Training & Leadership in ELT Conference

Be it in pre-service or in-service training, one of our roles as trainers is to help teachers plan and deliver more effective lessons, and most courses for teacher focus on that. However, one of the biggest struggles after initial training or longer periods of stability, is to maintain or rekindle teachers’ motivation. In this workshop we will think of ways to use lesson-planning skills, which teachers are already familiar and comfortable with, to assess needs, establish short- and long-term goals, and define tangible actions moving forward. In the first part of the workshop, we will discuss the career development needs and challenges affecting our trainees in the current times. It is undeniable that the Covid-19 pandemic has affected the lives of teachers and trainers alike. The development of new skills was required, but new career opportunities have also emerged. Then, we will look at ways to translate the language our novice and experienced teachers use in lesson plans into career plans. Smart aims, procedures, stages and anticipated problems are all part of everyday lesson planning which have counterparts in other types of forward planning. Professional development plans are no exception. Finally, we will work together to create a sample career plan, using Freeman’s KASA framework to assess and systematise the needs of our actual trainees, and Richards & Farrells’s suggestions to propose possible actions.

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Have you ever worked with someone who you just didn’t click with?  Did their way of working seem alien to you or just wound you up?  You can rest assured that the feeling was probably mutual!  Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could all just get on?  Although I can’t promise perfect harmony, in this workshop we will be looking at DISC profiles to better understand ourselves and those around us to help improve relationships.

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Within our online community of practice (CoP), we have observed that teachers invest as and when they can without any long term goals or coherent plan. In this session, we will discuss the challenges faced when trying to move away from these kinds of training formats that are top-down and isolated and onto a more considered and directed CPD ‘pathway’. This will be of particular interest to anyone responsible for designing CPD or teachers who are looking for guidance and direction in their career.

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The benefits of asking people for feedback on what we do and how we do it seem obvious, but what often happens is we either don’t ask, because we are lazy, scared or somehow convince ourselves that it won’t be useful. When we do ask for feedback we often find it hard to ask the right questions to the right people at the right time. Whether you are a teacher, a manager or both, this workshop will give you the confidence to get started and some clear ideas on how to get good quality feedback from your students, your staff and your colleagues.

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Within INSETT programmes, we often make the distinction between bottom-up, i.e. teachers' needs and wants, and top-down, i.e. management's needs and wants. These two distinctions need not/cannot be separated. In this workshop, we will look at collecting information on both sets of needs, and a number of ways in which these can be brought together so that the in-service programme has the best chance of leaving the biggest impact on learners, teachers and the institution itself.

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The connectivity between ELT and the climate emergency is moving towards the centre of the ELT agenda. Across our global community there are initiatives, both local and national, and both ‘bottom-up’, driven by teachers and learners and ‘top-down’, driven by ministries and other institutional stakeholders. The variety and range of scope, as well as the fragmentation of these initiatives is now quite dazzling, dazzling to the extent it can be hard for school leaders, managers, and teacher educators to answer the question “what should I be doing in my school?”. In this talk I will explore the role that leaders and teacher educators can play in creating a culture of locally-relevant and pragmatic sustainability and environmental awareness in their institution. We will start by taking a look at what the key elements of this culture would be, both operational in terms of how the school works, and academic of what is actually taught. We will then move on to explore the idea that effective institutional cultural change comes better through a movement rather than a mandate. Because the cultural changes can require, on occasion quite substantial, behavioural change to be made, instructing, requiring, or even suggesting, can produce resentment and antagonism towards good sustainability practices. A much more effective approach, and indeed one that is itself sustainable is to create a green movement that embeds itself into the institution’s DNA. We will discuss approaches to creating, nurturing, and expanding this movement, including addressing some of the challenges it involves We will finish by exploring three words mentioned at the beginning of this abstract, ‘locally-relevant’ and ‘pragmatic’. Local relevance is a big driver towards maximising colleague engagement with the school’s green culture. Pragmatism also helps people to deal with seemingly insurmountable environmental catastrophes by ‘picking their fights’ – choosing behavioural changes that can they themselves implement to create tangible results.

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After 25 years training, the past 2 years of 10h Zoom-days have led to a lot of reflection on what works best (if 10-hour Zoom days allow for thinking at all!) In the session, I’ll offer 10 tips for successful, affective, effective training, based on observations of working with teachers, trainers, and MA materials writers, and rooted in theories of learning, cognition, motivation & engagement. The tips can apply to training but also to teaching, and hopefully you’ll also share tips of your own.

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In every aspect of society we usually get credit for making sacrifices in order to help others. When it comes to business instead, we are ready to step on others in order to rise to the top. Together, we are going to learn about leadership, which is about empathy, ethics and inclusivity, is about rising by lifting others. Do you want to see a change in your workplace? Come and learn to be that change!

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