10-year challenge

You may have seen the 10-year challenge meme on facebook or Instagram. Here’s my take, and something of a reflection on the decade, one in which I’ve grown and developed enormously as a person, and learnt so much.

Here’s the first photo of me I can find from 2010, from January 9th:

I was halfway through my second year of full-time teaching after university/CELTA. I’d completed the IH Business English Teaching Certificate and was partway through the IH Certificate in Teaching Young Learners (before teens were included).

It was another 10 weeks before I presented at a conference for the first time (March 2010 – though I’d attended a few one-day events in Brno, Bratislava and Prague), 6 months before I joined Twitter (June 2010) and 10 months before I started my blog (October 2010).

Here’s a picture of me from Christmas Day, three days ago:

Here are 20 things I’ve done in the intervening period, ready to launch into 2020:

1. completed the IH Certificate in Advanced Methodology, IH Certificate in Online Tutoring, and Cambridge Delta.
2. started a Masters in Professional Development in Language Education with NILE.
3. become a CELTA trainer, and worked on 14 courses with a range of great trainers.
4. realised that I can be a Director of Studies, and been one for 4.5 years.
5. published 674 blogposts (this is number 675) on this blog, and many posts and articles in other places too.
6. written three books, and contributed to a few others.
7. tweeted over 29,000 times, mostly at conferences I think!
8. helped to curate #ELTpics and the #ELTchat summaries page.
9. become addicted to IATEFL conferences, volunteered on the IATEFL Membership and Marketing Committee, and set up and run the IATEFL blog for a couple of years.
10. presented at a lot of other conferences and online events.
11. been diagnosed and learnt to live with ulcerative colitis and become a much better cook and a considerably healthier eater in the process.
12. got a Fitbit, and drastically increased the amount of exercise I do.
13. visited a lot of new cities and countries.
14. learnt 2 new languages to a reasonable level, and had a go at 7 others to fuel my addiction.
15. met a lot of fascinating people and made a lot of new friends.
16. taken around 60,000 photos, give or take.
17. become increasingly aware of my massively high carbon footprint, and started trying to reduce it.
18. bought a flat.
19. found other people who enjoy board games as much as I always have!
20. learnt to answer back to my inner voice, deal with my thoughts in a much more constructive way, and stay calm and manage my emotions in challenging situations.

So what’s next?

The biggest thing I’d like the 2020s to bring for me is an answer to this 2016 letter, though point 20 means that it’s not even close to the issue I felt like it was before. I don’t think about it anywhere near as much as I used to, but it’s always there a little bit. I know time will tell, and I’m happy either way, but a family would be nice (yes, I know there are other ways that can be achieved!)

Apart from that, more of the same please. That includes the next ELT Playbook, which I’ll be starting soon if all goes to plan. I love my life, I don’t regret anything from the past 10 years, as even the bad things have been experiences I’ve learnt from which have made me who I am today, and I’m excited about what the future holds.

Have a great decade. Enjoy!

Useful links for teacher training

In August 2019 I started doing the NILE MA Trainer Development module and discovered there’s actually quite a lot of information out there to help teacher trainers, a lot of which had passed me by. This post aims to collect what I’ve found. Please let me know if there’s anything you’d add or if any of the links are broken.

Training for trainers

International House offer a Teacher Trainer Certificate. It’s a 14-week online course, with 12 weeks of input and 2 weeks to finish your portfolio. There is also a new (at the time of writing) Observation and giving feedback course, which I think is around 7 weeks long. IH teachers get a discount on both courses.

NILE (Norwich Institute for Language Education) offer a Trainer Development course. This can be taken as 2 weeks face-to-face or 10 weeks online. It can form one 30-credit module of the full NILE MA programme, the MA in Professional Development in Language Education (MAPDLE). I’ve written quite a lot connected to the MAPDLE on my blog.

IH ILC Brno run an annual trainers’ weekend. The first one was in 2019. Full details on their website.

British Council have a comprehensive teacher educator framework which you can use to help you identify gaps in your skills and work out what to develop next.

Training blogs

Jacqueline Douglas writes bite-sized blogposts covering all kinds of aspects of teacher training.

Matthew Noble currently writes the Muddles into Maxims blog, and previously wrote the Diary of a newbie CELTA trainer. Both contain lots of thought-provoking posts and first-hand experiences of training.

Zhenya Polosatova is a teacher trainer and educator from Ukraine. She regularly blogs ideas and reflections on her Wednesday Seminars blog. I particularly enjoyed her series of Trainer Conversations, for example this one with Rasha Halat (part 2).

John Hughes has written a lot about observation and teacher training on his blog and in various other places.

Jim at Sponge ELT has recently (at the time of writing) become a teacher trainer and has started to blog about it. For example, he wrote this post about observer effects on teaching and learning. He has a series called The Teacher Trainer Diaries.

Rachel Tsateri has also blogged a lot about her teacher training experiences, including what she learnt as she completed the NILE MA Trainer Development module.

Jeanette Barsdell has posts about observations, connected to her book (see below).

I’ve written a lot of posts connected to teacher training. They’re all in the training category, and include this guest post by Lauren Perkins on principles for designing INSET (in-service) workshops for teachers.

Websites

Jo Gakonga shares lots of resources for teacher trainers.

Video in Language Teacher Education is a project by the University of Warwick and the British Council.

Social media

On the first Monday of each month, CELTA trainers meet on Twitter for CELTAchat. Even if you’re not a CELTA trainer, I’m sure you’ll find useful ideas there. Summaries of chats are published on the CELTAchat blog. The Twitter handle is @aChatCELT and you can read the hashtag even if you don’t have a Twitter account: #CELTAchat.

Journals and papers

The IH Journal regularly has articles connected to teacher training, all free, for example this one by Jacqueline and Alastair Douglas describing a CELTA course at IH London.

If you have an ETprofessional subscription or Modern English Teacher subscription, you’ll find lots of articles there. I particularly liked the No one told me that!

You can also get a subscription to the Teacher Training Journal.

Silvana Richardson and Gabriel Diaz Maggioli proposed the INSPIRE model for effective professional development. Both have spoken a lot about CPD, for example this IATEFL talk on inspired professional development based on their white paper.

Books

I’ve listed all of the teacher training books I’m aware of, including affiliate links to Amazon and BookDepository (meaning I get a few pennies if you order them that way) and a non-affiliate one to BEBC if possible, plus my posts about them if I’ve written one. I’m working through the backlog of books I’ve read for the MA and will be adding more over the next year or so if all goes to plan. Quite a few of these books are available secondhand a lot cheaper than you might expect!

• Trainer Development by Tony Wright and Rod Bolitho (Amazon, Book Depository, Lulu, my post)
  Very practical: a focus on the humanistic side of training and working with the people in front of you as much as possible.
• Teaching Language Teachers: Scaffolding Professional Learning by Gabriel Diaz Maggioli (Amazon, Book Depository, my post)
  Possibly more for MA TESOL trainers? But good for general theory too.
• Reflective Practice in English Language Teaching by Steve Mann and Steve Walsh (Amazon, Book Depository)
  I devoured this, and got so many ideas from it – highly recommended!
• Language Teacher Education by Jon Roberts (Amazon, Book Depository)
  A classic, I believe. Great for background theory, and has lots of examples of courses.
• Teaching Teachers: Processes and Practices by Angi Malderez and Martin Wedell (Amazon, Book Depository)
  Another good one for background theory, with a worked example of how to approach creating a course.
• Mentor Courses: A Resource Book for Trainer-Trainers by Angi Malderez and Caroline Bodóczky (Amazon, BEBC, Book Depository)
  Specifically for mentoring and training mentors, but has some useful things for general training.
• Advising and Supporting Teachers by Mick Randall with Barbara Thornton (Amazon, BEBC, Book Depository)
  Particularly good for those doing longer-term advice and support.
• Ways of Training by Tessa Woodward (Amazon, Book Depository)
  A recipe book with loads of ideas for different ways to tweak your training.
• Models and Metaphors in Language Teacher Training: Loop Input and Other Strategies by Tessa Woodward (Amazon, Book Depository)
  The origin of loop input, full of worked examples of training sequences with a bit of theory at the end to tie it all off.
• Readings in Teacher Development by Katie Head and Pauline Taylor (Amazon, Book Depository)
  A collection of excerpts from various different sources touching on a wide range of areas for teacher development, including mental and physical health.
• The Lazy Teacher Trainers Handbook by Magnus Coney (Amazon, Smashwords (affiliate), the round)
  Ready-made workshops that largely depend on the input of the trainees and involve minimal preparation but maximum output. e-book only, but you can print it (I did!)
• Professional Development for Language Teachers by Jack C. Richards and Thomas S. C. Farrell (Amazon, Book Depository)
  While aimed at teachers, this is good for ideas of different modes of training.
• The Developing Teacher by Duncan Foord (Amazon, BEBC, Book Depository)
  Another one aimed at teachers, but covering with lots of different tasks you could adapt for the classroom.
• Classroom Observation Tasks by Ruth Wajnryb (Amazon, BEBC, Book Depository)
  [I haven’t actually read this one yet, but I know it’s a classic!]
• ELT Lesson Observation & Feedback Handbook by Jeanette Barsdell (Amazon)
  [I haven’t read this one either, but have heard good things about it.]
• The Routledge Handbook of English Language Teacher Education edited by Steve Walsh and Steve Mann (Amazon, Routledge, Book Depository)
  [The price of this 2019 617-page book means I’m unlikely to get my hands on a copy any time soon, but the sample chapters and pages I’ve managed to read through Amazon LookInside and Google Books show that this is a fantastic compendium of up-to-date information about teacher training. P.S. If you buy a copy through my Amazon link, I’ll probably be able to afford one of the other books on this list!] 😉
• A Practical Introduction to Teacher Training in ELT by John Hughes (Amazon, BEBC, Book Depository) – I think this is the best basic introduction to teacher training, and as practical as the title claims.

And last but not least, the book I wrote 🙂 ELT Playbook Teacher Training:

…for which you can get badges if you share your responses to the reflective tasks included in the book using social media:

It’s available as a paperback through the BEBC website and can be shipped all over the world. You can also get it via as a paperback from Book Depository or Amazon’s print-on-demand service, as an Amazon Kindle e-book or an e-book in various formats (including .pdf) from Smashwords.

Podcasts

These podcasts have occasional episodes or sections devoted to teacher training or which might be useful in your training context:

• TEFL Training Institute
  e.g. this episode with Ben Beaumont on reflection in teacher education
• Developod
  e.g. episode 7 about feedback or episode 8 about creating an organisation-wide culture of teacher development
• TEFLology
  e.g. John Fanselow on teacher observation or Gabriel Diaz Maggioli on teacher development

Special interest groups (SIGs)

IATEFL has two SIGs which teacher trainers may find useful:

• Teacher Training and Education
• Teacher Development

Other links

Here are my diigo bookmarks, which I’m constantly adding to:

• CELTA training
• Teacher training
• Observation
• Feedback

I’ve also written other Useful links posts on CELTA and Delta which may be useful. The CELTA one contains links for CELTA trainers at the end.

Learning the language and low-level learners (British Council TeachingEnglish Associates)

Paul and I are working our way through some old posts of mine on the British Council Teaching English website. Here are two which were published in November:

• Teaching very low-level learners
• Learning the language in the country where you work

You can find the full list of all of the posts I’ve written for TEBC on my Writing page. Look out for more coming soon.

And to make this post look pretty, here’s a gratuitous picture from the country where I work (there are more of those here).

Enjoy!