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October 2023 - Year 25 - Issue 5

ISSN 1755-9715

To the Editor

Letter 1

Hi Hania

Storytelling in Education Global Online Conference 7 October

Are you ready for some good news?

You're invited to the first Storytelling in Education Global Online Conference brought to you by David Heathfield World Storyteller and Simona Stambazzi of Simona's Stories.

Here is the beautifully designed conference brochure with all the details https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UD_YZ4hZOti5joDpSo9vlGy8WcbrVWkv/view

When? October 7th

What time? 9am - 3pm UK time

What? 8 highly interactive sessions about bringing storytelling into the heart of learning (video recordings will be made available to everyone who registers)

Where? Online - on Zoom

How to register? On Eventbrite www.eventbrite.com/e/storytelling-in-education-tickets-705996142467?aff=oddtdtcreator&fbclid - ‘Pay what you can’ option. Or request your free place by email to simonasstories@gmail.com & davidheathfield@hotmail.co.uk

Here's our excellent programme of workshops led by highly experienced international educators/storytellers (UK times):

9am - 9:15am Welcome from Simona and David

9:15am - 9:45am Evi Karydi (Greece) - Stories Come Alive with Total Physical Response Storytelling

9:45am - 10:30am Rasheedat Sadiq (Nigeria) - Storytelling as a Means of Social Emotional Learning

10:30am - 11am Despina Ariou (Greece) - Diversity in stories and in life

11:15am - 11:45am Haneen Jadallah (Palestine) - Border crossing between storytelling and drama through 'The Mantle of the Expert'

11:45am - 12:15pm Susan Piper (UK) - Using simple graphics in storytelling!

12:15pm - 12:45pm Alan Hall (Ireland) & Samir Salama (Palestine) - Stories, Language and Cultural Identity, Finding your Pot of Gold

1:30pm - 2pm Swee Yean Wong (Singapore) - Still Pictures - A Fun Storytelling Game To Break the Shy Barrier

2pm - 2:45pm David Heathfield (UK) & Simona Stambazzi (Italy) - Building Global Communities through Storytelling

2:45pm - 3pm Thank you & Goodbye

 

Numbers are limited so it's a good idea to register soon.

Please pass on this exciting news to everyone you know who might be interested by word of mouth, by email and by social media.

 

Heartfelt good wishes

David Heathfield

 

Letter 2

Dear All,

Just to let you know that our book "The practice of EMI around the world", to which many of you contributed, is now published and available on Amazon or the Springer website:  https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-30613-6.  

Now that this one is complete, I am working on a proposal for an edited book on Teacher Burnout with Multilingual Matters. If anyone is interested in contributing to that, please let me know.

Best wishes,

Carol Griffiths

 

Letter 3

Hania

Mein neuester Titel ist online!

My new piece is available online

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_EUeme8vy0

LG Walter

 

Letter 4

Hi,

We are writing to bring your attention to a key change affecting our services, specifically regarding the integration of Twitter feeds onto your school websites.

Twitter has recently modified their terms and conditions, imposing significant constraints on third-party developers, including ourselves. These alterations encompass a new pricing structure for API access, stringent restrictions on data retrieval, and a daily limit on the number of tweets that can be accessed.

We have endeavoured to keep pace with Twitter's evolving policies, making extensive adjustments to our codebase in response to their announcements. However, the inconsistent and unpredictable nature of Twitter's changes have introduced challenges in maintaining the seamless service delivery you are accustomed to.

As a result of Twitter's repeated adjustments, with no clarity as to whether more adjustments will be made, we have determined that it is no longer feasible to support Twitter feeds in the way we have been doing. We wish to highlight that this decision is a direct response to Twitter's changing platform, rather than a reflection on the quality of service we strive to provide.

From this point forward, we will no longer offer support for integrating Twitter feeds onto your websites. We want to reassure you that this does not affect the integration of other existing social media feeds on your sites, which will continue to function as usual as per those providers current terms and conditions.

We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause. Unfortunately, this is out of our control, however, we remain committed to upholding the high level of service you expect from us and will continue to work diligently to provide robust and flexible solutions that are responsive to the ever-changing digital landscape.

If you have any further questions, please call the support team on 03333 449984 or email: support.jw@junipereducation.org

Many thanks,

Juniper

 

Letter 5

Welcome to your Pavilion ELT newsletter

In this edition, we introduce our new MET blogger Anna Hasper and share her first MET blog, which explores whether paper-light teaching is the way forward.

New from Modern English Teacher

Introducing our new blogger – Anna Hasper

We are delighted to welcome Anna Hasper as our new MET blogger! Anna is an experienced teacher development specialist and has been involved in English language teaching since 2002. She trained as a primary teacher and worked as an ELT teacher and DoS before moving to the Middle East. Over the years, Anna has worked as a teacher and trainer in a wide variety of contexts and roles. She is currently based in Dubai where she works as a CELTA tutor and assessor and designs and delivers training courses for Ministries and leading educational publishers.

Alongside this, she is involved in course and content writing. She is super passionate about anything related to making better learning happen! Her research interests concern language teachers and language teacher educators’ professional learning and educational psychology with an emphasis on social emotional wellbeing and motivation which is also the focus of her current doctoral studies.

You can take a look at Anna's first MET blog below!

 

New from Modern English Teacher

Blog – Paper-light teaching: the way forward

Paper-light, or materials-light teaching, not only helps teacher do their bit for the environment, it can also lead to more student involvement, wise use of technology and creative use of images and realia in the classroom. Besides including topics like climate change and recycling into your lessons, have you ever thought about how much paper you are using? With many face-to-face summer schools in full swing, for Anna Hasper this seems to perfect time to consider paper-light teaching. Not sure what we are talking about? Read on to find out more!

Read now

Get involved with Modern English Teacher

Global Voices – How can you get involved?

The Global Voices feature in each issue of MET shines a light on teaching stories from across the world, to celebrate, explore and learn from the different teaching contexts teachers adapt to. If you would like to share an idea that has worked for you, an insight into your teaching context, lessons you have learnt, or even would just like to have a go at writing for a magazine then we would love to hear from you!

If you are interested in getting involved (whether you are an experienced writer or simply looking to submit your first small piece), here are some ideas for what you could include:

  • How are you teaching, for example, are you teaching in face-to-face classes, live online, hybrid teaching, flipped classes, etc? Where and when are the classes held?
  • Describe your classroom/teaching area, the average length of classes, typical levels of English and the number of students you have on average. What equipment and tools are you using?
  • How do you prepare lessons? Do you create your own material, supplement coursebooks with your own material or only use published material the school provides?
  • What’s the most important thing about teaching for you? What have you had to learn this past year and will you continue to use it in your teaching in the year to come? What would make your teaching day easier/What would you like to see happen in the teaching world in the next year or so?

Submit your story, in around 200 words to the editor, Robert McLarty (Robert.McLarty@pavpub.com), ideally with a supporting picture! We would love to hear from you.

Find out more about writing for us