Our response to feeling fragile

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“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

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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.

Developing relationships with students and colleagues, near and far

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Developing relationships with students and colleagues, near and far - with Teresa Bestwick and Simon Pearlman (webinar)
Watch now

Introduction

Simon talked about how “there’s a whole new world defining and redefining itself as we go through this experience of the pandemic” and in this webinar we wanted to think about the way that our relationships are developing within the classroom during these times – whether we’re teaching behind a mask or in an online environment. Simon also mentioned the fact that this is a shared, global phenomenon and so we also wanted to think about ways we can connect with other ELT professionals outside the classroom – to share experiences, both positive and negative, of these challenging times. “Through sharing and connecting, we can feel less alone and we can feel more accompanied” – and this idea of connection if one of our main aims for the TEFL Development Hub.

Ideas for building relationships with and between learners

  1. Emotional literacy

One of the issues a lot of us are facing now is with ‘reading the room’ – it became more complicated in the online environment, but as well now it can be tricky with everyone wearing masks.

Make use of emoticons (you can get lots of free ones from pixabay.com) as these can give us a wider range to work on. Paul said that one of his students has printed off her own set of emoticons and put them on sticks so she can show how she’s feeling, which is a lovely idea and also allows learners to personalise their own classroom materials.

Simon talked about creating a space to allow learners to share – or allowing them not to share, as well. Often with the communicative approach, we always want to ask follow-up questions, but actually allowing learners to say how they’re feeling, without needing to explain why. Lisa said she’s taught her students to say, “just because” which is a wonderfully genuine response to the question too.

Image credit: @dinosandcomics on Instagram

Other ideas from the chat included using anonymous polls for learners to share how they’re doing (Paul), an emotional thermometer – having scales for different emotions (Borja) and getting students to play a song which sums up their mood of the day (Olivia).

For younger learners, you can create characters using fruit and veg – ideas stolen from Chris! – as this can allow learners to express their creativity. And Angie suggested using the Mr Men and Little Miss books as well.

When we’re teaching from behind a mask, it can be useful to help learners develop their emotional literacy with their eyes and body language. This is also helping learners to develop skills to use outside the classroom.

Seen on LinkedIn, source unknown (sorry!)

Fiona and Vicky mentioned using sign language or Makaton – another way that we can communicate with our learners non-verbally.

  1. Learners’ responsibilities

Our younger learners love to feel involved in the class and have a job to do. Think about the jobs you can have in a socially-distanced classroom, such as changing who sits nearest the teacher each lesson or a handshake creator – someone who creates a little 4-move action to do during a brain break. This again allows the learners to bring their own ideas into the class and be responsible for creating something everyone will do during that lesson. Adam suggested Mask Police as well – you may have had a class sheriff in the past who checked people were on task or not speaking L1 unnecessarily, the job evolves too in these changing times!

  1. Virtual journals

This could be an option for learners who want to share, but don’t feel comfortable doing so in front of the class. Set up an individual google document for each learner and ask each person a personalised question at the start of the class. It could start out as a part of your lesson routine and then see who’s interested in continuing – even if only one person wants to, it’s another opportunity to connect on a personal level. Please remember to check your school policy about communicating with learners on an individual basis in this way.

  1. A rose, a thorn and a bud

Idea 1 – students write three things: something they’re happy about (rose), something they’re unhappy about (thorn) and something they’re looking forward to (bud). Their partner then guesses which is which – and this might be very easy to do, but it allows them to learn more about their classmates and develop conversations from it.

Idea 2: write as many things as you like (that you’re happy, unhappy or excited about) and your partner identifies which category each falls into. This gives the learners more choice as to what they share, rather than being forced to have one thing in each category.

  1. Class connections

Have learners think of a way they connect with every other person in a class – but their connections can’t be things everyone has in common (e.g. we all speak English or we’re all at the same school). They can be very simple connections, such as sharing the first letter of their name or something about their hobbies, where they live…anything.

Carmen asked about getting feedback on activities like these and as it’s important to show we value the activities that we set our learners to do, the feedback on this task could be, “Tell me about one of your connections”, rather than forcing them to say everything.

Other bits and bobs

One question which came up was about the use of L1 – should we allow learners more space and time to use their own language to express how they’re feeling?

Also, we did a webinar before on Building Rapport – ideas for the start of term and activities to use throughout the year. This is now only available on the Hub in the Videos (Media) tab.

Tim suggested learners share where they are (if they want to) or a picture of a place which means something to them and make use of the virtual background.

Ideas for connecting with other ELT professionals

  1. Padlet

This is a great place to save links to websites or leave documents. This is the one created by some of the Active Language teachers. You can set up the wall in different ways – for example, this one is organised in columns so you can store ideas within different categories.

Lisa said that they use Google Drive as a space to share and store ideas.

  1. PD Winter Festival

This is something happening at Active Language this year, as a way for teachers to think about their personal professional development over the term. Each teacher will be sharing an idea – something they’ve done in their lessons this term, or something they’ve learnt about the profession. Although this is being organised through the school, you could easily get together with a few colleagues to create your own PD Festival.

  1. Finding places and spaces to connect

Within the Hub, we’ll be holding a live event every Thursday but there are also other opportunities to connect with other teachers in different environments.

For example, on Twitter, there’s a #SIGTweetMeet every Tuesday – different SIGs take turns to ‘host’ the TweetMeet for three weeks (thanks Ceri for confirming details!) and whilst there are questions to focus the chat, there’s also lots of freedom to just pop along and say hello.

If you’re into teacher training, there’s a monthly #CELTAchat on Twitter, again with a focussed theme for the chat. A lot of what they talk about is also relevant to the Trinity CertTESOL (and to teacher training in general).

  1. ELT events calendar

Are you missing the free pens from conferences this year? I know I am! But also really miss the buzz of attending a conference in-person. However, one of the benefits of the pandemic is that many organisations have moved their conferences online, meaning that we can attend many events that we wouldn’t have been able to go to before. That said, we also need to be wary of FOMO – we don’t need to attend everything that’s on offer!

Coffee Break – the first of many!

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First, thank you soooo much to all those who came to the first TEFL Development Hub Coffee Break. There was a great atmosphere and we covered a lot of ground in an hour. It was great to meet up and chat in an informal atmosphere; a fabulous addition alongside the webinars.

It was the first time using Messenger Rooms for all of us and it seemed to work well for everyone, although a couple of people tried but failed to join us (investigations are on-going). There’s no chat function, although some of us were able to use the chat on the Facebook thread. Another difference to Zoom is the lack of breakout rooms which could be tricky if there are big groups. Please do send through thoughts and suggestions, if you were in the Coffee Break or not.

And indeed, if you missed it, not to worry, there’ll be another one soon. The first of many!

What did we talk about?

The conversation was wide-ranging and focused around motivation of students and teachers, teens and engagement and younger learners and movement. We shared a host of ideas and activities giving us all plenty to take away and use.

Here’s a bullet point list of the conversation.

  • “Teaching at the moment is not much fun.” We shared some frustrations, especially with tech issues and young students in hybrid situations.
  • There was agreement that motivation is an issue for (some?) teen groups, it was reassuring to hear that others were having similar issues.
  • An online tutorial by Borja was mentioned as having some great ideas.
  • Teens open up when they get into a speaking or pairwork activity (where possible). We talked again about the “buddy system” and noted that in hybrid classrooms headphones are very important to exclude background classroom noise.
  • Teachers are also exhausted by the extra work involved now, we need to think about our own motivation levels too.
  • The feeling of stress and exhaustion for teens, even for good students, in general in their lives; school exams, less freedom, growing apathy and sadness.
  • How much responsibility do we have as teachers? Perhaps more than ever.
  • How can we help? Create space for students to express themselves and share feelings, depending on the group and the situation.

What else? Design lessons to address the issues. After getting agreement from the class, a teacher created a lesson dealing with stress for teenagers and included some breathing techniques. Students shared their feedback.

  • We moved on to talk about our younger learners, we focused on games, fun and engagement.
  • One suggestion was to keep focused on the books and look for ways to make it more engaging with coursebook tweaks.
  • Should we devote more time to “fun” activities and games than before in young learners classes? Most people think we should, one suggestion was that perhaps 60-70% of class time should be game-orientated.
  • We talked about the importance of movement with young and very young learners.
  • Even when there’s limited space we can do activities including movement next to their chairs or in designated space.
  • Breaks are great ways to change the momentum of the classes.
  • While there’s lots of things we can’t do, we need to focus on the things we can do.
  • Total Physical Response activities are a firm favourite; pencils on heads and yoga movements are especially popular.
  • The last 5 minutes of class can be dedicated to building up Tik Tok routines.
  • We touched on “Growth Mindsets” too, with Carol Dweck as recommended viewing.
  • Does everything need to have an English aim? “They’re people”. We should take pressure off them and off ourselves, perhaps pacing schedules are less important than before.
  • There was a recommendation for Junior Just dance and 3-5 minute Joe Wicks videos.
  • What about movement in online classes with young learners? Yes, absolutely. It can be great; fewer limitations, using the home as a resource (“Go and find…”)

And that was where we got to in an hour… everyone had the chance to share, there was a feeling of support and togetherness in the group despite different backgrounds and the feedback was great. Thank you again to everyone for your ideas and contributions. It was an hour well spent!

A few notes on the “after-party”

A handful of us stayed around to chat a little more…

The chat was again varied.

  • The pros and cons of living in cities, towns, villages and isolated in the countryside during these times of COVID.
  • The increased diversity and number of connections in our online working lives.
  • The variety of work available online; some companies are, in a very crowded market place, differentiating their offering through quality and that there are still some good opportunities around.
  • The shift online has led to a freedom for some, amid the challenge there are opportunities.

And with that, the last of the coffee was drunk and it was nearly time for lunch.