TEFL

We share because we care. (design by Clarissa Bezerra)

Today we launched the Advanced Planning Hub project, with our first face-to-face gathering over at Casa Thomas Jefferson – Sudoeste Branch. This was an idea I had after analyzing the results of a recent survey I carried out with our Advanced level teachers. The purpose of the survey was to foster some reflection on the work developed throughout our first year using Viewpoint (Cambridge University Press) with our Upper-Intermediate level students. This was also a way to get feedback from our teachers as to how they evaluate the effectiveness of the material, as well as identify possible issues or difficulties that may have come up during these two semesters. The overall result of the survey was very positive. Acceptance of the newly adopted material is very high among our Advanced teachers, and we all know that’s key for successful teaching and learning in any course.

There was one aspect that called our attention in the survey results. Apparently, a few teachers had been having some difficulty planning and delivering the Conversation Strategy lessons (lessons C in Viewpoint) in a way that would be more meaningful for their students. It is worth mentioning here that the majority of our upper-intermediate and advanced student population is made up of teenagers, which makes our reality very peculiar, since most, if not all of the EFL/ESL materials available at this level target older learners (young adults and adults). Teachers felt that the way these lessons are structured sometimes yields quite mechanical responses from students. Therefore, we needed to find ways of making these lessons more meaningful, fostering more authentic communication in class. That’s when the idea of the Hub first occurred to me. As course supervisor, I’d been not only teaching with the material, but I had also been talking to teachers about it, as well as observing a number of classes. I knew that there were teachers who had been planning and delivering highly engaging, effective Conversation Strategy lessons, for example. What I needed to do was get those teachers who’d been struggling together with those who had been having all sorts of great ideas for those lessons, and let the magic of sharing work its wonders. And so it was that at 10:00 am today, we had a beautiful collection of thirty eight teachers (that’s about 40% of the total number of Advanced level teachers this semester, so wow!) eager to share their wonderful ideas with each other.

The Hub in action.

For our F2F gathering today, I had put together a workspace within our school wiki – The Advanced Planning Hub – a place for teachers to share their lesson plans (lesson goals, step-by-step procedures, and supporting materials) and also find help when they have run out of ideas. So this morning, I showed them our new workspace. Our Hub gathering began with two of our teachers, Diana do Amaral and Cristina Bolissian, sharing/presenting a lesson plan of their own, which they had sent me the previous week and which had been shared on the Hub workspace. After that, teachers worked in smaller groups, sitting in round tables spread in the room, and engaged in very productive lesson-planning dynamics. They organized themselves into the different levels they are teaching this semester and went about feeding our Hub with great lesson plans.

Macaroons of appreciation! (photo shared by teacher Anna Lúcia)

Time flew by, and it was already 11:30 am when I interrupted their busy work. I asked if anyone would like to share something they had learned during that time spent together with their fellow teachers. Some of them volunteered to share all kinds of tips, ranging from handling technology in the classroom (like using the class software and configuring the right screen definition for it to work properly) to actual methodological aspects, such as asking more challenging questions to engage students, and how the revised Bloom’s Taxonomy verbs may help us do that. After that, it was time to go, but not before getting a small token of appreciation from their supervisor – ahem, yours truly – in appreciation for the fact that each one of these educators had chosen to spend two hours of a lovely friday morning planning lessons together, having a good time together, and showing that they care for their own professional development and for each person sitting next to them.

This post goes to all of the people who helped this idea fly today. Hopefully, this was the first of many Hub gatherings to come!

Here’s to caring and sharing!

Professional development is a big deal for us here at the Casa. So much so that we hold our very own yearly seminars, which are attended not only by our local TEFL community but also by professionals coming from different cities and states in Brazil. It is an amazing opportunity to strengthen our “PD muscle” and connect with amazing professionals and individuals from all over the globe. The 2014 edition of the CTJ TEFL Seminar was no different, and yet, it had a special flavor of accomplishment to it, since this year we celebrated its 10th anniversary.

The day began with ESL professor Rob Jenkins‘ plenary on a topic which never gets old – motivation. Rob reminded us of the importance of successfully developing an atmosphere that fosters student confidence, and that we should always be deeply aware of the difference between teaching and learning. That teaching has to be regarded as a byproduct of learning, and that it is our role as teachers to be deeply aware that what may seem to be great, solid teaching may not necessarily result in learning, especially if we find ourselves teaching lessons in spite of the learners and their individual learning styles, cognitive abilities, and unique personalities.

Later on, I had the pleasure of engaging a group of ten fellow teachers and professionals in my Seminar presentation “On wearing two hats: Teaching and responding to writing”. I began my talk explaining how the idea for that session had come up. That it had actually sprung up from a training session I had delivered earlier this year, and from the connections and the contributions made by this group of pre-service teachers who were absolutely motivated to learn more about teaching effective writing lessons, as well as providing effective corrective feedback on students’ writings. I also mentioned the fact that I’d begun blogging earlier this year, sharing with them the one feature of blogging that I appreciate the most (other than the fact that I simply love writing), which is the possibility of connecting with others. It was a very productive session, thanks to the amazing contributions made by my colleagues throughout. We got to discuss extremely important concepts when it comes to teaching writing. The first one is how fostering a sense of audience in our students is critical in actually motivating them to write. The second, the awareness that our students are in a quest for finding their voice and that we teachers need to nurture that.

After a lovely lunch (some delicious feijoada) by the Paranoá lake with a dear friend, I had the pleasure of attending an ever so useful session called “Mobile devices in the EFL classroom: What’s App 101”, delivered/facilitated by fellow teachers Daniela Lyra, Leonardo Sampaio and Paola Barbieri Hanna. The session began with some very pertinent discussion on the topic of cell phone use in the classroom, and how we deal with excessive student texting during lessons, for example. We also had the chance of clarifying any doubts we had regarding the use and the functions of What’s App, followed by some discussion on sensible social media use policy in schools. Daniela Lyra took us through the SAMR model, explaining each of its stages with some practical classroom examples. The session progressed into a more hands-on stage, with each of the facilitators working separately with smaller groups, sharing some extremely engaging activities in which students use What’s App in so many effective ways for learning and practicing the language.

It was then time for the last plenary of the Seminar, a virtual plenary delivered by RELOBrazil EFL consultant Heather Benucci. The title of the plenary says it all: “Care and feeding required: Sustaining your personal learning network (PLN)”. Heather shared with us some smart strategies for building and sustaining a strong PLN, as well as the countless possibilities of achieving professional development goals with the support of a solid PLN. One particular aspect she discussed called my attention. The fact that, after a while, and after you have managed to build a good PLN, we need to beware of the echo chamber effect. We need to try and diversify our connections by finding professionals and individuals who may not have similar views as our own, and from whom we may actually learn new things and broaden our perspectives, stepping out of the comfort zone. Another highlight of her plenary was an amazing video by Derek Sivers. It reminded me of how I felt before I began blogging and building my beloved PLN.