Setting off for pastures new…

Image used under a Creative Commons Public Domain licence via http://www.clker.com/ http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en

My blog has lived with the WordPress people for a little over two years now, and while we we have got on well and I have got used to how they like to keep their place neat and tidy, I have recently started to yearn for a place of my own – somewhere with a little more freedom and space.

So, with fond memories and a tear in my eye, it’s time to fly the nest and settle down under an address of my own.

From now on, you can find me over at teachertrainingunplugged.com – not a big change of address, but it means a lot to me.

Please make sure to update your bookmarks and re-subscribe of you need to – I don’t want to lose touch with any of you!

Apologies for any inconvenience caused by the move, but I felt it was time to stand on my own two feet.

Hope to see you over at teachertrainingunplugged.com very soon!

Anthony

PS: my next blog post – The Classroom As Crucible – will be going live over on teachertrainingunplugged.com at midday CET tomorrow.

This blog will self-destruct in 10 seconds (OK, days…)

This is just a short note to let you all know that I will be deleting this blog in ten days.

The reason is that some time ago I created teachertrainingunplugged.com and now that I’ve settled in over there, the continued existence of this blog, which I no longer update, is unnecessary. Also, it is causing confusion for new readers.

So in case you haven’t switched to teachertrainingunplugged.com yet, please follow the link and subscribe over there – and thank you for investing your time in reading what I have to say: I really appreciate it.

All the best,

Anthony

Parachute training for teachers

Photo taken from http://www.flickr.com/photos/horiavarlan/5247691488/ by hora varian, used under a CC Attribution licence, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/

Have you ever learnt to sky-dive?

If you have, you may recall receiving this instruction…

“Immediately after you pull the rip cord, shout out at the top of your lungs ONE THOUSAND, TWO THOUSAND, THREE THOUSAND – CHECK!!!!

When you shout CHECK!, tilt your head back and look above your head.

If you see your parachute canopy opening, relax and enjoy the ride.

If you don’t, reach for your reserve rip cord and pull it.

Repeat.

If you see your parachute canopy opening, relax and enjoy the ride.

If you don’t, relax anyway, because it will all be over before you know it.”

Macabre as the punchline is, there is actually a great deal of sense in this short lesson – both for novice sky-divers and for teachers of all levels of experience.

My first guest bloggers – my students

Work in progress…

Earlier today I unexpectedly had the opportunity to cover a teaching practice slot on our CELTA course. As I was watching one of my trainee teachers working with a recording of a book-club discussion about Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, I started to think about what I could do next with the student group that would be challenging and worth their while.

I decided to ask them if they were writers themselves, and it turns out that one of them had recently penned a poem to a friend on the occasion of their birthday (if I understood them correctly). from here, I made a connection to some poetry writing that I had been doing with students recently myself, and this led me to my blog.

I showed some of my recent posts and then admitted a problem: I am so busy with the current training course that I was afraid about not getting my next post out in time.

The class agreed – cautiously – to becoming my first ever guest blog post writers, with a post about their experience as students working with my trainee teachers in teaching practice. .

We defined who my typical readership was and what they were likely to be interested in hearing about, and then I let each student write about whatever they felt like in response to this. I spent my time supporting them and refining where I could, but I didn’t suggest content.

They agreed that I could post their comments on their teaching practice experience here, and I would love it if you would reply to them in a comment.

Question: should I write a book or not?

Someone recently messaged me to encourage me to publish a book of low-resource ideas for initial language teacher training.

I think I would like to write such a book (when I get the time, that is!), but I would hate to do it if the world doesn’t seem to want something like that with the Teacher Training Unplugged twist.

So here is a bit of fun with a serious purpose: if you have a moment, please answer this simple question and I promise I’ll act (sooner or later) on the results!

 

 

If you can’t see the poll question, it is because your browser is blocking the embedded content from PollDaddy – this could happen if you use Ghostery or NoScript to protect yourself online.  Please allow PollDaddy if you want to see and answer the question.

Thanks for participating; I’m really looking forward to what you think.

Going for the jugular in the language classroom

Got Blood used under a Creative Commons licence from Drury Drama (Lee Radlin)

Before I get started, let me put a few things on the record.

I want the teachers I train to be bloody in tooth and claw when it comes to dealing with language.

I want the teachers I train to sink their teeth into what their learners say or write and suck on the marrow of it with relish.

I want the teachers I train to go for the jugular.

Now we have that straight, let me take you into a classroom…

Learning to listen

“What can you say when you haven’t been listening?”

I’ve been thinking about listening skills a lot since we decided to “unplug” our CELTA course back in 2009 (if you are interested in catching up with that work, you can watch a summary talk we gave at IATEFL 2010, or read some blog posts here, here and here.).

Listening skills development is certainly not a novel topic; what is perhaps unusual about my preoccupation is that it hasn’t been the students’ listening skills that I’ve been thinking about, but the teachers’.