What is ELT's relationship with climate change, gender, sexuality and opportunity?
All our actions, from the supplies we buy for the classroom to how we handle gender and sexuality have consequences. We all face tricky decisions around ethics and responsibility every day, including in the classroom.
We look forward to discussing how a number of key issues of our time impact, and can be supported by, our UK ELT industry in the ELT Conference on 17-18 January 2020.
As an international industry, UK ELT produces large amounts of carbon through both student and staff flights. How can we take environmental responsibility seriously in the face of the climate crisis and run both successful and sustainable businesses that help over half a million students achieve their English language learning dreams each year? How can environmentally themed meetings help create a more responsible and sustainable school?
This internationalism also means a diversity of cultures and students from all over the world learning English together in our classrooms. But this diversity of views does not mean you cannot openly include and support LGBTQI+ identities, as Adam Scott and Charlotte Williams will discuss.
And further sessions will explore gender and self sabotage and how we can reach beyond our classrooms and facilitate language learning for children in refugee camps.
Together we hope these sessions will give participants the space to think and debate about our industry's relationship to important topics. Let's think not only about the difference we can make as individuals, but the huge impact we can have as an industry.
English UK members benefit from discounted member rates, simply enter your member number in the promotional code box to receive member prices.
Many thanks to Trinity College London for supporting the conference and to our drinks reception sponsor Macmillan Education.
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Environmental responsibility in ELT with Christopher Etchells
What do we mean by environmental responsibility and how can we embed it in our schools and our teaching? Taking the research of the UK ELT & The Environment Working Group as its starting point, this presentation will seek to persuade delegates of the importance of environmental responsibility and give practical advice to help ELT organisations become more environmentally responsible.
Christopher Etchells is chair of the UK ELT & The Environment Working Party consisting of individuals from English UK member centres whose aim is to make UK ELT carbon neutral as soon as possible. He directs English Country Schools, an ELT summer school with a long track record of teaching English through projects and activities in the natural environment.
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Managing LGBTQI+ inclusive ELT settings: approaching issues, developing staff, supporting students with Adam Scott and Charlotte Williams
Do you want to be more inclusive but you worry about students' reactions, how to offer support, and how to ensure students from a variety of communities aren't excluded from classrooms and school life?
Understanding, empathising with and supporting LGBTQI+ identities and issues in the ELT setting of diverse and diverging values stretches the skills of managers and trainers alike. Avoiding LGBTQI+ focus through fear of 'getting it wrong' can seem the easier option.
This session will show why it is important to meet this challenge, embracing gender diversity to help students from all backgrounds in their international lives ahead. Applying queer ELT research, psychological research and in-school supported experiments, you will gain insights and strategies to give you certainty when practising LGBTQI+ inclusivity.
Adam Scott undertakes teacher research projects, speaks at conferences and writes on evidenced, person-centred, learner-led practice, as well as collaborating on a new teacher development initiative: Brighton Language Teachers.
Charlotte Williams is an experienced ESL teacher with a background in Applied Social Psychology. Responding to a lack of diversity inclusion, she created a role as an LGBTQI+ advisor within her organisation to support students and fellow teaching staff alike. She holds sessions on why inclusion (of all kinds) is essential.
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Toward a more responsible and sustainable school with Green Groups with Ricky Anderson
In this workshop Ricky will provide a model for how thriving environmentally-themed meetings can create a more responsible and sustainable school.
Delegates will form action groups with a scenario of waste or environmentally damaging activity in the ELT. Working together each group will propose realistic solutions and action, e.g writing to an MP, planning a litter pick, making a promotional video etc. This section mirrors how the Liverpool School of English's 'green groups' work. The workshop will be followed by feedback and a mini presentation of the centre's successes and failures.
Ricky has been teaching EFL since 2010 in Liverpool. He has developed and delivered Live Liverpool (learning outside the classroom) at Liverpool School of English since 2016. Ricky started the green group with colleagues in January this year and has been shocked by what a small committed group is managing to achieve. His current interests revolve around bringing the pressing issues of our day into the classroom and taking the classroom out to meet them head on.
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Self-sabotage and how to avoid it with Mel Judge and Thom Jones
There are many issues that hinder women on the way to the top of the workplace, but one that is not often talked about is how we hinder ourselves. Join this session to discuss the ways we hold ourselves back and what we can do to overcome it.
This session is an open discussion facilitated by Mel Judge and Lead 5050 champion Thom Jones.
Mel Judge is academic director for Stafford House Summer and a committee member for Young Learners English UK.
Thom Jones works as an associate for No Fluff, a consultant for Telc and runs his own company: Brock Solutions Agency.
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Zooming in and out: facilitating language learning for children in refugee camps through simple video conferencing tools with Nick Bilbrough
Cheap and simple video conferencing tools like Zoom can provide many of the components of effective language learning. For children in refugee camps around the world, where teaching materials, language exposure and opportunities for communicative language use are severely limited, they can facilitate a very positive and motivating learning experience.
Reflecting on the work of The Hands Up Project, a charity set up about five years ago working online with children mainly in refugee camps, Nick will explore a range of teaching activities that can help learners with both the bits and pieces of language (zooming in) as well as the bigger picture (zooming out).
Nick Bilbrough is a teacher, teacher-trainer and author. He has taught and trained language teachers in many diverse contexts and now devotes all his energy to the Hands Up Project, providing learning opportunities for young people, mostly in Palestine, through online conversation, storytelling and drama activities.
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