This post was originally written in 2009 on this blog which was very very new and had very few readers.

I have updated it with two videos of a Pecha Kucha which was inspired by it and you will find them at the end of the post. Both post & original talk and PK’s are spoof, delivered tongue in cheek and I particularly enjoyed doing them. I hope you will find some use for them. 

This short post includes my notes from a presentation I did some years ago at a  conference for Foreign Language School Owners in Greece where I was specifically asked to present a workshop on good classroom management.

At that time, I had been training a group of  directors of studies and had used  Gilbert’s (1978) excellent “Behavior Model for Creating Incompetence” . You will find this on page 87.

This inspired me to use Gilbert’s model, in some cases with phrases lifted right off his table (p.87) and in many cases, adding my own ideas to categories of teacher behaviours typically associated with good classroom management.

The idea generated this worksheet. The participants were, at some point during my workshop, involved in commenting on the statements below and, of course, turning them into positive, empowering teacher behaviours.

Handout given to participants:

Rapport –  classroom atmosphere

• Scowl and frown as often as possible – this should make you look serious and busy
• Never smile or show warmth – familiarity breeds discontempt
• Encouraging smiles are for young classes – adult classes don’t need such nonsense
• Avoid jokes and humour – the classroom is a place for work
• Create an atmosphere of high anxiety
• Threaten students with spot tests and low performance ratings as often as you can

 Setting up activities: guidelines to students

• Make your guidelines as confusing as you can
• Never check to see whether your students have understood your instructions
• Don’t bother to help or support students or groups who are lost
• Avoid explaining the purposes of activities – you were not meant to give your students free teacher training!!
• Give them as little guidance as possible and only if pushed against the wall
• Never show them how to perform well
• Hide what is expected of your students as much as possible
• Never tell them what you expect them to do in case they might get smart

Student Groupings

• Don’t mix or match groups according to levels of ability or personality
• Make sure the loudest, most domineering students are working with the shyest ones
• Never allocate tasks in group work – your students should already know how to work in a team

Training your learners

• Leave training to chance – you are there only to explain grammar & vocabulary
• Your students should already know how to participate in class activities – so they are OK
• If you decide – against all good judgement – to do some learner training, make it unnecessarily difficult
• In that case, also make training irrelevant to your students’ needs and objectives
• Never give your students choice – this means you might have to do more work
• Design activities and materials without ever consulting with your learners
• Schedule difficult activities for times when your learners are not at their sharpest
• Avoid using activities that your learners could find motivating or pleasant

Teacher’s Position and Movement

• Always remain seated behind your desk – learners must know where to find you
• When you do move, pounce! This should keep them on their toes…
• When the students are working in groups, butt in and participate
• In fact, that is an excellent time to tell them some choice episodes from you personal life

Eye Contact & Attention Spread

• Avoid looking at all the students; too much eye contact breeds familiarity
• You should only look at your favourite students – ignore everyone else
• When a student is talking, do something useful, e.g. write on the board
• Always ask your best students – ignore the rest
• Ask your weaker students questions you know they could never answer
• When a weaker student is talking, remember to glare and show disapproval

Your Language  & Using your Voice

• Treat your learners as if they were five year olds – talk to them simply and very loudly
• Call them ‘children’ as often as possible – establish your authority
• Being polite is not in your job description – you need to assert yourself over them
• Avoid using simple language everyone can understand – show off your knowledge of terminology
• The more abstruse and vague you are, the more respect you will inspire

Giving Students Feedback

• Give your students misleading information about their overall performance
• Never let your students know how well they are performing
• If anyone makes a mistake, do not neglect to comment on their low IQ
• Name students who made serious mistakes and laugh at them to motivate them to study
• Correct everything – preferably while a student is talking, for a lasting effect
• Never correct any of your favourite students – praise them warmly instead
• Make sure that poor performers get the same marks as good performers
• See to it that good performance gets punished in some way

©Marisa Constantinides – CELT Athens – 2000

Pecha Kucha Inspired by this Handout

A Pecha Kucha delivered at the 2nd ISTEK International Conference in 2011. Much of what is in this PK first originated in the handout above. This one was done in front of a live audience.

The same PK delivered online during the 4th Virtual Round Tempel Conference in 2011. 

Reference

Gilbert, T. (1978) Human Competence – Engineering Worthy Performance, A Publication of the International Society for Performance Improvement.

Below you can find a useful Knol

World Class Advice on Managing and Motivating People – Wisdom from psychologist and “performance engineer” Thomas F. Gilbert Written by Joseph Boyett, author The Guru Guide

Postscripts

1. Please feel free to use this as a handout for your workshops or discuss during teachers’ meetings on the subject.
2. Finally, someone who has recognised, applauded and wrote a follow up post to highlight my words of infinite wisdom…. A Model for Classroom Incompetence by TEFL Tradesman – what other laurels would I need? Edublog awards, eat your heart out!

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Post Updated with videos downloaded from Upstream

Videos of  most of my talk at IATEFL Harrogate 2010

Part A about 22 minutes  (conntent of slides 1-7 below is not included) 

 Part B about 8 minutes

A Summary of my talk 

It has been suggested that creativity (or, as it is also termed, divergent production) is not a single unifying ability but is viewed as a composite of intellectual abilities. The four main facets I will be looking at are:

FLUENCY Ability to produce large numbers of ideas

FLEXIBILITY Ability to produce diverse ideas (not the same kind)

ELABORATION Ability to add on to and embellish an already existing idea

ORIGINALITY Ability to produce uncommon, ‘clever’ ideas

Creative thinking, or divergent production, facilitates problem solving, and in a problem solving approach oriented classroom, enhancing creative thinking potential can facilitate discovery learning as well as enhance language production.

This talk outlined the relationship of divergent versus convergent production to specific language activities encouraging one or the other kind.

A range of activities which can develop aspects of creative thinking singly or in combination were suggested; the handout contains a few more which were not covered in the actual presentation.

The four facets listed do not refer specifically to language learning but to any kind of intellectual challenge, language learning being one of them.

Slides 

Divergent production activities_Handout and_task

Comment

I would like to add a significant, for me, point, which does not emerge from my slides and handout, but which was made during my talk:

The activities mentioned and listed are intended to be integrated into a regular syllabus, for instance, the ‘unusual uses’ activity could be used when you introduce and practise the infinitive of purpose, or later, when you want to cover time clauses, or the language of re suggestions. The ‘predicaments’ activity can be used as is (..you were seen dancing on the rooftop of your friend’s car in a car park) or with other structures which you might introduce earlier or later, e.g. “Why did you hang your shoes outside your window last night?”

All these activities, however, need to be seen in the context of language practise and learner training.

The synthesis of these individual facets, their combinations and integrations need to be taken to a higher level of application through activities in the higher order level of Bloom’s taxonomy, whether digitally or non-digitally, in holistic activities, collaborative  projects, large scale simulations, web quests, authoring of wikis or blogs, creating collaborative stories or similar tasks.

Ambriguous Picture Sources:

• Perfectly timed photos check the one I linked to out as well as this one, perfect for cutting in half!
• Deviant Art

Related blog post:

The Art of Being Creative by Marisa Constantinides, TEFL Matters

The activities presented in my talk at Harrogate were all related to language learning situations, but a few years ago I wrote an article ‘translating’ the basic activity typology into a list which could be useful to teacher educators. Many of these activities form the basis of the training at my centre on a variety of courses, from CELTA to DELTA and beyond.

My main bibliography on the subject of my talk can be found on this other, related post.

Acknowledgement

I am hugely grateful to Graham Stanley who livestreamed my talk on the day and has kept the videos on his account without deleting them for so long! Thank you so much Graham! I actually only now saw that you can download livestreamed talks via Real Player on Firefox (if anyone is interested in saving theirs )

I had every good intention of writing these well informed reports about the sessions I went to at IATEFL Brighton, but somehow the conference itself took over and living the experience became more important than reporting it!

Experiencing a conference of this magnitude takes a lot of energy!

Running from session to session, stopping for a quick cup of coffee and a chat with friends who went to other sessions, then on to the next workshop or talk, required great stamina!

Then, the social get-togethers took over! That required even more stamina!  And it did, in the end, begin to tell on me!!!!

I don’t know that a learnt an earth-shaking lot of new stuff at this conference but it was a very good conference, nevertheless – despite the rather disappointing difficulties with wifi which unnerved me and made me spend an extraordinary amount of time downloading pages and preparing with my Plan B (according to Sue Lyon Jones’ advice during her great presentation on the last day)

Elisbete Thess, one of the roving reporters, wrote up a great report of my talk “From Paper to Paperless – Teachier Education in Transition“,  delivered in the strangely dark Tudor room, thankfully with wifi working properly!

Sessions I really enjoyed

Tom Farrell’s “Reflective Practice for Language Teachers” was very close to my interests  and a very thought-provoking one. A pity that the talk is impossible to follow due to sound issues but these may be fixed soon.

Carla Arena’s presentation was a great highlight. A pity she hasn’t yet uploaded it to IATEFL online but Phil Bird has written up a great summary of Carla’s presentation as well as Sue Lyon Jones’ on his blog post here

Lindsay Clanfield’s presentation on ‘Critical thinking and ELT” – which I had also followed at the recent TESOL Macedonia-Thrace conference – was  really well put together proving Lindsay’s mettle as a conference speaker. Looking forward to the upload!

Bethany Cagnol’s presentation classroom discipline - ‘Ruling the Unruly: Classroom management and solutions‘ -a really well presented talk, even though I did not myself agree with the reactive nature of some of the things she mentioned as solutions. Bethany is a really good presenter and she had researched her topic well – which is very musch appreciated.

I loved the debate with Nicky Hockly on the side of technology pitted against Alan Waters – the lady hath style! You can watch the video of the debate on technology “Tweeting is for the birds!” and read Elisabete Thess’ report!  The pro-technology side, did of course win!

And finally, Amanda Wilson’s great presentation on “Web 2.0 tools for IELTS speaking and writing success” – what a grand thing this was, to see all the tools we have all been talking about on Twitter put together to such intelligent and coherent use!

If you want to read other’s reflections on the IATEFL conference here is what I would recommend

• Shaun Wilden’t post “What I learnt in Brighton” was an interesting read and reflects some, not all, of my thoughts regarding the majority of the talks I went to.
• Diarmuid Fogarty’s discussion of the grand question of Dogme - ‘Questions which Dog me‘ – which seemed to be a prevailing topic at various points of the conference. The discussion following his wonderful blog post is more than I hoped I would read, and regret the fact that my talk was at the same time as the symposium  What a missed opportunity!
• Willy Cardoso’s post on his thoughts about the uses of pairwork during conference talksb- or rather how inane pairwork annoys him no end

Meeting up with my PLN

But, oh, I did enjoy meeting face-to-face with my PLN!   I love the daily contact with them on Twitter and Facebook and their blogs and my blog, but it was lovely to have the chance to meet and get to know them all a little better!  Some very special moments and conversations with Cecilia Lemos, Shelly Terrell, Heike Philps, Karenne Sylvester, Scott Thornbury, Luke Meddings, Dede Wislon, Sue Lyon Jones,  and so many more!!!  Must not forget to mention Carol Rainbow, my very special Second Life – and now real life – friend, who popped down to Brighton to see us all on the Pecha Kucha night!

Dear PLN, if I have left out any names, it is not because contact with you was not important, but this was such a rich experience, I am bound to have left out some names!

I am terrible with photography so I have borrowed some of the snapshots shared by friends on Facebook – thanks to them I can give you a tiny taste of the great experience on a professional and human level that this was!

Burcu Akyol and I deep in conversation with Scott Thornbury while Beyza, Shelly & Elizabeth Anne are deep into another topic! Isli Boy is just looking as pretty as ever!

The great Karaoke evening organised by the fabulous Petra Pontner - here you can see Mike Harrison and Brad Patterson doing the boys' stuff on "Summer Nights" from "Grease" while Shelly, Anna, Vladka and more of us are bawling out the girl's lines!

With Shelly Terrell, Ken Wilson, Tara Benwell and Cecilia Lemos meeting up on the first evening at Brighton before the start of the conference! I loved meeting you all and especially Tara and Ceci who I hadn't met before! Very special people...

At the "Globe", the pub where we eneded up most of the evenings with Jamie Keddie and Isli Boy. Shaun WIlden and Richard Whiteside can be seen in the background.

Post Conference Note

The graceful,  flawless hospitality with which Simon Greenall and his wife Jill Florent took us in (Shelly , Cecilia and myself) after Brighton and gave us three bright and sweetly memorable days in Oxford was the cherry on the cake of this trip.  I was shaken out of the sorry illusion that Greeks are the masters of hospitality – sorry! We  have been truly had here!

Suffice it to say I am already on a really strict diet to shed off Simon’s delicious cooking!

The weather was on our side too and so we enjoyed the glory of a beautiful English garden and some great walking tours (and shopping sprees with Ceci! ) around Oxford!

with Shelly & Cecilia - Simon looking a bit bemused by all this photographic activity

with Cecilia & Jill in the garden

One of Simon & Jill's feasts!

More IATEFL?

Have a look at this link which lists all the videotaped talks  here: http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2011/sessions/videos. And if you can’t make it to the next one in Glasgow, I hope I have given you an idea of how a great conference like this – and like ISTEK of course! – can bring us all closer together.

More posts by

Post Script

I will be adding more reports on other blogs as they come up!

This is a quick report of the Pre Conference Events I went to and the first day at IATEFL – there were various PCE events but I briefly went to Associates’ Day to be there for the book launch for which Sara Hannam and I wrote a chapter and a wiki and then on to the Learning SIG where the main topic was Interactive Whiteboards. A good day at the LT SIG – the highlight for me was Luke Medding’s session in which we looked at the why’s and how’s of IWB and Dogme.

Pleanry speakers are very important to conference organisers.

I remember spending long and agonising board meetings in the days when I helped organise a teachers’ association conference. Who will be your plenary speakers is felt to be giving a message, the tone, an atmosphere to the whole conference;  no wonder we spent lots of time making these decisions.

As a conference goer, however, I have, more often than not, enjoyed and felt a conference was great, mostly because of the speakers in-between the plenaries.

For me, they are the ones who make the conference and that’s where a conference organising committee has to be very careful reading abstracts and accepting proposals.

On day one of IATEFL, I saw some great talks and none of them were plenary talks:

Amanda Wilson and her colleague Susan Demspey from the UK showed us how time spent time on Twitter and learning about all the tools you all share translates into great classroom practice of usinf Web 2.0 tools to prepare their students better for the IELTS exams. An excellent presentation putting a variety of tools to good use in the IELTS context.

Antisoara Pop from Romania talked about how she integrates asynchronous tools like voicethread and class blogs to supplement and enrich face to face teaching in her country and showed us some great examples of student output.

Burcu Akyol gave us a lesson in cool by not losing it completely even though there was no wifi when her presentation was based on using it (talking about setting up school and teacher blogs). Burcu eventually had to use one of the participants’ dongle – had that good lady not been there…. – but she did a great job of showing us the benefits for teachers and for the learners.

Nik Peachey talked about digitising your course material and to a packed room, he went through a wonderful list of tools which can transform your coursebook and engage your learners in talking, e.g. by sending you recorded messages via email, or by using vocaroo.

I will be posting links related to these talks  when and as they become available.

The conference is also a social event, and there ahs been a serious amount of socialising, meeting for coffees, teas, drinks, going to pubs, having meals together, dancing till late….

Today, the programme looks equally promising so I must get out and about if I am to report anything later.

Right now I am following Sophie Georgiou-Ioannou’s
session on CLIL in pre-primary and primary education in Cyprus and being thrilled by the concepts of CLIL “showers” , i.e. short bursts of content-based teaching in the primary and pre-primary class (safety, hygiene, physical education, road safety)

Wish you were here Mark to report this better

It’s a great conference but the social life is killing me!!! 

I presented this workshop at ISTEK Schools International Conference in Istanbul on March 28 2010. The topic is a real favourite of mine and forms the basis of a lot of training work I do – teachers, after all, do have to use coursebooks, despite the arguments against them, and they have to have the tools to make the most of them.

So, without further ado, here is my powerpoint presentation, with a little bit of added zest here and there for the benefit of those who were not at that fabulous conference!!!

I would appreciate any feeback to the ideas in this presentation – whether you were there or not, please write comments, especially if you have tried any of the ideas in the powerpoint presentation.

Postscript

The ideas in the slide presentation are good for making a coursebook come alive but, hopefully, you can find them useful as ideas for overall good materials design whether it involves adapting material you have found or material you are creating from scratch.

Here is a short version of my seminar which I presented as a Pecha Kucha at the Virtual Round Table Conference in 2010

Related Posts

1. Working with Coursebooks – Gathering Intelligence, Making a Choice
2. Visual Delights & Spike Milligan