training courses for clil teachers, for overseas teachers, for english teachers

There are a lot of 'TEFL teacher training courses' out there - but what about courses to help already qualified English teachers?

Here we're talking not only offering CPD/continuing professional development, but giving teachers immediate practical ways to work more effectively in the classroom, as well as further qualifications to enhance their skills and careers.

There are some good UK-based schools which offer this - from the small and intimate, to the big and impressive:

Overseas Teachers of English | Sidmouth International School

Teacher Training Courses - Pilgrims English Language Courses

There are different understandings of and approaches to teaching - to teaching CLIL, for example:

Jay Doubleyou: clil: content and language integrated learning

Jay Doubleyou: is clil working? is the bilingual class effective? are students learning through english?

A lot of teachers are exhausted - and just need some support and guidance from their peers:

Jay Doubleyou: teacher burnout

But we also need to see learning a language from different perspectives - in which case, it's sometimes good for a teacher to become a student:

Jay Doubleyou: students and teachers prefer different activities when learning english...

There are lots of places to go online of course:

Jay Doubleyou: free on-line resources for learning and teaching english

Although some sort of interaction is the point of any training:

Jay Doubleyou: websites to practice your english

Jay Doubleyou: learn to teach from videos

So, how can a course - either online or offline - offer good interactive training opportunities?

Here are some suggestions on how to create, for example, a course for CLIL teachers:

CLIL: A lesson framework | TeachingEnglish | British Council

Enough theory! How do I write a CLIL lesson plan? - CLIL Media

Training CLIL Teachers: The Zurich Approach | Article | Onestopenglish

Finally, any training course should surely aim high!

Jay Doubleyou: demand-high teaching

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"there is now a massive shortage of tefl teachers across the world"

Three years ago, the ESL/EFL world was looking very bad:

Jay Doubleyou: "this has been a dire, dire situation for the industry since the pandemic started"

Then things began to pick up - but things were not perfect by any means:

Jay Doubleyou: "the shortage of teachers is matched only by the surge in student numbers"

And so, the industry has sought to address this shortage:

Jay Doubleyou: how to attract and keep your english language teachers

Some are doing very well:

Fabio Cerpelloni speaks to Hadar Shemesh about the importance of teacher recruitment and retention for her school, Accent’s Way English.

Seeing the person in front of you - E L Gazette

But even so, there are other shortages keeping back the industry:

Residential and homestay shortages stopped around 6000 students from enrolling in UK schools last year.

UK: schools restrict enrolment due to bed shortages - E L Gazette

The latest E L Gazette looks at this problem, which isn't going away. Here are a few excerpts from an excellent, longer analysis:

The teacher shortage: what’s it all about?

In the ongoing teacher shortage, Melanie Butler takes a look at what is driving practitioners both in and out of work.

There is now a massive shortage of TEFL teachers across the world; indeed, a massive shortage of teachers of any subject. Isn’t this just a simple example of the law of supply and demand: if the supply falls, the price you have to pay will go up? And in some places, the pay has gone up. In the UK, London, Brighton and Oxbridge hourly rates have risen quite sharply but to little avail – the teachers aren’t coming back.

In most of the rest of the world, salaries have barely changed in more than a decade. Take the British Council network: in the last year or so we’ve seen their teachers in Taiwan join a Union because their pay hasn’t changed in 20 years, teachers in Portugal went on strike claiming their pay had increased only 1% since 2009, while in Japan, staff came out over the Council’s failure, after two years of negotiations, to bring their pension rights into line with local law.

While teachers earn a reasonable wage, it is job security, not income, which is causing the problem. And it is the demand for secure jobs that is preventing experienced teachers from returning to the sector. In London, for example, many ex-TEFLers have shifted into working as teaching assistants where their ELT qualifications give them a head-start. Their pay – though low at around £500 a week – is guaranteed, and their hours are regular, from 8:30 to 15:30. Lesson planning and marking is minimal, and while most TAs are unpaid eight weeks of the school holiday year, they can easily get TEFL work in the school holidays.

When the owner of ELC Bristol – one of the six schools in the country to get a perfect score on inspection – set out to find his teachers, they had all found permanent jobs. They wanted to come back to teaching, but would not accept zero-hour contracts. He took the decision to sell ownership of the school to the city’s top not for-profit independent schools so he could offer them permanent jobs. For the results of this endeavour, read the case study at the bottom of this article.

Will language schools have to follow their lead? In the UK, they may have no option. If the Labour Party win the next election they have to ban zero-hours contracts unless staff choose them. After working for 12 weeks, workers must be offered a permanent job based on the average of all working time undertaken, and not just ‘teaching hours’.

The teacher shortage: what’s it all about? - E L Gazette

There are groups pushing for a better deal for teachers:

Employment Rights – TEFL Workers Union

And meanwhile, the news reflects what might be significant changes for the industry:

Labour’s ‘new deal for workers’ will not fully ban zero-hours contracts | Labour | The Guardian

Zero-hours contracts: Workers react to the ban - BBC News

Labour's plans to ban zero-hour contracts will be a disaster for small business - our firms will go under | The Sun

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team-building with lego

We can have fun doing things with Lego

Jay Doubleyou: things to do with lego in the esl/efl classroom

... while learning leadership, cooperation and group dynamics:

Jay Doubleyou: how to work together well in teams

BUILDING A MODEL:

here's an excellent example of just that [with thanks to comments from Mike Harrison to a good overview of what can be done with Lego by Emma Herrod]:

What I did was similar to Barbara’s foolproof lesson (ref. this is an idea in the OUP Resource Book for Teachers: Conversation by Rob Nolasco and Lois Arthur).

>Make a model out of Lego – the more complicated the better!

>Place the model somewhere not all the students in the class can see. Screens or office dividers can be good for this.

>Divide the class into two teams. They then have 15/20/30 minutes to attempt to reconstruct the model!

All good for practising spatial language like you mention above, Emma, and that Barbara mentioned in her earlier post. I also used it as a way to develop teamwork skills (like the building the bridge activity for business English students).

More Than Five Things to do with LEGO® in the EFL Classroom Part 2

With the original available here: 

Conversation : Nolasco, Rob : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

BUILDING TEAMS:

There are lots of great suggestions of  activities to see how people work together: 

Here are ideas from some of our most popular team building challenges and activities for businesses and organisations of any size. Not sure team building with LEGO bricks is for you? Read why LEGO bricks are great for team building activities here.

5 ideas for team building with LEGO® bricks - Bricks McGee

Who’d have thought that playing with Lego could teach communication, collaboration, and teamwork?

The Lego Challenge team building activity & alternatives | MTa Learning | Experiential learning

In this edition of "What I Wish I Knew..." I go over some helpful tips for running the Lego Challenge smoothly in your classroom or corporate event. This is a FANTASTIC team building challenge that really tests the participants communication skills! I hope you enjoy!

Lego Challenge STEM Team Building - What I Wish I Knew.... - YouTube

David explores the concept of working versus playing and how to be more productive in meetings using LEGO bricks.

What the DUCK? How playing with LEGO bricks can change how you inter(act) | David Kubacki | TEDxCWRU - YouTube

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controlling ai - part two: the dangers of deep fake imagery

In a discussion earlier this year among European media people, questions were raised about information and democracy:

Will artificial intelligence replace journalists? Does it endanger democracy? How can AI be regulated without curbing the innovations it might bring for the good of all?

Jay Doubleyou: controlling ai - part one: the dangers of chatgpt

Similar questions were being asked at the time by UK media journalist Ian Burrell:

It is nearly eight years since the abuse of online personal information by data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica aided Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and spotlighted the future risks of high-volume voter manipulation. Since then, the giant social platforms have done too little to address the threat of mass misinformation, being preoccupied with recent economic headwinds that have momentarily stalled their previously inexorable profit growth.

2024 is the year that AI will show its potential to influence elections

When it comes to imagery, misinformation can have an immediate effect, as looked by by Reuters this week:

Images of former U.S. President Donald Trump smiling as security personnel surround him during the assassination attempt Saturday are digitally altered. A Threads account, opens new tab shared an image of smiling security personnel as they surround Trump. The caption said, “Why are the secret service smiling? STAGED.”

Another person shared the altered image of Trump on X and wrote, “Trump is *smiling* AFTER surviving an assassination attempt! None of this passes the smell test.”
Both images were altered.
The original photographs, opens new tab of Trump was captured by Associated Press photographer Evan Vucci and does not show the former president smiling. It shows him looking forward with a serious expression while surrounded by security personnel.

Fact Check: Images of Trump, Secret Service smiling after shooting are fake | Reuters

Journalist Ian Burrell reports on how the AI is doing this: 

"Fact-checker NewsGuard's analysis of 10 leading generative AI chatbots (including ChatGPT-4 and Microsoft's Copilot) found that they failed to provide correct information on the Trump shooting 57 percent of the time and supported numerous false narratives..."

PressReader.com - Digital Newspaper & Magazine Subscriptions

The fact-checker has a lot to offer:

NewsGuard - Transparent Reliability Ratings for News and Information Sources

For example:

How Kremlin uses false fact checks to spread disinformation

NewsGuard launches suite of AI anti-misinfo tools | Semafor

Newsguard releases Israel-Hamas fact-checking resources | Media news

Newsguard downgrades credibility scores for NYT and GB News

41 TikTok accounts use AI to mass-produce political misinformation

The anti-establishment group 'New Tolerance Campaign' doesn't like them:

NewsGuard Must Answer for Fact-Check Bias - New Tolerance Campaign

This is a real issue, though:

Photo of Kamala Harris and Jeffrey Epstein Embracing on Beach is Fake | Snopes.com

AI image misinformation has surged, Google researchers find

There is an irony, however:

AI tools help journalists assess authenticity of images in immediate aftermath of Trump shooting – GeekWire

Finally, there are other fact-checkers:

Fact Check | Reuters

Snopes.com | The definitive fact-checking site and reference source for urban legends, folklore, myths, rumors, and misinformation.

But who can we trust?

List of fact-checking websites - Wikipedia

AI tools help journalists assess authenticity of images in immediate aftermath of Trump shooting – GeekWire

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things to do with lego in the esl/efl classroom

Lego is a very popular and successful tool in the classroom - especially when working with both children and adults on their English.

And there are some excellent web resources.

This is from Emma Herrod who used to work for Lego:

LEGO Running ‘Bricktation’ - This activity works in a very similar way to the well-know ‘running dictation’ ELT activity. However, rather than a text pinned up on the wall, students refer to a picture of a LEGO model from a set of building instructions.

Writing instructions activity - Students begin by building a model together as a class. In teams, they then build their own model and write out instructions so other teams can try and replicate it. The idea here is to develop the skill of writing concise instructions and working together with other students towards a common objective.

More Than Five Things to do with LEGO® in the EFL Classroom Part 1

And:

Home Sweet Home - This lesson makes for a fun way of working with language to do with accommodation and living spaces, as the students work together to build a large model house. The model is then referred to throughout subsequent lessons and forms a focus for discussion. There are a number of instructions you can find on the internet for making LEGO houses. Personally, I love this Apple Tree House https://creator.lego.com/en-us/buildinginstructions/default.aspx.

Stop Animation Project - Why not embark on a project over the course of a few lessons or the term in which the finished product is a stop animation film made out of LEGO? There are number of videos such as the famous ‘Starwars’ and ‘Indiana Jones’ clips to inspire you at https://www.brickfilms.com/.

LEGO Cuisenaire Rods - Although I feel that The Silent Way goes against many of my communicative language principles, I cannot help but be fascinated by the use of little coloured Cuisenaire Rods and I don’t need convincing that they have their justified place in some classrooms. In my world, I use LEGO bricks to fulfil a similar function.

More Than Five Things to do with LEGO® in the EFL Classroom Part 2

And here are a few more good places to go:

Ways To Use Lego In The Classroom - Teaching Ideas

Language Through Legos | Simply Mona!

15 ways to teach English with blocks and stacking games - UsingEnglish.com

9 LEGO® Education Ideas to Use Random Building Bricks in the Classroom | Teach Starter

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