Posts

Teacher, do you remember why you love your job?
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I believe we all know this feeling of discouragement, with more and more administrative duties, students requiring more individual care and parents who are becoming more and more demanding.
What I want to write about is a short list of things that may help you smile, lift up your chin and remember that we matter, teachers matter, that regardless of what people claim, we do change the world. And we should never, ever, stop believing that.

Dear teacher, vulnerability is not weakness
Imagine an educational system where it's OK for teachers to openly admit their issues and share them with colleagues in atmosphere of mutual understanding. Imagine teachers carrying this attitude to the classroom and teaching it by showing - making the students believe that it's OK to feel insecure, that everyone has issues once in a while and that there are people who are willing to help instead of judging.

Role-Playing Teaching (Part 10:Why RPGs Rock in the Classroom)
I've just realised I didn't write anything about why RPGs are so cool when it comes to teaching! So here we are, a list of seven main reasons you should take your class into one of the Never-Never worlds.

M-education for beginners
Mobile education, also called m-learning, is perceived by some as a kind of e-learning, yet it can be much more than that. By using smartphones in the class, and allowing – or even encouraging – my students to do the same, I bring some real context to the artificial environment of a classroom. No longer a forbidden fruit, smartphones can be useful, entertaining and... motivating!

5 ways to shine at your speaking test
There's always one part of testing English that you hate. Some hate writing, others listening (aye, that would be me), but somehow it's speaking that seems to cause lots of worries. To tell you the truth, I haven't had problems with speaking ever since I came up with some simple steps. I can't claim you'll excel at speaking tests after following my ideas, but I do encourage you to give them a go - maybe they'll work out for you just as they did for me!

6 Useful Apps for Academic IELTS Prep
I want to present my top 6 apps that will help students practise at home and prepare for the test - links will direct you to Google Play Store where you'll be able to download the app. You may also find most of them in the Apple Store as well.

Tell them what we're doing! (guest note by Ewa Torebko)
I met Ewa last August during workshop where she shared her way of lesson planning and sharing it with her students. I found the idea just brilliant, so I asked her to write a guest post for my blog, so that you have the opportunity to learn from the master herself.

5 things I should've been told when I was a rookie teacher
Being a DoS means also recruiting new teachers, and then training them to meet up the standards of our school - and this inspires me to share 5 things someone should've told me when I started teaching years ago.
Someone should have - but I had no DoS, and even though teaching runs in my blood, there are some things I had to discover by myself:

Can fake identity be useful for teachers?
Today I'm going to show you something you might not have thought of using, and which proves that a teacher role for today is almost a secret agent!

7 reasons for going to teachers' conventions
I spent the last weekend in Warsaw where edunation ladies had organised an event for Directors of Studies and proper teachers. It was the first event of its kind and it reminded me a lot of fantasy fans' conventions I used to coordinate *sniff*. Good times...
