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Using social media for business purposes

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This morning we were joined by the fabulous Rachael Roberts of Life Resourceful who shared her social media know-how with us. We’d had some great questions come in ahead of the chat and some other popped up during the session as well.

Is it better to focus on a particular market?

Rachael has experience of niching and says that it’s a good choice as you can focus on the areas of ELT which you particularly enjoy. It makes you more memorable and more referable. She says that a danger of trying to appeal to everyone is that your message gets lost, whereas if you focus on one aspect, you can market yourself on social media more easily and appeal to people in a specific context. That said, she added that this doesn’t mean that this becomes ALL you do. Many ELT professionals enjoy the variety of working with different age groups or in different areas and choosing to market yourself in a particular way doesn’t mean that you have to give anything else up. Similarly, if you find that you’ve ‘fallen into a niche’ and are trying to climb out of it, rebranding yourself through social media can be a great way of reestablishing yourself.

Is it true that to succeed in business on social media you either need lots of money or lots of time?

The feeling here was that time is more important than money. Although you can pay to boost posts or turn posts into ads, ads only work well if you have organic growth. Rachael mentioned that a social media marketeer had said that you need to be investing at least £300 a week to see any significant impact on Facebook. 

Another approach is paying people to create content for you. This might not be the best idea if you’re trying to market yourself: you need to be authentic so that clients – whether that’s students or publishers – know what they’re getting. There are lots of tutorials you can find about setting up your own website, how to write a blogpost, what image sizes work best on different platforms and learning to do it yourself will be better in the long run. Furthermore, if you’re using Canva, you can select to create an image which is the right fit for different platforms and if you have the Pro version, it will resize content for you.

So, time is the best option. Rachael suggests being strategic and focussed: going into your social media profile to do that one thing and then get out again, rather than getting stuck scrolling for an eternity. She also has a handy hint about how to be more visible, such as the ‘juice and boost’. Deliberately don’t reply to all comments on a post in one go, but instead respond to a couple, then go back a couple of hours later and reply to more, and so on. 

Consistency vs. flexibility

It’s better to get into the habit of being active on social media: posting twice a week regularly is better than have a full-on month of posts followed by a month of nothing. In terms of what you post, it’s a good idea to plan content as trying to think of what to post each time you do will end up taking your more time.  

Some people like to batch content and spend a chunk of time once a month to prepare all their content, which can be a more efficient way of working. 

What about scheduling posts?

This is also a time-saving option. However, it’s better to schedule your posts directly through the platform rather than using a third-party tool such as Hootsuite. This is because the platform recognises that you’re not on it to schedule content and so reduces the reach of your posts.

Do I need to vary the content for different platforms?

A social media guru would say ‘yes’. However, Rachael suggests a better approach is to focus on using one or two platforms and ensure that you’re sharing quality content on each. In terms of identifying which platform is right for you, it’s important to think about the audience you’re trying to sell to and another hint here is to make use of as many features that the platform offers as possible. For example, to be more effective on Instagram, use reels, stories and IGTV as well as the platform is moving away from being just a ‘square photo-sharing app’. 

Another aspect to think about with different platforms in the life of a post. Posts on LinkedIn have a long life, whereas Instagram is a much more ‘in the moment’ platform. An additional plus of sharing content through LinkedIn and Facebook is that when someone comments on a post, it becomes visible again. There was also a question around sharing content in groups and Rachael’s advice here is to look at the type of posts in the group and the group rules: in some groups there are lots of posts of people ‘selling’ themselves, whereas in other groups this happens less.

*As an aside, in the Hub group on Facebook, we’re more than happy for people to promote themselves and what they’re doing as long as posts have a question to encourage members to reflect and engage with the content 😁

Another tip from Rachael is to ensure that the post itself is engaging. This is not only important in terms of getting people’s attention, but also because linking to an external source (such as a blogpost) reduces reach. A couple of ways around this are to post a link to your blogpost in the comments or apparently you can trick the algorithm if you post and then edit the post to include the link.

What about the analytics?

You can learn A LOT about post reach, engagement and more. However, not all of the data may be relevant to you. For example, for some people it might be more important to know where followers are based so they can identify what sort of content will be mor relevant; other people might be interested in knowing the time when most people engage with their posts; other people might want to know how people come to their site…and so on.

One thing Rachael suggests looking at is the engagement and reach and working out the engagement by reach rate. This is the total engagement (likes, comments, shares) divided by reach times 100. Apparently the average engagement by reach is about 2% so any more than that and you’re doing well! 

You can then start to think about why a particular post does better than others: was it the design? the content? the humour?

‘Done is better than perfect’

This was an idea that Rachael came back to a couple of times during the Q&A. We chatted a little bit about getting over the fear of ridicule and not bothering to do hundreds of takes of a video before posting. People also mentioned that although it can be scary to put yourself out there at the start (in terms of posting video content or selfies), it does get more comfortable. One tip for producing video content was to use Filmora which is user-friendly video editing software. Rachael highlighted as well that images with your face will often do better as people like to put a face to a name. Another tip here is around brand consistency and Rachael suggests picking a few templates rather than re-inventing the wheel each time you create content. She added as well that colour branding can be quite impactful and make your posts stand out as someone’s scrolling through.

SOS!

If you’re interested in learning more, Rachael has a few spots left on her next Switch off Stress, Switch on Success programme starting in September.

During the 12-week course, you’ll look at a variety of different aspects of business management, such as niching and pinning down your message, building an effective social media profile, identifying the client journey, selling in a way that makes you feel comfortable, negotiating and much, much more. There are weekly input sessions, group coaching sessions and a supportive community channel on Slack. 

Coffee and a collection of queries…

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We chatted about pay and whether prep time was included in our hourly rates at schools we had worked at before. Then we touched briefly on how pay can vary wildly in different countries (for example, in Geneva the starting rate is 40€+ per hour!) – though obviously cost of living is very different too. This made us wonder about charging different rates for people depending on where they’re based. A couple of people who are freelance said that they have different rates depending on the platform the student comes via – for example, LinkedIn might be a platform to market on with a higher rate as you’re more likely to interact with business people.

We chatted a lot about social media and about the need to post different content on different platforms. This led on to questions around batching content and whether it’s better to have a strict schedule or more flexibility. There was a question of whether the algorithm gods like consistency 🙂 Instagram was highlighted as a place ‘where all the happy yoga people are’ with a feeling that interactions on there tend to be largely positive simply because you can only love content, whilst on Facebook and LinkedIn there’s a wider variety of responses available.

There were also questions around using the analytics tool with a suggestion that it can be useful to know where your followers are based in terms of creating content to appeal to a particular market. As well, someone mentioned that it’s important to remember that just because someone doesn’t visually engage with your content, it doesn’t mean they don’t have you in their mind. There was a feeling that social media engagement is for a reward in the long-term more than one post immediately generating revenue. One other thing which was mentioned was about the importance of engaging with other people’s content for yours to be more visible and someone had heard the tip of liking ten posts before you post your own.

We touched very briefly on teacher organisations where we’re based and BELTA and ELTA-Rhine got a quick mention as places which promote PD and often have things going on.

And finally we chatted about transcription tools – no new ones were mentioned although we had a chat around how forgiving they can be – it feels like sometimes they aren’t so great for allowing learners to see their pron mistakes as the tech is developing and correcting errors which in recognises in chunks; at the same time it was felt that often if you don’t have a standard accent or if you haven’t scripted the content, the AI is less precise. We chatted a bit around putting closed captions on video content for social media – for example with YouTube there’s an option to automatically create subtitles which you can then edit, and Instagram offers a captioning tool but it might only be available through certain versions. This led us on finally to discuss very briefly whether subtitles are a crutch for learners and whether using them means you practise reading more than listening.

How is coaching different to teaching?

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First off, an apology! After making the ad for the session, I listened to the podcast which Karen shared in the group and discovered that the order of actions is slightly different to what’s shown above, as it’s known as the GROW approach to coaching. First you identify your goals, then consider your current reality. From there you start to consider your options (which can be feasible or crazy, the idea is to get as many ideas down as you can) and then you identify the way forward.

Who is coaching for?

We talked a little about the difference between coaching in training and teaching contexts, as well as the challenges of coaching in a group situation. For the most part, our chat focused on coaching English language learners, rather than trainee teachers or others.

Whoever you’re working with, we identified a need to understand the degree of support people want as coaching is directing not leading; therefore, as Niamh Ryan points out in the podcast, it isn’t suitable for people who want to be told what to do.

We all agreed as well that we were initially a little resistant to the term ‘coaching’ and that it perhaps felt like a bit of a marketing ploy to charge more for classes! However, we also felt that in many cases, a lot of our teaching involves an aspect of coaching anyway, in terms of directing learners to resources they can use outside the class, as we felt that if they only have an hour or two of class time, the responsibility lies with them to put in the effort if they want to improve quickly.

The benefits of coaching in a 1-to-1 environment

We thought that it might be easier when working with individuals as you have the time to dedicate to talking to them about their goals, as well as helping them to identify the next steps they can take and providing support in the reflection process too. This might be more challenging in a group context, however we did come up with some possibilities for how it might work which we’ll look at shortly.

Another benefit is that you can develop a more personal relationship with the person. We said that coaching is very much about creating a safe space for coachees to open up about any problems they’re facing and the coach is much more able to ask delving questions to get to the underlying causes of issues, taking the time to form their questions carefully to support their coachee.

How might it work in groups?

We felt it would be tricky to coach everyone effectively in a group situation as each individual has different needs. However, we did suggest some ways of working which might enable us to incude more coaching aspects:

Build in one-to-one tutorial moments as an ongoing part of the course. We may sometimes do tutorials at the end of term; however we felt that these would be more effective as a more routine part of the lesson, as chances are that at the end of term everyone is winding down. Starting with a one-to-one moment following your initial needs analysis as a group, you can pinpoint areas which individuals are looking to work on and then reflect on their progress in a formative way during each term.

Structured reflection tasks. We identified that for learners to fully benefit from coaching, there needs to be a more in-depth reflection on the process of learning. For example, Francesca mentioned that on the pre-sessional courses which she’s worked on, learners are often given criteria to help them self-assess their work, whether it’s their level of participation, the range of vocabulary they used, or other areas. 

One of the criteria of assessment in Diploma-level lessons is that “learners are encouraged to evaluate, review and reflect on their learning” and we talked briefly about ways of doing this, such as by using exit tickets or having learners annotate the screen to highlight which activity they enjoyed most (as very basic ways of engaging learners in the reflective process…feels like that could be another Focused Forum topic!).

Some questions learners could perhaps ask themselves at the end of an activity to reflect on it include:

  • How did I feel about this activity?
  • Did I participate as much as I wanted to?
  • What words, phrases or structures did I use which are new to me?
  • What prevented me from doing better in the task?
  • What would I need to do differently next time?

Adding to the chat around reflection, we felt that it needed to be given more importance in class – though this is obviously a challenge with the time we have with learners to get through everything as it is. We also noted that coaching needs to be consistent and part of a planned, ongoing activity throughout the course. We all worried that we easily start the term full of new ideas and great intetnions, but for these things to work in practice, it needs dedicated planning and time.

We also thought in a group context that it would be wonderful to do some learner training to enable them to coach each other. It would require significant thought and training to be effective, but the results could be something magical.

One final comment about the reflective process was around accountability and we thought that perhaps as a coach, your role is to support people in their reflection, but not judge or evaluate their progress. This again links back to the podcast and the idea that coaching is linked to intrinsic motivation, so also not as suitable for those who value external approval for progress.

Areas for coaching

Confidence was a huge area where we felt that many learners would benefit from coaching, particularly if we can ask them the right questions to help them see their improvement.

Linked to this is the idea of a growth mindset – and a recommendation to watch Carol Dweck’s The Power of Yet if you haven’t already seen it.

Another suggestion was to work with learners’ will power and we all agreed that we’re guilty of choosing to watch an episode on Netflix instead of an ELT webinar which has been on our to do list! Similarly, we can work with our learners to encourage them to use those thirty-minute slots for something useful in their language learning.

We also suggested looking at study skills with them – another area which often isn’t given the importance it deserves as part of a general course.

And obviously we also thought that learners could use some coaching for how to improve certain skills, such as listening, writing or pronunciation. In terms of skills work, we said that this might be where coaching becomes more feasible in a group context – you could have a focus for each couple of weeks and provide the group with resources to help them work on a certain skill, but with a nod to those learners who specifically identified it as an area of interest during your needs analysis and initial tutorial.

And around pronunciation we had a little rant about the distinction between a pronunciation coach and an accent reduction coach 😬

Some interesting follow-up reading and viewing were mentioned:

Some questions to reflect on:

  • What elements of coaching would you like to incorporate into your teaching? How?
  • At what age could learners start reflecting on the learning process?
  • What questions have you asked your learners recently to help them reflect on their learning?

Huge thanks to everyone who came along 😍

To conference or not to conference; FOMO and JOMO!

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We started talking about the recently finished IATEFL conference. Some of us were big fans and regular attenders whereas others had never been. The fans talked about leaving on a TEFL high that carried through to a bounce in our professional step that lasted a while, a feeling of being inspired. Others baulked at the cost (was it really 300 pounds for this year’s online conference?) and we noted that many people are paid for by their workplaces. 

We went on to talk about other conferences too… TESOL-SPAIN got (yet another) honourable mention for the use of the Whova app which contributed massively to the buzz and the connection around the event.

We talked about submitting proposals for upcoming events (ACEIA, Innovate and TESOL-SPAIN). We were chatting about Innovate and how at a previous event they had drop-in sessions – an hour-long slot in the timetable where there were a number of things happening at once with a format that meant you could come and go as you please. We chatted about how this might be feasible in an online conference and talked about how TEFL del Sur tried something similar with themed breakout rooms which you could move around, but we weren’t sure whether this required everyone to be a co-host and whether it would be feasible for a larger event.

We also chatted briefly about the ELT Workshop which offers monthly PD events on Zoom and is a really nice way to connect with other ELT professionals.

And we talked about Clubhouse which is an audio-only app which is now available for Android as well as Apple. There seems to be some weird etiquette, such as introducing yourself each time you speak as people can come and go as they choose. We thought it could perhaps be used as a tool for conversation classes as you can set up a private room but then could perhaps have an open event every couple of months as a way of marketing your classes.

We also chatted a bit about podcasts and the difficulty of when to listen to them. Some people like to listen to them whilst out for a walk, others manage to multitask and get on with other things with one on in the background.

We also talked about both FOMO and JOMO (the fear of missing out and the joy of missing out), that we can’t possibly do everything and we do need to look after ourselves, one way of doing that is by being very selective with what we go to.

We acknowledged that we (as committed Hubbers!) are often really engaged in development in lots of ways but there are also lots of people that aren’t so engaged. There are lots of teachers and trainers who do a fabulous job but aren’t connected with CPD and just continue moving forward in their own way.

Making choices

We agreed that we much preferred conferences and other professional development events that have audience guidelines. Conferences do tend to include descriptors “This session is useful for…” but often webinars and other CPD events don’t. We agreed that having clearer guidelines across all events would make it easier for us to pick and choose what to attend.

We talked about our favourites; John Hughes’ short development videos got a special mention for his authentic, natural and professional approach as did Rachael Roberts’ ELT Resourceful and Lightbulb Moments.

We then talked about some people’s desire to keep studying, always and forever! The MA in Applied Linguistics in Limerick was recommended. One participant said that they’d done the 2 years masters course over seven or eight years!

Career development

We reflected on the fact that there are times in our lives when things just happen to us and we need to respond to unforeseen events. “Oh goodness, I’ve lost my job” can turn into the best thing ever as we are forced to re-evaluate. 

Sometimes career development is seemingly so much about being in the right place at the right time (with the right attitude!) We thought that to “succeed” in TEFL you have to be a “yes” person, to be useful and positive in and around the workplace. We wondered whether this was the same in all professions and across all countries. One participant compared Ireland to France, in Ireland it’s easier to move “up” based on the work done whereas France feels like a more qualification driven country.

Recruitment procedures

We talked briefly about recruitment procedures weighing up experience with qualifications and worrying about Brexit-era work permit possibilities across Europe. One school has a recruitment day where there are two interviews with the DOS and the school principal as well as demo lessons for the survivors (after they had observed the group one).

Observation thoughts

And then observation reared its head, of course. We agreed that observations are always rather odd under nearly any circumstances. We thought the best thing would be to start with an issue, a problem or a puzzle and that observation would then be one of several possible options and then there could be several options around observation. We talked about observation to empower teachers through choice of group and choice of observation style. We identified a few different ways to observe; a traditional “management” observation, peer observation and a ghost (or self) observation. There was also a “selfie” observation, as an addition to the self obs, where the teacher takes pics to use in the observation feedback. This acknowledges that recall is so often so very unreliable and this adds in some evidence based and helps things be more dialogic in approach. Another approach to self obs was filming or voice recording obs and then giving teachers the power to edit their recordings. Recordings could then become part of a teacher’s CPD portfolio.

And in the 5pm hangout, we watched Harry’s shave!

What’s the best way to prepare for ELT management?

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There were people from schools of all sorts of different shapes and sizes, from huge schools of 100 plus teachers across several sites in several cities through to medium-sized schools with 20-odd staff and smaller schools with just a few colleagues. We agreed that although the scale may differ, the issues are often the same.

Teacher mentors and managers

It felt like in bigger schools it was easier for some teachers to “fall between the cracks” and harder to keep a handle on everything that goes on despite management layers of possibly an overall academic manager, a director of studies as well as various centre managers. We talked about how mentors could help newer or less experienced teachers and one school had mentors for all teachers without a diploma.

In some schools diploma-qualified teachers (DELTA or DipTESOL) are expected to mentor others. Mentoring can also help teachers prepare for management roles as they begin to understand the problems teachers might have. Teachers who are more ambitious tend to do a diploma course looking for career progression, more money and more responsibility. 

Others said that mentoring had been tried in the past but often the mentors found it unmotivating and we agreed that it needs continual work to keep it moving forward well. Mentors also need mentoring! And we talked about a staged process looking at what mentoring is, giving feedback on lesson plans and observations and the role of coaching. All this investment is about training teachers to become managers and appreciating the financial investment from school owners to facilitate the process. 

The EAQUALS competencies framework in management was mentioned too as a good way to frame and measure development as we can move from being a training manager looking at what makes a good manager, into management and then on to senior management in bigger schools.

Moving into management – Top Tips

We talked in more depth about the process of becoming a manager in a language school and how to go about it. 

We all need to invest in our development and a DipTESOL/DELTA is one way to further qualifications and show our commitment, we also talked about the IH management courses and NILE  MA (where you can just take separate modules or do the whole MA). If you’re interested in reading more about the NILE MA programme, Rachel Tsateri has blogged about her experience of it.

We also talked about looking for opportunities and asking the question, “What can I do for the school?” Implicit in this idea is the role of critical thinking and self-reflection, all essential parts of a good manager, we need to show it and do it help move forward in our careers. Another suggestion was to get involved in the life of the school and get noticed that way as well as being prepared to commit to doing a bit more rather than working to rule and expecting promotion. 

Transparency in management

We talked about how some changes had been made during the pandemic and that we had all worked hard to try to carefully explain it all to teachers. For some of us it had meant big changes, and some uncomfortable changes. For example, in one school where they had a proud tradition of always offering guaranteed hours and salaries, during the pandemic they had had to shift to hourly pay without being able to guarantee hours to teachers. In another school things had unfortunately become “less official” during the uncertainty of COVID. We are all hoping that we’ll be able to go back to those “good practices” soon. We are fearful that some of the less desirable practices (like zero-hour contracts, pay cuts, etc.) for teachers and staff might remain. Watch this space!

IA-trouble?

We talked briefly about IATEFL and said that we would have liked to have gone this year as transport and time off would have been less of a problem but several of us were put off by the price tag. We wondered how many people attended and whether the association was under some economic pressure, like so many of us with our traditional business models under threat. One member reported that they had been to one IATEFL conference and had found it a bit cliquey and we thought that, although that was a pity, it was probably inevitable to some extent. We hoped it’d all be ok and very much value the work the association does.

How do you plan conversation classes?

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Thanks to everyone who joined us to think about planning conversation classes this morning.

There was a lot of interesting chat during the session about what a conversation class is and how we can find resources for them. Here are some of the questions which came up and our responses to them.

What is a conversation class?

This was quite a big question that we came back to a number of times during the session. We identified that it’s essential that we know what our learners’ expectations, needs and wants are. For example, is their focus more on fluency or accuracy? Do they want to ‘learn’ English and will our role by more that of a teacher or learning coach? 

Is a conversation class just chatting?

For some learners, yes. For some it’s about increasing their confidence in conversation and feeling able to talk on a variety of topics with ease. Some learners want to have a natural conversation, others want more structure. Sometimes a conversation class might involve scaffolding a task with specific language we want them to use; other times there might be more of a task-based or TTT approach in which we do a conversational task, look at how to upgrade their language and then repeat a similar task again. Other times the conversation might be an extended engage stage which then leads on to a communicative task based on the topic, hopefully encouraging the learners to use some of the emergent language which has come up.

How can we plan these lessons?

We talked about who is responsible for planning the topic for the lessons. Some teachers said they liked to have something as a back-up if necessary, but were very happy to let the conversation happen naturally and take the lesson in the direction the learner(s) wanted (more of a Dogme approach). We also suggested having a functional syllabus as this would both allow us to develop our learners’ conversational skills whilst also feeling a sense of progress and structure in the lessons.

There was also an idea that a conversation class should have a linguistic aim, whether it’s functional language or thinking about one of the ‘Can do’ statements, e.g. ‘Can talk about experiences’. Again, this allows there to be a sense of progress within the lesson and provides a focus.

Another suggestion was to think of a broad topic, such as travel, and develop a series of lessons on that theme, perhaps covering a couple of weeks’ worth of meetings. This would then allow you to get into more specific details around the topic, such as ecotourism, local tourism, types of holiday, etc. without trying to cram too much into a single lesson.

What resources can we use?

Some people liked to set the learners a task ahead of the lesson, such as to read an article or think about some questions ahead of time.

Current affairs are a good go-to, though it’s worth being aware that our learners might not have the same background knowledge about a topic.

We talked about picking bits out of coursebooks – love them or not, they are a very useful resource, particularly if you do have the freedom to use the bits you want to without being tied to it.

Another suggestion was choosing a topic and giving learners (in a group class) time to write questions about it, then posting the questions around the room and having them mingle to discuss it. This is a nice way to focus on question formation too, as we noted that natural conversation often involves a lot of interaction through questions.

For younger learners and adults we talked about using ‘show and tell’ – this gives us a starting point for the conversation and also encourages a lot of natural communication in that a huge part of everyday communication is sharing experiences, admittedly perhaps not whilst holding a hoilday snapshot or other memento, but we talk naturally about what has happened to us.

The topic of debates came up as well and that debating in normal conversation can be very different across cultures. One teacher mentioned that she had set up some ‘proper’ debates with a group of teens – including someone to chair the debate – and that they had enjoyed the experience so much that they set up a debating society in their mainstream school. We also noted that if learners are told what their opinion will be, it can oftem make them research a topic more deeply and encourage them to ask for more language.

There were some useful shares as well:

Feel free to add any others in the comments!

What are some of the challenges of this type of class?

From a teacher’s point of view, this type of work can be very tiring, especially if you’re trying to keep the conversation going in as natural a way as possible whilst thinking about how to upgrade your learners’ language, choosing which errors to give feedback on and trying to use a wider range of phrases naturally yourself. We said as well that part of our role as a conversation teacher/coach is to maintain interest in what the learner is saying in a natural, encouraging way.

It can also be difficult to get a sense of progress, which is why it’s important as well to identify what the learner hopes to get from the lesson. We suggested that learners could reflect at the end of sessions as to how much they enjoyed the lesson and how accurate/fluent/confident they felt they were. This also gives you the opportunity to assess in an ongoing way whether the classes are meeting their needs – if they originally said they ‘only’ wanted conversation practice but then feel they’re not making progress, it could be time to negotiate how the lessons take place.

Another option could be to record learners during one of your first sessions (with their permission, of course). You could then record them after a number of lessons and compare the two to give them tangible feedback.

Feedback was also a challenge we discussed, which again comes back to identifying expectations together with your learner(s). How much error correction do they want? And how can we upgarde their language?

We chatted briefly about the possibility of peer correction in a group class with one teacher saying that she set up a ‘Listen and Learn’ session. Although peer feedback wasn’t implicitly advertised, the idea was very much that participants could and would learn from each other.

Another issue is repetition, both in terms of the topics we discuss (which is where some kind of syllabus can come in handy) but also in encouraging learners to use new language so that it becomes more natural. One suggestion was to ban certain words or phrases (such as I agree or What do you think?).

Linking back to the idea of progress, we discussed whether there’s any takeaway from the lesson: do learners write down any emergent language? Is there a handout of any useful phrases if this has been the linguistic aim of the lesson?

At the end of the day, a conversation class can be whatever you and your learners decide it is 🙂