About a week ago, I posted an article about teaching children according to their ability rather than according to what year they are in at school.  In addition to the comments on the post itself, I got some favourable remarks and shoutouts on Twitter.  Given that the system is “my baby” I’m extremely conscious of rambling on for far too long about it, and so I tried to cut it down to the essentials and made the classic teaching mistake of expecting my audience to understand the finer points without further explanation.  Having worked with the system for the large part of the last decade I sometimes forget that the system is not self-explanatory.  So thank you to the people who posted and tweeted questions.  For anyone who missed the original post, you can find it and the comments here.

I’m going to start with perhaps the most fascinating question, which was put by Pandoora who asked:

does this mean my 13-year-old daughter and I shouldn’t be bothered by her having to sit next to that 16-year-old gang banger boy who keeps getting retained and can’t seem to get out of middle school? Continue reading »

(c) Sunshine on the Road, via Flickr

When I was younger, it wasn’t all that unusual to see a small kids struggling to get around on his or her big brother’s bike.  It always looked a bit strange.  It was undoubtedly both somewhat dangerous and tiring, and the kid would have always been better served by having a bike of the right size.  Obviously, not every family could afford it.  And if you travel a lot in developing countries, you will still regularly be confronted with such a sight.

Now ask yourself this…  If you decided to learn a new language and went to evening school to enrol in a course would you find the following conversation between yourself and the enrolment clerk odd?

“Hello, I’ve decided I’d like to learn Chinese.”
” That’s great!  How old are you?”
“Er… Forty-two.  Why?”
“Excellent.  We’ll put you in a Level 6 Course”
“But I’m a beginner!”
“At 42 you should be in Level 6.”
“Er…”

If you don’t find the above odd, then stop reading now – this article is not for you.  For the rest of you, ask yourself the following:  Why do we do that with foreign languages in schools? Continue reading »

(c) Wesley Fryer, via Flickr

So, I’m sitting in a train on my way to the airport to catch a flight to Istanbul. The ISTEK ELT Conference is taking place there this weekend. I’ve been looking forward to going for several weeks, but now I’m angry. The train’s on time, and I haven’t forgotten my passport, but travelling by train gives me time to make plans or brood (depending on whether the planning is finished or not). No, the reason I’m fuming mad is because of my colleagues.

Let’s go back a few days… On the last day of term the conversation in the staff room turned quite naturally to the holidays. The activities varied from doing nothing to moving house to going away somewhere – all quite normal, until I said I was going on a training course and then attending a conference in Istanbul. Actually, the reaction didn’t surprise me too much. Some people were surprised that I was going given that I was not being sponsored, others couldn’t see the point (without even asking what the conference was focused on), and a sizeable group stated flatly that they would never do such a thing in the holidays. Even the professional conference attender on the staff wasn’t prepared to give up time during his holidays for such an event. No-one expressed any interest in getting feedback after I returned, though many wanted a report from a colleague who was going to Mallorca. As I said, I wasn’t particularly surprised by this, and I got on with more important things in my life. Until this train journey. No planning to do. Time to brood… Continue reading »

(c) Michael Sarver, via Flickr

I listened to a disturbing conversation last week.  I was standing at a buffet table with two experienced teachers who I’ve known for some time were discussing the relative merits of the English curriculum in their respective states in Germany.  Quickly it broadened out into a debate as to which of the major publishers produced the most curriculum-oriented course book.  One major publisher apparently only focuses on competences, another is slavish in following the prescribed pedagogy.  Part of my job is to know what’s on the market, so the opinions on the books were interesting.  However, as the conversation went on my irritation grew and eventually I felt forced to add an opinion.  The two teachers stared at me as if I had suddenly grown another nose on my face and ignored my question completely and continued discussing which publisher taught Shakespeare better.  What had I said, that was so totally unimportant? Continue reading »

This article was originally published as a guest blog in Betty Ray’s edutopia.org blog.

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(c) trix0r, Flickr

To put it bluntly, teachers have a major image problem. Seen from the outside, teachers have excellent job security, long holidays, they aren’t accountable for their performance and then to cap it all, they are constantly complaining about their pay and conditions.

It gets worse. Although teachers may be great at presenting information, they are not usually skilled at defending themselves against adversaries in the same way that politicians, journalists and business managers are. This means the teacher is holding a really bad hand when getting involved in emotive arguments like how to reform education.

Because reform is an emotive word. If you put it together with education, you have a heady mixture. At the same time reform is an elusive thing. It’s like quality. Everyone wants it, but no-one can agree what it is. So when the #edchat discussion last Tuesday took on the issue of education reform and the role of the teacher in it, I knew it would be a dynamic discussion. Six-hundred ninety-one posts in an hour from 83 different contributors around the world confirmed my expectations. Continue reading »