Beth is an instructor in the English Language Development (ELD) department. She has been teaching at Camosun since 2014, and this term she is back in the classroom after serving as a co-chair for the Basic English as a Second Language (BESL) program, teaching ELD 052 (a reading and writing class) and ELD 054 (a listening and speaking class.)
Beth came to ESL teaching in a roundabout way, first going to the University of Victoria (UVic), then Vancouver Island University (VIU) (Malaspina at the time), then graduating from Simon Fraser University (SFU) with a degree in Contemporary Arts. But, she says, “throughout my post-secondary journey, I was involved in the campus community radio scene. I had several radio shows at several different universities, first at UVic and then SFU where I helped community groups put together their shows and taught them how to use the gear and how to put together a basic show. Because several of these were non-English programming shows, there was a lot of English language teaching going on at the same time. “
After graduation, Beth was living in Vancouver struggling to make ends meet, so decided to look elsewhere for work. “I had a friend who was teaching in Japan, and they had a space available at their school, so, I went to Japan and taught English. My original plan was to go for just one year, but I stayed for seven because I loved it so much.” While Beth was working in Japan, she was also completing, by distance, the Master of Teaching English as a Second Foreign Language through the University of Birmingham. Beth returned to Canada in 2012 where she cobbled together bits of work around Victoria for a few years building experience and credentials, until she was hired at Camosun.
I had to ask Beth if she found that all her radio experience has helped in her teaching life. “When you’re hosting by yourself, you are doing multiple tasks at the same time, not multitasking, but managing many things all happening at the same time. You have to always be one step ahead, your plans ready and available. This really helped during my Master’s program where the students would get together and run webinars – it was a great group of people, some of whom I’ve never met in person, only online. Running webinars was like producing a radio show because you have to watch the chat, watch the video, make sure people have access to files, and make sure that you stay on time. You also learn flexibility because when things don’t go as planned, you can’t give up, you have to shift and go to a backup plan.” Kind of like teaching online during the pandemic, which I will come to shortly.
Beth told me what she enjoys most about teaching is “helping students realize their potential. “That’s the thing about language: it’s so exciting when you’re finally able to communicate a basic message in another language whether it’s listening and speaking or reading and writing and everything in between. Improving your English, especially for new immigrants, opens more employment, more education, and changes your confidence level. And at Camosun, we can see where students go, whether they take other programs at the college or at another university. I love that I am part of the School of Access – we’re providing access to a million different things.”
As has been my eternal question since I started these interviews in 2021, I asked Beth about the impact the last three years on her teaching and her students. “The past two years and eight months, I was co-chair of ELD so I wasn’t teaching as much as I am currently. I taught ELD 062 and 064 online during the lockdown in the summer of 2020, did some subbing later, taught for a couple of weeks in fall 2022 until we got an instructor. But I’ve always used a lot of technology in my classes, including D2L, so, I found it relatively easy to teach online and it didn’t seem too much of a shift to being remote. But what it confirmed to me was both the good things I was already doing, and the things that I needed to tweak. And it reminded me how important it is to take the time to organize things.”
Beth also noted how much of a toll the last three years have had on students. “Students have had to (and continue to have to) manage tiredness, confusion, uncertainty, on top of having to study. Instructors need to be a more flexible in terms of how they’re doing assignments, because if we continue to do things the way it used to be students are not going to be successful. We need to experiment more and explore alternative ways of assessment. In BESL, we use outcomes, and we need to look at different ways for satisfying each outcome, not just a paper and pencil test for example.” Beth is concerned about the complexity of student life today. “Students are stretched in all sorts of ways. They are working, have families, they are studying, and if they get COVID they may be away for a significant amount of time. And instructors have to support students as well as keep things moving, deliver effective lessons, get feedback to them as quickly as possible, as well as manage their own health and sanity.” These days, Beth noted, we seem to have to do more with less which means changing expectations and mindsets in our new reality.
I asked Beth if she had any memories from her teaching that stood out for her. “For me, it’s those tiny moments that are the most meaningful for me, like seeing the moment a student has understood a concept – when it clicks.” But she did have a couple of specific memories. “I taught English in a junior high in Japan for seven years, and when I left to return to Canada, my colleagues told my students, some of whom I had taught for 3 years, that I was leaving Japan. My students told me about the impact I had had on them. They said I helped them understand that speaking in another language with other people was fun and not scary, difficult but achievable.” And this term, Beth is using an Open Textbook in her class and discovering the importance of understanding student expectations. “Most of them want a hard copy book. They don’t want to be bothered with printing something or with having to read on a screen. But I didn’t have enough time to arrange for printed copies of the text before I started teaching the class. I will need to do a bit more planning which sections of the text I will use next time so there can be print copies and thinking about the difference in how your brain processes information through reading on-screen versus reading on paper. Maybe that’ll be my next PHD.”
Knowing that Beth served as co-chair for almost three years, I was curious about what advice she would give new faculty members coming into ELD. “Camosun’s ELD programs are unique for a few reasons. We have long semesters, and the curriculum and outcomes are loosely based on the Canadian Language Benchmarks, which is unusual in BC. So, becoming familiar with that is important. But at Camosun there are so many great people who are willing and able to help you. Our Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, the ELD faculty, we all help each other. Just ask questions, reach out for help, but have patience because it can take time for people to respond if they are busy. And remember that teaching can be overwhelming for both new faculty and faculty who have been here for a long time. It’s not easy even after you’ve been doing it for a long time.”
Beth is always thinking ahead in her teaching and noted how fast things have been changing in recent years, for example Open Education, ungrading, and alternative assessments. “I’m not doing as much I want to yet because it takes planning and consideration around how it will fit with the course content, but I’m integrating more of these than I had before. We also have to keep our students and their needs in mind. For English language students, it’s not just about conversation, it’s about communication of all kinds. Some students need to use Whatsapp to communicate with their bosses or have to submit their hours by PDF – they need to be able to use many different tools and engaging with them in class provides direct application for them. It’s about more than just teaching language now.”