first arrived at JIEI, I felt myself sinking into a deep bout of impostor syndrome.

“What am I doing here? What qualifies me to do this?” “These teachers are all older and more experienced than me. What could I possibly teach them?”

As a result, I regret to say that my early lessons were exercises of linguistic flexing on my part. I dredged up ideas about conceptual metaphor theory, phonological reduction, and frameworks of ELT – topics I cannot imagine myself lecturing about today.

A great inflection point came from speaking with KETs outside of class – whether it was over coffee or on the badminton court. I realized that although trainees had high expectations, many also showed symptoms of burnout. While they hoped for thought-provoking lessons each day, they also reveled in taking a break from their schools. Navigating this paradox consumed me as future programs commenced.

I realized trainees didn’t need an “expert” to tell them about the latest-and-greatest EFL theories or activities. Rather than sharing new methods on how to teach, I realized I could share new methods on how to think about teaching and, as Kristy emphasized so well in her courses, how to reflect on yourself as a teacher – a kind of meta education.

During my last six-month program, I put these ideas to work in a series of lessons about creative constraints. On the surface, the trainees and I simply practiced and performed different varieties of role-play and dialogue-based activities that varied in their creative demands. Some were fully scripted. Others required trainees to answer a short series of questions to create a story.

In short, the meta-lesson I stressed every day was to think about teaching as a creative exercise where one must name and navigate a series of constraints.

“Look, I know you probably won’t use any of these activities in your own lessons. That’s fine. But you encounter creative constraints in your own school every day.”

“What are some constraints that you have to name and incorporate in your own school and classroom?”

“Once you can identify those constraints, what creative solutions come to mind?”
So many trainees come to programs at JIEI with feelings of burnout. As an instructor, my goal hasn’t been to provide them with new activities or theories about education, but to provide them with psychological tools, mindsets, and a renewed spirit so they would be able to return to their schools with a fresh perspective and problem-solving capacities.

Interviewer: From your experiences teaching in Korea, what directions would you like to see English education, and education in general, take in the coming years in Korea?

Ian: These days, I’ve been heavy into reading books, journal articles, and dissertations about English language hegemony and ideology. The sociolinguist in me is interested in how English manifests as symbolic capital in Korean society.

In general, I would like to see a more critical approach to English education – what many researchers would call “glocalizing” critical pedagogy. By “glocal,” I mean an integration of the global language of English into local contexts – another take on the theory of World Englishes. In short, that would involve greater consciousness-raising and discussion among educators and students (especially at the secondary and tertiary level) regarding the myths and realities of how English education fits into globalized and neo-liberal social structures.

“Why are we learning English?” “Who benefits from learning English?” “Are we utilizing the most effective methods to reach our language-learning goals?”

But these questions are complex, and as an outsider, I’ll likely never have a complete answer. But they’re questions that many researchers and educators (like myself) see as worth exploring.

They’re also terrifying questions to explore as a native-speaking teacher. Answers and solutions may be contrary to my own aspirations and interests as an educator. For example, while my knee-jerk response may be that Korean English education should prioritize speaking and communication skills and decenter the domination of reading skills and standardized tests, these skills also serve a purpose. And until we can all better articulate the purpose and function of English education in Korea, we cannot propose the changes we really need.

This is a challenge for myself and others to “up our games” and really question the value that we bring to the classrooms as educators. If we take the time to reflect on our work in the classroom and conduct our professional development in a serious manner, I believe that our value lies well beyond our credentials or our first language.

Interviewer: May I ask what your plans are for the future?

Ian: I’m currently working towards an MA in linguistics through the University of Kentucky in an effort to plan my next career move. It might involve pursuing a PhD in linguistics or education. Or it may involve taking on a new job in Korea. Time will tell.

Interviewer: Thank you, Ian, for this bushel basket full of insights from your experiences in training English teachers and principals. There’s much food for thought that you’ve given us in this interview.

Interviewed by David Shaffer.
Photograph and graphics courtesy of Ian Schneider.

The Interviewer
David Shaffer has been involved in EFL and TEFL in Gwangju for many years. As vice-president of the Gwangju-Jeonnam Chapter of KOTESOL, he invites you to participate in the chapter’s teacher development workshops (now online) and in KOTESOL activities in general. He is a past president of KOTESOL, and is currently the editor-in-chief of the Gwangju News.

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