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Featured Session - International Conference 2015
Creative Teaching for 21st Century Learners
There’s a lot of talk these days about including 21st century skills in language classes. What are these skills, and do they have any place in a language class where teachers have limited contact time, and the priority is, still, to teach English? In our workshop, you’ll learn teaching techniques to help your learners become strong English users and also critical and creative thinkers. By making every moment of class time count, you can help your students succeed – on exams and in future jobs. You can build both the traditional four skills (speaking, listening, reading, and writing) and the 21st century 4Cs (communication, collaboration, creativity, and critical thinking) in every class.
The secret is building a strong English foundation, so that you can spend most of your class time using language to develop the more advanced (and more fun!) integrated skills in student-generated projects. We’ll explore simple teaching techniques to do this and look at actual student projects. You’ll have a chance to try out techniques and activities, so come prepared to participate.
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Invited Second Session
The Lives of English Language Teachers
Inspired by narrative research done by Huberman and Grounaur in their landmark book The Lives of Teachers as well as the framework provided in Day and Gu’s The New Lives of Teachers, Barbara, Chuck Sandy, Ann Loseva, and their colleagues at the International Teacher Development Institute (iTDi) have used a variety of media to conduct narrative interviews with both native and non-native English language teachers from a variety of backgrounds and contexts around the world. In this ongoing research, the focus has been on examining how beginning and experienced teachers view the work they do, the reasons why they do it, how they stay motivated to continue doing it while facing a range of both professional and personal challenges, and how their personal and professional identities change over time. From the particulars shared by individual teachers in their interviews, commonalities have appeared across culture and context. These common universal challenges faced by all educators no matter what their background or context include achieving a satisfactory work/life balance, gaining the respect of colleagues, finding a place within the international teaching community, and continuing to develop professionally in order to remain fulfilled in their work. This workshop will provide an overview of this ongoing research, share highlights from the interviews, and work with participants to draw out universals from the offered narratives. Participants will then be asked to share their own stories and use the framework provided to locate their own place in the global community of educators.
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Speaker Bio-Sketch
Barbara Hoskins Sakamoto has taught English and ESL in the US, and EFL in Japan for more than 25 years. She earned her BA from Western Oregon University and her Masters in TESOL from Northern Arizona University. She has conducted face-to-face teacher training workshops throughout Asia, the U.S., and Latin America, and is a popular online workshop presenter as well. Barbara is co-author of Let's Go (Oxford University Press), one of the world’s best-selling coursebook series for children learning English, and an online course, English for Teachers (iTDi.pro). Currently, Barbara is on the faculty of International Teacher Development Institute, where she also serves as one of the institute’s directors. Barbara maintains an award-winning blog, Teaching Village, is working on developing a new blog with her Let’s Go co-authors called Teaching Children English, and is active in various online social media networks.
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Introductory Video by Barbara Hoskins Sakamoto
https://youtu.be/N3uvJJSBvVU
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Speaker Online Materials
Website:
http://barbarahoskins.org
Blog:
http://www.teachingvillage.org/
Blog:
http://teachingchildrenenglish.com/
Three-Question Interview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkNO-Vgh0vo
Barbara Hoskins Sakamoto’s participation in the 2015 Korea TESOL International Conference and English Expo is supported in part by IATEFL’s Young Learners & Teenagers Special Interest Group (IATEFL YLT SIG).
See the full list of Major Speakers at the KOTESOL International Conference and English Expo at http://koreatesol.org/ic2015/MajorSpeakers
