Does anyone here work in adult literacies? I'm meant to be starting the ITALL in a few weeks but I have to line up a placement before then. There's a lot of learning providers in Glasgow but they seem to be a bit flaky when it comes to getting back to enquiries!
Anyway tell me your stories, tips, advice etc.

I work in adult education just outside glasgow, computer literacy and all that jazz, what do you want to know? never done the ITALL though cause I is lazy (well actually it's because the council is lazy and hired me as a library assistant and made me do this, actually, I'm invigilating on a test right now haha)

what do you want to know?

40-50 year olds are the worst, worse than kids. the pensioners seem to take it all in there stride and are quite grateful of the chance and put some effort in, the younger people usually really need to learn whatever they are doing so put effort in. Those ones in the middle though are at that snappy stage where they think everything should be laid on a plate for them, I have two coming in half an hour and every fucking week it's "we forgot what we did last week. mong mong mong mong mong."

go for it though, it's generally quite good, I got a wee glow in my heart when I got a woman who couldn't use a mouse ordering stuff from marks and spencers webpage. you need to be able to handle people, be patient and instil confidence, and you need to have a bit of intiative, it's not like teaching kids where they come in all clean slates they know half of what they want to know already also you'll quite often have limited resources available and need to muddle through anyway. It's fun though, it certainly beats doing loads of paperwork in an office and it's not repetitive at all.

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Would you like a cigarette? They're quite exellent.

That sounds like a good job, so you're a library assistant but also do the teaching thing aswell? I'd like that!
I'd say I'm quite good with people, I'm very patient/understanding and I feel like I'd really enjoying helping someone to learn. Probably need to work on my own confidence/authoritativeness but I think that will come together as I learn more about what I'm doing.
I've only had experience with Higher English tutoring and helping uni students with their essay writing so I imagine this will be a whole new ball game.

I'm actually taking Beginners Spanish right now to remind myself what it's like to learn something new and unknown.

the fact that you know more than the people you're teaching will generally get you quite confident. that sounds a bit arrogant but it's true, I crap myself when someone asks me about complicated stuff but most of the time you feel ok. it's the sort of thing you'll figure out more in a week of doing it rather than taking courses (i know now for example that no one can fathom mail merge or percentage calculations in spreadsheets and that the structure and terminology of a database is confusing so I have ways to explain these) but it's not hard. i'm not smart but get by on just being affable and pretending I know what I'm talking about.

I'd say the most important thing is figuring what they want from it. some are killing time in their life, some need a qualification, others are just generally interested and want to pick some extra knowledge and others want a particular skill. no point getting someone that just wants to surf the net to do touch typing stuff, no point in getting someone that wants to kill time doing anything remotely difficult, no point in getting someone that just wants a qualification doing anything they don't need to know etc.

good luck with the spanish, how is that going? I've been learning for a year and I suck so hard. weirdly these two topics merge into one as next week I'm giving a chilean woman an introductory interview, should I use my limited bad spanish? hmmmmm

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Would you like a cigarette? They're quite exellent.

yeah I just started in January so it's all about the verbs and 'donde esta el gato?'.
I was also wondering about the possibility of actually getting paid to teach this stuff, I've seen a couple of posts advertised but most places are looking for volunteers. Now that the government is really pushing the issue it might get better? All the paid positions require qualifications like ITALL, ESOL etc

yeah, I should probably get those. balls, erm, where do you get them? is it easy and does it take long. if it takes more than a month I'll never do it, very short attention whatever.

and donde esta el gato is about as good as I get too.

__________________
Would you like a cigarette? They're quite exellent.

I'm not sure, I know the ITALL is about 12 weeks, it's like one day a week or two evenings. The others I don't know, local colleges are probably the best place to find out.