As school terms worldwide start to wind down, now is the perfect time to relax, reflect, and reboot as the holidays approach. The break provides a prime opportunity to reflect on all the experiences from the past school year and continue to learn, grow, and plan for the year ahead. In this blog post, Andrea Tolve and Allen Davenport look at some professional development tips and advice which may help with this.
1. Put yourself first!
Any professional learning or development needs to happen when you are ready. If you need to, wait until you feel rested, grounded, and motivated. At the end of the school year, it’s normal to feel exhausted and drained, so perhaps take some time away from teaching and tend to the personal things you may have neglected, including your family, friends, and your own well-being. Do something that makes you happy – read, go to a spa, go to the gym, meditate, take yourself out to a nice restaurant, or even teach in a different context if you think you might enjoy it. Breathe in the fresh air, enjoy the sun, and go with the flow. Take a break from your school, but don’t take a break from yourself or your needs and development.
2. Review your professional development
When you are ready, take time to review how you have developed professionally over the past couple of years. Language teaching has evolved so much over the last decade in areas such as technology, approaches and second language acquisition, that it can be challenging to decide in which areas we would like to grow. Try asking yourself these questions:
- What areas of teaching are you most experienced in?
- What are three or four areas of teaching you would like to become more familiar with?
- What have been the most critical learning opportunities in your career so far?
Then, using the Cambridge English Teaching Framework, you can identify areas that may not be on your radar. It’s your chance to investigate and find out where you are and where you want to go.
3. Reflect on how you’ve changed as a teacher
Change doesn’t happen overnight and doesn’t only mean doing something different. It also means examining and possibly shifting our awareness and beliefs about teaching. To plan forward, it can help to think back to when you started teaching. Think about any changes of action, changes of mind you have made, and why. Then, try to identify changes you might like to make in the future. You can use the list below of some aspects of teaching by asking the questions: Can you give an example of change related to any of these aspects of teaching? How have the changes affected your teaching practice?
- Your role in the classroom
- How you develop lesson plans
- The teaching style(s) you use
- The relationship between grammar and vocabulary in language learning
- How learners can make their learning more effective
- Error correction and feedback
- Formative and summative assessment
Look at old lesson plans to help guide you and list things you hope you carry over from next year. Professional learning and development is not about fixing the bad; it’s about improving, growing, developing, and learning.
Visualise your ideal “teacher self”
To plan your route effectively, it is essential to have a clear image of your destination and the teacher you want to be in the near future. Take time to think about your “ideal professional self” in five years:
- Training new teachers
- Running your own language centre
- Writing materials for primary schools
- Presenting at a conference
- Organising a reading group at your school
- Engaging in education-related social media platforms
- Getting another teacher qualification (such as a Cambridge Delta or master’s degree)
5. Develop your plan
Once you know where you are and where you want to go, it’s time to plan your route. What steps will you need to take to achieve your goal? Try to make your plan SMART – by making sure your goals are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound.
6. Read
Webinars are excellent, but they don’t tend to go very deep into a topic. Now is the ideal chance to dive deeper into one of the areas you identified as of interest. Whether you want to read something theoretical or practical, there is something for everyone. If you don’t know where to begin, we would suggest looking at some of the Cambridge Handbook for Language Teachers Pocket editions for a start. These are compact books written by established experts who have a passion for their topics.
7. Examine your social networks
Update your CV and/or LinkedIn page, find a group of local or international teachers that you can share ideas and experiences with. Follow a blogger and further build up the support network that will carry you through the following year.
Whatever you choose to do over the holiday, we hope you get the much-deserved rest and recharge that you need to carry you through the following term and beyond. For further information on professional learning and development with Cambridge, visit our web pages.
Ref 1. Jack C Richards, ’50 Tips for Teacher Development‘
For back to school preparations, check out Dan Vincent’s post, ‘Back to school with a bang‘.