Your standards of work, ethics, personal development and responsibility set your course in life and business. Follow the seven tips below and remember to think as big as you can, expect nothing less than the best, have courage and most importantly, be kind.

1. Collaborate with others.

At its core, success is about relationships. Involve customers and colleagues in the creation and direction of your business pursuits. With them, set standards for the work that needs to be accomplished in each person’s area of responsibility. Make these standards challenging but achievable. The result will be the high-level productivity and service you aim to perform.

You can only go so far in business alone. You need others for your own success, empowerment and completeness. In business, choose your aims and equip your team to get your business where it needs to go, rewarding the team members along the way.

2. Never neglect.

Personal power and complacency cannot co-exist in the pursuit of success. Dedicate time and energy wherever necessary to ensure that no important areas of focus, personal or professional, are neglected.

Complete tasks and assignments and work hard to overcome obstacles, focusing on what you can gain, learn and improve upon to make life and business flow more effortlessly. Make lists of things which need to be done with expectations for performance and dates of completion. Focus your efforts on what is most important for the bigger picture, not on what is urgent. Urgency creates an irrational mind. Let those elements settle while you focus on what you can control.

3. Choose possibilities, not problems.

With personal power you possess the deep belief there are available solutions for problems. When you approach challenges from a solutions-focused perspective it engages the creative process of examining and architecting alternate routes in lieu of staying stuck in false beliefs of why things cannot be done.

If you cannot find a solution, open your thoughts to others, seek their ideas and suggestions. Solution-focused minds reward and inspire each other. When solutions are the focus you learn to fail and adapt, moving away from the fixing and failing approach.

4. Self-check.

To grow in personal power use the motivational mindset of consistently monitoring, evaluating and adjusting your own work, attitude and beliefs to stay clear of complacency so you may continue meeting your higher standards.

One of the best ways to keep yourself motivated in reaching your higher standards is to write things down and define your direction. Describe what superior performance would be in light of your chosen aims, and then describe what complacent performance would be and actions steps to stay away from lower level habits.

Personal power means you set performance standards somewhere between complacency and superiority.

5. Manage your time.

The power of now. To uphold your personal power examine where you spend most of your time. Do you get the most important tasks out of the way first or do you typically get through the small, tedious things which seem more urgent? Getting caught in the small, urgent tasks pull you from the more important aims requiring your attention. Focus on what is most important and work from there.

When it comes to relationships, be on time or early to all events, business and professional, as this gives your commitments the feeling of importance. When you can make another feel significant, this is power. How you are with time says much about your commitment and character as a person and leader.

When you respect your time and that of others, you and everyone around you, will work to much higher standards.

6. Accept responsibility.

Whatever happens in your life or career the best path to the development of your personal power is to accept responsibility for the outcomes, both positive and negative, which are the result of your efforts. If you make a mistake, see it as a self-created learning experience and figure out what needs to shift for you and your efforts to be more effective. Taking responsibility allows you to be flexible and change your approach.

Power is understanding mistakes gift you with more than they take. It is from mistakes all new directions arise.

Powerful leadership is not about ego. It is about humility and a willingness to learn. Inspire in others the willingness to accept personal responsibility for the outcomes of their work. To instill this you must first demonstrate these behaviors publicly, powerfully and consistently yourself.

Elevating another person to live at a higher level of existence is the gift your personal power inspires.

7. Be kind.

There is no greater a value to offer as a human being than the simple power of kindness. Kindness does not mean you are a “yes” person or a pushover. Kindness which is success generated is the kindness that can deliver good and bad news with grace. Kindness that is geared toward higher standards is the kindness which gives feedback rather than criticism. Kindness that inspires hard work is the kindness that sees possibilities not problems.

Be kind. Be good to yourself and the people you work with and for. Create the emotional environment around you to be infectious, contagious and advantageous to all who are blessed to be a part of it. Kindness will take you further in success than any other human attribute.

To have and to lead from personal power means you embrace your inalienable right to think for yourself, to speak your mind, to pursue happiness, success and financial gain, to seek inner awareness and a sense of peace, and to do so without having to conform to anyone else’s small standards including your own. Empower yourself by being yourself. Take advantage of what it means to have opportunity, to organize your pursuits, to be kind in your leadership and to strive for that beautiful and attainable sense of personal freedom.

In your freedom lies your power.

by Rebecca Alber

I remember how, as a new teacher, I would attend a professional development and feel inundated with new strategies. (I wanted to get back to the classroom and try them all!) After the magic of that day wore off, I reflected on the many strategies and would often think, “Lots of great stuff, but I’m not sure it’s worth the time it would take to implement it all.”

We teachers are always looking to innovate, so, yes, it’s essential that we try new things to add to our pedagogical bag of tricks. But it’s important to focus on purpose and intentionality — and not on quantity. So what really matters more than “always trying something new” is the reason behind why we do what we do.

What Research Says

This leads me to educational researcher John Hattie, who wrote Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning. Through his research, one of his goals is to aid teachers in seeing and better understanding learning through the eyes of their students.

Hattie has spent more than 15 years researching the influences on achievement of K-12 children. His findings linked student outcomes to several highly effective classroom practices. Here I’d like to highlight five of those practices:

1. Teacher Clarity

When a teacher begins a new unit of study or project with students, she clarifies the purpose and learning goals, and provides explicit criteria on how students can be successful. It’s ideal to also present models or examples to students so they can see what the end product looks like.

2. Classroom Discussion

Teachers need to frequently step offstage and facilitate entire class discussion. This allows students to learn from each other. It’s also a great opportunity for teachers to formatively assess (through observation) how well students are grasping new content and concepts.

3. Feedback

How do learners know they are moving forward without steady, consistent feedback? They often won’t. Along with individual feedback (written or verbal), teachers need to provide whole-group feedback on patterns they see in the collective class’ growth and areas of need. Students also need to be given opportunities to provide feedback to the teacher so that she can adjust the learning process, materials, and instruction accordingly.

4. Formative Assessments

In order to provide students with effective and accurate feedback, teachers need to assess frequently and routinely where students are in relation to the unit of study’s learning goals or end product (summative assessment). Hattie recommends that teachers spend the same amount of time on formative evaluation as they do on summative assessment.

5. Metacognitive Strategies

Students are given opportunities to plan and organize, monitor their own work, direct their own learning, and to self-reflect along the way. When we provide students with time and space to be aware of their own knowledge and their own thinking, student ownership increases. And research shows that metacognition can be taught.

 Collaborating with Colleagues

Great teachers are earnest learners. Spend some time with a colleague, or two or three, and talk about what each of these research-based, best classroom practices looks like in the classroom. Discuss each one in the context of your unique learning environment: who your students are, what they need, what they already know, etc.

By Lindsay Clandfield and Jo Budden

Level: Starter/beginner, Elementary, Pre-intermediate, Intermediate, Upper intermediate, Advanced

“I love my new job. I can be creative in my class preparation, I get along really well with my students and I really appreciate the responsibility. There’s nobody looking over my shoulder all the time when I’m at work. It’s me and my class.”

“I feel bored and a bit depressed with my job. I feel like I am doing the same thing over and over again. I have no new ideas and I hate my course book. I don’t know if I can do this for the rest of my life. One of the problems is that I feel so lonely, even with a class full of students. I think I’m becoming disconnected from it all.”

The first quote is from a new English teacher in their first few months of teaching (after the “fear” of the first classes has worn off) and the second is from an English teacher who has been working for some years. Do either of these sound familiar? Why does the second teacher feel that way? What has happened?

The second teacher may be close to suffering from teacher burnout. Burnout is a response to chronic, everyday stress, rather than to occasional crises. As Dr. Susan Barduhn, President of IATEFL, notes, “People who go into teaching (or nursing, social work, fire-fighting or any kind of helping profession) often have a high need for approval and high expectations of themselves. The burnout-prone individual is one who simply takes on too much.” One of the best ways to avoid burnout is to start supporting and cooperating with fellow teachers and professionals. According to many studies, burnout and teacher turnover is drastically reduced when successful peer support exists.

This article is about Collaborative Teaching. I take Collaborative Teaching to mean more than teaching or planning a class between more than one teacher (although it can take that form). For me, collaborative teaching is about developing different mechanisms of peer support. It is also about developing professionally, but not in isolation. What follows is a series of tips and activities for teachers to do to start collaborative teaching and stop burnout before it occurs.

Share ideas

One of the easiest and cheapest ways to start collaborative teaching is to swap ideas. Teachers often do this anyway. You can formalize this process at your school in two ways:

Organize a folder entitled Ideas and Tips. Divide it into sections (either by level, or by theme) and ask other teachers to contribute. For a project like this to work you really have to have someone in charge of keeping the folder or folders in order. Why not rotate that duty among teachers? You could also have a “Tip or Activity of the Week” that you can post on the staff room wall.

Offer to organize a meeting to exchange ideas at your work. All you need is a time and a place where teachers can meet. At a school where I worked we called it the Materials Circus Maximus(Gladiator had just come out in the theatres!) We all met on a Friday afternoon and shared activity ideas. This became even more popular when teachers would “teach” the others using their material. It made the activity more memorable when teachers actually played the part of learners.

Sharing ideas in your school can be beneficial for all involved. But why stop at your school when you can share tips and classes with English teachers all around the world! One way of doing this is through the onestopenglish Lesson Share competition. See section G below for other ideas.

Start a teacher discussion group

This aspect of collaborative teaching means going further than just swapping tips and materials. Get together with a group of other teachers (or even just one other teacher!) to exchange ideas and methods and reflect on your teaching. This could be to discuss problems you have had with a certain class or course book, to share good and bad moments in class or to reflect on a particular aspect of your teaching. It could be a formalized meeting with other teachers at the school, or a more informal meeting at a cafe.
Here are some directions that a teacher discussion group could take:

• The group meets to discuss discipline problems in their classes and ways of dealing with them.
• The group meets to offer advice and suggestions to one member who is having trouble motivating a class.
• Each member of the group researches an aspect of methodology which they haven’t tried (examples include Total Physical Response, Using Literature in the Classroom, Task Based Learning) and then presents their findings at the meeting. A good starting point for research like this is the Methodology section of onestopenglish.
• Each member of the group writes some reflections on two different classes – one which went well and one which didn’t go so well. Teachers come together and exchange reflections. They then discuss the classes.

Observe a colleague

Peer observation is a great way to get new ideas and see how others deal with everyday classroom occurrences. Have you ever wondered what was going on in the classroom next door? Why was it so quiet or why was there so much laughter? Here’s your chance to find out.

Choose a colleague who you respect and ask them if they would mind you observing them. With any luck they’ll jump at the chance of having an extra pair of eyes in the class. You could use the observation to steal some new ideas for your own classes. There are many forms available to use as a guide for the observation. Click in the box below for some samples from Jim Scrivener’s Learning Teaching. Alternatively, make a form yourself for your exact needs.

Ask a colleague to observe you

Choose a colleague you admire and trust and invite them to observe one of your classes. Choose a focus that you’d like them to concentrate on, such as your instructions, interaction with students or use of L1 in the class and ask for feedback on that specific point.

Always remember that giving feedback is a skill in itself and you should aim to be mainly positive, by giving constructive advice and ideas. Think about what you would like to tell the observee before you begin the feedback and consider how best to tell them.

Set up a mentor program

In English language teaching, the idea of having mentors in a school is relatively new. The mentor is an experienced teacher in the school who knows where things are and is familiar with school procedures. A new teacher is assigned a mentor when they start. The mentor is responsible for this new member of staff. The mentor has different “roles”:

• that of model (to inspire the mentee)
• that of acculturator (to show the mentee around and get them used to the school culture)
• that of sponsor and support (to “open doors” for the mentee, to introduce mentee to the “right people”; to “be there” for the mentee)
• that of educator (to listen and coach the mentee so that the mentee can achieve professional learning objectives)

A more informal mentor program could be a simple buddy system by which new teachers are assigned a “buddy” on the staff who they can turn to if they have any problems or questions.

Inter-class communicating and swaps

If you teach in a school at the same time as another English teacher with a similar level, there are many interesting possibilities for collaboration. Here are some ideas.

For oral tests, swap classes with the other teacher. This can be beneficial for getting an outside view of your learners’ oral competence. It will almost certainly mean that your learners will take the test a lot more seriously. For learners who are preparing for an external exam like the Cambridge First Certificate or Advanced, both of which have an interview component this could be a good practice run for them.

Run friendly competitions between classes. This could involve trivia quizzes for example. Post the results of each group in the classrooms.

Have learners write letters to each other. You can even set up written role plays. For example, have one class write a series of job adverts for the other class. The students in the other class decide on which job they would like to apply for and write letters of application, which go back to the first class. This could even be followed up by a face-to-face interview.

Have individual learners come and visit the other class from time to time. They could be interviewed by their new classmates, or make short presentations.

Collaborate locally

The above ideas all more or less take place inside one school. You can expand your horizons and link up with other English teachers in your area. For example:

Go to a conference, seminar or product presentation. Many countries have an English teaching association and run a yearly conference. Conferences are great places to meet other teachers, network and get new ideas. Sometimes a local school or organization will set up a seminar on an aspect of language teaching. Finally, publishers will often have special teacher development days or product presentations (these often include free books or a free breakfast!). Get in touch with the publisher’s local representative.

Start a teachers’ newsletter. You could start this in the school where you work, or organize it between two or three schools. Include lesson ideas and tips and news about teaching in your local area.

Collaborate world-wide

Do some of the above projects seem too difficult to set up in your school? Maybe you work in many different schools and therefore are not in a position to implement or participate in such programs. Does that mean you can’t do any collaborative teaching? Not at all! There is a whole community of English language teachers helping each other around the world.

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