What Does It Take

What does it take to get people geared towards teaching English with less use of the massive photo copies so prevalent in most programs? Most Program Managers believe that the more photo copies you make the better teacher you are. Enlighten Program Managers are  hard to come by.

The place where I am currently employed has gotten us this great copy machine to use for our needs. This is wonderful when we have paper and something that actually needs to be copied. It does, however encourage people to make good use of the machine so they can walk around with those copies to indicate what a great teacher they are. the good thing about copies is you get to give them to the students to fill in the blanks or whatever while you rest and don't actually have to teach. Talk about cruise along.

We have in a location somewhere over 300 iPads sitting there screaming to be used. They were given out to one class with instructions to use them to help with the teaching. That's it. No program, no plan, nothing.

I came up with a plan that was cost effective (Free) and would give the teachers the needed knowledge to effectively use the iPads with the classes. You go to a site Sophia.org and there they have three courses  in professional Development which would fit the bill and solve the problem we have. Three courses specifically would be

• iPads in Teaching
• Virtual Classrooms
• Using Google Docs

You do the four modules and then show mastery by putting up a tutorial for the class; using the information learned. After you show mastery then you get the Certificate. It's all free. You can't get more cost effective than that.

That's only part of the problem solved. The way they have the pacing schedule the teachers don't have time to do anymore in the class than what has been prescribed.  It seems the only option is to put something up that the students have to do outside of school. It doesn't take place during the learning day so it has to be completely voluntary. VOLUNTARY.... there goes that idea. some will and some won't but at least the iPads will be getting used and their purchase will not have gone in vain.

I have been away from the blog for a few years and I think it's high time to get back into the realities of the Environment and how it relates to English.  I originally started the blog to engage  teachers with the kinds of activities they could use in class that would eliminate the use of massive mindless photocopies. What I found out was that most teachers just don't give a shit. Or at least they don't profess to use online teaching as a way to avoid killing trees. 

Most are forced into online teaching. They receive their certificate or whatever the receive that allows them to call themselves ESL teachers and they basically make no effort at keeping up with the rest of the world that is passing them by.  

How do teachers get to the point that they can get excited about e-Learning or M-Learning without being pushed into it.

In my opinion, and they are like noses....everybody has one, We can get to that point by looking at Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. If they excited about their work, teachers can progress up the scale and eventually they will get to the point where they can get really excited about using teaching techniques that don't require loads of paper. 

Getting there is a very long uphill battle if the employer is not tuned in to helping their teachers develop and progress not only as teachers but humans also.