30 abr 2019

by | in Career, Reflections about Education

The educational field has been suffering attacks from all parts of society, in Brazil and around the world - differences do apply. This post is a reflection about the courage needed to make significant changes to the current scenario - that of turmoil where teachers, parents, students, the society seem to be taking to each other, but running around in multiple directions, either following trends and assumptions or neglecting to look at the big picture from each other's perspectives. The first point I would like to make is that...

27 abr 2019

by | in Bilingual Education, Career, Reflections about Education, Teacher Development

It often strikes me when there is a very emotional talk about bilingual education here in Brazil and we tend to criticise what we have been doing here compared to what is being done elsewhere in the world. My opinion is clear: adopting an international bilingual education model "as is" here in Brazil is not scalable and also not effective. That being said, it is obvious that international schools and bilingual schools that adopt some sort of international curriculum can and are very succesful most of the times...

20 abr 2019

by | in Classroom Experiences, Reflections about Education

The last month of March has been significantly special for me. The month of my birth, filled with excitement I was carrying with me, conducting a special project to celebrate International Women's Day. Me and other two partners invited ten women from the ELT community and we asked other 9 (my partners included) to write articles talking about their lives. Those posts were compiled and a magazine was born. The use of this magazine to engage my students is the topic of this post. Teaching teenagers in advanced levels brings some...

15 abr 2019

by | in Classroom Experiences, Reflections about Education, Skills

What is your passion when it comes to teaching EFL? Is it one of the four skills [listening, speaking, reading or writing]? One of the four systems [pronunciation, lexis, grammar or discourse]? Teaching YLs or teens? Methodology, perhaps? Teacher training? - Hard to pick one, right? Well, I'll do it anyways! I'll start with Listening - why is it one of my many passions? Because of the challenge it presents teachers with: we cannot enter our learners' ears to check what they are actually understanding. For this reason, I'm starting a...

10 abr 2019

by | in Classroom Experiences, Educational Technology, Reflections about Education

Recently the school where I work has implemented Google Classroom for most of the groups, in order to promote a broader and more consistent interaction with learners, as well as make communications between students and teacher faster and more effective. As a tech enthusiast myself, I celebrated the achievement along with my peers at the branch, specially because we knew the impact this would have on the students’ tangibilization of progress. Mind you, I have the utmost respect for students who are able to keep their studies organized...

09 abr 2019

by | in Classroom Experiences, Inclusive Teaching, Reflections about Education

Most of us cannot watch a film or an episode of our favourite series without trying to identify scenes that could be used in our lessons, right? Even if we just want to Netflix and chill, it just seems to be hardwired in our brains. In this post, I’ll take a look at some of my favourite quotes from some of my favourite films and TV series, to check how they apply to the English teaching context. “You know nothing, Jon Snow” (Ygritte, Game of Thrones) No matter how much...

06 abr 2019

by | in Career, Reflections about Education, Teacher Development

Have you ever heard of a continuous improvement cycle called the PDCA cycle? I am sure most of you who have already studied a little bit of business management have certainly come across this acronym before. But for those of you who haven’t studied any business theories, PDCA is an acronym that stands for Plan-Do-Check-Act. These are the four stages of this continuous improvement cycle that can be applied in business and in our personal lives as well. But what does this cycle have to do with teaching? Well,...

04 abr 2019

by | in Reflections about Education

This is, in fact, my first experience at an IATEFL event. I have been to BRAZ-TESOL and BRELT events, however, the IATEFL is quite different. You see names from all over the world, talking about their teaching experiences in Japan, in Nigeria, Uganda, etc and the verdict is all the same: we need to improve the teachers’ training so the students' experience gets better. You get to socialise, take pictures, post them on Instagram. You get to write about the event for blogs. There are so many things to...

30 mar 2019

by | in Career, Reflections about Education

One of the current buzz words in education is collaboration. From kindergarten to doctorate learners, many teachers claim to develop collaboration with their groups. I have recently discussed the matter with a group of teachers working in different contexts (language institutes, primary school, undergraduate courses) and the understanding of the concept of collaboration seems blurred at times, especially when taken as a synonym to work together. In our classrooms, many of us are used to asking learners to work in pairs, in groups, to compare answers, to solve a puzzle....

21 mar 2019

by | in ELT Management, Language Acquisition, Reflections about Education

A challenge teachers frequently face is reducing the amount of L1 used by their students in class. For obvious reasons, we all want our learners to take the most of our lessons. They also like to feel challenged and to leave the room (or wherever you teach them) feeling that they have spent an hour or so only speaking English. In addition, all of us teachers tend to believe that every minute of communication in the target language is worth the effort. These arguments make complete sense, but...