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.

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! 

TESOL France Plenary - Carol Read "Reflections on How To Be a Highly Effective Teacher"

The (First Draft - to be edited later)

The first plenary session for TESOL France is delivered by Carol Read, the President of IATEFL (The International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language). Read is a teacher with over 30 years’ experience as a teacher, teacher educator, academic manager, materials writer and consultant. She has taught all ages and has a lot of experience with primary classroom teaching, having written a number of books including “Bugs” and “500 Activities for the Primary Classroom”. 

The purpose of her talk is to explore and share ideas of being a highly effective teacher in a time of social and technological change in most of our classrooms. Her talk is intended to apply to all levels, from Very Young Learners through to Teacher Education.

She begins her talk with a story about a woman who has a drippy faucet in her house. She looks for solutions and in the end hires a plumber to fix it. The plumber comes and pulls out a little hammer, taps a pipe lightly and the problem is fixed. The woman gets charged £50 for the service and is outraged. A detailed invoice was:

·      Tapping on the pipe - £5

·      Knowing where to tap - £45

This is a metaphor for teaching, where we spend most of our lives learning “where to tap” on our students to provide language development. We do this by:

·      Observing

·      Asking for feedback

·      Listening to students

·      Etc.

The ultimate goal is reflective practice. Going through a reflective cycle as below from Pollard (2005):

She also shows this diagram from Pollard and Tann (1993), which describes the macro and micro dilemmas where we make decisions about the courses we teach and follow paths and methods that are imposed on us. Taking into account a number of factors and relationships to come to a final classroom outcome.

The Conscious/Unconscious, Competence/Incompetence model attributed to Bardwell (1969) shows a table that stages of development in sequence from not knowing anything to knowing something and using it unconsciously.

	Competence	Incompetence
Conscious	3	2
Unconscious	4	1

She applies this to students, and then extends it quite aptly to teacher education and professional development and how we learned to work with new student groups, new methods, and even new technologies and progress through these stages ourselves. We are given an opportunity to reflect on our own stages of development in our teaching and our work, considering to what extent it’s natural and easy for us to apply different skills. I personally know that I went through all four of these stages in sequence last year during my first ever experience teaching Very Young Learners, passing through complete panic through my IH CYLT course and by the end complete and natural comfort with my group of kids who I grew to love. I now find myself somewhere between 2 and 3 as I enter new duties managing professional development for a language school, where I am working hard to train myself to be competent and effective at what I do.

Reade them moves her talk onto a discussion of the features of teaching in the 21^st century. Issues that we as teachers run into in the modern age of ELT. Namely:

·      Knowledge of Technology Explosion

o   Where we need to learn to filter and pick things up as they are useful to us.

·      Status of the profession

o   Where we as a profession find ourselves often slighted by the societal role that teachers have been denigrated to in most countries.

·      Public scrutiny and accountability

o   Falling standards and educational issues end up getting pinned on teachers themselves.

·      Perceptions about “good” teaching   

o   Fighting against ideas of a “good” teacher as a fountain of knowledge delivering knowledge to attentive, note taking students.

·      Essential need for Continuous development and learning

o   The fact that nowadays with the changing landscape we as teachers are never finished training, and must constantly keep up with current methodologies and attitudes to education.

In essence, what we’re seeing is a change in the language of educational discourse. Articles of educational technology, among other innovations come through with buzzwords like:

·      Personalization

·      Interactive

All of which have changed in meaning from human-focused definitions to technology-focused definitions.

She then shows us her “Reflective Teacher Wheel” showing the 8 letters on the wheel that represent factors for reflections for teachers to filter and adapt to their own teaching.

The above showing the following points:

·      Mindset

o   The importance of our beliefs, underpinning what we do as teachers and impacting the ways we bring about change to student lives in our classrooms. How the typical habits, behaviors and attitudes of teachers impact lessons. Things like:

§  Resourceful

§  Knowledgeable

§  Dedicated

§  Flexible

§  Engaging

§  Available

§  Caring

§  Etc.

o   All of these habits and behaviors being informed by our own principles and beliefs as in the below diagram, and related quote:

 

o   Reade makes the point about the importance of Growth Mindset informing motivation, citing a researcher from Stanford (Carol Dweck (sp?) dividing students into “helpless oriented” and “mastery oriented”, showing that students either give up when they face a problem and take it as a reflection on themselves choose to persist and look for a way to succeed.

·      Rapport

o   The ability to build a state of trust and respect with our students. This is highly individual and varies from teacher to teacher. A study that was done with primary school children in Spain, where they were asked “What makes a teacher special for you?” The student responses included:

§  Patient

§  Kind

§  Funny

§  Treats you as a person

§  Makes you work

§  Tells you off when necessary, but doesn’t get angry or shout

§  Can explain things clearly

§  Doesn’t have favorites

§  Doesn’t go on and on

o   Matching and mirroring is another aspect that builds rapport where being able to find common ground and empathize with people this way can be used (for better or worse) to match interests and relate to our students.

 

·      Engagement

o   The crucial element, underpinning everything we do. “Engagement is the soil that makes learning sustainable” is a quote from (SOMEONE, Look it up) about education.

o   This connects directly to Stephen Krashen’s talk yesterday about the importance of Flow as a state students will get into in an ideal world that will drive their emotional involvement in what they’re doing. This is illustrated nicely by this graphic:

 

o   Six foundations of flow  based on Csziksentmilhayi’s concept include:        

§  Appropriate level of challenge

§  Opportunities for collaborative work

§  Learners have the necessary skills and strategies

§  Clear and worthwhile goals

§  Feedback is integral to the process

§  Tasks are intrinsically motivating

·      Support/Scaffolding

o   This is used in the sense of helping learners move through “the zone of proximal development” from Vygotsky’s theories of language acquisition – supporting the difficulty and challenge of tasks.

o   This also includes taking a backseat and handing tasks over to students to manage. This was designed for young children, but researchers have investigated and found that it works well for adult EFL/ESL classrooms at global, activity and local/interactional levels of classroom activities and interactions (Van Lier, 1996).

o   A further point on scaffolding is “distancing” strategies to move back and open up the thinking about topics to provide more opportunities for discussion.

·      Impact

o   Having to do with feedback, paying attention to the impact you’re having on learners at every stage beyond test scores and on to non-verbal signals like eye-contact, fidgeting, and other telltale signs that inform where our students are and how they are dealing.

§  The crucial thing here is acting and reacting to these signals.

·      The Language of Learning

o   Learner autonomy!! A personal favorite of mine. This point deals with developing our learners knowledge of strategies and skills that we are working on together. Informing their ability to talk about their own learning in these terms:

 

·      Expectations

o   If we have mediocre expectations of our learners – they will be mediocre. The way we treat our students and interact with them ultimately affects dynamics more than most anything else.

o   She gives an example of teaching the story below to a group of 30 Croatian students in a recently post-war environment while being observed by 60 teachers at a conference. Amazed at the ability these children had to express their thoughts and memories of the war with her in this context.

·      Collaboration

o   Working with each other, sharing ideas with other teachers and focusing on where we can get ideas and how to share ideas is the best way to be a highly effective teacher. Attending conferences is part of this, but sharing in a staffroom is just as effective.

o   For our students this means providing them opportunities to share ideas and strategies in class based on their common experience as students in the class.

Reade concludes by encouraging us to make our own wheel and modify it to suit our needs then use it to reflect on our own teaching and development.

For more information about Carol Read's ELT writings and ideas, find her here:

www.carolread.com

http://carolread.wordpress.com

@carolread

DELTA Diaries Week 0 - Overview and Anticipation

As is mentioned in my first introductory post "Cutting The Ribbon", I have been working as an English teacher since 2008 and initially trained for my CELTA (Cambridge Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults) in 2010 at Teaching House New York. This is when I first learned about International House World Organization and the amount of teacher training that goes on at these schools around the world.

After a few years of working in France, I came to Prague to work for AKCENT International House Prague largely because of these opportunities for teacher training and continuing development. My goal was to gain experience working within the IH network while also taking training courses to develop in other aspects of ELT (I have completed the IH Certificate in Teaching Young Learners and Teenagers, as well as the IH Language Awareness Course).

In one week I will be starting my Delta Modules 1 & 2 (formerly the Cambridge Diploma in English Language Teaching to Adults) at IH Prague. For those who don't know this is an advanced certification in English Language Teaching generally required for ELT management positions as well as teacher trainer roles at most language schools. The full Delta consists of three modules:

Module One
This is a written exam which falls under Cambridge English Language Assessments (along with Cambridge First (FCE), Cambridge Advanced (CAE), etc....) and tests a teacher's knowledge of:

• Second Language Acquisition Theories
• Language Teaching Methodologies
• Language Systems (Grammar, Vocabulary)
• Language Skills (Reading, Listening)
• Potential Learner Difficulties
• Language Resources and Materials
• Assessment Methodologies

Because I have already completed half the coursework for an MA in Teaching English as a Second/Foreign Language, many of these are concepts which I have already studied and written papers about. However, the focus of the Delta Modules is more practical than my MA, and so there will still be quite a bit of work to do to prepare for the Module One exam.

Module Two
This module will be the main challenge to overcome this summer, and as such the main focus of these blog posts. Module two is the practical teaching-focused portion of the Delta Modules which includes the following tasks:

Four Language Systems/Skills Assignments (LSAs)
Throughout the summer I will be team teaching two groups of students at different levels. I will regularly teach them in part to get to know them better because they will also be the students who I teach for my four official observed lessons, which are part of each LSA.

LSAs are divided into Systems (grammar points, lexical sets, and other language-structure focused lessons) and Skills (speaking, reading, listening and writing). During Module Two, I will need to teach two systems lessons and two skills lessons of 45-60 minutes which will be officially observed and marked for every minute detail of the lesson from lesson aims, lesson cohesion, techniques used, etc...

Additionally, I will need to write a research paper for each lesson focusing on the details of the system or skill I will be teaching (think: 2,500 words on phrasal verbs, on listening, on perfect aspects, on affixes, etc). The purpose of these papers is to learn the language point I will be teaching inside and out, backwards and forwards and to apply this knowledge to the anticipated needs and problems of the learners I am teaching. This research should all build towards the observed lesson and factors into the overall mark for these LSAs.

Additionally, the final LSA will be observed and marked by an external assessor - someone not teaching my course who I will have never met, and this final LSA is a requirement of passing the whole Delta Module 2. 

Professional Development Assignment (PDA) Part A - Reflection and Action
This assignment begins with a diagnostic observation at the beginning of the course (prior to the LSAs) performed by an official Delta course tutor. This observation is unassessed, but feedback is given on a 45-60 minute lesson. After the observation the candidate must write an assignment of 1,000 words maximum detailing teaching beliefs and practices, strengths and weaknesses, as well as an action plan including approaches, methods and resources to work on.

Later, after the first two Language Systems/Skills Assignments (LSAs) have been completed, another paper is written of 750 words maximum detailing the progress made since the initial assignment, and further plans of action.

Another 750 word paper is submitted at the end of all four LSAs at the end of the course detailing the progress made in teaching beliefs and practices, and listing plans for continuing development beyond the course.


Professional Development Assignment (PDA) Part B - Experimental Practice
The second part of the PDA is one I am looking forward to, and actually one I have presented on before for TESOL Greece - Experimental Practice. For this assignment the candidate needs to select a methodology or technique that is commonly known and used (currently or historically) in ELT and use it to plan and teach a lesson. The catch is that this technique must be one they have never used before. Some commonly used ones are Dogme, The Lexical Approach, and Task-Based Learning; but any technique could potentially be used.

The experimental lesson is analyzed and evaluated by the candidate for effectiveness and for benefits brought on by the central aspects of the technique. This results in a 2,000-2,500 page paper not including the lesson plans.

This portion of the PDA appeals to me, but because I have played around with aspects of so many different techniques, I will need to either do something archaic (Audio-Lingual? Silent Way?) or a bit off the wall (suggestopedia?) to meet the "have never used it before" criterion.

Module Three
The final module of the DELTA is an extended research assignment which I will not be completing right away due to work commitments. I will write more on that when it comes around.

-----------------------

So there it is. I expect this summer will be a ton of work, but I am also really looking forward to having nothing to do for 8 weeks but work on my own development as a teacher and learn the observation/evaluation skills that I will need in my new position with IH Beirut. I will do my best to post weekly updates and summaries of my thoughts and reflections on the course. I hope these will serve as a way for me to organize my thoughts and synthesize a ton of info down to the most important take-home messages. If so, then hopefully it can serve as a sort of guide to future DELTA trainees who stumble across my blog. Wish me luck!

ELT Forum Plenary - Maggie Kubanyiová "Motivating Language Teachers Through Vision"

The closing plenary session for ELT Forum was given by Maggie Kubanyiová. 

Her bio and description are shown above but briefly: she is a lecturer and researcher at the University of Birmingham (where I am doing my MA TEFL/TESL) who focuses on learner motivation. She recently co-authored the book Motivating Learners, Motivating Teachers for the Cambridge Language Teaching Library Collection with Zoltán Dörnyei. Her talk promises to share some of the best kept secrets to inspirational language teaching which take advantage of teachers' inherent personalities, knowledge and skill sets. 

She begins her talk by thanking the conference organizers and commenting on how fantastic all the ideas and activities that have been shared at the conference are. She then brings up a problem that she had heard discussed at many of these talks....motivating learners. 

She shares a quote from a secondary school teacher who struggled with this very issue. 

Essentially, although we embrace the ideas on motivation, the evidence doesn't come through in the classroom. The reason being that it makes sense and seems wonderful in the training session, but once you're back at home and back at work it just seems more comfortable and clearer to do things the old way. 

This happens to varying degrees to most of us, and her question was to find out why this was. Her answer draws inspiration from T.S. Eliot. 

So, the question is how do we take these ideas from training sessions and make them ours; make them personal and real for our own lives?

She refers to second language acquisition (SLA) research questions posed by Rod Ellis:

She focuses primarily on the green question in her own research. Seeking to find how what teachers already know and do affect the theories in SLA. To seek a connection between research and classroom practice. 

For a bit of background she defines "language teacher cognition" as the following collection of issues. 

The collection if things which inform our teaching and what we see as best practice. It comes down to how we see ourselves and what vision we have of ourselves in the future. As we realize this we start to make more conscious decisions about the future. 

Another definition she gives for "ideal language teacherselves" which is who we would like to become. The reality we want to create for ourselves as developing professionals. 

An ideal self is not something simple like "I would like to be a good teacher", but something vivid and real with details about all the variety of factors that affect our motivation and actions. 

An example she gives relates directly to our situation as conference attendees. She says that what we pay attention to and what we ignore, that is, the way we engage with the ideas at this conference - that is how we see our future selves. 

In actual practice we look at some specific questions:

Who are we? Why do we do this? and What is the image we have of our future selves?

Starting with "Who are we?", she gives the example of Benjamin Zander, the famous orchestral conductor. 

She tells us "the conductor of the orchestra doesn't make a sound". He is on the cover of the CD and yet we never hear him make a sound. 

We as teachers act in much the same way. When we're doing our job at its best, we simply direct and guide our students, and it is what comes out of their mouths and pens that matters in the end. 

This is how she sees her own teaching. If her students' eyes are not shining, then what she as the teacher is doing hasn't connect with them. 

She shares the above Palmer quote to drive the message home that it is really "WHO am I being" that matters for this motivational factor, with teaching ability and technique a requisite, but not standalone factor.

She draws our attention to the first activity on the handout (to be attached via scribd later) which focuses on finding our own gifts and passions; the things we are good at. She gives examples of colleagues who juggle in class, discuss music, dance - whatever impassions them and drives the inspirational aspect to their teaching. 

The next part if her talk asks us to think of a teacher who inspired us. We work in pairs to describe who it was (for me, it was my biology teacher Mr. Campbell who I thought of because of his offhand and sarcastic style which made him much more authentic as a person than other teachers I had at the time). 

Her follow up task was to think about what it was about us (not the teacher) that made this teacher inspirational. In this case I can look back at 15 year old me and remember the fact that I appreciated being treated like an adult and so I responded to Mr. Campbell's style because it came across as genuine, friendly and at times mocking, which seemed a much more genuine interaction than other teachers I had at the time. I look back at other teachers I remember as being important to me at the time: Mrs. Ralston (French), Mr. Hohl (Math), Mr. Dober (Physics) and I realize that though they were vastly different from each other, all of them stick out in my mind as being good teachers, and as being adults who treated me as an adult at a time when other teachers still treated me like a child. 

She asks us to look at these inspirational teachers and not seek lessons on how to teach like them, but rather to look at what that experience says about us. 

The next question she asks is the why. That is, why we think language is important. 

The above response was given to Kubanyiová at the end of a training on motivating students. She found it useful because it made her realize this idea of motivation is not always an obvious or easy thing to train. 

She then talks about what things language teachers need to know. Basing it on the "Golden Circle" for language teachers. 

Knowing the "What"s like: present perfect, articles, conditionals isn't enough. 

Knowing the "How"s like: how to set up a listening task, how to get students speaking isn't enough. 

Knowing the "why"s of our teaching are also necessary when we look for motivation. Why are we doing this? Why is this important? 

She gives an example dialogue from a communicative teaching methodologies session. T is the teacher and S is the student. 

The issue here is why did we do the first task? Students did this, and in the end what students came up with was of no value to the teacher because it was irrelevant to the task. So why do this task? We need to consider the tasks we ask of our students and what they mean to our learners and how they connect to other elements of class. Most importantly, remembering to acknowledge student ideas and contributions so they have a purpose. 

Her final section deals with the image. 

We are asked to close our eyes and imagine a big yellow lemon, smell it, we have a knife in our hand and we want to cut that lemon in half. Now we can smell it even more clearly. We can bring it up to our face and lick it. We can taste the tartness of the juice in our mouth. 

We come back and realize that many of us are salivating and that imagination is actually quote powerful. 

This is how image and imagination factor into teaching and professional development in motivation. 

She gives and example then of a successful athlete who has been quoted as saying that imagining herself walking into the Olympic stadium was the image that got her up for 5 a.m. trainings and through grueling drills and practice. Images like these give us the power to overcome all sorts of obstacles in our professional lives. They give us direction and inspiration. 

The task then is to imagine and take a tour around our ideal classroom. Look around and see what is happening and think about getting ourselves there. I missed the change to grab a picture of the slide (too busy typing the previous sentence), but it was full of wonderful images of smiling students and teachers, round table discussions, etc etc.

She concludes her talk with a story:

A little boy was watching this man in the middle of the square. There was sweltering heat and this man was working very hard and chopping away with a chisel at a piece of large stone. The boy looked at the man and wondered what he was doing. "Why are you doing that? It doesn't make any sense." And Michaelanglo said this "See little boy, there's an angel inside and I want to make him free.