TESSA WOODWARD, a teacher, teacher trainer/educator, and the professional development coordinator at Hilderstone College in Broadstairs, England, was the chosen speaker for the Opening Plenary session this year. Her talk entitled "The professional life cycles of teachers" took us through the various cycles of teaching using a framework which according to her, was collated from several research sources. She helped us think about our several needs and concerns at different points in our careers. A reflective session but nonetheless sprinkled with a lot of humourous examples. A very pleasant session.
After a 10 minute break it was time to meet an ELT guru--Alan Maley. Mr Maley has been involved in ELT for over 40 years and is the authosr of over 30 books and numerous articles.His session "Reculer pour mieux sauter: lessons from the past" showed us in a most entertaining way how techinques from the past such as ditations, rote memorization, repetition,rote learing and the like does not need to be boring and does need need to be discarded. He suggests ways of making them still useful in the classroom in fun and creative ways.
The workshops in the afternoon were very useful, especially for young learner classes. But I will come back to them tomorrow.
Have got to get up early tomorrow for another full day of sessions.
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