I've been working in teacher training for roughly 3-4 years in various situations. In each situation, though, the training has always needed initial-training-like focus points.
Sometimes this has been because both semi-experienced and inexperienced teachers in companies I've worked for have had little or no previous training, in which case the training has been a balance of basic techniques/procedures/approach to teaching, course-specific training, and teacher-specific training (based on observations as well as student, peer, and management feedback). Other times this has been because I've been involved in pre-service training (for example, CELTA training).
Due to the focus having always been 'initial' or 'pre-service' training, I've found myself a bit unsure about how to approach in-service training. Or more to the point, how to approach 'post-initial' training. I need to develop a series of generic (ie. not focused on a specific teachers' needs) teacher training and development workshops for the company I'm currently working for that can be delivered to teachers from various programmes as a single group.
So, the question I have, in parts, is:
- What do teachers need/want beyond an initial training course?
(Having completed a CELTA, Trinity Cert, or equivalent, and taught for 3 months afterwards, what topics, techniques or procedures do teachers generally tend to need to learn more about or improve in?)
Beyond any suggestions and advice you can give me, I'd also be extremely grateful for recommended reading or other teacher training resources (like websites) that could help.
Best of thanks,
Heath
Comments
Amir A. Ravayee
Taking part in Teacher Training Courses (TTC) or having completed CELTA and TESOL courses are very important but not enough. There is a great difference between the theories we learn in such courses and the reality we experience in our classes. Experience plays an important role in teaching. I’ve been teaching for almost 17 years and for the last five years I have been a teacher trainer, but I still join in different workshops and seminars to learn more.
Every day, I receive lots of application forms from people who have completed TTC courses and have been teaching for several months, but they must learn a lot more to be successful teachers.
In my opinion work shops and On the Job Training Courses (OJT) are very important.
Once or twice a month teachers can get together for an hour and discuss subjects like:
1- What should be done with very big classes?
2- What if students are all at different levels?
3- How can we deal with students who keep using their own language?
4- How can we encourage students to do homework?
5- How can uncooperative students be motivated?
6- What can be done about the students who don’t want to talk?
7- What do successful teachers do?
8- What are different methods of assessing students?
9- What are new techniques of ELT?
There are more and more topics you can bring to your workshops. You can browse the internet to get new ideas and strategies of teaching which are always new to most teachers. You can also find your items to discuss in trainer’s handbooks.
Amir Abbass Ravayee
Heath
Thank you for your suggestions Ravayee.
You have highlighted some of the very topics that the teachers themselves have expressed interest in learning more about. Dealing with mixed-levels, uncooperative students and students who speak only in their own language, and assessing students are of the most common requests (and also the most common 'complaints' about the teaching situation). So I'll definitely be able to draw on your suggestions there, thanks!
The teachers I've worked with in China tend to feel the more theoretical topics like learning about new ELT techniques or talking about 'successful' teachers are less useful, though (too abstract, whereas the other areas are concerned with current, practical difficulties they face day to day).
Some other things that have since come up from enquiring with teachers directly, are:
I do wonder, is it really enough for teachers to get together and discuss these issues? It's just that in my experience I've found several inherent problems with the "meet weekly/fortnightly and discuss" approach:
Do you find that people you've worked with are similar?
Amir A. Ravayee
Dear Heat,
I agree with you on the point that some teachers are very uncooperative or after some time they might not be interested in taking part in work shops any more.
Let me confess that it was really difficult at the beginning but I managed to change the attitude.
Why don't you ask them to run the sessions themselves? You don't have to be the only lecturer. There are a lot of movies related to teaching English you can use in your work shops.I am sure they will enjoy your work shops.
Amir Abbass Ravayee
Heath
Thanks again Amir, I do like both the ideas you've mentioned.
I've never really used movies for teacher training. I should say, when we run CELTA courses we use some of IH's DVDs for a small part of the observation component, but I've never used DVD for actual workshop sessions - despite having access to quite a few good teaching videos and recordings of teachers actually in class. Will definitely be trying a few different approaches with those in the near future.
As for letting them run the sessions themselves, I do do this and find that they usually work well, but usually only when one or two of the more enthusiastic teachers take control.
That said, I still find that teachers want to get practical ideas, techniques etc, more than they want to discuss theories. Perhaps after a year or two of experience they will start to become more interested in theoretical aspects, but I have to sympathise with them when a lot of theory is difficult to apply to the here and now.
Thanks again for your advice, my future sessions will indeed include some:
Amir A. Ravayee
Dear heath,
Thank you for your reply. I will become happy if you write and tell me about the result of your future workshops.
Best wishes,
Amir Abbass Ravayee
The Butterfly
Hi there
I really like the idea of using DVD for teacher training, but I wonder where I can find them. I was able to download Speaking videos once from this site.
Is there a way to download more?
Thanks
Heath
We ordered the DVDs through IH London's website (ihlondon.com).
As for other teaching videos, you can try:
Failing that, do a couple of web searches using terms like ELT Training Videos and you might find some other things.
I remember seeing a few 'episodes' of a great collection of videos of some famous teacher trainers (Scott Thornbury was one of the trainers, for example) doing training in, if I remember correctly, Macquarie Uni in Aussie. That looked pretty good, but I'm afraid I don't have any other details about it.
Hope that helps some.
davidvincent
Thanks for those links, they're great.
http://www.eltworld.net/news/