Sunday, July 12, 2015

Reflections on Development & Teacher Training

I've been working in academic management this past year with IH Beirut. A large part of my job is working on training and development of teachers through observations, feedback, CPD and regular input sessions.

This has been a major learning experience, particularly thinking back to my experiences at the various teaching jobs I have had.

I look at the staff of teachers I work with, all of them with their own background, training, studies and experience and I wonder what it is that puts me in a position to give them advice on teaching and development when so many are older and have more years in the field than I do. There are a lot of reasons I could list: my DELTA, my MA work, the range of teaching contexts I've worked in, all the experience I have gotten through attending and organizing ELT conferences. One of the most significant factors, though, is most definitely my experience working for a French university.

There is a major problem with ELT which is that most teachers get a CELTA (which trains you as best it can with only 6 hours of supervised teaching to make the most effective lessons you can out of pre-packaged course book materials), then these teachers go and work for language centers which assign a book, a syllabus, and ask the teacher to make lessons "fun" for the customers (I use this word intentionally) and to make sure they cover the language points in the book before the final exam.

I was incredibly lucky to dodge that bullet and work for this university department instead.

The faculty of the Département Langues et Cultures at L’Université Bordeaux 2 played a large role in training me to be an effective materials writer, asking me to create entire lessons from authentic material on a weekly basis. One professor in particular ripped my worksheets to shreds (not literally, but almost) and made me rewrite them at least 10 times before they were good enough. My supervisor asked me to write entire Moodle courses feeding in learner strategies and extra resources, as well as teaching various level-specific general and ESP courses based on my self-designed syllabus and materials. The director supported my ventures in ELT conference attendance and coordination, and encouraged me to pursue my online MA in TEFL/TESL. My supervisor and I had several great chats about the topics I was studying on the MA - providing me with face-to-face discussion on topics that were otherwise stuck behind a screen. When I told her that I planned to take ELT seriously and make it my career, the worksheet-dissecting professor handed me the Rod Ellis tome on Second Language Acquisition research and said, "start by reading this whole thing". I've made my way through large chunks of it by now, by the way, but that's a big F-ing book - she couldn't start me on Lightbown and Spada? :)

They made me consider the aim and purpose of lessons, and focus on what skills and sub-skills my materials were meant to develop. They considered my ambitions within the field and guided me to the developmental fast-track for it. Very few people in this field make new teachers do that, and that’s a real shame.

At IATEFL Manchester I saw many great ideas about the future of ELT – one of the most engaging was Willy Cardoso’s session putting forward a new framework for initial teacher training. As mentors and teacher trainers we need to encourage new teachers to engage and reflect on their own development and push them to face their limitations.

Thursday, January 8, 2015

New Years Resolutions. AKA, my CPD plan for 2015

New Years Resolutions are a terrible idea. I made a resolution years ago never to make resolutions again. They seemed like just a way to say things that sounds good to your friends, then trail off sometime in mid-January and feel guilty about until you forget you ever made them sometime in February or March.

But it isn't New Years anymore, and I'm not planning a new running regimen or to cut red meat out of my diet. This is decidedly nerdier.

My current job puts me in charge of professional development and training for the teaching staff at IH Beirut, and because I am starting the year off with a redesigned continuous professional development (CPD) scheme for our teachers, I've been very aware of the whole notion of planning and implementing a plan for oneself to improve.

I've never really had a focused CPD plan for myself. At IH Prague I jumped through all the CPD hoops easily because I just happened to be on that path already without ever having consciously decided it would count towards professional development. I was required to complete three tasks by them, and I believe I completed at least four times that number (IH CYLT, IH LAC, DELTA, attended four conferences, spoke at all four (including three new talks!), gave a monthly development session, did a research project for my MA....I'm not sure when I found the time to learn Czech and make some friends!)

Now, my job in itself provides ample opportunities for development without me being extracurricular about it. I've moved into academic management and teacher training for the first time in my career, and have found challenges and excitement all along the way. Also, a reaffirmed respect for my former academic managers. However, with my new CPD plan for the IH Beirut staff, I feel it would be hypocritical if I didn't come up with a CPD plan of my own for this year. One that includes things that don't already fall under my job description or existing plans.

That means, that although I am already planning on speaking at IATEFL Manchester, tutoring on my first IH CAM course and applying to be a CELTA tutor for IH Beirut this summer, I cannot count these towards my three goals.

So, with that in mind I am setting myself the following goals:

  • Blog more often! 
    • I am setting myself a weekly reminder in my work calendar to write a blog about something (anything!) to get into the habit - but I will count this one a victory if I manage to get 20 new posts in 2015, not including any blogging I do for conferences like IATEFL.
  • Publish to an international ELT Journal
    • OK, this one is a bit ambitious, but I feel good about trying for it. I may come to realize that I am aiming a bit too high, but I have collected enough experience and done enough research for my MA or my DELTA that I think I genuinely have something to contribute to the international academic world of ELT. Their editors will be the judges, I suppose.
  • Complete the IH TTC Online Course 
    • One of the options available to the teachers for their own CPD is taking an IH World Organization Training course through the Online Teacher Training Institute. Because I am increasingly involved in teacher training, and because I have enjoyed the IH courses I've taken in the past, I've decided to give the OTTI a whirl of my own with the Teacher Training Course. 
I hope this goes well, at the very least I have the three people who read this blog (including my mother) to silently judge me when this is still the most recent post to my blog in March ;).

What are your CPD plans for this year? If you have any please let me know via comments so I know you exist!