Talks & Workshops
Here are some of the talks, workshops and presentations that I deliver.
For a full list, please email me at the address below.
Engaging the teens of 2024: Generation Z and beyond
“Motivation is no longer the primary key for successful learning” (Mercer, 2019). Even the most motivated student can get distracted in these difficult times, and we can hardly blame them. Not only is the world around our learners an ever more challenging place to live, but since life online became the new normal, what chance do we stand as teachers, trying to hold their attention?
The answer may lie in developing what have been termed as teens’ Super Skills (Kivunja, 2015), which are “the qualities that students need to possess in the 21st century for success in college, careers and citizenship” (Saxena, 2015). This requires no change to the syllabus or indeed the lesson plan, but adjustments to our class delivery to significantly increase our students’ engagement. In this workshop we both define and explore activities that foster the Super Skills, to enhance our enjoyment of teaching and our students’ enthusiasm.
Learner Training or Lion Taming? Comprehensive and Cohesive Classroom Management.
“Classroom management is the dimension of teachers’ work that is the most challenging, and the area of training that many teachers feel is lacking.” (Egeberg, McConney & Price, 2020)
How many of us have felt our pedagogical practice evaporate when faced with a class of students? Despite our teacher training, it sometimes feels as though there was nothing that really prepared us for what we face in schools and institutes every day: the challenge of managing a classroom.
How can teachers make sure their students are both engaged and behaving themselves, especially when they have a syllabus to get through?
In this session, we will look at how combining two aspects of classroom management, collaboration and control, can make every lesson a success for both teachers and their younger learners.
The whole is greater than the sum of its parts: cultivating intercultural learning.
Language is forged in the furnace of culture: its symbols representing the concepts, beliefs, shared history and experiences of a people, nation or state. How then, can we claim to be language teachers without affording our students the opportunity to examine not only their own culture, but those of other peoples?
In this session, we will take some steps towards defining the concept of intercultural learning and then explore its generative benefits for the development of our students’ language learning and their development as citizens of the world. Such an exploration is as fascinating as it is essential, for “if language is seen as social practice, culture becomes the very core of language teaching” (Kramsch, 1993).
The Story of My Life: Storytelling as Transformational Teaching
How often have you had to tell your students to stop talking in class? And how powerful and productive would it be if you could harness that innate human need to talk about life for teaching purposes?
We live “surrounded by [our] own stories” (Sartre, 1964) and we can tap into this to turn our classroom into an enthralling learning community.
Employing strategies from storytelling and Transformational Teaching (Slavich, 2005), we will explore generative activities for exponentially enhancing our students’ language learning.