Other

Do we, as managers, need new skills moving forward? If so, what?

by

This was the first management forum on the TEFL Development Hub, it was a very successful event where honest opinions, tough experiences and some workable solutions were shared. The Hub aims to connect, share, develop were evident. Many thanks to those who came. In the group there were managers and owners from language schools big and small, as well as trainers from CELTA and Trinity CertTESOL courses. We all manage people, be it in the staffroom, the training room or the classroom and it became clear that there are many shared experiences.

We began by talking about our experiences, challenges and learning through the pandemic.

  • Building team identity – it’s challenging to create identity through online weekly team meetings. For some it has meant more meetings, others have tried to have more 1:1 meetings where there is more space to talk about personal situations. 
  • Make time for the personal connections – Morning check-ins with staff have been extremely useful.
  • “I can’t lead” – How can we lead when we feel unskilled, when we don’t know the answers or when we’re falling apart? Have we had points when we are at the bottom of Maslow’s pyramid, struggling with basic requirements like safety and security? Are we disappointing our teams? It has created friction between teachers and managers as everyone is used to us having the answers. 
  • “We’re flying a plane at the same time as we’re building it!” It feels scary and somehow freeing. Being honest with our teams is so important.
  • Modelling behaviour – How should we behave? How honest can we be?
  • Staff are so tired – We want to help but teaching hybrid is so hard, we feel bad and sad. One survey said that over 50% of teachers no longer enjoy their work. They can do it but they don’t like it. Start honest conversations, “How are you feeling?” We can’t solve problems necessarily but we can listen, accompany and empathise.
  • Training in webinars – It’s always interesting but not always exactly relevant for our teams.
  • Managing customers – Parents and students need us to help them too. Everybody is under stress and it shows in all sorts of ways. Be calm and confident. Customers are quick to anger, are these real complaints or are they exaggerated as expressions of frustration and a lack of control in their lives?
  • High quality customers – should we focus more on those we have who trust us rather than those who have left and didn’t even try?
  • Self-care – We also need to take care of ourselves.

What is a good leader?

  • Different types of leadership – recognising and communicating that we don’t have the answers is so important. Humility can lead to magical conversations. Look for the bright spots, find out what’s going well and share it amongst the team. Then we all gain experience and know-how.
  • Servant leadership vs controlling, directive and “heroic” leadership – share power, put the needs of staff first, be there for them instead.
  • Transitions in leadership styles – Do we sometimes need to adopt a military style directive approach, especially during times of high anxiety? Is the important thing in communicating the move between different management styles?
  • A directly relevant webinar can be found here, Andy Hockley, “Academic Leadership in the time of COVID”, many of the themes here are echoed and expanded upon within the webinar, there is also an extensive set of references at the end for deeper reading. 

What might be the future effects on staffing from Brexit and COVID?

This came second in the list of most interesting topics from the poll in the Facebook group.

  • Moving away from the “native speaker model” – Will teachers from other countries have a better chance of finding good work? Schools need to be strong and confident in saying that we guarantee good teachers, regardless of their nationality.
  • Bi-lateral agreements between the UK and other countries – The legal wheels turn very slowly and while this may happen in the longer term, we shouldn’t hold our breath. The UK needs workers from the EU so the possibility is there.
  • Online remote teaching from other countries – It’s very complex in terms of accounting. Some teachers who normally go back in the summer and work university pre-sessional work have been told that they cannot do so from outside the UK. 
  • Fewer teachers travelling to new destinations because of COVID – Is our competition local? Are we competing with our neighbour schools for staff? Do we need to increase salaries? If so, do prices need to go up? It’s had to put prices up in a recession. Do teachers understand what employers have to pay in terms of social security, etc.? How can we educate teachers in what a good, legal, socially responsible school looks like?
  • Training and development – How can we make our training and development programmes more relevant? A shift from the formal to the informal, towards more personalised training and a more active role for teachers in directing their training. Do teachers know what they need to develop? How can we balance the teachers’ needs with the school’s needs? Use a combination of observation, conversation, appraisal to create a needs analysis for your staff. Tie in recruitment, where possible, to align with your school.

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

by

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?

Icelandic dub and quality exposure

by

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.

Mind your language!

by

Do I want students to say what they want to say or what I want to them to say?

This is such a great question, it pretty much goes across all of the conversations in one way or another and is certainly the one that’s got me thinking the most!

It was fabulous to see so many people at the Coffee Break, it shows it’s something that we all value and enjoy. Is it sustainable in this way with these numbers of participants? We’ll pop a questionnaire on the Hub and we can see what everyone thinks.

There were two main topics of conversation; the Wednesday question about swearing and the other a look back at Chris Roland’s session on Young Learners.

We started off looking at the Wednesday question which had already provoked quite a response in the chat; “How do we feel about teaching swear words?” Here’s the main points people made…

  • Students are interested in it. It’s part of the language so we shouldn’t ignore it.
  • Not with younger learners, “obviously”… but they use swear words a lot, even in class. (Thank you, Fortnite et al!)
  • We don’t need to teach it, it’s there in society. But do we need to teach appropriate use? It feels horrible hearing students use the N-word in class, for example. The challenge is how to incorporate it.
  • Does swearing sound just wrong in a foreign language?
  • Are we as teachers, and perhaps living out of predominantly English speaking countries for a while, up to date? Check out History of Swear Words on Netflix
  • “You can use it out of class but I don’t want to hear it”, like a parent might to their children.
  • Swearing adds colour and flavour to language… maybe we need to teach the severity scale. See Swan, M, Practical English Usage, 1995, as he also  touches on grammaticalised swearing.
  • There’s also a book from 1996 by Sterling Johnson called English as a Second F*cking Language: How to Swear Effectively, Explained in Detail With Numerous Examples Taken from Everyday Life
  • We can also have fun with pron, for example “bitch/beach”.
  • Have some of these words lost their strength? “What the f*ck?”, “It’s so f*cked up”, etc.
  • Does a lack of alternatives for our students indicate a lack of other vocabulary?

And then the focus switched to materials…

  • Writers have to avoid certain subjects. It’s all about sales. Would Rinvolucri et al be published now?
  • Is ELT too clean? We need to reflect reality. Is “anodyne” a better word? Does ELT publishing go for an all-acceptable world view based around western values of attainment and end up in a glossy, magazine-like portrayal of the world? ELT fails to reflect so many realities, including uncomfortable realities.
  • The Raise Up series of coursebooks was mentioned as a counterpoint. https://raiseupforelt.com/
  • And of course, current materials weren’t written for a COVID world and so much seems so silly now!
  • We can ask questions of our students at all ages to help them engage in a more real world view.

We then switched topics completely to look back at Chris’s sessions about teaching younger learners and the questions that had emerged in the chat in the threads on the Hub. The main question was about Chris saying that he didn’t really do routines with his little ‘uns and why that might be.

  • Children need reference points, routines give moments of confidence, especially to weaker learners.
  • Routines shouldn’t be boring and just time-consuming, although they often are. How helpful is it for students to spell their name in every class?
  • Do we miss opportunities for natural exchanges and personalized language development if we stick to our routines? Do we want children to say what they want to say or we want them to say?
  • Routines need to change and develop, we need to change things up.
  • Routines can be really helpful in reviewing and previewing future language.
  • What is a routine? Maybe it’s a structure of a class… a connecting stage, homework check, input and closing stages.
  • The teacher might be bored but is the student? They might be really into it. We need to react to our students.
  • Try “Good day, bad day?” as a routine. Learners really express themselves, build personalized vocabulary through an appropriate use of translation and supporting learners.
  • A note on translation; try a “sandwich” where learners tell the teacher what they want to say, the teacher translates and then encourages students to repeat the words or writes new vocabulary on the board. What happens to the language then? This depends on teacher skill, we need to decide what’s worth coming back to, which of the emergent language should we recycle? The teacher become the “archiver of useful stuff”. The acknowledging of and listening to the students is a great way to build relationships too.
  • Do routines just access Lower Order Thinking Skills? Need to use routines to activate Higher Order Thinking Skills too.

Following on from the Coffee Break, Chris added a reply to the question about using routines:

“My three main objections to routines (activities that YL’s do again and again) are: 1. Some kids just hate them. There are always one or two who you can see are bored by doing the same thing every lesson. 2. The language connected to routines often stagnates, not going anywhere over the course of a term or year, sometimes to the point that it is rendered meaningless to students. You can sometimes tell this because they have no idea where the word boundaries are between the different words that accompany the actions they are performing. 3. I feel that in some situations, routines might be a bit of an easy option used to fill up class time when students could actually be being pushed further or engaged on a more personal level.

On a more technical level, I feel that routines often regulate action rather than language. To move away from an events management paradigm and towards a linguistic one, I prefer to talk about ‘scripts’ which I define as sentence length utterances connected to recurring classroom events, but not necessarily activities. I also do rely on routinised transitions, as covered in the session, using these to give me greater flexibility to lead in to the unexpected. So there is an element of routine there.

I cover scripts, classroom events and transitions in more detail in the first 5 chapters of the main book, Structuring Fun for Young Learners in the ELT Classroom (the big one rather than the smaller volume for online teaching) but that’s about the nuts and bolts of it. Having said all that though, it’s not a stance I defend vehemently, just a preference, and I think if a teacher looks after their routines and updates or adds to the language a little bit now and then, and maybe builds on the actions systematically, then they can be a useful strategy.”

Our response to feeling fragile

by

“not ready to start again!”, “demotivated”, “the world seems so fragile”, “it’s all a bit scary”

These were just some of the comments to get us going. In classic staffroom style lots of things got a mention and some things were dwelt on longer than others; COVID, of course, then Trump and the storming of the Capitol building with Brexit thrown in for good measure; all things which were playing on people’s minds. All adding to a sense of general unease and “trepidation” for the weeks and months ahead. 

Will it be more of the same? Are things going to get worse rather than better? Do we feel motivated? Is it going to be manageable? Are we hopeful? Do we feel positive? 51% optimistic? 

Why do we come to the Coffee Break?

People come to the Coffee Break because they are looking for a professional space to make connections, especially now with more remote working and more isolation (even more acute freelancers). We hoped the conversation would leave us feeling supported and motivated heading into 2021.

We talked about the personal and the professional; our New Year’s Resolutions (or maybe better New Week’s or New Day’s or New Lesson Resolutions) including making more connections, being more involved with our own children’s schooling, running and about getting into not just going through the motions and approaching things differently. 

Eco-warriors?

One area to make changes could/should be in our treatment of the environment. The Climate Crisis and our possible roles as ELT professionals got a good amount of discussion. The need to normalise the discussion within our classes was discussed; to not wait for the inevitable unit on the environment, to look for ways to engage with the topic in a “non-intrusive and non-eco-warrior” way, to move away from preaching towards asking questions. 

ELT Footprint, ELT Sustainable, and Renewable English were mentioned; all are great sources for lesson ideas, courses, inspiration and much more! Hub members are heavily involved in all three. Well worth checking out.

The never-ending rollercoaster

There was general agreement that the rest of the academic year was unlikely to see much change to our situations. We thought that this term would probably be another rollercoaster ride with a little more optimism for the summer term but realistically people are looking at September before things might return to “normal”. The virus is mutating and the situation is unrelenting leaving us all – writers, trainers, teachers and students alike – with varying levels of motivation and tiredness.

Let’s try to make it lighter. Let’s go for mini-resolutions, mini-challenges on weekly, daily or lesson-by-lesson levels within the uncertainty and the associated difficulties with longer term planning. Let’s try to celebrate the little wins and then build up a bank of little successes. Suggestions and ideas started to flow. People talked about the danger of slipping into “just going through the motions” and the associated boredom and disillusionment with the job. We talked about the effect of peer-praise and self-praise. One positive idea was about choosing an area to focus on, play with and extend during our classes, possibly a fortnightly focus; it could be anything: communication, group dynamics, pronunciation and where we just look for opportunities to do little bits of something new. Journaling was suggested as a way to give ourselves perspective and cultivate kinder self-talk where we talk to ourselves as we might talk to a friend or a colleague rather than the habitual sharp criticism. Another idea was about the potential of the TEFL Development Hub creating a space for mutual support through small groups where we could add in a level of accountability for ourselves and other members. Watch this space for news on that!

Two more super-relevant and helpful resources were mentioned here…Views from the Whiteboard and Life Resourceful These are also run by Hub members, check them out when you can.

The sensitive teacher

The talk turned to teenagers and their particular motivation issues often illustrated through a lack of homework and patchy attendance amongst other things. We talked about empowerment and compassion, that the class can a safe space for students to talk about their experiences and to know that we, as their teachers, are there for them. We can add into our plans, perhaps at the beginning of the class, a time to share and the good, the bad and the ugly of their situations. Of course, they may not want to share, but we can open the door for them to do so. Small actions of this kind will, we hoped, build rapport and in turn motivation.

Almost inevitably we looked at the issue of L1 use in the classroom. Students, especially at lower levels, run out of vocabulary pretty quickly, and at this point we want them to feel able to share in any language. We touched on how to work sensitively with emergent language and to think about recycling that language in an appropriate, helpful and constructive way, not like in the following clip…

What’s next?

It was fabulous to see so many people at the Coffee Break… some familiar faces and some first-timers too. See you at the next Coffee Break, 11am (CET) on 21st January. And before then the next webinar on 14th January, at 11.00 (CET) is with Chris Roland where he’ll talk about “Teaching little ‘uns in socially distanced and hybrid classes”, it’s bound to be a cracker!

Adjectives, adverts and a fresh look at Project Based Learning

by

Welcome to the TEFL Development Hub Coffee Break, this is not a webinar! It’s a space to meet, to share and to develop, it’s a bit like a staffroom vibe, sitting around between classes, round the photocopier… cup of tea in hand! Exclusively for Hub members.

It’s done through a Facebook room which can accommodate up to 50 people for unlimited time and is super easy to join. It does however have the drawbacks of no written chat (though as Lucy suggested during the first coffee break, we can comment on the ‘Room open’ thread on the mainpage) and no breakout rooms. It worked pretty well and of course, if you have suggestions about alternative ways of doing things, please do share them with Simon or T or just leave a comment on the Hub.

We started off by just asking how we are. A proper TEFLy start! “Bored”, “tired”, “grateful”, “excited”, “busy”, “webinared-out”, “proud”, “exhausted”… were some of the replies. We are all looking forward to a break.

  • Proud of the work we have done as teachers, schools and as the TEFL community when so many others have struggled. We should all be proud of our achievements this year as we’ve moved through the challenges. For some the shift from a paper-based teacher to an online teacher has been nothing more than miraculous.
  • Grateful for the upcoming holidays and not needing to plan anything, for having a job to do and to earn a living.
  • Bored of the restrictions.

We talked about our approaches to the last classes of the year…

  • the “party class” with our Very Young and Young Learners having a chance to sing, dance and play party games, albeit this year with appropriate social distance. There was again an interesting discussion about whether or not all activities need to have a language focus and possible parental objections to “wasting” time.
  • the need to connect with our students, to show our human side by sharing a bonding moment of fun. Now more than ever fun is important. A seasonal pandemic joke was shared:

Why couldn’t Mary and Joseph join the video-conference?

Because there wasn’t any Zoom in the Inn.

  • Word play like that can work for children too!
  • to recognize the huge efforts our students have made coming to class and continuing to work hard. We talked about personalizing the praise, “Jorge, thank you for always being happy!”
  • to acknowledge that this year things are not the same as usual, to share something of ourselves; photos of family far away… a bittersweet Christmas.
  • the holiday advert classes; several were mentioned. Supervalu, John Lewis and the World War I truce advert all received honourable mentions as did the All at C blog with really good, ready-to-go lessons. The “spikey hedgehog” can be a wonderful writing activity for teens and adults as they imagine what the hedgehogs are thinking.

Thoughts then turned to the coming year with people sharing a gamut of feelings from positive to fearful; positive about new possibilities and fearful of the sustainability of the current situation and that things could get worse again.

  • will we and our students be able to keep the enthusiasm going? Are the darker months of January and February going to be even tougher? Will there be subsequent waves? March 2020 was tough, of course, but it was spring
  • short-term goals to work towards which can maintain enthusiasm for us all! Learning a language is a long process, not like scoring a goal or winning a football match. Are people now into shorter-term thinking in general? We need to create a sense of achievement for ourselves and for our students.
  • Project based classes could become really helpful; creating a class/school magazine or maybe a new lockdown club. One wonderful example was shared by a teacher working in a pretty rural community. The students were complaining that there was nothing to do, they did small group projects to create a pandemic club, the local town hall took it on and are turning one of the clubs into a reality – it’s starting in January! Huge congratulations to all those involved. We can and do make a difference!
  • and what of New Year’s Resolutions? Is “resolution” the wrong word? Is it too big, too easy to fail, too unrealistic? Is it better to have short term objectives, to keep nudging things along? Maybe we should make “new day resolutions” or “new class resolutions”.

And with that our time together came to a close. The coffee break was over. Seasonal salutations and best wishes for a better new year were exchanged.

A few people stayed for the afterparty… we reflected on several of the discussion points and were particularly happy to note that several meaningful connections were made; some possible online work, an Oceania connection as well as all the connections made between us all.