Hub Digests

Hub digest – 12th March, 2021

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As the Hub continues to grow, it’s great that our members are using the wealth of knowledge of colleagues from around the world in the group. This week we had an interesting question about how to plan, as one of our members was looking for an effective way to prep one-to-one lessons for two students who had previously been working at the same level but now needed differing support.

There was also some wonderful chat around this week’s Wednesday Question which focussed on an article from a nonbinary teacher who had faced challenges when they first started working at a school in Andalucía. It feels like this is definitely an area we’ll be exploring more in the next Monthly Management Meet Up, happening on Tuesday 23rd.

And there was a lot of excitement and anticipation around this week’s webinar in which we were joined by George Chilton of Hubbub Labs to talk about how we can make the most of social media to sell our skills. I wouldn’t be surprised if all our members are updating their LinkedIn profiles this weekend!

Hub digest – 5th March, 2021

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There’s been some great chat on the page this week as we shared our pet hates on a grammar-based syllabus to celebrate Grammar Day. There was also a crowdsourcing post from one of our members about things we wish we’d known when starting out with VYLs and Primary. Looking forward to reading her Teaching Tips.

We tried out a slightly different format in the Coffee Break on Thursday, breaking into smaller groups to extend the conversations which had been happening on the Facebook page and then coming back together to share our takeaways.

And there’s a lot of interest around our webinar next week, when George from Hubbub Labs will be coming along to talk about selling our skills through social media.

Hub digest – 26th February, 2021

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It’s been another wonderful week in the Hub, with new members joining us from Spain, the UK, Germany, Brazil, India, Italy and Hong Kong – our community is becoming more global every week!

This week we hosted our first Monthly Management Meet Up which was a fabulous event with lots of food for thought. Topics discussed included the impact of COVID and Brexit on staffing and the skills managers need to lead effectively during these changing times. The next Meet Up is on March 23rd at 11am (UTC+1).

There was lots of discussion around our Wednesday Question this week which was on the ENORMOUS topic of observation. Feelings were mixed, but there were also good suggestions about different approaches people have tried from drop-ins to self-observation, getting involved with the class yourself and observing someone else teach one of your groups. This is definitely an area we’ll look at in more detail in the future.

Then Thursday’s webinar was hugely successful and the chat during the live event and after was full of wonderful comments and suggestions. If you’re looking for advice on time management, it’s definitely worth a watch on #catchup

Hub digest – 19th February, 2021

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Wow, there’s been a lot happening in the Hub this week!

In the Progress Hangout on Tuesday, we ended up chatting about phonology and accents which led on to the Wednesday Question. There were so many great resources shared in response and when we have the website fully up and running, we’ll be setting up a Virtual Library so members can easily access links which are shared.

On Thursday, we had our two Coffee Breaks. One of our main missions of the Hub is to provide a space where ELT professionals can find support and it felt like that was much needed this week, with people sharing concerns about job security and howbest we can market ourselves and find work online. There was also discussion around the Wednesday Question from last week, about providing the rationale for activities to our learners and an interesting chat about how the communicative approach works in an online environment.

And there’s no signs of the Hub slowing next week, as we’re excited to launch a new feature – a Monthly Management Meet Up. This will be a space open to all Hub members, but directed at providing support to those working in language school management. And we’ll also be discussing an important topic in our webinar with Rachael Roberts: do you manage your time or does it manage you?

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.

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.