by Phil Dexter
Phil Dexter worked as British Council teacher and Teacher Coordinator in Sofia in the period 1987-1994. In Bulgaria, he set up and developed centres for self-access English lessons for students from secondary foreign language schools – a project that is now successfully used in other British Council representatives around the world.
Phil has many dear memories from Bulgaria. Also, there he learned (at least) two important life skills.
“Were it not for the Bulgarian experience this all may not have happened and my approach to learning and teaching may have been completely different and gone in different directions.” – Phil Dexter
I spent a very happy seven years in Sofia from 1987 to 1994 working on the English language medium school programme which was initially entirely funded by the Bulgarian Ministry of Education. This programme had been going on since the 1960s I believe and the network of Foreign Language schools since well before then. When I was there was approximately 25 schools in the English programme and from 1991 (when the programme could no longer be funded by the Ministry), the British Council along with a UK schools organisation called the Central Bureau for Educational Visits and Exchanges took over the professional management of the programme and funding for the British teachers. Though this was very much still in partnership with the Ministry and of course the schools. From 1991 I took over as the British Council coordinator for the programme but still taught in the first English language school in Sofia following briefly with time in the second English language school.
I have so many stories connected to my time in Bulgaria – most really happy but some more challenging and I would like talk here about three examples connected with teaching and one more personal one:
i) My favourite class to teach in the English language school was always the preparatory class which was the transition class between primary and secondary. Here, at least within the school, for the first year the pupils were in an almost emersion programme with about 30 hours of English a week. The only subjects taught in Bulgarian were Bulgarian literature and mathematics. The aim was to get everyone to a level where most subjects could be learned in English. In the main, there was huge motivation and discipline and behaviour not an issue. However, 13/14 year olds are what they are. I remember one class saying “We love your lessons Mr Dexter, but there is something much better than a good teacher – that is no teacher at all!” I also remember – it was in 1989 or 1990 which was very interesting given the revolutionary upheavals or “the changes” as it was called in Bulgaria (more of that a little later) – having a very difficult class which I found very difficult to manage. I was finding it very difficult to “reach” them as both individuals and a class at whole. Whatever I tried I felt we lacked a real rapport and communication. Then suddenly one day I stumbled across an idea which to this day I still regard as a little bit of teacher “magic dust”!!! I thought let’s try some poetry knowing full well that if I suggested let’s write some poetry today I would be chased out the door – and quite rightly. This was something else – “all” I did was suggest a few silly questions like “How do you feel when you wake up and realise it is a holiday?”, “What do oranges smell like”, “What sound do you make when walking through fresh snow”. There were about 10 such questions and which they had to answer which created a frame for a future poem. This they did very happily and then went on to expand this into a much more expressive and personal poem. I did this with many other classes – however, this one was very special. The idea was that they would read out their poems and in this class every single person “insisted” on coming to the front of the class in turn and reading out their poems. It was a wonderful experience and for about 90 minutes this class became an “island of creativity”. After this, rapport with this class was never an issue and told me so much about how to “reach” a group of people which I have never forgotten…
ii) Of course 1989/1900 were such heady times and this was reflected and expressed by young people so strongly. 1990 was the year of the first free election in Bulgaria and of course my pupils parents and all adults were getting excited about the prospect. It’s hardly a new idea to have a mock election in a classroom but the one I organised in the English language school was something very special given the context. I asked groups in the class to organise themselves into political parties and create a short manifesto… However, they were not allowed to be “real” political parties and in fact were to be anything but political parties. We had examples such as “the flying meatball party”, “the three legged race party”, and “the seven day holiday party” amongst others. They had to justify their “manifestos” to others and then we voted and voted until we had a winner who got over 50% of the votes. Lots of fun and also lots speaking and listening skills developed – however, the real impact was that everyone was participating in a vote a few days ahead of their parents and this was so powerful and special for these young kids.
iii) I have always had a strong belief in the importance of learner and learning independence and that in order to learn something effectively you need take responsibility for your own learning. As the British Council teacher coordinator I regularly visited English language schools and once I was in Stara Zagora talking to a head teacher about a language laboratory she had recently required. Language laboratories were very much a product of the 1960’s – very good and useful especially for listening but very much focused on “listen and repeat” and repetition. I thought perhaps we could do something much better that would be more engaging and we came up with idea of setting up a self-access centre which involved a room “packed full” of resources on reading, writing, speaking and listening, video and all sorts of tasks broken down into bite size activities. This was at the time a very revolutionary and pioneering approach and in many ways much more of a challenge for teachers than the learners. Self-access lessons were timetable and there was no doubt that language levels “leaped”. All of this was also only possible due work of my wife, Helen, working with the Ministry ensuring official support and consistent work with the schools. Thanks also to David Stokes the British Council Director at the time we had funding to set up a small network of such centres in not only Stara Zagora but also in Haskovo and Vratsa. Other centres followed and I believe they still exist (to some extent) in the schools today. Not only was this a really exciting model for learning in Bulgaria but I have developed this model in other British Council projects I have worked on since. In the Czech Republic at a teacher training college, in Slovakia in secondary schools, in Croatia and Libya in military contexts and more recently as a model for teacher training in Tanzania. Were it not for the Bulgarian experience this all may not have happened and my approach to learning and teaching may have been completely different and gone in different directions.
iv) Finally a little personal story – in the late 80’s, especially for a foreigner new to living in Bulgaria it was not always a simple matter to go food shopping… Of course. Little did I know how much worse it would get in the early 90’s! Somebody in Bulgaria once said that “some people look for food and others find it”! I well remember either seeing queues and asking what the queue was for or seeing people with bag full of goodies and asking where they got it from. I learnt in Bulgaria to never leave the house without a plastic bag or two and to be “ready” to fill up my bag with as much as could carry. People thought that I was very much the person who would find food! I well remember, around Christmas time when the green oranges from Cuba appeared and indeed asking people where they were on sale and doing the necessary… Bananas also appeared from somewhere but I cannot remember where from. Getting these was a complete different experience as you never had to ask anyone. This was because as soon as people had bought their supply they started eating them and all you had to do was follow the yellow trail to the “banana shop”… Not to be confused with following the yellow brick road in central Sofia, of course. On a slippy snowy winter day that was something else indeed. To this day I still go out with plastic bags just in case… Another important life skill learnt in Bulgaria.