During my first session as a teacher educator I always ask my students to think back to a really good teacher from the time they themselves were pupils or students. Then, I ask them to name an essential characteristic of this ideal teacher. Usually, the majority of my trainee teachers come up with personal characteristics [...]
On the 19th March Peter Dyer was the facilitator for our Teacher Development SIG Day at the Glasgow IATEFL conference, which was very successful. In the next Newsletter you will find an interview I had with him. Here’s a taster: Peter: The acting side of the workshop was really about why we act or respond [...]
For all of us ready to embark on writing an article for our newsletter or maybe starting a professional doctorate, I have a few tools that might come in handy. The app that has really helped me is PDF Expert which allows you to make notes in a PDF file on your iPad and save [...]
Rita, a teacher from Amsterdam was appalled when a pupil showed her her private holiday snapshots taken from Facebook during a traineeship in Curacao. ‘ I didn’t wear anything indecent and didn’t throw up or anything, but it was very shocking.’ Fortunately, the same pupil taught Rita how to change the settings of her profile. [...]
Teaching seems at times very close to social work. At the start of the lesson pupils and students sometimes first need to relax a little because one of them just witnessed a major row between his parents before cycling to school. As a teacher you need to offer this student some space to cool down. [...]
Does the language that you speak influence your behaviour? And is the opposite true too? Does your personality influence the way you manage to speak a second language? Please share your experiences with us on this site. If you end up being a TEFL teacher it is very helpful to have some acting in your [...]
A report of the Unplugged Conference of the 21st May by Catalina Dumitrescu. Catalina is a teacher trainer at Oxford TEFL Barcelona ‘It’s so easy not to practise what you preach. It´s better to sit down and talk. We all have so much to say. Not a good idea to be talked at.’ – Luke Meddings [...]
It is going to take place at Vilnius Pedagogical University http://www.vpu.lt/ The Conference invites ELT teachers, researchers, teacher educators and decision makers to exchange, discuss and develop their ideas on the challenges of the digital world. The conference programme is expected to offer many opportunities for contact between ELT practitioners and researchers via plenary speeches, workshops, [...]
Five more days to go and then our Unplugged Conference is on in Barcelona. http://www.tdsig.org/unplugged/ You can also register on the day in reception at OxfordTEFL if the online registration doesn’t work. I will now continue our discussion on Giving Feedback. On our annual IATEFL Conference in Brighton we had an interesting PCE entitled ‘Does my bum [...]
Changing demographies in our countries have their effects on our classrooms. A true exchange of ideas requires an understanding of different beliefs and value systems. What role does diversity have in your education? Do teacher training colleges in your country teach diversity?
In the next issue of our Teacher Development Newsletter we will run an article on how our members deal with noisy and disruptive classes. A colleague of mine explains to his classes at the start of the year that pupils will be given an extra assignment if they don’t listen. He has a special folder [...]
This week our dilemma is on ‘no child/learner left behind.’ What to do with diversity in your classroom? Teachers move away from the problem-based approach and move more towards the needs-based approach. Do you think you are trained to cater for pupils/learners with learning difficulties? And what do you do with highly talented pupils/learners? Do [...]
In the Netherlands there is an ongoing discussion on how we could improve our education. A panel of 10 educators came up with the following suggestions: improve image of the teacher more opportunities to grow for teachers, but make sure you name and shame when teachers don’t achieve don’t just look at the marks of [...]
The answer to this question is ‘yes’. But it should be clear what we mean by ‘critical friend.’ The concept would no longer be meaningful if it could not be distinguished from helpfulness, sympathy or peer coaching. An essential characteristic of a critical friend is that someone who wants to learn by seeking support for [...]
Critical friendship is an intriguing concept. The term appears in many books and articles about research and about collaborative learning. However, it has rarely been defined clearly. It is my aim to define it more precisely so that we set it apart from concepts like collegial consultation and helpfulness. I will do this by presenting [...]
In this month’s blog I would like to tackle the concept of critical friend. In the next NL you will find an article on this topic. What all critical friends have in common is that they are good listeners and respond to problems and questions with integrity and a positive attitude. Of course the two [...]
