What happens when every teacher matters?

Barbara Hoskins Sakamotoby barbara hoskins sakamoto

That was our question when we sat down to write the iTDi Principles more than three years ago. While teachers should matter equally, we know that in reality many teachers have been excluded from existing professional development opportunities because they can’t pay, don’t speak English well, or don’t have good Internet access.

What would happen if we tried to run International Teacher Development Institute as if all teachers mattered equally? Is it possible for a for-profit institute like iTDi to do well while still doing good? Putting this belief into practice has been a journey in equal parts challenging and rewarding.

Every teacher matters.

Think about all of the contexts where English is taught, and all of the people who are tasked with teaching English around the world. The teachers who show up at conferences and workshops, webinars and courses are easy to reach, and have a wealth of professional development choices, both free and paid. They tend to be confident English speakers who are already networking with other teachers online, they take high speed Internet for granted, and possess credit cards that can be used to pay for things online. Criteria that teachers reading this blog post may take for granted.

What does it mean to include all teachers – including those who are lack confidence in their English, may live in a part of the world where high, speed, and Internet are simply three words in the dictionary, and live with currency restrictions or no credit card?

For iTDi, it means providing excellent teacher training that isn’t difficult to understand. (Since one of our faculty includes authors also responsible for the Celta Course, A Course in English Language Teaching, and Teach English, we know that quality training and accessible English are not mutually exclusive.) It means providing a safe place for teachers (no spam!) that can be accessed from Internet cafes and computers still living in an XP world. It means making sure that teachers who need some help finding their way around online get mentored. It means looking for new ways for teachers to pay and offering scholarships when teachers are unable to pay.

While we’ve provided scholarships to hundreds of teachers since our launch in 2011, we only started keeping data about scholarship recipients for our Advanced Teaching Skills courses in 2014. Since then, we’ve awarded over 200 scholarships to teachers in more than 30 countries. We know that the average monthly income of these teachers is about $500. This amount is actually a bit skewed because some of our teachers make $1000 – $1700 a month, but live in countries with a high cost of living or currency restrictions. Seventy percent of the teachers receiving scholarships earn less than $500 a month and thirty percent earn $200 or less.

Every teacher matters.

What qualifies someone to be an English teacher? Is it completing a one-month course? Earning a college degree in TESOL? Acquiring a teaching license? Being fluent in English? Being hired by a language school? Deciding to start teaching neighborhood children?

If all teachers matter, then we need to accept that there are many paths that lead to teaching English and embrace teachers no matter how they come into the profession. The reality is that the standards for language teachers vary widely around the world, depending on the teaching context, teacher nationality, and availability of trained teachers.

What matters isn’t where you start. What matters is where you want to go in your professional development. All teachers have something to learn, and all teachers have something to share. That’s why all of our courses are social and collaborative — because we learn best when we learn together.

iTDi prices courses so that most teachers can afford to participate. However, the reality is that while $59 for an intensive course might be a bargain for teachers in many countries, it’s a challenge for the teachers who apply for one of our scholarships.

If teachers who can pay, do, then we can afford to include all teachers.

Every teacher matters.

If ongoing professional development is a kind of conversation teachers share, then more voices in the conversation means we all grow, and our profession becomes stronger. Teachers who receive mentoring become mentors. Teachers who commit to becoming better teachers also become leaders in their own schools and teacher communities. They teach other teachers what they’ve learned, attend and present at conferences, and ultimately raise the level of the language teaching profession.

If, like us, you believe that every teacher matters, and deserves an equal chance to improve, what can you do?

  1. Enroll in one of iTDi’s Advanced Teaching Skills courses, or one of our TESOL / TEFL certification programs. Every paying teacher means we can afford to include more teachers who can’t pay.
  2. Become an iTDi Patron by making a donation to our scholarship fund. 100% of all money donated goes toward including an ever-increasing number of teachers applying for scholarships.
  3. Share information about what iTDi offers, what we believe, and what we’re trying to do in order to make sure that every teacher has an equal chance to improve. Our Share the Care page includes ecards that promote our principles and other things we believe about teaching and learning, perfect for sharing in your social networks.

When every teacher matters, we all win.

Education Matters

Chuck Sandyby Chuck Sandy

The best way to change the world for the better is to provide quality education for all learners. The best way to do this is to give all teachers the opportunity to become the best teachers they can be. If we do this, we really can change the world. – iTDi Principle #9

Growing up in a small farming community with extremely limited resources, I saw first-hand how education can change lives and how those changed lives can go on to change the world. Despite having grown up in a background that many would call impoverished, my classmates and I were lucky enough to have had a handful of truly great teachers who not only took their work and their learners seriously, but who also worked tirelessly at becoming better teachers.

I didn’t know much about education back then and certainly nothing about professional development, but being in the classroom with these teachers after they’d attended workshops and seminars – which of course they told us all about – was one of the things that made me fall in love with teaching. These great teachers weren’t just teachers. They were learners, too, and as their learning changed them, that learning changed us. Now, almost forty years later I look out and see the ways that more than a few of my classmates went on to change the world.

From my small graduating class at Eden Senior High School in rural New York State came a labor organizer, an advocate for the homeless, an engineer who has worked on several world-changing technology projects, a musician who wrote some of the advertising jingles we’ve all had stuck in our head, an actor, a politician, a couple of social workers, a number of successful business people, some very innovative farmers, and more than a few teachers. Although we’ve all had different lives, what we all had in common were those very good teachers who got us started by first being the best teachers they could be. Education matters.

Recognizing this some long years ago now is what first led me to devote my life to becoming a better teacher myself and then later to founding the International Teacher Development Institute (iTDi) along with colleagues who believe as strongly as I do that the best way to change the world is by giving all teachers the opportunity to become the best teachers they can be. Since its launch in 2012, iTDi has worked with 1000s of teacher in over 100 counties and I’ve seen first-hand how that work has changed lives. I know that those changed lives will go on to change the world in ways I can now only imagine. As teachers get better at what they do, everything changes. Education matters.

This past year, we’ve had the good fortune of being introduced to an organization whose work supporting teachers exemplifies this principle, and we are proud to announce our growing collaboration with Gallery Languages and the addition of Gallery Languages’ Giovanni Rottura to our board of directors. We first collaborated with Giovanni and his organization on the iTDi / Gallery Teachers Summer Intensive which is now a collection of almost 30 archived presentation videos any teacher can view free. We’ve also provided a way for teachers to use this archive to obtain Professional Development Credit Hours, and since our relationship with Gallery Languages now allows us to reach even more teachers around the world, even more change is possible.

Although we’re now working together on a number of projects, our most visible collaboration is the newly launched GalleryTeachers.com where we aim to provide ideas, materials, and activities for every English teacher with regularly updated columns and downloadable activity sheets. It’s free to subscribe, so please do have a look.

As we increase our reach and our offerings, we increase the likelihood that the work we do will lead to even greater change in the years ahead. Still, just as it was impossible for me to know more than forty years ago where the work the good teachers I had would bring about, it’s now impossible to know where the work iTDi and Gallery Languages is doing with teachers will one day lead. What we do know for sure is that the best way to change the world for the better is to provide quality education for all learners. The best way to do this is to give all teachers the opportunity to become the best teachers they can be. If we do this, we really can change the world. Education matters.

Giving Back II

Mentors help us become better teachers. But sometimes they do even more than that, sometimes they help us become fuller and more aware people. In the second issue of the iTDi blog dedicated to the mentors in our community, Michael Griffin, Maria Bossa and Kevin Stein celebrate the teachers who have helped us to feel that what we have to say is important. The mentors in our community remind us that the act of giving is also an act of receiving, how reaching out and helping someone else enriches us all. ‘Giving Back’, a tribute to the mentors in our community.

Michael Griffin A TEACHER BY ANY OTHER NAME
Maria BossaPERSONAL DEVELOPMENT IS PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Kevin SteinTO LISTEN
iTDi-circle

A teacher by any other name

Michael Griffinby Michael Griffin

This is a post mostly about me. One teacher plays a very prominent role here but she will remain nameless. Perhaps she would prefer the anonymity anyway. She is quite humble.

I’m not even sure when or how we met. I only know it was online. I’m guessing it was in 2012. Late 2012, probably. I know iTDi was somehow involved. If I recall correctly, she took the “English for Teachers” course at some point. She now regularly takes advanced iTDi courses. I don’t actually remember any of our initial interactions. It was as though, all of a sudden, she was there and she’d been there all along. I do remember having a great impression of her from the very start even though I don’t know exactly when that was.

Although I have never met this teacher in person I have been lucky enough to hear her speak in webinars as well as video and audio recordings. In these moments, her compassion could be clearly seen and heard. Her compassion and passion are also clear in her writing. Her blog is one of the few blogs I make sure there are no other tabs or windows open on my computer before reading because I want to savor every word.

Although I have never met her face-to-face I have bonded with other teachers sharing our respect and admiration for her both on and offline. My opinion of others changes when I learn they know, like and interact with her. Just three days ago I was meeting someone in person for the first time and he mentioned how welcoming, kind, knowledgeable, and helpful she is. She is a connector, whether she is in the room or not.

Although we have never met in “real life” we talk online on Twitter and Facebook. We don’t chat all that often but in our conversations seem to pick up right where we left off before things like sleep, work, and life got in in the way. A few times a quick clarification or question on Facebook turned into an hours-long conversation. On these occasions it was easy to lose track of time because of the interesting and honest conversations we had about teaching, development and our respective contexts.

She has helped me see many things in different ways and I think she is a great model of how to communicate effectively and honestly with those we disagree with. I see her as a positive force and a non-selfish person in world where this is too rare. She has helped me to consider the reasons behind decisions made by myself and others even if the answers are not always pretty or flattering.

One of the most important things she has helped remind me of is the realities of many teachers around the world when it comes to money and time. As an example, flying off to the IATEFL or TESOL Conferences is not realistic for many teachers around the world. Similarly, having the latest fancy tools and gadgets for teaching is impossible for many teachers.  She has helped remind me of such realities. It is very easy to fall into certain bubbles and ignore much more important issues happening in the field. I appreciate her helping me see this more clearly.

In terms of teaching, her views on giving students choice and autonomy are things I consider throughout my teaching and planning. I cannot always implement as much student choice as I’d like to but it is something I keep in mind more often now. I feel more capable of finding small ways of doing so.

Rose Image for MichaelI am filled with gratitude when I think about her and all the other fantastic teachers I have met online. She is a wonderful model of passion, empathy, kindness, compassion, humility, and honesty so I sincerely thank her for that. She is also a great model of being onto others what we want others to be. I thank her for being a fellow learner, fellow traveler and fellow human.

If I were to share a private and personal message to her (publicly on this blog) I would say that there is hope and that good can still win. The world just needs more people like her sharing their light.

Personal Development is Professional Development

Maria BossaBy Maria Bossa

It is hard to describe what happens when we meet a friend for the first time because we need to write about one individual moment, deep feelings and sudden emotions, but in this case… it is very easy. I ‘met’—in the virtual sense of the word—this teacher the very last day of an online course back in 2011. I had written my final reflections about a session on using web 2.0 tools in the classroom when a stranger suddenly popped up in my messaging application and wrote that my words were the exact words she, “wanted to say but didn’t know how to express them.” Since that first exchange of messages, we have become colleagues, friends and sisters-of-the-heart, sometimes even referred to by people who know us as the ‘online twins.’ Ayat Al-Tawel is not only a teacher of English from Cairo, Egypt but might also be seen as my “serious half”.

Maria and Ayat photoAyat has been teaching English for some time and recently she has also become an Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) trainer. She has helped me a lot in my professional life because she is always willing to “jump in” on one of my crazy projects. In fact, right after that course on using Web 2.0 tools was finished, I decided that I wanted to use Skype in my classroom, and I wanted Ayat to be a part of it. The idea was that my students could interview her. I didn’t have any specific topic in mind, just to interview her as part of using a new tool and for my students to have contact with someone from so far away. Ayat and I discussed this idea and she liked it. Then, she decided to do the same with her students but in her case, she introduced the topics of ‘forests in South America’ and ‘Messi, the Argentinian football player’. Students from both classes were eager to ask questions and participate. One of my students even danced Arabian music for Ayat! Ayat and I felt there was no need to let all that energy simply disappear, so we created the Facebook group called ‘ArgentEgypt’ and for three months our students in Egypt and Argentina shared everything from birthday wishes to dreams about their futures.

When I was ready to take the next step in my professional development and wanted to reach out and share what I was doing in my classroom in a more formal setting, Ayat was there for me again. She helped me to organise my experiences into presentations for webinars. And when I was unexpectedly invited by the Secretary of Education to talk about our “ArgentEgypt” project at an Education Congress in my city, Ayat advised me on what to include in the slides; with her help, I ended up expanding my presentation to include other ways I had used information technologies in my classes and, I hope, conveyed how important ICT is to learning in general. Ayat wasn’t able to attend my presentation physically, but she was there in every word I spoke, from beginning to end. Last year I was honoured to receive a scholarship from the University of Oregon (USA) to do a professional teacher’s course there and was named “City Ambassador” by our city’s mayor. This recognition of what I have accomplished wouldn’t have been possible without Ayat.

Even though we became fast on-line friends, I only first met Ayat in person in December 2012 when I traveled to Cairo. We had finished the ArgentEgypt project and I felt such a strong connection and sense of gratitude that I went to visit Ayat’s school and her students. My trip was a bit long as I had to travel from Buenos Aires to Rome and from there to Cairo. It was nearly 24-hours of travel in total. Ayat was at the airport with her sister and when I walked through customs we immediately knew we were going to be friends forever. When we were finally standing in front of each other, she gave me the best and warmest hug two friends could ever have. And here is the thing, it was spending time with Ayat that I learned that Professional Development and Personal Development are one and the same thing. The welcoming and warmth of Ayat’s family, spending time in her home, learning about her city, all of these things were just as important to me as spending time at her school and seeing how Ayat taught. I rode a camel, I hung out with King Tutankhamen, and I climbed the pyramids! And as I grew closer to Ayat as a friend and explored and shared her world, I also grew as a person.

No matter how many kilometres apart Ayat and I may be geographically, we are always emotionally close to each other, our hearts just one small step of empathy apart. Yes, I know it is important to support other teachers. I know that we should respect and further each other professionally. I know we must help each other grow as teachers. But I also know now, thanks to Ayat’s example, how much kindness and openness can also help us grow and develop as people. As her “older crazy sister” I just want to say “thank you”. Thank you for helping me learn about myself and the world around me. Thank you for being my sister. ‘Thank you’… It’s quite simple, right? Amazing how a simple message of thanks is often enough to allow us to both give and receive so much.

[In Argentina, we celebrate “Friend’s Day” on July 20th. Though I called Ayat very early in the morning, I could not give her a gift in person. In honour of, and to celebrate our friendship, I dedicate this post to my friend and sister Ayat Al-Tawel.]