[kimyushin]

Hi I am an ESL Conversation Teacher in the Philippines. I teach Koreans. Our classes are done one-on-one. We are similar to hagwons in Korea; the only difference is the large chunk of our classes are done one-on-one; that's because there are hardly any one-on-one classes in Korea. Students have very few chances to speak in English in large group classes in Korea. When we say large we are talking about 10 to 15 students per class; other classes are larger. If there are any one-on-one sessions, they are expensive.

Not only that, some Korean EFL Teachers speak both Korean and English in class which some parents and students find not helpful to learn another language. Given my teaching context, I want to explain the challenge I am facing now.

I have taught in our Academy for One year and ten months; I am the senior Conversation teacher here; the Korean principal is asking me to train our conversation teachers; however, I do not know how to train other teachers.

The principal wants me to pass on the effective methods, activities and other know-how that I learned to our teachers so that they can be effective as well. Here are the questions that I need help about:

1. What is the first step to take when training other teachers? Half of the teachers are older than me. I already did a short group interview of some of our teachers; i wanted to know what their expectations are from the training; Most of them said they want to see how things are done in a conversation class; they want to see demos; and they also want to do demos during the training themselves. These two things I do not know how to do; my second problem is related this.


2. Most of the teaching insights I learned and applied I got from first hand experience; What I mean is, I experienced a problem in class, then I researched the internet for solutions and I also formulated my own solutions; after doing research I applied them in class; I studied the failures and successes of my experiments. I have done this for quite some time and I was able to stack up on practical knowledge to handle various problems. How can I teach this kind of problem-solving mindset to our teachers? They will also be teaching one-on-one classes; perhaps they will encounter similar problems.

My point is, I can do a lecture on what and how they must do things; but somehow I am skeptical about this; lectures are sometimes too theoretical: students only get information but not the perspective and attitude I want them to have. I want our teachers to discover their unique teaching styles; I don't want them parroting what I do simply because I told them to do it or because it was effective for me, ergo, it will also be effective for them. I want them to be their own problem-solver.

3. In relation to challenge number one and two, I am thinking of doing a demo in class; for instance one of the useful practices I have done is to ask as for student input after doing an activitiy; I want to do a mock class by assigning one teacher to be a Korean student while another teacher will pretend to be a Conversation teacher. They will have to demonstrate the principles they learned in class; as they do the demo, I and their classmates will evaluate their performance.

One drawback I can see here is that the teacher might have a difficult time imagining the situation and thus negatively affect the quality of the demo. They may not be able to apply the principles quite well since they are not in the real environment; as a solution I was thinking of inviting one of our Korean students to help us out; but I still need permission from our principal.

3. I am thinking of dividing the training into two parts: It will be twice a week; one hour per training. First training day will be about theories, discussions and principles; while the second training day will be all demo and observations. I am thinking of doing it on a Monday and Wednesday schedule after work. What do you think of this training schedule set-up?

4. The training will run for the whole month of March. After that, I do not know how to track whether the training was effective or not. I myself cannot observe the classes of our teachers since I will be teaching as well. The principal can do this so I was thinking of giving her a checklist which she must use as she observes the teachers who attended the training. I do not know if this will be effective or not. What I am getting at is, how do I do a follow up after the training?

4. Do you know of any website in the internet that offer materials on training teachers?

I am a new teacher I myself am learning still, I don't feel qualified to teach other teachers; but I also believe that what I have learned other teachers can also put to good use. I hope our veteran teachers here in ESLHQ can help out

Thank you very much in advance and I really appreciate all the help you can give