Many challenges face a Western language educator working in a teacher education university program in Southeast Asia. Here I describe the challenge of bringing about change with the local Vietnamese teachers who were my students. Rather than covering only what was in the lesson plan, they began to think about the lessons they were teaching in relation to the students sitting in the chairs in their classroom.

After teaching just a few courses in Vietnam as part of a joint master’s degree program between Southern New Hampshire University and Vietnam National University, I quickly realized that in order for the teachers to change the way they thought about their lessons, I needed to go back to the beginning, of sorts. Although most of the student-teacher learners had had a very good education in Vietnam, their training focused on the teacher rather than the students. Observing my style of making the course content relevant and interesting to them, my students sitting in front of me, they became eager to learn more of how I might approach lesson planning, and we began to talk more about how to make their lessons more interesting and suitable for their own particular educational settings. Since then I have incorporated these discussions into my classes. I can recall when I first introduced some very basic notions about offering choices and options when assigning class work and homework.

After many years of teaching for exam purposes and operating under the direction of the Ministry for Education and Training, the teachers had lost some of the connection they might have originally felt between themselves and their students. It came as a surprise and as a new idea to many when I suggested they give choices or options when asking students to write a paragraph or an essay, for example. For the majority of Vietnamese teachers, a class of 40 to 60 students is not unusual and many Vietnamese teachers understandably struggle with trying to motivate their students to learn English. If the teacher gives the same topic and assignment to all 60 students, naturally not all will find the topic interesting. I explained that giving a few choices for the writing assignment and allowing students to write about something they cared about or were interested in (within reason of course) would improve their writing skills and help to motivate the class. I was always careful to be sure they understood I was not advocating straying from the structure of the Ministry of Education’s curriculum regulations but that the two could coexist if care and thought were put into the planning.

In addition to being exposed to research articles and techniques, my students benefited from going back to the beginning and reflecting on why they entered the teaching profession in the first place. Sometimes the simplest suggestions can make a big difference in the teaching and learning process when looked at from different perspectives.

Now that I have been back to Vietnam many times and have taught numerous classes and students over the past few years, I include this discussion as part of my course content. I do not assume that they are familiar with some lesson planning ideas that deal with choices and options. We talk about what they do in their classes and how they view their students. It is rewarding to see the teachers get excited about making the connection between what they are teaching and whom they are teaching rather than just focusing on the required lesson content. As I ask the students to reflect on their own teaching practices in their particular teaching settings, they become motivated to see what other changes and ideas may come about as a result of their expanded professional knowledge.

Rosemary Orlando, r.orlando@snhu.edu, is an associate professor at Southern New Hampshire University in New Hampshire, where she teaches in the Master’s in TEFL program. As part of a joint Master’s TEFL program, she also teaches at Vietnam National University in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, working as a teacher-trainer with Vietnamese teachers of English.