You have just conducted your first-ever micro-teaching session. What is micro-teaching you may wonder. Micro-teaching can be defined as “approach, structured method, simulation “exercises”, situation, and learning possibility”, according to Allen (1970). Furthermore, you have received quite positive feedback from your professors and fellow IMAESC students with impressive professional and life experiences. This micro-teaching session was a new experience for you an adult educator as well as adult learner including personal, professional, and cultural aspects.

When you started IMAESC programme, you found yourself to be surrounded by people with amazing experiences, ideas, and expertise. You were among of the youngest students full of shyness, but enthusiasm and willingness to learn. You learned by observing and tried to develop your teaching skills. Well, I need to tell you that you learned a lot and got more confident in your teaching. You have started to develop your teacher identity. You may not trust me, but you can listen to Beijaard, Meijer, and Verloop (2004) who postulate that concept of professional teacher identity is an ongoing process that embraces both personal and professional sides and consists of sub identities. You have been developing as a person and as an educator. Your very first experience of conducting a micro-teaching on the topic that is very new for you is the first sign of becoming more confident. More confident as the learner and as the educator. 

Your confidence will be one of the most mentioned aspects in feedback that your IMAESC fellows and professors will give you. You will run a 15-minute micro-teaching session on the topic of older adults. Older adults, yes, you got me right. You have almost no experience in teaching older adults. Stop, you do have some. However, that experience was quite negative. Do you remember when you had to teach Business English to one high-level student in his sixties? He literally bullied you, a young female instructor who just began teaching. He never liked the activities you planned and every time nit-picked your pronunciation and delivery of grammatical content. Yes, he also loved using some quite sexist jokes. Another experience of teaching students, who were older than you, was not that pleasant as well. When you had to replace your colleague (very experienced one), many mature students decided to drop the course as they did not trust you, a beginner teacher. However, please do not be scared of working with people who are older than you. You will travel to Paide, the city in the heart of Estonia, and you will visit the elderly centre. That visit will be eye-opening for you. 

The elderly centre in Paide will show you that older adults face many challenges and are marginalised. You will hear complaints of older students and the director will reply that there is no funding for them. Everything is for primary, secondary, and higher education. For younger ones. English and Mayo (2012) write that “All in all, older adults are told to be quiet, just at a time when many are ready to take on learning tasks that eluded them in their earlier years through busyness or through social class impediments” (p. 205).

Unfortunately, you will witness that sad situation and will decide to raise people’s awareness by conducting a 15-minute long intensive session. It will be challenging, but you will manage to structure your lesson and come up with activities. Your ice-breaker “Tell me about your granny or any other older adult you know” will be very positively welcomed by learners. You will receive feedback that it helped spark interest and make learning more personal. Moreover, the learners will appreciate your choice of topic saying that it was interesting, relevant, and meaningful. Well done, Aisara, you can give yourself a pat on the back! You left your comfort zone of language teaching and decided to challenge yourself. It is not easy, but it can be rewarding in terms of transforming your learning, according to Mezirow (2003). 

As an adult educator, you will learn how to reflect on the importance of your  cultural background. Lindsey (2014) advocates reflection of one’s own culture by stressing that “an appreciation the role culture plays in shaping who we are and how we see the word is vital for teaching in a culturally diverse world” (p. 9). Raised in the traditional patriarchal Asian culture, where age is very respected, you will find it difficult to interact with your seniors. Maybe therefore, you will suffer from the imposter syndrome from time to time. Sometimes it would get so intense that you would not be able to sleep, eat, and breathe. Everyone in your cohort will seem to be experienced, mature, and way more competent than you. It will take courage, but you will be fine working with your amazing colleagues and learning from and with them! It will seem very daunting to conduct a class in front of such an experienced group of adult learners. Your traditional Kazakh upbringing will not hold you back from challenging your learners and engaging them! That micro-teaching session will show that you managed to create a positive learning environment and interact with them. You will understand that age is not a factor measuring competences! 

Looking in the retrospect, you will see that you evolve professionally. In your essay on your teaching philosophy, you wrote that social constructivism espoused your teaching. You may know all aspects of your favorite self-efficacy theory by Bandura (1977) and put all your heart and soul into learning by observing and doing. You explained it beautifully in your essay:

Bandura (1977) defines self-efficacy as “the conviction that one can successfully execute the behavior required to produce the outcomes” (p. 193). Furthermore, self-efficacy beliefs impact the behavior, outcome expectation, ability to cope with challenges, and human motivation in general (Bandura, 2006). To understand this theory, one needs to shed light on the sources of self-efficacy namely "personal accomplishments, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion, and emotional arousal" (Bandura, 1988, p. 195). One’s lived experience of facing successes and failures is personal accomplishment (mastery experience), while vicarious experience is shaped by modelling and observational learning (Bandura, 1977). Encouragement and verbal support comprise social persuasion and people’s emotional reactions are the last two sources of self-efficacy (Bandura, 1977).

 

However, you will not be aware of the power of getting positive feedback from professors and fellow students, so called social persuasion. Sometimes you can be too critical towards yourself saying that there is always a room for improvement. Yes, it good to aspire to excel. But you should be able to reward yourself. You will not expect that your experienced colleagues will praise your confidence, choice of topic, content knowledge, and activities. You will learn that you are good at ice-breakers and metaphors. Also, your body language and habit of moving around the classroom that used to annoy you, will help you. Help to keep learners focused and engaged. According to the feedback, you know how interact with your audience. Therefore, your social skills are not that bad as you think. You will find all feedback so inspiring!

All in all, I want to tell you that you will step out of your comfort zone when conducting your very first micro-teaching. It will be challenging, but it will be rewarding. You will learn how to choose the most meaningful content that will empower your learners. You will learn how to structure your learning experience. You will learn how to create a positive learning environment where your adult learners will have their space and agency. Feedback from your audience will help you to start fostering self-efficacy regarding your ability to teach people older than you. You might be a novice teacher, but you are becoming an adult educator who learns how to learn with and from learners. Night before micro-teaching you will be panicking and overthinking. However, when running your first micro-teaching, praise yourself for challenging yourself and acknowledging that you have few experience of teaching older adults. Your adult learners will not nitpick you, they will be grateful for co-learning opportunity. Believe in your teaching skills! You can do it! 

Last but not least, I almost forgot to mention your plans. I know that you are very obsessed with planning. You even planned your retirement when you were 15 and moved out from your parents’ house. However, please do not try to predict and control everything in your life. You have never thought that you would become an educator as your parents. Yes, I remember that you and your siblings were feeling lonely when your parents were busy at school. Busy teaching other children while forgetting about their own. But years later you will be in the field of education and you will enjoy it. You will understand your parents. You will feel fulfilled and happy. At the final session of Social Competences class, you will be asked to visualize your plans and future. You will draw two dinosaurs: one who is scared of not being good enough and another one who feels excited about the future. These two dinosaurs symbolize you: younger self and more confident you. Sometimes the circumstances will lead you and please do not assume that you have poor planning skills. Please embrace everything that happens to you. It might not be expected or pleasant. But everything matters! The narrative interview will show you that everything that happens to you will become pieces of a jigsaw. Jigsaw of your journey towards becoming an adult educator. 

I promise that these two paragraphs would be the final passages in the letter to my younger self. Aisara, I hope that you will learn how to balance planning and flexibility. Please do stop underestimating yourself and thinking that you are too young and inexperienced. Experience will come with people you meet and with your evolving teaching self-efficacy. You will learn by observing and by doing. Age does not define your competences! Please do remember it! More importantly, please stop putting more make-up and wearing official clothing only just to pretend that you are older. Do not listen to your employers that would insist that you should look older and more respectable. You are still a girl with green eyes and chubby cheeks. Fifteen-year-old Aisara and twenty-five-year-old Aisara will look almost the same. Your chubby cheeks will stay chubby as usual, but you will never be the same. 

You will grow professionally and personally. For the first time in your life you will facilitate opening and wrapping up of the whole day of workshops for the Estonian adult educators. This experience will show you that even if you are among the youngest in the room, it does not mean that you are nothing. Do you remember the caption on the wall of the Emperor Palace in Poznan, Poland? It says: LOVE THE FUTURE. You do not know how post-IMAESC life would look like. Please be not afraid of having no Plans A and Plans B. Embrace every opportunity. Do not try to plan every step – embrace every opportunity as the opportunity to learn and try. Although you will be one of the youngest almost everywhere you go, but you will be unstoppable, self-efficacious, stubborn, curious, and willing to learn. The only thing I will ask you to know that age does not define competences! Age does not define your competences nor you! Do appreciate every single piece of your personal and professional experience. And again, please do embrace that age does not define you and your competences!

 

References:

Allen, D. (1970). MT/Training technique. Stanford University. 

Bandura, A. (1977). Self-efficacy: toward a unifying theory of behavioral change. Psychological review, 84(2), 191-215. Retrieved from https://www.uky.edu/~eushe2/Bandura/Bandura1977PR.pdf

Beijaard, D., Meijer, P. C., & Verloop, N. (2004). Reconsidering research on teachers’ professional identity. Teaching and Teacher Education, 20, 107–128. doi:10.1016/j.tate.2003.07.001

English, L.M, & Mayo, P. (2012). Learning with adults: a critical pedagogical introduction. Sense Publishers.

Lindsey, J. (2004). Culture's role in teacher identity: Prompting teachers to explore their cultural background. Action in Teacher Education, 25(4), 9-13. doi:10.1080/01626620.2004.10648291

Mezirow, J. (2003). Transformative learning as discourse. Journal of transformative     education, 1(1), 58-63.