Professional development challenges Reflective practice Language awareness

Reflecting on their practice and exploring new alternatives. Keeping up and enhancing their English proficiency.

Developing themselves as leaders. Leading the teachers under their supervision to develop themselves.

For novice teachers: Lesson preparation takes long because there are so many variables to consider. For experienced teachers: Planning and teaching on auto-pilot can be boring for the pilot. The teacher may use old ideas and materials again and again.

Both novice and experienced teachers’ concerns: Repertoires and sequences of activities may be used without exploring the beliefs and assumptions about learning and teaching that govern the teacher’s choices.

Their knowledge of the underlying systems of the language that enables them to teach effectively. The need to explore the richness and complexity of language by examining features of language and studying how language works.

Leader Mentor Coach Advisor Facilitator

Develops himself/herself. Inspires others. Helps them achieve the best they can in their own terms. Builds a relationship of trust and self-development. Gets people to want to do things by appealing to values and beliefs. Facilitates change, innovation. Builds a network of professional support.

Offers support, challenge, patience and enthusiasm while he guides mentees to new levels of competence. Brings out the best in mentees so they become themselves. Discusses lessons in a non-judgemental way. Helps mentees find the origins of their actions.

Provides teachers with a framework to examine the teaching experience and work on targets for the next experience

Helps teachers look critically at their own teaching. Gives them strategies to identify their strengths and weaknesses.

Helps teachers to identify their ZPD (Zone of Proximal Development). Provides scaffolding for them to move forward and internalize new ideas, concepts and skills.

Professional behavior PlanningReviewing Selecting and/or learning Knowledge about: students, language Form and use, activities, process skills Conceptualizations of: education, teaching, learning, professionalism, language-learning, language, language policy Feelings, beliefs, attitudes, values Language knowledge proficiency and School Educational system Culture Society Mentor Courses Angi Malderez and Caroline Bodoczky, 1999

STEPSCHUNKS ASSUMPTIONS/ BELIEFS ARCHAEOLOGY T greets S/S and asks them to share one positive thing that happened to them during the weekend. Setting atmosphere. T believes this helps students relax. Learning is enhanced if S/S are relaxed. T learned this at teacher training college. T writes lesson menu on B/B. Lead-in. T believes this gives a sense of structure to S/S. They know what the teacher is doing. T learned this in a workshop she attended.

STEPSCHUNKS ASSUMPTIONS/ BELIEFS ARCHAEOLOGY T asks S/S to look at coursebook pictures and elicits vocabulary. Pre-reading. T believes this activates background knowledge and helps S/S predict content. This enhances comprehension. T learned this at teacher training college.

Read the article Buenos Aires: A City’s Power and Promise by Daniel Politi. Notice chunks of language that might be useful to talk about Argentina’s history, geography, politics. Are there facts about our past that you didn’t know? List all the opportunities/benefits that foreigners find in our country. Learn about the expatriates’ lives in Buenos Aires. Where are they from? What jobs or businesses do they have in Buenos Aires?Buenos Aires: A City’s Power and Promise

Malderez, Angi and Bodoczky, Caroline, Mentor Courses, Cambridge O’Connor, Joseph, Leading with NLP, Randall, Mick, Advising and Supporting Teachers, Cambridge Shalaway, Linda, Learning to Teach, Scholastic, Wallace, Michael, Training Foreign Language Teachers, Cambridge, Woodward, Tessa, Planning Lessons and Courses, Cambridge, 2001.

May your pursuit of professional excellence be rewarding and filled with happy times! Eleonora Salas –