Here is Gavin Dudeney’s second exclusive article for TeachingEnglish.
I’m fortunate enough to be able to go to quite a few face-to-face conferences every year, generally as a speaker, though I also attend as many sessions as I can at each event – there’s always something to learn from any speaker, no matter how experienced they are. This year I’ve seen some great speakers, not just some of the more famous people in ELT, but a wide variety of teachers talking about what they do with great passion, and sharing their experiences and teaching ideas. In fact, these types of events are my favourite kind of professional development, combining – as they do – the talks, plenaries and workshops with fun social activities and occasionally some sightseeing.
But of course not everybody is lucky enough to be able to go to these events very often, and have to rely on local development opportunities such as workshops or in-school training. And, at least in my experience, this is actually relatively rare too. In all my travels this year I’ve met hundreds of teachers who receive no professional development each year. It’s as if they’ve simple been forgotten about… Now they’re in place and teaching, there’s no need to develop them any further or help them widen their repertoire, at least that is what seems to me happens in many schools. So what is a teacher to do in that kind of situation?
Read the complete article at http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/articles/personal-learning-networks