Webinars

Inclusion and diversity with the Raise Up! project

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Inclusion and diversity with the Raise Up! project - with James Taylor and Ilá Coimbra (webinar)
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As well as showcasing the incredible Raise Up! project, James Taylor and Ilá Coimbra were keen to look at the question of how we can make materials and resources for our lessons more inclusive in the webinar.

What’s the current situation?

White, young, heterosexual, urban, middle-class people are ‘the norm’ in mainstream materials.

From their teaching, training and materials-writing, James and Ilá have gathered a list of groups and identities which are neglected in mainstream ELT materials. This is by no means an exhaustive list – unfortunately it continues to grow rather than getting shorter.

  • Women
  • Black, Asian and minority ethnic people
  • LGBTQIA+
  • Disabled people
  • The working class
  • Indigenous people
  • Non-conventional body types
  • Non-hegemonic countries and cultures
  • Refugees
  • People living and working in extreme conditions
  • Non-urban environments
  • Elderly people
  • Aspects of faith
  • Neurodiversity
  • Immigrants
  • Non-conventional families

In some areas there have been improvements: for example there are more women and black people in positions of power now in materials. However, in many other cases, materials provide a stereotypical view of these other groups and identities, if they are even included.

For example, you won’t find families with LGBTQIA+ members represented in materials, whilst disabled people and the elderly are often included but in quite a stereotyped way: the cranky old granny or the cute granny knitting in her rocking chair or the inspirational woman who’s hiking up a mountain in spite of her age – not that there’s necessarily anything wrong with these images, but there’s very little space in materials for elderly people to just live ‘normal’ lives, leading to quite a limited portrayal of the elderly.

Often, when certain groups or identities are included in materials, it’s because they’ve done something incredible…rather than just for ‘being’.

Why is inclusivity and visibility important?

Incorporating these identities which are often under- or misrepresented, has a hugely positive impact in our classrooms:

“You can’t be if you can’t see it.”

Learning a language is a cultural experience so you can come into contact with other worlds and other ways of being, helping them to understand their own place in the world (especially important if they feel they don’t belong when they physically are). Ilá mentioned that a common thing in many trans narratives is the feeling of not belonging and not really knowing who they were until they saw a transgender person – making these identities more visible to them in our materials will help them form their own identity.

Students can be themselves

You create a classroom where learners can be who they really are – something we would all want. For those of us with privilege, we don’t have to hide aspects of ourselves away, but many people do.

Acceptance is motivating

Zoltán Dörnyei one of his key principles of motivation is that you have to feel accepted as you are – if you don’t, it creates a barrier to their learning. Some research suggests that learners grow passive resistance to their learning if they feel their voices aren’t acknowledged. Furthermore, if learners feel they aren’t being represented in the materials, it can make them feel distanced from the language. They need to feel like they belong in the English-speaking world. We are also creating a safe space for all our learners to be who they are in the classroom – this fosters motivation and boosts learning.

Visibility fosters empathy and can help prevent bullying

Deviations from ‘the norm’ is one of the many causes of bullying – when we bring other narratives into the classroom, we can help support learners who might be struggling. Even if your class do fit the ‘norm’, we can introduce our learners to other narratives, helping them to appreciate the differences in the world.

Adapting learning resources

Not all teachers can create new materials for each lesson, but there are ways you can adapted the coursebooks you’re already using.

 

  1. Remember your aim is to create an inclusive classroom

The idea is to create a classroom in which each individual feels they belong

  1. Images and other supplemental materials

You can find alternative images to bring people who are normally not there into the classroom. Take a critical look at any images you choose to include! Ilá shared an image search for gay couples – however, the results were still largely young, white, fit, good-looking…’the norm’.

If different identities are represented in your images, consider how –James shared the image below: the black woman isn’t really a part of the group and she’s staring straight at the camera.

Some photobanks focus on diverse images – James mentioned Unsplash, Nappy, TONL and Black Illustrations and you can find links to others in this blogpost. Remember to use legally-sourced images and to credit images on your materials.

  1. Discussion questions

These are a great way to change something in the coursebook without creating extra work for yourself! Look at the questions – often used as a lead-in or in follow-up to a receptive skills or language task. It also allows you to ask your learners more critical questions, as coursebook questions can often be fairly superficial. You’re familiar with the context and culture you’re teaching in and also know how far you can take the discussion with your learners.

  1. Encourage empathy and intercultural understanding, criticism (critical thinking), self-discovery, alternate perspectives and learner-centred learning, not censorship

Asking your learners questions to encourage them to see things from a different perspective builds empathy. Also, by asking your students to think about what isn’t represented in the materials (e.g. during a unit on families, asking, ‘What other types of family can you think of?’), you’re encouraging a learner-centred approach.

When we ask our learners to see things from a different perspective and bring other narratives into the classroom, we’re training our learners to spot injustice, using the language classroom as a tool for social change. Check out Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

If there are materials in a coursebook which you feel aren’t inclusive, rather than ‘censoring’ them, use it as an opportunity to discuss with the learners and think about why they might be inappropriate or too limited.

  1. Focus on what (or who) is missing, bias and values

Neutral coursebook subjects – shopping, travel, education – these are all laden with values but are often represented in a very superficial way. Although more recent publications are including a more critical approach – e.g. in a unit or shopping, there might be questions about consumerism – we can include more of these questions in our lessons.

John Gray suggests you ask your students:

Why is this topic here?

How is the topic and the subjects being presented?
What other ways of presenting about the topic and subject are there?

  1. Ask for help

We shouldn’t expect to be able to include everyone in one class, unit, course J

Ilá mentions that one of the biggest challenges for her was knowing how to accurately represent a minority – looking for sources, trying to cover everything that should be included and talking to people.

If you don’t know what terminology to include or if you don’t know how to represent a particular group, ask someone in the know; talk to other teachers who have more experience, look for ready-made resources such as Raise Up!, IDEAL+ or Tyson Seburn’s coursebook sample. It’s important for us as teachers to listen to other narratives as well as we all have unconscious biases.  

Another important point is that we’re not including resources inappropriately and exploiting others to include a grammar point:

Be careful not to re-exploit their pain just for the sake of a grammar syllabus. Do not turn the harm, violation and exploitation of enslaved human beings into a convenient tool to introduce the next grammar point. The trauma experienced by victims of human trafficking is not for our pedagogic use. Respect, empathy and justice come first – appropriate lexis, grammar and skills must arise from the theme.

– Judy Boyle

There’s a link to her webinar for the British Council here (thanks to Karen for sharing in the chat). We need to be careful of triggers in the classroom – again, the classroom should be a safe space for students.

James went on to share some examples of inappropriate activities taken from existing materials, such as one which asked learners to discuss whether gay marriage, gay bashing, gay doctors, etc. should be allowed – legitimising the discussion of things which should not be discussed; and another where a friend is asking for advice – however, the depiction of the friend is inappropriate and one of the learners in the lesson may identify with that depiction – how would that make them feel?

Diversity is not likely to happen soon in mainstream publishing, but local publishers and teachers have much more opportunity to bring different topics into the classroom. Also, it would be good for trainers to think about how to raise trainees’ awareness of diversity and inclusion during pre-service training courses so they approach materials with a more critical eye both during the course and when they start working.

Raise Up!

There are currently three books for teens and adults on the market: the first was a multi-level book, written by James and Ilá; next came a B1 book which includes other voices and narratives – half of the book was written by Ilá and the other by guest authors; then they released a B2 book, in which each lesson was written by a different author. This last book includes two audio lessons and also has a powerpoint version available too.

There are also teachers’ notes which are more than just an answer key: they’ve tried to include extra resources and alternate ways of using the material and they’re written for people who might not have experience with the topic, or much experience as a teacher.

There are more books coming this year…

Everyone involved in the project is a volunteer, with all money from the books going to charity:

  • Casa 1, a shelter for the LGBTQI+ community in São Paulo
  • Las Patronas, a Mexican organization which supports migrants travelling through Mexico to the US border
  • Lifting Hands International, a group based in Greece which works with refugees

They also have a blog with articles, lesson plans and interviews for those who are interested in the project. This is particularly useful if you have a materials idea which involves copyrighted material (as this can’t be included in the books).

There is a lack of diversity in ELT materials writers, so James and Ilá are keen to have people get in touch to allow for new voices to get involved. At the same time, it’s important for people with privilege to think about how they can represent people in their materials. They’re looking for editors, illustrators, bloggers…do get in touch if you’re interested!

raiseupforelt@gmail.com

You can also check out James’ sites: theteacherjames.com and taylormadeenglish.com for lots of lesson plan ideas and resources.

The Essentials of Teaching Pronunciation

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The Essentials of Teaching Pronunciation - with Lina Gordyshevskaya (webinar)
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It was fabulous to have Lina Gordyshevskaya join us to talk about the essentials of teaching pronunciation. Phonology is often seen during pre-service qualifications, with sessions tending to focus more on supra-segmental elements (connected speech, sentence stress, intonation, etc.). However, for a long time it has been seen as “the Cinderella of English teaching” (Adrian Underhill) as we focus more on grammar and vocabulary – though as we know, you can’t teach either of these without looking at pronunciation.

Teachers have a number of fears around pronunciation:

  • fear of the chart (there was a suggestion to check out Mark Hancock’s version)
  • where to start? what should I aim for? As we know, intelligibility is now the key, but many learners are still aiming to sound like a ‘native’ speaker – if that’s the case, dig deeper: why is this their goal?
  • finding the balance between accuracy and intelligibility is important

Intelligibility is very tied to familiarity with accents as well: you may find it very easy to understand learners or other speakers in the context where you work, but struggle with accents from other areas.

Decoding is an important skill to help our learners with their receptive skills – rather than them being able to produce a model of connected speech phrases (e.g. /dʒə’wʌnə/), it helps them when they’re speaking to other people, watching shows or listening to English podcasts.

Depending on what your learners’ goals are, you can adjust your pronunciation work to suit their needs – who will learners be communicating with? Where will they be using English?

Also, it’s important to know your context and the issues your learners might have with English. There are some useful resources to help which can provide you with some generalized issues, but spending time with your learners and doing a needs analysis is the best way to gather information.

Generally, if you’re working in a monolingual context, your learners will have similar issues (although there may be times when a particular dialect within a language has features of English phonology which another doesn’t). However, with a multilingual class, you need to identify the most critical issues across each language and then find common issues as these will be the first you can focus on with the class together. When you focus on more specific issues, hopefully you’ll have the flexibility with your group to allow them to complete self-study rather than attending the class that day.

It’s important for there to be collaboration in setting the syllabus for pronunciation too – what you know learners need and what they would like.

Make it physical!

Make a start by getting learners familiar with what’s in their mouths and what’s involved in making sound. This can be as easy as the difference between voiced and unvoiced sounds, and then moving on to think about the place and manner of articulation of particular sounds so they can feel it.

Remember as well that we’re using muscles which need to be warmed up and as well that through practice, learners will become better able to produce the sounds more instinctively (muscle memory). There were some great analogies here around doing squats and yoga – you have to know how to do things well and then remembering how to do them to improve.

From: https://www.languagesoftheworld.info/phonetics-and-phonology/innovations-to-the-human-vocal-apparatus.html

Make it visual!

Check out Tools for Clear Speech which has some incredible visuals.

You can use lots of other tools to make it more visual as well, such as rubber bands for identifying short and long vowels, hands, chopsticks, or paper to work with aspirated consonants.

Read Lina’s Top 10 resources for teaching pronunciation physically and visually

Make it practical!

Speech recognition is a great tool – it can be quite sensitive so learners need to exaggerate to pronounce the words quite clearly – apps on their phones, Google Docs, Google Translate.

You can also find examples of speech on sites such as Tube Quizard and YouGlish – this can be particular good for seeing how intonation changes in different phrases.

Series are a great resource for learners to notice features of connected speech, or the difference in pronunciation of certain sounds in different accents. Although these aren’t always authentic (as scripted productions), you can sometimes find some more realistic shows and films, such as Chef, GoggleBox or talk shows.

Make it artistic!

Language is music with its own melody and rhythm.

Often with pitch and intonation it can help to be a bit of a drama queen!  Take a sentence and say it with different emotions to notice how your intonation changes. You can also try Lina’s activity Banana? Banana!

Working with intonation it can help to hear a sound at a different pitch; whilst working with rhythm and sentence stress can be done effectively with a metronome.

Intonation and pitch can be important in intelligibility as a phrase may sound sarcastic with a lower pitch or flat intonation or sympathetic with a falling intonation. Miscommunication or misunderstandings can occur if the intonation patterns of English – and other languages – aren’t familiar to your learners.

A couple of resources suggested in the comments were Carole Graham’s Jazz Chants and a book by Ken Wilson (which we couldn’t remember the name of) though you can find lots of scripts on his blog. Lina also mentioned the short film skwerl (How English sounds to non-English speakers) – have students listen first without watching and try to guess what’s happening between the two people…usually they’re able to identify the plot from the way the actors are speaking, even though they’re not using coherent English.

Extras

 What’s your approach to phonology? Is it integrated into your lessons or a stand-alone slot?

Be proactive – analyse what you’ll be working with to predict what problems might arise with pronunciation.

Teach your learners communication strategies so they know what to do if there’s a communication breakdown due to pronunciation.

There was also some chat around ELF / EIL – thanks to Lucy for this definition in the chatbox:

“E.I.L.: English as an international language, a newer acronym which implies English is going to be spoken in almost all situations where a second language is required. E.L.F.: English as lingua franca, which is similar to E.I.L. but implies a situation where two people who need to communicate are forced to use English.”

Communication is about collaboration – the listener needs to be willing to understand the speaker as much as the speaker needs to be intelligible There was an interesting post on Robin Walker’s English Global Communication blog with research that suggested intelligibility in the past was often judged by inner circle speakers.

As teachers, we can do a lot to dispel the ‘native speaker ideal’ by introducing our learners to different accents from around the world – both models of speakers whose first language is English, as well as role models of people who have learnt English themselves as a second (or third, fourth, fifth) language!

L1 can be useful to show similar sounds – even in multilingual classes, learners can try to identify a sound which is similar in their own language.

Sometimes as well it can help learners to make one sound to move to another, such as /w/ to /r/.

Selling your skills on social media

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Selling your skills through social media - with George Chilton (webinar)
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George Chilton has an extensive career in ELT, working as a teacher, writer, translator and editor. He’s the co-owner of Hubbub Labs, a company set up in 2017 which offers content marketing support for education businesses. He also co-founded SLB Coop, a teachers’ cooperative based in Barcelona.

He started off the webinar by pointing out that everyone has a unique career path and so no single piece of advice will suit everyone. He shared a great cartoon: Life begins at the end of your comfort zone. Having a strategy that will help you grow as a professional will help you take new steps and we’ll all be pushed out of our comfort zone at some point (take the pandemic for example!).

A lot of the later stages of the talk focus on personal branding. It’s not the nicest of phrases, but it does help you sell what you want to sell. But before you start trying to sell yourself, you need to know who you are and what you want.

Ikigai (7.30)

This concept helps you think about what you want and what you can excel at. It can help you to find a focus and to find a way to move forward.

Five steps to personal branding (9.00)

These are similar steps to business strategy.

  1. Where am I now in my career?
  2. Where do I want to be?
  3. What steps am I going to take to get there?
  4. How am I going to position myself through content?
  5. Who can help me and what tools can I use?

It’s good to write a personal statement about who you are and then think about your vision. From there, you can make an action plan about how you’re going to get there – people with a plan tend to achieve their objectives.

Point 4 relates to your personal brand – how are you going to present yourself to the market you’re trying to reach?

And in point 5, never underestimate the people – the old saying “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know” is very true and people who know who you are and what you do can help extend your network and provide you with more opportunities.

TOWS chart (11.45)

This is another tool to help you focus your strategy and become more self-aware.

You need to maximise you opportunities and strengths and minimise or mitigate your weaknesses and threats.

Start by completing the outer boxes (TOWS) and then you can think strategically about your direction by cross-referencing the boxes, e.g. How can you use your strengths to maximise your opportunities? How can you minimise your weaknesses to maximise your opportunities?

It’s good to look at this critically with an accountability partner – our Progress Hangouts are the perfect opportunity for this!

SMART goals (15.45)

We often do these for our lessons, but it’s good to think about them for our own objectives too. With a SMART goal, you can create your action plan and give yourself deadlines to complete the steps you need to. Again, working with an accountability partner is a really good way to keep things moving.

Why brand yourself? (17.00)

Once you know who you are, where you want to go and how you’re going to get there, you need to share this with others – if people don’t know what your goals are, they won’t be able to help you achieve them.

George shared the personal brand of Dror Wayne – he’s young but is good at marketing himself. He created his personal brand to show people what he has to bring to the table, particularly so they wouldn’t judge him on his youth. There’s a great video of him with his multimedia quote of why he created his brand.

Why create content on social media? (21.30)

To position yourself as a professional in the area you want to be in.

  • improve visibility
  • network with the right people
  • build an online portfolio
  • learn from others
  • stand out from the crowd
  • be a ‘go-to’ expert
  • build social proof
  • discover opportunities

Think about the profile you use – you might want to keep Facebook as your personal space (or create a page for your brand).

When people are looking for people, the people who are most in your mind will spring to mind so posting regularly can really help to improve your visibility…even if it doesn’t seem to have an immediate effect. Social media is also a great way to build an online portfolio – share testimonials from your clients, write articles on LinkedIn, share materials or learning/teaching tips, etc.

Think about your niche – what group of people do you want to talk to?

Social Presence (27.25)

Focussing on LinkedIn as it’s the most-used professional network. Use the header on your profile to show what you do, e.g. your mission statement, your contact details, your skills.

Work on your About section – you have about two lines to sell yourself before the ‘see more…’. Write about what you want to achieve and what you can help people to do.

George also mentioned calendly, which allows people to sign up virtually for a call.

Not many people know this but under your work experience, you can attach materials, example work, etc.

You also have a portfolio section called Features – you can share links, articles, testimonials, etc. here.

Content types

Status posts (31.50)

Post every couple of days and block-plan what you’re going to share – you can schedule posts or just have something ready to share each time, so it takes the pressure off thinking about what to share.

You have 1300 characters, which is quite a lot (around 150 words maybe), Again, you get about two lines before ‘see more…’ so be provocative or intriguing at the start so people are encouraged to click more. Offer value, give tips and advice, ask questions – this gets comments, shares and likes. Use hashtags – they’re really helpful: you can reach a wide range of people with something general like #education but then also reach more of the people you want to target by using more specific tags like #ELT – use a mix! Although on the general stream you’ll move off the feed quickly, you can get seen by a big audience.

There was a question about using different hashtags on different social media – yes, as what’s trending on LinkedIn might not be what’s trending on Twitter. LinkedIn will tell you how popular a hashtag is at a given time.

There’s also a question about whether you put them as part of the post or just a stream at the end – there’s not a lot of difference, but test out what seems to work for you and your content.

Be careful when tagging people in posts – make it relevant to them and ensure it doesn’t annoy them!

If you have lots of engagement with your content, it tells LinkedIn that you’re a valuable member of the network and rewards you by placing you higher on search lists.

You might also start trending, which further improves your visibility.

Articles (38.00)

This is good if you don’t have your own blog. Don’t be promotional, but share things which provide value for others. Be original and make sure the headline is descriptive and offers a helpful summary of the content – these are the things people are looking for.

Listicles are good – titles with numbers attract people. With a listicle, you know what you’re going to get and it’s better to have an odd number in your list!

Native video (39.20)

Native means that it’s uploaded directly to the platform – this keeps people on the site, rather than sending them to an external platform (all social media platforms have a vested interest in keeping people on their site). On Facebook, you have three seconds to get people’s attention, on LinkedIn it’s 6 seconds so make your introduction engaging. Remember as well to include subtitles if you have speech as many people watch videos without sound. That said, people are more forgiving of a poor quality video than one that has poor sound – use a directional microphone to cut out background noise. Optimise for mobile – do portrait rather than landscape. Be authentic – do what you can do and only create content you can follow through on.

LinkedIn slideshare (42.40)

Useful for sharing materials, presentations, documents. Make the most of SEO and think about the keywords you’re using

Instagram (43.20)

Also popular for teachers and teacher trainers. He recommends checking out Clare Venables from Active English, Jamie Keddie’s LessonStream, Marek Kiczkowiak’s TEFL Equity Advocates for how they market their brands – look at the TEFL celebs and learn from what they’re producing. They’re all very focussed on one area – you can sum up what they do one sentence.

Make the most of all the features Instagram offers – stories are a great way to stay at the top of people’s feeds.

Resources (49.30)

  • ELT Teacher 2 Writer: A series of paperbacks and ebooks full of valuable content for aspiring writers in various ELT niches: www.eltteacher2writer.co.uk
  • ELT Publishing Professionals: A directory for service providers and clients which costs £50 P/A. All major publishers, including Pearson, National Geographic, CUP, OUP, Ladybird, Collins, ELTJam, etc. www.publishingprofessionals.co.uk
  • Serveis Linguistics de Barcelona Cooperative: A cooperative for teachers and language service providers. Training, collaboration, mentorship and employment opportunities: www.SLB.coop
  • InnovateELT Conference at OxfordTEFL: A teacher-led conference focused on innovation, future-proofing your career and learning new skills. Excellent for networking and meeting publishers: Innovateevents
  • Content Creators Barcelona: An active and friendly Facebook group with resources, events, job opportunities and advisors for potential writing jobs outside of ELT

Final thoughts (50.45)

  • Make sure you have a way for people to get in touch with you!
  • Seek out a mentor. Find somebody who’s doing what you want to do – some people will do it for free J
  • Embrace fear – it’s the discomfort you feel before you grow
  • Start before you’re ready (very different to faking it til you make it)
  • Imposter syndrome is a thing – it’s easy to talk yourself out of things 
  • It’s all part of an experimental journey – everyone makes mistakes, learn from them
  • Try crazy things – it might work!
  • Quality over quantity 
  • Do what you can do in baby steps: brand your profile first and then start thinking about posting, be active on platforms

There was a question about targeting your market – whether you target a particular nationality or country (think about your niche!). With time zones, you can find out about the best time to post (check out the analytics tools or insights on your page). But feeds aren’t generally chronological nowadays – it’s all about the algorithm! So, when you post is less relevant than how much interaction your post gets. Again, test what works best for your market and think about the hours when your target market are in business hours (or awake!).

Do you manage your time or does it manage you?

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Do you manage your time or does it manage you? - with Rachael Roberts (webinar)
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It was great to have Rachael Roberts joining us for this week’s webinar. As we mentioned in the introduction, she has an extensive career in ELT which puts her in a great position to help other ELT professionals. Here are the links to some of Rachael’s resources:

Not enough time – what’s the problem?

Is it a case of not saying no to things and taking too much on, or not managing your time effectively? For a lot of people, it’s likely to be a bit of both.

There’s also ‘fire-fighting mode’ where you’re constantly trying to catch up, with a never-ending to do list and get to the end of the day exhausted but with a feeling of not having achieved that much.

The problem is that you might not have enough time to think about time management and to consider what you need to prioritise, what you can say no to and how you can manage your time more efficiently.

Tracking time

Use an app like Toggl or Clockify to look at how much time you’re spending on each project. Observing what you do and change what you do, so having an app on might make you more efficient but either way, you may be surprised by the results. There was a comment about feeling ‘caught out’ but becoming more aware of just how much time you spend scrolling through social media or doing other ‘time-wasting’ activities can help you make conscious decisions to change those habits and as Rachael says, you don’t need to share your time audit with anyone else!

Budgeting time

We’re generally very good at budgeting our money – we have limited money to spend each month and have to make conscientious decisions about how to spend…to ensure we have enough money to cover the basics before we splurge out on something else.

We need to be careful to budget our time too and think about covering the basics before we splurge our time on something else.

The Eisenhower Matrix

This is a good grid to use to prioritise what you need to do. One point to note is that things in Not Important/Not Urgent (Box 4) are important too – things we do to relax and have fun shouldn’t not get done J It’s important as well to think about what things we put in this box – for example, exercise might seem Not Important and Not Urgent, but if we don’t include it as part of our routine, there will come a point where it is Important and Urgent (Box 1).

A lot of us don’t spend enough time in the Important/Not Urgent box (Box 2) – however, things we don’t focus on here tend to move to the Urgent box, which is how we can suddenly become overloaded. If you procrastinate, spend more time in Box 2 before things move to Box 1. Consciously make time for Box 2.

When you look at Box 3, it’s important to think carefully about what’s there – is it actually something Urgent which you need to do? Can it be delegated? Often these feel like the easy-wins – little tasks which feel urgent, and so we don’t get around to the big tasks in Box 1.

There was a comment as well about how in ELT we’re often focussing on the day’s lessons – so it’s worth setting aside time during your schedule to look ahead. There were lots of comments about the benefit of block planning, as well as some suggestions for new teachers to help them to plan more efficiently. One suggestion was to focus on one tool to showcase each week, rather than trying to incorporate too many different things from one week to the next. We also have more things up our sleeves as we gain more experience and having a list of fillers means that we can plan less as we know we have something we can use if we have an extra five minutes at the end of class. We also shared Chris Roland’s 300 Questions which are a great resource to have on hand – they’re in the Files section – and here’s a link to a thread from a while back about ways of storing and remembering games to use in class.

And this was a lovely quote in the comments box: It’s all about scheduling your priorities, not prioritising what’s on your schedule.

Saying No

We often have a tendency to be very excited in projects or not want to let people down and those two things together can lead to us being overwhelmed. Also, we know we’re competent people and feel we can do all these things! When you say yes to something, what does that mean you’re actually saying no to?

For example, if I say yes to this new class, I’m giving up that time which I usually spend with my family or the time I spend exercising, or the time I spend cooking a decent meal.

Three steps:

  1. recognise the pattern of always saying yes
  2. working out why you find it difficult to say no
  3. train yourself to step back and think before you agree to anything – ask for time to think about things rather than agreeing immediately

Check out Rachael’s post How to say no (without feeling bad about it)

Why time management isn’t enough…

There are two other important things you need to manage and budget: energy and focus.

How aware are you of the impact of what you’re eating on your energy levels and sustained energy?

Are you drinking enough water? Regular sipping is better than downing a whole glass when you realise you’re thirsty. There was a good tip in the comments to put marks of a 2l bottle to show how much you should be drinking every hour. You can also get apps which track your water intake.

Caffeine has a half-life of 6/7 hours and can affect your sleep but more importantly, it doesn’t stop you being tired – it’s like a painkiller in that it blocks the receptors that make you feel tired. Having too much coffee means you’re constantly blocking your body from telling you what it really needs.

Are you sleeping enough for you? Are you resting enough – meditating, napping (for a max. of 20mins so you don’t go into a deep sleep and feel groggy) or just doing nothing? Cal Newport (Deep Work) identified that the brain can only focus in a deep way for up to 4 hours a day so the things which are in Boxes 1 and 2 are good to focus on during those four hours. Scheduling rest into your day is a good way to ensure it happens.

How much are you moving during the day? This is not just about exercise but also moving around. Sitting too long has been shown to shrink the hippocampus (the part of the brain to do with memory). Again, there are apps which can give you reminders to move or stretch.

Time of the year, time of the week and even time of the day can have such a huge impact on our energy levels. Although it may feel like it makes sense to start the day checking your emails and ticking the easy things off your to do list, this is often the time of day when we are most able to concentrate and do the ‘deep work’ so you might prefer to leave those admin tasks til later in the day.

Scheduling the tougher tasks for earlier in the day can also help with procrastination. A quote attributed to Mark Twain is: “If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And if it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.”

Couple of further suggestions here:

Avoiding distractions

These can be external or internal. Dealing with an external distraction could include getting up earlier to work when others are still asleep, putting a Do not disturb sign on the door or working with headphones and having ambient noise on – such as Coffivity which provides the background noise of a café.

What other external distractions are you able to control? Turning off notifications is a great way to help you focus and help you to feel less stress. These can affect your adrenaline, dopamine and cortisol levels and your fight/flight response, which impacts your ability to work. It’s easy to become addicted to the dopamine hit you get every time a new notification comes in but each time you switch from one task to another – pausing your lesson planning to see who’s commented on your Facebook post – there’s a price to pay. A day’s worth of flipping between tasks could mean we waste around 40% of our working time!

How mindful are you of tech distractions? Forest is an app which can help to keep you off your ‘distraction sites’ as you can set it for a certain amount of time during which a tree will grow if you steer clear of your blocked sites. It will tell you to get back to work if you try to visit one of those sites and if you ignore it, the tree will eventually die. Study Bunny was also mentioned in the comments.

Pomodoro Technique

Work for 25 minutes straight and then have a five-minute break to get up and move around. You do four Pomodoros and then you can take a longer break. You can find it makes you more efficient J

There’s also the Japanese principle of Kaizen – doing things for one minute.

What’s the attraction of the distraction?

 If you’re still avoiding doing things, it’s important to dig deeper and think mindfully about why you’re looking for distractions. Are you feeling anxious about what you’re doing? Are you feeling resentful of the amount of work you have and feeling you’re not being paid enough?

Mindfulness has a positive effect on the brain and can strengthen the links between the pre-frontal cortex and the amygdala and can help you to understand why you’re behaving in certain ways.

Rachael mentioned the Mindfulness and EFL group which Simon set up and her ebook 30 ways to Mindfulness.

Developing beyond the classroom

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Developing beyond the classroom - with Ceri Jones (webinar)
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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

Zooming Around – online games for all ages

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Zooming Around: online games for all ages - with Harry Waters (webinar)
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Harry is another ELT professional whose passion for teaching shines through. As well as teaching and being involved in the Pearson BBC Live lessons, he’s recently set up his own website – Renewable English – which looks at ways to be more sustainable in our lives and how to introduce those ideas to our learners.

In Harry’s session, he shared lots of engaging ideas for games which can be used online or tweaked for the socially-distanced classroom. Times in brackets are rough estimates and not necessarily exactly when the activity starts! Here’s the link to Harry’s blogpost where he shares these ideas and a few more.

Show and Tell (8.30)

Although this is something which we’ve often done in the classroom, the joy of being online means that learners can share things they might not otherwise be able to bring to the lesson. It’s a lovely way to find out more about our learners and works with all ages – for example, Harry shared his certificate for swimming 25m which he got as a child. You could have a theme for what to bring (something you’re proud of, something you collect, something someone gave you, etc.). There were comments in the chat about how it’s nice to have this home-school connection and to enable learners to share more of themselves.

Treasure Hunt (11.00)

We’ve talked before about using ‘Find something yellow’ with younger learners and Harry had some awesome ideas to extend this activity. Aside from using it to work on the vocab for the lesson, he also suggests:

  • Find something that rhymes with…
  • Find five things with five letters

It might be worth letting parents know the learners will be doing this in case they wonder why their kids are running around the house during their English lesson!

If you’re working in a hybrid environment, the learners can work in pairs, with those in the classroom giving instructions to those at home.

City Race (13.45)

What’s the capital of Rwanda? You could ask learners this and then have them use their digital literacy skills to race to find the answer. When they have it (Kigali), have them write a word with each letter. In his example, Harry had key, iguana, go, antelope, leftovers, Ireland. Learners then have to make up a sentence or short story using those words. You could say they have to include certain parts of speech, such as an adverb.

It’s a nice way to introduce different places into the classroom as well as Rwanda probably doesn’t come up in a lot of coursebooks, so you could then share some information about the place as well.

Guess who said it (16.10)

Another activity we’ve done before in class but so easy to replicate online: ask the learners a question and have them reply using the private chat function so only you know their answer. You can then give an answer and learners can speculate about whose answer it is.

Depending on your chat settings, you can also let one of the learners lead this task. You may have disabled chat between learners, but making one of them a co-host should mean that the others can private message that person.

Songversations (18.40)

This is an amazing activity which allows learners to be creative. You can find a blogpost where Harry shared more info about it here (along with lots of other great ideas!). Learners choose a song and then create a conversation with the singer – it’s great as it encourages them to think about real interaction and what they can say so that the lyrics are an appropriate response.

Spot the difference (23.45)

A nice idea to keep learners on their toes! Whilst we were watching Harry’s songversation with Taylor Swift, he changed his shirt, put on a hat and put up a poster behind him.

Breakout Investigations (27.00)

This is a good way to get learners using their digital literacy skills to find out about a person. You could either have them choose the person they want to investigate, or assign people to them. The benefit of assigning people is that you can give stronger learners a more obscure person to investigate – great for differentiation. After they’ve researched the person, they can come back together as a group and be interviewed, also giving them a chance to work on question formation.

If you’re wondering who to bring into the classroom, there were suggestions to use the Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls to introduce strong females into the class. You could also check out biography.com

YouTwitch (29.45)

Leading on from the idea of an interview about a famous person, you could instead do a presentation, which introduces learners to a different skillset, both as presenters and viewers. Whilst one person is presenting, the others could be adding comments in the chat box or using the reactions to respond to what the person is saying, and even nominate a learner to be the chat moderator.

The other option is to do it like HotSeat, with questions from other learners being fired at the presenter. Having them write the questions in the chat box has a couple of benefits – 1. it stops them shouting over each other and 2. helps them practise their writing.

How to… (33.25)

This is another nice way to bring learners into each other’s homes. However, do make sure learners are happy to share their personal space away from their usual zoom environment – as was pointed out in the chat, learners can sometimes accept our authority as teachers and may do things they aren’t overly comfortable with.

The idea of this is for learners to share a tutorial about something they enjoy doing. Harry shared the example of making a cup of tea – it’s an easy way for learners to be introduced to new lexis in context, such as kettle and in this case you could also use it to talk about culture.

Mannequin Challenge (36.45)

This was a craze a few years back; however, I’m sure that many of us were doing statues in the class before that happened! Harry suggests making it a bit more challenging than just action verbs…why not have your learners hold a pose of a personality adjective? a type of weather? a day of the week? Another suggestion was for them to use a scene from a coursebook story – classmates then have to guess which scene it is or remember what was happening in the scene.

Armless fun (40.30)

Ever tried playing charades without using your hands? Another fun way to challenge your learners and get them thinking creatively

TikTok time (43.45)

This is similar to Show and Tell in that you can use it for learners to share the people they follow and ask questions to help build rapport. However, you can also use social media to set your learners homework – have them follow your teaching account, set a task with a specific hashtag for your group and then have them tag you and add the hashtag when they’ve completed the activity. If you encourage them to look at each other’s work, they can get extra views and likes. A wonderful way to take homework out of the book and into their lives.

On the theme of social media, Harry also mentioned using memes in class – you can find lots online which they can add a caption to.