Dear Vivek, Thank you for timely asking me to make practical suggestions on teacher networks.
Teachers have ideas generated from their practical teaching, research or intuition. In order to share those ideas, they need to come together, thus teacher networks. In this and other blog entries, I will be highlighting on possible networks (I am using the term teacher network to mean any kind of teachers’ membership community in the form of clubs, forums, networks, or associations) that any interested teachers can form and run.
Teachers’ Club (Single school)
Teachers of a single school can form a club for their own professional growth. Such clubs operate outside schools hours, so the membership is voluntary. Some enthusiastic teachers get together, plan and decide upon a tentative operation modality and communicate their idea to all teachers in the school. The Club is formally formed by a gathering. The Club organizes weekly or monthly interactions in which members present talks, papers, cases or problems. If any teacher has undertaken action research or any other type of study, they share the findings. Sometimes, they invite experts from outside the school to do a session.
The Club also has a collection of books which the members can borrow on a weekly basis. In a school in Kathmandu, when I shared this idea of book collection, teachers first thought they had no money but quickly one teacher said, “How about each of us donating two books?” So there were 60 books donated by 30 teachers within a week.
Celebrating Teachers’ Day would be another event teachers would love to join.
Teachers’ Club (School clusters)
Such clubs can be set up and operated in a cluster of schools. Several schools in a geographical area form a club and run the types of activities mentioned above. While the single school teachers’ club may have members from only one subject or many subjects, in the cluster clubs, teachers of only one subject come together, for example, English language teachers of one area will operate the club. Due to the extra efforts and sacrifices the club members will have to make, the enthusiasm may easily wane after some time. So to keep the enthusiasm, the club needs to have an executive body and active members will be executive members. Such a position acts as an incentive as they feel they have been recognized. Care should be taken to make each gathering very useful so that each member goes home to return again without being forced.
Advice
a) Teachers will have to be away from schools frequently to participate in club activities. So the club will have to make sure that the activities take place at a time when the schools do not have regular classes. This is more important in the cluster schools clubs as the school calendars may vary.
b) From the very beginning, the school administration and the local education authorities should be informed and where possible involved, for instance, you can invite an education officer to inaugurate your first club session. This not only validates and publicizes what you are doing but also attracts the attention of those who have resources. If they think what you doing is good, they will remember you when they have resources or they are looking for participants for an event they are organizing. Also inform potential sponsors in your area.
Comments
Jane Willis
Dear Laxman,
I enjoyed reading your advice on Teachers Clubs - thank you - they are a great way of spreading ideas and give opportunities for teachers to support each other. The book sharing is a good example of this. Can you tell us more about this - did they discuss what they had read with each other?
Collaboration on specific areas (for example on task design, or on ways of getting students to do homework) can often be very satisfying and rewarding, and can save a lot of preparation time.
It would be really helpful if you could give us a list of specific themes/topics/areas that teachers have discussed or worked on successfully in clubs you know.
I look forward to reading your response when I come back form my holiday in Scotland. (we are off for two weeks.)
Cheers,
Jane
metaweb
Hi Jane, Laxman
As a teacher trainer in Mexico, I have always said that a teacher's best resource is not me but another teacher or teachers. The importance of sharing and networking and building a sense of community is so critical to the process of learning that I created Mexico English Teachers' Alliance :: META Web 2.0 to bring busy teachers together.
Jane, all of my teachers have read your A Framework for Task Based Learning. Thanks so much for that gift. I must say however that it is a struggle for teachers to not slide back to teaching grammar as a conerstone. Here in Mexico where thinks "traditional" still dominate, it has been a challenge. Any ideas on how to make that shift more entrenched or successful. The normal complaint is that TBL isn't effective in a 50 minute class. Coordinators are even trying to convince administrators that a teacher-fronted classroom is pedagogically better.
So, this one example highlights the importance of teachers talking across disciplines and geographic bounderies. To give support and discover "truths" togehter, and not from only a teacher trainer.
Frank in Mexico
Blog: http://franksblog.edublogs.org
Network: http://metamexico.ning.com
amolpadwad
Laxman has suggested some interesting and useful points for setting up English Teachers’ Clubs. ETCs are indeed a valuable way of networking and professional growth for teachers, especially in resource-poor areas. However, I feel some of the points he raises need to be considered in different light. Five years of working with some successful (and some failed) ETCs in rural places of Central India has brought home to us some important lessons, that I think are worth sharing here. I must mention that I take ETCs to be serious small networks that aim to make long-term impact on members’ professional growth. For some people ETCs may be just ‘clubs’ with limited activities and impact.
I would actually hesitate to involve school and other authorities in the setting up and running of ETCs. It’s good to get support from them, but getting support from them should far below on the list of priorities of an ETC. The simple reason is that involvement of authorities is likely to impede the freedom, flexibility and autonomy of the group in many cases. It is also likely to bring in unnecessary formalities, obligations and occasionally outside interference.
Most ETCs in our experiment came up precisely because the authorities/ system failed to provide scope and support for professional development. Many members felt that their schools and staffrooms could not provide opportunities of sharing, open interaction and collaboration. In most cases the members felt they belonged to a minority within the schools which saw no chance of being understood by the majority that was happy with the ‘comfortable routines’. ETCs provided them the crucial forum for sharing and collaborating.
In principle, there is nothing wrong to aim for school-based and school-cluster based ETCs as Laxman suggests. But examples of groups that are single-institution-based seem to be very few. I have come across one in Taiwan that has been working for 16 years, which again is not an ETC (although they call themselves so) but a group of different subject teachers and a counselor, who have been working basically to improve their English. What I am trying to suggest is that it is not really important whether the group is school-based or not. It’s an added bonus if it turns out to be so, but certainly that is incidental. I don’t see this (going for a school-based group) as a necessity or priority.
I believe the strength of an informal small-scale network like ETCs lies in the interest and commitment of its members. This interest and commitment comes from the members themselves and it cannot be mandated. I see any attempt to send official memos to schools or teachers mandating them to form ETCs doomed to fail. (It did actually happen with an over-enthusiastic officer in one region during our experiment with ETCs.) Or for that matter if an individual/ NGO/ agency offers to set up ETCs for you, the offer needs to be taken with caution. They can certainly promote and support the efforts for setting up ETCs, but these efforts have to come from the members themselves. Otherwise any externally ‘supplied’ or imposed group-formation will be mandated and artificial and result in what Hargreaves calls ‘contrived collegiality’.
ETCs can sustain only if the ownership is collective, everybody’s stakes are involved, the working is democratic and transparent, they evolve with time and continue to be relevant, and members are willing to contribute time, money and efforts. All this cannot come from outside; it has to emerge from within.
Thanks, Laxman, for taking up a vital issue in teachers’ development.
Amol
Jane Willis
Frank,
Thank you for your contribution. I liked your web-site!
There is a longish response to your question about making the change from grammar-based to task-based or reather meaning based teaching on my blog - I thought it would be more accessible there for others to read because it is a question a lot of people ask. So thank you for asking it!
I'm sorry for the delay - but I went away on holiday on 27 JUne ....
YOu (and possibly your teachers) might like to have a look at Doing Task-based Teaching - which is very practical and more up to date than A framework for task-based learning since it contains a lot of advice from teachers who have been working with TBL for some years. And it contains accounts of how some of them implemented change in a big way.
Generally , once teachers have got accustomed to TBL, and see how bright and active their learners become once they gain some confidence in speaking, and once teachers realise you can integrate tasks with grammar (just do the grammar after the task - see my 3rd and 4th articles on this site.) they do keep up the TBL element and get on with the rest of the course book faster.
I hope the ideas in my blog posting are helpful and that your teachers slowly bcome convinced...
Jane