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Developing as a Teacher

This series of articles from the British Council aims to help you think about your teaching and bring new ideas and activities into your classroom. The series covers topics including homework， working with large classes and fnding resources. Today we look at developing as a teacher.

Read these comments from teachers. Do you agree？

Yolanda， Mexico

Rashid， Pakistan

What can we do to develop professionally？ Here are some ideas.

■ Talk to other teachers. The staff room is a great resource—it's full of teachers with ideas that you can borrow to try with your classes.

■ Keep a teaching diary. After each lesson makes notes on what you learned about your students，yourself， teaching， and the English language. List simple personal goals such as trying group or pair work.

■ Read about your profession in teaching journals， books， online articles， blogs.

■ Try a blind observation. This is good if you don't want someone to watch your class at frst or if it's diffcult to fnd a time when someone can watch you teach. The teacher tells the “observer” （a colleague）about the lesson she is going to teach and describe one or two areas that she wants to improve， for example instructions. She then teaches the lesson （without the “observer”）. After the lesson， the two colleagues have feedback， paying particular attention to those one or two areas.

■ Try team teaching. Plan and teach a lesson with another teacher. Decide who is going to teach which parts of the class. This is a great way to learn about different ways of teaching from each other.

■ Give a session/workshop at your school. Choose a topic that interests you such as creating resources. Do some research and plan what you want to say to your colleagues. Give teachers ideas for activities to use in class.

■ Start a professional community with colleagues. You can meet （in person or online） to exchange teaching tips， share resources， compare experiences， work on projects together， for example， improving English. The community can be just two people or as big as you like.

■ Think about professional training. You could learn to be a teacher trainer or an online tutor. Perhaps your school can help pay for training courses. Some online courses are free！

Be open to trying new ideas and look for ways to learn more about your profession. Developing professionally can make your job more interesting and improve your teaching.

What do you think？

Osman from Turkey writes:

Do you know what a PLN is？ It means Personal Learning Network. A PLN is a group of people， any people， that can help you to develop and learn.

Many people nowadays associate PLN with the connections made online with other teachers for example， through blogging， Twitter and Facebook.

However， we sometimes forget the most important people in our PLN—the people we work with every day！ They know the context we work in and they can be the most useful source of advice and support.

A classroom activity—learner diaries

Help students to think about their learning and provide information on their progress. They can also help the teacher to see what activities work well and not so well in class.

■ Students can use the back of their notebooks as a diary. Or fold a sheet of paper into a z-shape to make a six-page diary.

■ At the end of each class give the students 5 minutes to complete sentences in their diaries， for example:

■ Check the diaries as students are writing or collect them to read from time to time. Write comments if you like.

■ With a large class， correction may be impractical but give students help with writing if needed.

Glossary

A teaching diary is a record a teacher keeps of his/her classes—what worked well and what didn't and notes about classes.

A lesson observation is where one teacher watches another's lesson to give feedback and advice to help the teacher develop.

A blind observation is one type of observation.

Team teaching is when there are two teachers in the classroom teaching a lesson together.

A professional community is an organisation of teachers that lets them exchange information and ideas.

Think about

■ Write a list of three ways that you want to develop as a teacher:

1…………………………………………□

2…………………………………………□

3…………………………………………□

■ Tick the boxes as you do them！