Teresa

Job security, ELT marketeers and perhaps the biggest question of these times

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Several people are feeling less secure in their work than they were a few weeks ago; immigration controls are tightening and one teacher has recently lost a few hours due to a company cutting funding. Several people added that more teachers are on part-time contracts and hours are fluctuating. There is an increasing feeling of uncertainty. Change is in the air; it’s exciting and scary!

Possibilities around teaching online were compared; online schools, teacher platforms and working totally independently are all options. Experiences are mixed; some of it is great (e.g. working with motivated students in multilingual international classes working with good professional companies), others not so good, and some of it is dreadful. Some teacher platforms charge crazy commission and it can take a while to get established. One suggestion is that pecialisation is a good way forward, e.g. PET groups, business classes and assessment. Should we invest time and energy now to earn more later?

There was an acknowledgement that we need to market ourselves and there is a fear around that; we’re ELT professionals, not marketeers. We don’t know how to prioritise and how to best spend our time, how do we know which online spaces to be in; Pinterest, Facebook, LinkedIn, personal blogs, newsletters, Instagram, tiktok…! Marketing can make us feel “dirty”, we need to create content or do things that is useful for people and we need to understand how different platforms operate and what works. How do we find work online? It seems to be that cracking it seems to depend on a big investment of time or money… we’re poor in both!

Perhaps we need to think of ourselves as our own personal businesses. How do we price our work, whether it may be teaching or writing work? Think like a business… how much do I need or want to earn per year? How many hours a week am I prepared to work a week? Don’t forget to take into account holidays, a few sick days, etc. And then do some maths to work out your hourly rate. Of course we need to compare the market rate but prices vary wildly and we need to do the right thing for us. And for some of us, it’s difficult to talk about money. Should we become properly, legally self-employed? We all should but some
thought that depended on the type of work that we do, in some situations it’s essential, perhaps to get the quality work with good companies we need to do things right. Is there a moral obligation too? Sometimes we need to “invest” time too and think what does this experience give us? It can be money, of course. It can also be new contacts, new possibilities, new doors opening. And perhaps we need to try to do fewer things, perhaps even fewer of the things that we love, to find some balance and sustainability.

We talked, in one group, about the Wednesday question about explaining the rationale of activities to our students. The general consensus was that, yes, we should. Of course we need balance and we need to continue to keep people engaged. Making connections and making things explicit for students is always beneficial. Helping students understand what’s going on also puts the responsibility in their hands and we can help them develop “Higher Order Thinking Skills” by encouraging questions and evaluation. We can help our students be creative, curious and empowered.

In the other group, we opened up the subject of the “rules online”, talking about interactions, clothing and behaviour in classrooms and in the workplace. We are all still trying to define what is appropriate. Some participants online are getting creative changing their name to “connecting…” or “buffering…”. We’re pretty much a year into this we’re still trying to get to terms with all this. Are we all hoping to just go back to some version of “normal”? Is this all just a stop gap? Some people love it, some people hate it. It appears that materials writing has changed very little thus far, publishers are thinking longer term to a point when we are back to “normal”. Are we all just making do, just adapting what we can while we have to rather than making real changes? Perhaps we should rethink some basic ideas. Perhaps the biggest question was about the communicative approach… does it still work in the online environments? Is it still fit for
purpose? Or does it need a radical rethink?

Hub digest – 12th February, 2021

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Another fun-filled week in the Hub with lots of great discussions happening in the various discussion threads.

As well as sharing tips on setting up your workspace for the online classroom and ways of archiving and remembering activities to use in class, there was also a thread with ideas for where to find resources for the Trinity ISE III speaking exam.

In the Wednesday question, we discussed a topic which had come up in a comment on Harry’s Zooming Around session, about the benefit of sharing game and lesson objectives with our learners.

And Teresa spent a fabulous hour with Ceri Jones in Thursday’s webinar discussing ways in which we can progress in our classes outside the classroom. We’ll be sharing notes with lots of useful links on Monday and, as always, webinar recordings are available to all Hub members.

Developing beyond the classroom

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Developing beyond the classroom - with Ceri Jones (webinar)
Watch now

This was a fabulous session with Ceri Jones in which we discussed ways we can develop beyond improving our teaching skills. We touched on a few topics, but there are some other areas at the end of the notes which are also possible avenues to look into and hopefully we’ll be able to look at these in future webinars.

Further qualifications

Ceri talked about how she started in ELT, having taken a PGCE in English and Modern Languages (a qualification for teaching in mainstream education in the UK) and then a Diploma after two years in ELT and an MA in TEFL 8 years later.

She talked about how for the Diploma there is also an academic and research focus to it. Often MA courses have less of a practical focus on developing your teaching skills in the classroom; however, Ceri did also mention that a module on grammar and parsing had a positive effect on her confidence to describe and explain language to her learners.

Part of her decision for taking an MA was also to provide further support to her students, as she was working on EAP courses in the UK – study skills and language support for people coming to the UK to study MA and PhD programmes – as she wanted to experience that higher level education herself.

Another point which she said helped during the MA was looking at data analysis and the ability to critically read research and journals.

Useful links – not listing ALL programmes as that would be a ridiculously long list!

Obviously now we have a lot more options in terms of online study and Michelle mentioned how self-study is much more accessible these days. And you don’t have to limit yourself to something ELT-related either!

Academic management

We touched briefly on the fact that further qualifications sometimes don’t prepare you particularly well for an academic management position, despite the fact that posts for these positions will often require a Level 7 qualification (Diploma or DELTA). That said, DELTA module 3 is on ELT Management and International House runs a Director of Studies course.

Working in academic management tends to be something you learn on the job, rather than having formal training. The role will be different depending on the school you’re working in and what your responsibilities are: will you be required to deal with staff recruitment or the business side of the centre? Will your role involve working with individual learners, teachers, communicating with parents? Managing resources such as coursebooks, board markers and nowadays, the tech side of the classroom?

In-school ideas

There are lots of things you can do as well which take you outside your own four walls. These opportunities could come about through the type of teaching you’re doing, such as managing an off-site contract. They could be related to something that you’re interested in: leading a drama or film club, setting up a library, running a makers’ space.

The benefits of doing this is that it allows you to see ‘behind the scenes’ and to get a feel for having more responsibility and how you deal with issues as they arise. All these experiences can help you get a clearer idea of the direction you might want to take further can can also help to get you noticed – a voluntary role might turn into a paid coordination role or another type of promotion.

Owning your own school

Neither Ceri nor T have been interested in owning their own school – Ceri for the business management side of things, and T for the people management! And also it will inevitably take you out of the classroom.

However, there are lots of good reasons to do it:

  • you can do things as you like, particularly if you’re not happy with systems where you work at the moment
  • you can open a much more specialist school – Ceri mentioned that one of her colleagues opened up a school specifically working with VYLs
  • there might be a gap in the market (both in terms of specialising and in terms of location)
  • it helps you become a larger part of the community and build relationships with the people there

Borja mentioned how taking an MBA helped him with a lot of the managerial aspects of being a school owner. There are a number of school owners in the group who I’m sure would be willing to share their experiences of setting up their own centres as well as the day-to-day aspect.

Conferences

Attending (and presenting) means you get to meet a wider range of people so it’s a great opportunity to network and find out more about what options there are available to you. Conferences are a great place to make connections so talk to people in the coffee break and during workshops.

If you’re thinking of changing schools to work somewhere with better professional development options, it’s well worth taking a look at the agenda and seeing which schools are sponsoring speakers, as this is often a good sign that the school promotes PD.

If you’re interested in speaking at a conference, most organisers will have a call for papers a few months before the conference date. Many organisations have Facebook pages now so you can easily follow them to keep a track of what’s coming up. Some have scholarship opportunities as well for first-time speakers. Here are a couple which Ceri has spoken at:

  • TEFL del Sur is a local teachers’ organisation in Cádiz and a friendly place to take your first steps in presenting 
  • ACEIA is an Association of Language Schools in Andalucía with an annual event in November. The call for papers is generally around May.
  • TESOL-SPAIN has an annual event in March with the call for papers in October
  • IATEFL normally has an annual event in the UK in April, but they also have a number of SIGs (Special Interest Groups) which run events through the year
  • BBELT is the British Council event in Mexico

Nowadays, there’s a fair bit of eco-guilt around attending international conferences, as well as the growing discussion around who’s invited to speak at plenaries (largely in terms of gender and first language).

That said, at the moment, with lots of conferences moving online, there are LOADS of opportunities to attend conferences around the world. We’re trying to keep on top of things with our calendar…but there is SO MUCH out there now!

Running a PD session in your own centre is also a good way to get a feel for presenting and Paul suggested as well following up your session with an article and submitting it to onestopenglish or ETP. And Tim raised an excellent point that you don’t have to do these things on your own – Ceri presented with her ‘partner-in-crime’, Tania Bastow back in Italy.

Teacher training

In-house development sessions are an example of teacher training as well!

Ceri talked about having worked with teachers in mainstream education on a CLIL project when she was in Italy and local universities will sometimes run similar courses so it’s worth looking out for opportunities there.

Getting into teacher training will generally require a DELTA or Diploma and then centres which run courses will often have their own training course. Once you’ve been trained up, you’re generally required to complete standardisation training each year in order to be able to train.

You can find which centres run the Trinity CertTESOL on this map and Cambridge have a search feature to find centres for the CELTA.

Ceri mentioned an e-moderation course from the Consultants-e and the IHCOLT (International House Certificate for Tutoring Online) which is an approved course for becoming an online CELTA trainer. Cambridge offers a Train the Trainer course which doesn’t qualify you to be a CELTA trainer, but offers a good first step into training.

Writing materials

Ceri and Tania wrote a pairwork activities book when they were working together in Italy as they were supplementing their classes with speaking activities after noticing a gap in the materials they were using. They sent a sample to lots of publishers and then 7 months later heard from OUP that they were looking for writers of supplementary materials for Headway.

Having a blog is a good way to get into writing and can also help you showcase your work. However, if you’re not keen on setting up your blog, approach the people whose blogs you read and ask about writing a guest post (great suggestion from JG). If you’re interested in writing a blogpost for the TEFL Development Hub, feel free to get in touch.

As mentioned above, look for places to submit lesson plans (such as for onestopenglish) or IATEFL MAWSIG – here’s an interesting article from one of their scholarship winners with tips on getting into writing.

There are lots of other places where you can share your materials online to showcase your work (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook groups) and presenting materials which have worked well for you at conferences is another way to share your work with the world – and you never know who might be in the audience!

Working in teacher training is also a good way to get into writing teachers’ books as you often have the skills to write support notes which are clear and concise.

And, there’s always the option of self-publishing and Ceri mentioned the iTDi course which offers advice on how and where to start. ELT Teacher 2 Writer has books and courses on writing materials too.

Other ideas

There are of course lots of other ways we can progress, including:

  • working in EAP
  • providing support to learners through ESL in mainstream education or with immigrants
  • Business English or ESP – finding your niche
  • getting involved in local, national or international teachers’ organisations
  • examining and assessment

Hub digest – 5th February, 2021

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It was great to see more members joining from around the world this week, with new members from Norway, Germany, the UK and Spain.

There was lots of interesting chat around the Wednesday Question, which was related to English language in the media, the dangers to minority languages and the benefits for learners to be exposed to more English from an early age.

The chat which started in the comments thread continued into Thursday’s Coffee Breaks, which for the first time this week happened in two time slots. In the first Coffee Break, we also followed up on Harry’s webinar of the previous week, sharing ideas for songs which would work well for songversations.

We also launched our Progress Hangouts this week, with a few Hub members meeting in Zoom to chat in smal groups about their goals for the next fortnight.

Coming up next week, we’ve got a webinar with Ceri Jones chatting to Teresa about ways in which we can develop beyond the classroom.

Icelandic dub and quality exposure

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This was the first time we had used Zoom for the Coffee Breaks (after experimenting with Facebook Rooms) and also the first time we had options for the morning and the afternoon. There were about a dozen of us in the morning and four in the afternoon. If you prefer bigger groups, the morning session is the one for you and so far, the afternoon’s for people who prefer more intimate surroundings. People preferred Zoom for sound quality, the ability to use the chat and on-screen features as well as the possibility to use breakout rooms when groups are bigger. 

We used Harry’s webinar and the Wednesday question about dubbing in Iceland as possible starting points. You can catch up and re-watch Harry’s webinar “Zooming Around”, as well as all the webinars thus far through the TEFL Development Hub Facebook page; go to “more” (at the top of the page) then “media”, then “videos” and they’re all there, all 14 of them!

The conversation went something like this…

Is dubbing a good thing as it decreases the domination of English over other languages, in this case specifically in Iceland?

So much important cultural stuff and acting quality is lost through dubbing.  

There is a skill involved in reading subtitles; it can also increase reading speed.

Bilingualism can grow through exposure. If we just put everything in the “target” language, they will learn.

Students driven by curiosity will learn, perhaps they enjoy the sounds and this creates a bond and a “feeling” with the language.

People, especially children, get bored and demotivated if they can’t understand enough. 

Several Irish “learners” shared their stories of being forced into Irish and struggling despite society doing its best to make it real and immersive.

The quality of exposure is important to consider. Too easy or too difficult is low quality.

Enjoyment and understanding should be the guide to things outside the classroom.

Disney are confident that people won’t turn off if it’s not dubbed. (Who pays for the dubbing? Is it Disney or the country?) Netflix has a language learning plug-in.

There have been studies into acquisition vs active learning in 2 hours a week. Results indicate that active learning is better.

Authentic materials are great when the student is ready for them. Adapted materials are part of the process. There was mention of Steve and Maggie for YLs.

 

When we tell stories, should we adapt the language to aid learning and understanding?

“Teacher what can I do?” Ask our motivated A2, B1 students… try a trailer first without subtitles and then with, how did you do? 

B2 and up… watch whatever you want!

We should be mindful of not patronizing our lower-level adult students.

Use tik tok to add captions to video, play with the language and the formats.

There were a couple of sites mentioned: edpuzzle lets you add comprehension questions to YouTube videos and English Attack (which requires you to sign up to access) has movie clips with activities already prepared. There’s also PlayPhrase where you can hear clips with a particular phrase and Youglish does something similar

Getting creative with homework… the internet is an unlimited resource; encourage students to do things for pleasure, e.g. follow your favourite celebrities.

Value any contact with English; in gaming change the language, play with lyrics to songs, etc. Find a challenge.

What songs can we use in “Songversations”? Be guided by your students but watch out for the bad language. Ed Sherran is generally ok, as are most slow love songs.

Coach our students as well as teach them.

Coerce students into using English! Trick them into learning through memes and tik tok.

Students read a huge amount. Mostly short pieces. Are we all being dragged down to the lowest common denominators?

We discussed the merits of extensive and intensive reading tasks.

There seems to be more students struggling with the receptive elements of official exams than there were before (10-20 years ago) Is there a noticeable decrease in people’s abilities in receptive skills?

In exam preparation classes, we need to help our students with these skills. If they have a reason to read, they will. Exam readings are boring. Will exams change to reflect society? 

Use extensive reading programmes to encourage reading for pleasure. During COVID we need to consider quarantining books. Are there online options? Are there any second hand sharing possibilities? You could check out Oxford Owl, Vooks, Oxford Learners Bookshelf and Usborne

Should extensive reading programmes be optional or does there need to be an element of compulsion?

How do we feel about translation? To summarise, to translate in and out of different languages? Translation is important in many ways, use it wisely. Some good ideas about translation in this webinar from Philip Kerr. Online students can message back and forth translating back and forth and then find the differences.

Also mentioned… 

Brexit and recruiting teachers in Europe was briefly talked about. 

Writers’ groups and the “Society of Authors” also got a mention too as communities which support writers.

Hub digest – 29th January, 2021

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We celebrated hitting 100 members in the Hub this week, with ELT professionals joining us from Spain, the UK, Ireland, Greece, Croatia, Italy, the UAE, Ukraine and Sweden.

The Wednesday question was focussed on working for online education companies, following a video from Martin Sketchley talking about his recent experiences.

Then on Thursday, we had a fabulous webinar, with Harry Waters joining us and sharing some easy-to-adapt ideas for games.

Next week, we’re launching our Progress Hangouts, facilitating a space for Hub members to connect in small groups to motivate each other to achieve their goals and we’ll be hosting our first afternoon coffee break, expanding from our regular Thursday morning slots.