Job Discussion Forums

[Czexpat]

While I like to think I'm quite a good teacher and flatter myself that most of my students agree, I know that there are thousands of things I could learn.

However, I find myself reluctant to attend seminars as part of my professional development as I have often found them to be a waste of time and run by enthusiastic bores.

One that I was urged to attend springs to mind. It was titled �Who puts the lights on� and was by some sort of Richard Dawkins lookalike who started by showing how cool he was because he left a school after being asked to wear a tie and not jeans. Both of those were no-nos so he resigned within a week.

He then went on to the main subject of the seminar (at least I don't think that the topic was supposed to be �Me and how great I am�), which demonstrated how student-centred he was, empowering students by letting them not only write on the board but clean it as well.

He ended with a series of questions, having made the classic mistake of depending on the reaction he hoped for.

"Who issues the handouts? The Teacher!
Could the student? Yes!"

He had about eight of these, getting a less enthusiastic response with each one until the big finish:

�Who turns the lights on? (Silence)
Could the student? (Muffled) yes."

It is because of people like him and such seminars that I hesitate to attend any. I have no doubt that some would be useful but I spend a lot of time teaching and preparing so don't enjoy setting aside afternoons for right-on claptrap or �amazing� techniques for the consumption of a lot of people with nothing better to do that day.

Another I attended was on writing. All very well and nice but everything contained in the hour session could have been communicated in about 250 printed words. (It also had the failing of being sort of suitable for teachers but not for people whose educational background hasn't fostered a vivid imagination.)

So are seminars worthwhile at all? Who are they really for � the teachers, their students or the person taking centre stage?

And if they are sometimes worth going to, how can you judge them individually without wasting four or five hours of your life?

[spiral78]

I have experience on both ends of this (preparing and delivery of workshops/seminars and attending). I prefer workshops - if they are properly done - because the attendees actually have real hands-on input into the thing.

But overall, if I'm going to spend valuable time as an attendee, I want to know something about the focus(es) and who's going to deliver the thing. Ideally, it will be on a topic that's actually relevant and/or interesting to me and given by a person whose qualifications I respect.

I guess it's a crap-shoot to some degree even so, though - I've attended some duds on interesting/useful topics given by people with great qualifications .

[BadBeagleBad]

I have found seminars that are closely focused like "Using Magaine Cut Outs in Class" or "Let's Work on Pronunciation" to be more valuable than those than are vague. The one you mentioned sounds horrible, I probably would have walked out. Even though the one on magazine cut outs sounds like it would be for beginning teachers, I got some great ideas from it. Some were repeats, yes, but I did get a refresher on old ideas, and quite a few new ones. So, yeah, it's a mixed bag. I have presented a few workshops myself, and I tend to do ones that are more concrete as in, if you want to do more of this in your class, this is a good workshop. The two most recent ones I did were ways to use reading in class, and ways to get students to read more. And valuable time fillers, things you can do if you run out of material, or want a warm up, but that are still a valuable use of your time rather than just a tie filler. The second one, especially, was very well received.

[johntpartee]

[Glenski]

Some are good, some are great, some are poorly done.

I guess it depends on where one is, and what organization puts on the conference where many seminars/presentations are held (or even just one talk in some cases). If you feel you have been burned by one organization's presentations, I would suggest looking into others. They are not all the same.

Improving one's repertoire of teaching strategies or even just one's knowledge of SLA is important if you want to become a better teacher. Keep looking, I say.

[tttompatz]

I agree with Spiral. Having been on both sides of the coin (presenter and attendee) at both workshops and seminars I would say that some of them (the recent ones put on by Cambridge publishing come quickly to mind) are a boring waste of a day.

Others, the most recent by Oxford press, asia education leaders forum by Worlddidac or the workshops put on by St. John's University and the annual conferences like the KOTESOL conference have certainly been worthwhile for both content and networking.

I think the key is to look at what is being presented, who the presenters are, duration and format of the seminar (usually indicated on the pretty brochure that you got in the mail) and breakout workshops if any.

IF they are "free" workshops then look at the sponsor - tanstaafl. They are selling something and that is not a bad thing. The last Oxford publishing seminar was being used to promote their new "everybody up" series of primary ELT books.

Their series of one day seminars were great because they were broken down into 30 minute segments with different presenters each of whom were demonstrating different activities for use in the classroom. It was active, exciting, engaging, entertaining and educational.

.

[spiral78]

[LongShiKong]

[hippocampus]

Seminars are always a waste of time. The only thing that has ever worked for me teaching is making it up as I go along, and going with the flow.

[Christian St.Bacon]

Wow... you must be so 'cool' ............

Shukran very much

[fluffyhamster]

You haven't lived (and died and gone to hell) until you've been to some JET-related borefests. It seemed something like 99% of the JET AET intake thought wordsearches and similar pap was cutting-edge communicative dynamite. Same sort of thing with most of the dispatch AET "training" too.

[timothypfox]

Back in the day.... GEOS seminars in Japan included about 10 minutes of classroom techniques and 3 hours to increase sales of textbooks, courses, and homestays to students....

[LongShiKong]

[fluffyhamster]

Those who want to read what we previously discussed can check out those threads of yours, LSK. The JET programme barely qualifies as ELT IMHO. As for old school and feeling ignored, that can be the case wherever one teaches! The thing of course is to not let it affect one too much as one gets on with trying to teach as well as one possibly can under whatever circumstances.

[LongShiKong]