Panagiotis Anagnostopoulos interviews Nicky Hockly

Nicky Hockly is the Director of Pedagogy at The Consultants-e which is an online language teacher training and development consultancy. She has worked in the field of face-to-face and distance education since 1987, as a teacher, teacher trainer and consultant and holds an MA in TEFL from the Universidad de Granada ( Spain ), a CTEFLA (1987) and a DTEFLA (1991). Nicky has worked as a teacher trainer on Cambridge-ESOL CELTA courses, and has given seminars, in-service workshops and teacher training courses for practising language teachers in the UK, South America, South Africa and in many European countries. She has also been involved in materials development, for both EFL course books and online learning.   Awards include: British Council Innovation Award - Winners 2007; Ben Warren International House Trust Prize 2007; David Riley / MacMillan / BESIG Prize - shortlisted 2008; British Council Innovation Award - shortlisted 2009. 

Nicky blogs @ E-moderation Station and tweets from @TheConsultantsE

Nicky kindly agreed to do an interview with Panagiotis for the She-in-ELT series.

1. Why did you decide to pursue a career in English Language Teaching?

The weather is what made me into a language teacher. That may sound a little odd. Born in Cape Town South Africa, I was used to decent weather, and after spending six years in the UK, I was desperate to move to warmer climes. The easiest way to move to Greece/Portugal/Italy/Turkey/Spain was by becoming a language teacher. The minute I got my British citizenship, I jumped on the first plane heading south, armed with a four-week teaching certificate, and got a job in Barcelona. I then discovered that I loved both teaching and Barcelona, and haven't looked back since.

2. Can you expand on your experience using technology in teaching?

I am first and foremost a teacher and teacher trainer. That's what I love doing. I'm definitely not a technical person by nature. I ended up using technology in my teaching quite by chance. I was offered a job as the Academic Director on an inter-university online MA programme in 1997, which was run entirely online. These were the very early days of online teaching and training. I cut my teeth on WebCT (a VLE), producing MA materials, designing online tasks, and tutoring groups of MA students online from Spain, the UK, and Latin America.

Although I had plenty of experience teaching face-to-face, I had none teaching online. After about six months of online tutoring, the turning point came when I myself was an online student on a course with a UK university in 1998. As an online learner, I learned more in six weeks than I had learned as an untrained tutor in six months. It was a real eye opener.

It made me realise just how important experiential training is for the online tutor. Not so surprising really: we all know that learning a foreign language gives a foreign language teacher invaluable insights into the process of learning a language; taking an online course gives one invaluable insights into online learning and tutoring.

I worked on the online MA programme for six years, until setting up an online training and online consultancy (The Consultants-E) with my colleague Gavin Dudeney in 2003. I now work about 80% online, training and tutoring, and managing a variety of online projects and consultancies. About 20% of my time is spent on f2f training and giving conference talks.

Using technology in my work has the obvious advantage of working in a cutting-edge field which is constantly evolving, and which I find interesting and stimulating. Fringe benefits to working online include avoiding rush hour traffic, and working in my pyjamas until 2pm if I feel like it.

3. Today we all witness the education world change and transform into something new through the use of technology. What do you think the future of education holds for us? How do you see online learning developing?

I think it's already the case that more and more educational institutions are offering both blended and online learning. Learners expect increased flexibility, and teachers need to be able to harness the potential of new technologies in order to meet these needs. This means that teachers need to be trained in how to effectively create and deliver both online and blended courses. In my experience the great majority of teachers are still woefully under-prepared for this, and many teacher training courses still persist in ignoring new technologies, whether in face-to-face teaching or in blended and online teaching. I personally find that infuriating! I think it is unfair on teachers.

4. Online learning, while becoming increasingly popular is still faced by many with skepticism and fear. What do you think are the steps needed to overcome these obstacles?

Online learning is not necessarily inferior to face-to-face teaching -- it's different. The problem is that there are plenty of bad online courses out there, with poor course design, and untrained facilitators. This gives online learning a bad name. I personally know teachers who have already taken poorly designed online courses and have had such a negative experience, that they can't imagine online courses ever working effectively. This is another thing that infuriates me! :-)

Good online courses, in which effective online tasks are combined with effective online community building , and effective tutoring, can be immensely rewarding, and highly developmental. In my own experience, excellent online courses can be even more effective than face-to-face courses.

The steps needed to overcome fear of online teaching or learning? Take a good online course as a participant!

5.  How can a teacher make a successful transition from the offline to the online world?

I'm now going to start sounding very repetitive. In my opinion (and experience), teachers need effective training in e- moderation skills, and they need to experience online learning themselves as participants. Only then is the teacher really ready to consider how to design and facilitate his or her own courses online.

6. What do you think about the certification of online teachers? Do you consider it important and valuable for a teacher?

Absolutely!

7. What do you think makes ELT teaching a successful and rewarding experience?

Without doubt the students. Working in online teacher training means that my ‘students’ are teachers from all over the world, from Azerbaijan to Zambia. That is an incredibly enriching and rewarding thing!

8. For many, ELT is still a male dominated field. You’ve had a very successful and accomplished career. However, did you as a female ever felt pressure or limits on your development? Did you feel a sort of “glass ceiling” in the field?

Well, it's very flattering that you think I've had a successful and accomplished career!  I think there are plenty of women out there who have done a lot more than me, a lot more effectively, than I have! As to the glass ceiling debate, my only comment is this: of all the conferences that I have attended or spoken at in the last 12 months, the great majority of plenary speakers were male. In two of the conferences, all of the plenary speakers were male. I find that surprising in a female dominated profession.

Useful links related to this posting:
Nicky's very funny Pechua Kucha from IATEFL Cardiff 2009

This interview was conducted by Panagiotis Anagnostopoulos of Myngle.com - Myngle brings together language teachers and students from all over the world enabling live lessons over the Internet. Myngle offers the possibility of teaching or receiving live one-on-one lessons from the comfort of your home for practically any language, level or type of teacher.  To learn more about Myngle, visit their LinkedIn page.

Myngle also tweet from their handle @Myngler


Do you have a question for Nicky?  Don't hesitate to ask and if you'd also like to contribute a guest-article on one of the amazing woman in our field of English Language Teaching, please don't hesitate to get in touch!

Melanie Butler on Glass Ceilings in ELT

Is there a glass ceiling for women in ELT? 

Let’s conduct a thought experiment.

Shut you eyes and walk into a staffroom, any staffroom you know well. Count the number of women’s faces.

Now do the thought experiment again. Go back into the staffroom and count the black faces.  If you are working anywhere in the private sector in Europe the answer to the second experiment is probably “none”.  If you are working in British ESOL, as migrant teaching is called  the answer is probably along the lines of, “one black and a couple of Asians.”  

If you are working in a US  language school you can probably count two or three black Americans and a sprinkling of teachers from other ethnic groups. And what if you are working in Kenya?

EFL is a global market and the situation for black teachers, (or women, or homosexuals) will vary depending on the country and the sector you are working in. Because it is a global market ,building a career generally means being globally mobile and that in itself can be a glass ceiling for working mothers  - or indeed anyone with kids. In most of the world, though, the highest level of discrimination is not against women teachers but against non-whites, irregardless of nationality or first language. 

A glass ceiling for white women there may be, but if you are black and you are British there is a solid steel front door.

Now that we are, I hope, all feeling a little less sorry for ourselves, let’s go back to the original questions: is there a class ceiling for women in EFL? 

The answer is: that depends on what country and in what sector you are working. And it always has done.

In the mid 1980s I gave a lecture in Barcelona on the role of women in ELT to a roomful of Masters students from both sides of the Atlantic. Women who wanted to get on, I argued, should go into publishing where there were plenty of high achieving women, and avoid academia. At the time there was not one female professor of any ELT related subject in the whole of the UK. At the end of the lecture the Europeans all clapped and the Americans all protested. In the US, twenty years ago, publishing was dominated by men but there were plenty of female professors, including the Emeritus professor at Harvard, the redoubtable, Australian-born, Wilga Rivers.

There are other examples of country to country variation in other sectors. In the UK the original language schools and language school chains were largely founded by men: John Haycraft of IH, Peter Fabian, of the London School of English, Paul Lindsay of St Giles and Frank Bell of, well, Bell. Pop across the Irish channel, however, and you find that many of the most famous schools were founded by women: Mary Towers of the Language Centre of Ireland, Hilary McIlwain of Keltic, Rosemary Quinn of CES, Celestine Rowlands, of Galway Cultural Institute.

So here we are in 2009, a quarter of a century after I gave that lecture in Barcelona, and what sectors, and what countries, offer the best opportunities for women now?

Let’s look at them one by one.

The situation in British Universities is much improved. The first women Professor, Gillian Brown, was awarded a chair at Cambridge and 1988 and the number of female professors has grown apace, not just in the UK but almost everywhere. We are not at parity in the ivory towers, but the difference between the sexes is no longer as ridiculous as twenty five years ago. In one Gazette piece I wrote on the subject at the time one famous (male) Professor of Applied Linguistics defended the fact that none of his peers were female: by pointing out that “women generally perform less well on video spatial awareness tasks.”

To which the Gazette responded:  “But women score better on verbal reasoning. What are they teaching in Applied Linguistics? Video Games?

Right now the university sector is a good place for women to be almost anywhere in the world. And not just for those with a PhD. The growing number of university department offering  Academic English courses for students,  seem women-friendly too not just in the UK but in Ireland, Australia and the States. Take just one New Zealander working in the UK right now : Olwyn Alexander, author of EAP Essentials, pioneer of EAP training and chair elect of British Association of Lecturer In English for Academic Purposes.

Migrant English courses, or ESOL if you’re British, are also doing better when it comes to women than was the case a quarter of a century ago. It’s not all good news in the UK, though. There may be more women in senior positions than there used to be but there are fewer Asians. One ESOL trainer told me the current profile of an up and coming Esol women is “ upper Middle class, privately educated and white.”

Almost everywhere in the English speaking world  the State Sector is good for women, especially working mothers. The teaching hours are shorter, the holidays longer and there is usually good child care provision. There is less need to be globally mobile – though you may need to move institutions in the same country if you want to get to the top. The pay is much better too, up to 200% better in the case of hourly paid teachers in London.

Except, of course, for those at the very top.The starting pay in the state sector is generally better, but you are much more likely to be earning six figures a year running a publishing house, a chain of language schools or an exam board.

So who runs those?

Well things have changed a little in publishing: there are more senior women than there used to be in the US houses, and slightly fewer in the UK ones. There is no figure anywhere that I can see as powerful as Paula Kahn, who fought her way up from ELT editor to head the whole of Longman publishing in the 1980s. Not only was she the most senior woman in the whole of British publishing, she was the only open Lesbian ( ELT may be racist, it may not be as women friendly as it could be but nobody could accuse this industry of homophobia).

There is a catch, though. Most of the women who dominated UK ELT publishing in the 80s, from Susan Holden at Macmillan to Yvonne de Henseler at OUP, had no children. Publishing is a long hours, long-haul travelling corporate game and, as my publishing director told me firmly when I worked at Longman in the early 90’s “children are a career decision”. And not, she implied, a very good one. Publishing is woman friendly but, like most big corporate businesses, child-friendly it is not.

Exam boards do better Liz Bang Jones at Anglia has two children, Monica Poultner, the head of teacher training qualifications at Cambridge Esol, has a tribe of boys, and  the extraordinarily entrepreneurial Caroline Browne who recently launched English Language Testing has a daughter..

There has long been a phalanx of formidable women at all the exam boards, especially at ETS in the US the home of Toefl from Marilyn Rymniak, who was formerly head of TOEFL to Gena Netten, who heads up the marketing.

The exam pendulum, though, may be swinging in favour of the men. Testing is booming but you increasingly need a specialist Masters to get into it and more and more men are taking that option but rather fewer women. Maybe men are more attracted to researching face validity in criterion-based reading tests. Or maybe they are just better at smelling out where the money is: the starting rate for a Masters qualified tester worldwide is about £40,000 (us$60,000) per year. 

I am reliably informed by  my friendly neghbourhood  (male) professor of testing, that there is currently only one such recent (male) graduate in Britain who hasn’t got a job.

The same is true of IT. Some of the leading pioneers in ELT distance learning were women: Nicky Hockley, Ruth Gates, the British Council’s Caroline Moore, and the redoubtable Flo-Jo.  Now  the field is increasingly filled with young nerdy men clutching Masters. Ah well, I hear you sigh, it is IT.   To which I can only reply with a questions ” What do you call a geek when he grows up?”

“Sir.”

This leaves us with the language school chains. Obviously it is easier to build a career in a chain than it is in a stand alone school where you have to sit and wait for the DOS to die before you can get promotion. But are the chains women-friendly?

My completely subjective impression of this is that the situation for women is getting worse. In the private sector corridors of academic management women are on equal footing (count the Dosses) but in the corridor of power it’s the young men in grey suits who seem to predominate. 

Why?

Men do Sales. In many commercial chains the route to success increasingly comes through sales rather than teaching. And men get all the sales jobs. I asked a language school chain owner why in his business, most of the academic managers are women and the sales force is predominantly male. Yes” he said “the women run everything and the men sell everything. But that’s only because women don’t apply for the sales jobs..”

Women can do sales  - they do so very successfully in publishing, in language travel agencies and for examination boards. When it comes to global language school chains though, men take the all the sales jobs. 

Why?

The clue may lie in the word global. Global sales means global travelling. Again, this probably has a lot to do with children. In most societies women still take most of the responsibility for childcare, and it pretty hard to take care of the children when you are spending half your life on a plane.  Not all chains have this men at the top profile. 

At the Bell group, for example, the sales manager is male but the rest of the team are female. One of the three directors at Bell is a woman and two of the three UK school principals as is half the borad of Trustees. Ironic when you think that Bell was historically famous for having a management team almost entirely consisting of men: the famous “ Bell Boys”.

Bell do try very hard on the equal opportunities front and are  leading from the front when it comes to taking on prejudice against non-natives. But they are not paragons of virtue. When the Gazette wrote a piece saying Bell women teachers were living off compound in Saudi Arabia – insane in my opinion in a country where women cannot even drive cars or leave their house unaccompanied - Bell told us that the women were on exactly the same terms and conditions as the men. In a country that’s not equal opportunity, that’s house arrest.

Compare that to the British Council approach when they needed to recruit a senior woman for Saudi. According to Fiona Bartels-Ellis, the dynamic, black head of the Equal Opportunities and diversity unit, they spent hours agonising what to do. Then they advertised for a woman who was either married or would be prepared to get married before taking up the post!

A compromise, of course. But a compromise based on a real understanding of the problems of working as a woman in Saudi Arabia.

Again the Council are not perfect. But they have come along way from the days, 20 years ago, where a Council officer was suspended without pay when she got pregnant and another, senior, officer took them to court. Men are still slightly ahead at the London HQ   but overseas we are on the inside track: the two biggest markets are now headed by women: Ruth Gee in India and Joanna Burke in China.

The Council has long been aware of the need for global mobility.  To build up a career in the British Council teaching centres network, the teacher has to be prepared to move every two to four years. This is pretty difficult to do if you have children – and that is the case whether you are the mother or the father.
Almost uniquely the Council have done something about it. 

They have recently agreed that teachers with middle-management positions and above working outside Europe should be entitled to have schools fees paid for the local international schools.- an absolute necessity if you want to attract working mothers or even working fathers.  ( No, before you ask, I’m not sure why Europe is excluded either. If you move from Spain to Greece and then Greece to Poland, you’re going to end up with some linguistically confused kids). I don’t want to hold the Council up as saints: after all these are the kinds of terms and conditions normal in most other expatriate jobs. But it’s a start.

As far as I can see, kids (or working partners unable to move with your career) present the real glass ceiling in EFL. This is a global business and like any global business from oil company exectuives to aid workers, if you want to build a career, you are probably going to have to move. If you are tied to staying in Bournemouth or Barcelona, Brisbane or Boston you are simply going to limit your scope.

I’m not sure anymore that the problem is direct discrimination against women. It is discrimination against families that is the problem. In fact, increasingly it is not only women who find their careers are slowed by family ties. Very recently I was asked to headhunt a very senior (and very well paid) job at a British-based chain. One man I tracked down replied: “ This is a great job, a really great job and I’d love to do it. But my kids are teenagers, and my wife commutes to work full-time. Right at this point in my career I just couldn’t take on something like this.”

Sound familiar? 

Useful links related to this posting:
The She-in-ELT series
Sandy McManus on Melanie Butler
"I don't want to say it, Sir" by Vicky Loras

As editor and owner of the EL Gazette, Melanie Butler is a well-known She-in-ELT and I am honored to feature a piece written by her.  Melanie and her team of intrepid journalists carry out a good number of major investigative pieces and deal admirably with the usual libel threats which accompany perceptive and accurate stories of this type.

Lindsay Clandfield on Katy Wright

I used to wonder why authors thanked their editors in the acknowledgments of their books. It wasn’t until I worked with Katy Wright that I really understood.

I first met Katy Wright at an IATEFL conference in Liverpool in 2004. It was my first BIG conference, I was an eager new author all set to meet my new commissioning editor and publisher at Macmillan. I remember being so nervous but excited at the same time. I was moving into a world about which I knew quite little and was in awe a bit at the whole thing. Katy Wright did not disappoint at all.

For the next year or so Katy helped the manuscript which was to become my first major book (Straightforward Elementary) take shape. She was a tireless professional. It takes a special kind of character to be a good editor, as you are often having to walk a fine line between encouraging an author when his/her work is good and pushing him/her when the work is not up to scratch. Katy was patient, and always listened to ideas and suggestions but always had a crystal clear idea of what the project needed.

Like the majority of editors, Katy started her ELT career as a teacher.

Fresh out of university (she studied history of art at Cambridge) she went to get her teaching certificate. Philip Kerr, lead author on Straightforward, was her trainer on her CELTA course at International House London. He told me that she was probably one of the sharpest, best teachers he had ever seen during his many years as a teacher trainer.

After finishing her certificate, Katy joined the British Council and started her career at the British Council in Israel. She spent three years in Tel Aviv and Nazareth, teaching general English and later on doing teacher training. This was the early nineties, and there were many English teachers from Russia who had arrived in Israel since the collapse of communism and needed training in communicative language teaching. Katy told me it was a great life experience, but after nearly four years it was time to move on.

Katy returned to the UK and did a higher diploma in TEFL at Manchester university. Shortly after finishing she moved into the world of educational publishing, which had been an interest to her since university days. Her first job was as a desk editor at Heinemann, working on manuscripts and learning the ropes. There she worked under Jill Florent, a “brilliant publisher and mentor” in Katy’s words. The first book Katy edited was Star, a First Certificate book by Luke Prodromou. I asked Luke how his experience was with Katy back at this time.

I first knew of Katy when her father appeared at the BC Thessaloniki in the late 70s early 80s. She was just a little girl. Then she 'reappeared' as my editor on Star, when the FC book was nearly complete and I was just starting the lower levels. I think it was her first project as an editor. She was young and full of energy and bright ideas. The difference between the FCE book and the other two volumes, the ones she edited is palpable. FCE is a baggy boring monster - basically it was not edited and overwrote like mad.

Her approach was tough, constructive and creative. When she didn't like something she provided alternative ideas or material. She was both critical and encouraging.

For me it was a learning experience in writing for teenagers and taking things form the readers' point of view. She helped me to keep the end reader in mind and produced a much fresher and appealing course. She had a good eye for design and visually had very good taste.

Interestingly, the FCE book was not a great seller - the books she edited, however, did much better and I am still in a position to appreciate and feel grateful for her support. She was a pleasure to work with and though young she was confident and professional. It made the sometimes painful experience of editorial feedback much easier to take and benefit from.

After two years Katy started moving up in the world of publishing. Her first promotion was to be commissioning editor for primary education in Greece. This allowed her to really focus on a market and get to know it. Greece is a very intense and competitive market, especially in the world of primary and secondary school, making it a very interesting place to work with in terms of English language teaching, and Katy was very satisfied with her work at that point.

But her real aim had always been adult education, and the opportunity presented itself when a job came up in the adult education group of Macmillan (who had taken over Heinemann by that point) with the late David Riley, a legend in the world of publishing. Katy began work on videos for the flagship course Inside Out before getting to commission her first own course – Straightforward. This was in 2003.

The world of publishing is constantly changing, and people are often moving about. So it was sad (for me and the other authors) but not a surprise to know that Katy was continuing her rise in the profession from commissioning editor to publisher.

She was offered a job with Pearson Longman as senior publisher for the adult group and the methodology titles in 2005. Since then Katy has been behind the launch of the new adult course Language Leader, as well as the award-winning How to Methodology series.

Katy and her partner Paul had their first child Amelie in 2007 and became parents for a second time earlier this 2009 with the arrival of Daniel. Much of the information for this piece I gathered from a Skype conversation with Katy at her home in London, as she is currently on maternity leave.

As this is a piece for She in ELT, I asked her if having children had made it difficult for her to find the right work-life balance. “Not really, no,” Katy told me. Although she was currently on maternity leave she felt that Pearson Longman had been amazing when it came to allowing her flexibility with work. “I cut down to four days a week after coming back from my maternity leave with Amelie. And of those four days, they let me work from home for two. Which really helps.”

So, is the world of ELT publishing male-dominated like many other businesses? Katy laughed when I asked this. “It’s like a nunnery!” she exclaimed, before quickly adding, “In the best possible way.” Katy told me that in ELT publishing, like in so many other sectors of language teaching, it is a female dominated area. Many of the very high up positions remain in the hands of men, but the glass ceiling in still pretty high. “I know several senior publishers and figures in the industry, all women.” And, based on her own experience, Katy believes that it is a good industry for women.

I thought a lot about how to begin this piece, because there is another thing about Katy that is interesting.

She is the daughter of another important ELT figure, Andrew Wright (author of Five Minute Activities and other books for teachers). It’s tempting to start to write about a daughter or son of someone known by insinuating that it’s all down to genetics, or contacts. However, in my view, Katy is a talented professional who is respected and appreciated in the field completely down to her own merit and personal achievements. She is one of the great “She in ELT” women in her own right, and I wish her all the best for the future.

Lindsay Clandfield is an award-winning methodology author, textbook writer, teacher and teacher trainer. A regular contributor to OneStopEnglish, he writes a monthly column for the Guardian Weekly and his great blog SixThings covers a wide range of topical ELT issues.


More in the She-in-ELT series

• Introduction to the series by Gavin Dudeney
• Valentina Dodge
• Melanie Butler
• Vicki Hollett
• Sister Luz Moreno
• Paula Reynolds
• Cristina Whitecross

Sheila Vine on Valentina Dodge

The female in ELT who has had the most influence on me during the last four or five years is Valentina Dodge. Valentina is to online EFL what chocolate is to life: essential.

Valentina is a teacher, teacher trainer, blogger and online moderator working at the University of Naples and has very recently been appointed Teaching Community Coordinator of the English 360 for Cambridge University Press.

Vale and I first ‘met’ back in June 2005 when we were both learning to be e-moderators on the same online course and we hit it off straight away.

It was a great course with a lot of wonderful students but Valentina, or Vale as she prefers to be called, immediately impressed. In fact, scared was my first reaction, because she was such a powerful, knowledgeable and dynamic participant in all the various exercises and tasks we had to perform.

I thought she must be a plant, put there to encourage the rest of us. But no, as I soon found out she was simply exhibiting one of her best virtues: her passion for online learning and teaching.

After the online courses, we started to work together, virtually, on eChatBoX which was an online resource for real-time moderators, which we made available on the internet.

This project and the talk we gave about it to the IATEFL conference in Harrogate in April 2006 was developed completely virtually - Valentina lives in Italy and I’m based in Germany so we did not meet face-to-face until the day before we gave our prize winning presentation on the project.

My first conference speech: we got through it with tremendous mutual support, giggling with enthusiasm for the topic.

We went on to teach together, online, in our separate countries and were a great virtual team.

Vale is always totally up to the minute on the latest online gadgets and tools and her enthusiasm has continued to drag me along and encourage my faltering steps.

We also spoke together on Blended Books in Aberdeen 2007 and worked on a chapter for the book Communities of Practice: Creating Learning Environments for Educators edited by Chris Kimble, Paul Hildreth and Isabelle Bourdon ISBN 1593118678 or ISBN 159311866X. Our chapter is called Gender and Moderation: The Style’s the Thing!

We also wrote various articles for online magazines e.g. Cornered-The Experiences of Freelance Business English Teachers in Europe for Humanising Language Teaching. In addition we co-wrote CD-ROMs for the Flying High series for Macmillan

Valentina has spoken at many events and the excellence of her work has been recognized by many. She inspires with, not only her enthusiasm, but also her genuine desire to help her students and colleagues.

When you are working and/or studying with her it is completely clear that she in not “in it for the money” like far too many people I have had contact with in this field.

She works extremely hard, always goes the extra mile and this is often only appreciated when you realize how much she actually has on her plate at any one time. She is like the duck floating serenely on the water but paddling like heck underneath to keep up and is a perfect example “if you want something doing ask a busy person”.

Because at the same time as all these online and face-to-face teaching activities she has found the time to bring up two teenage children.

So Valentina, on behalf of all the students, colleagues, conference delegates and teachers who have met and worked with you: you give such a lot to us all, you are an inspiring example of the best in ELT .

Sheila Vine teaches International Business Studies at University of Paderborn and is an online moderator at Cambridge Assessment. She is a freelance author of various EFL Books and CD Roms and writes a blog about books she's read or used in classes.

Useful links related to this posting:

• She-in-ELT: introduction to the series
• How to contribute your own piece

• More She-in-ELT articles (scroll past this one)
  

Sandy McManus on Melanie Butler

I can't really say that there is a glass ceiling in ELT- much more of a 'Pink Ceiling', especially if you work for the British Council!

I would say that more than half of my bosses in the field of education have been women, so I can't claim any evidence for the deliberate belittling of women and their achievements in the ELT workplace. If I think back to my working life in both the UK and abroad, I'm quite happy to state that EFL appears to dish out the crappy DoS and Academic Leader jobs quite evenly between the sexes.

However I'd like to nominate Melanie Butler as my candidate for the "She in ELT" pages.


Her name is, I know, not even half as well-known as many of those that have appeared in this series but I have a very solid reason or three for nominating her.

Melanie Butler is the editor and owner of the EL Gazette, a much under-rated and under-valued monthly trade journal for the EFL/ELT sector. She took over the reins of the EL Gazette in the days when EFL was but a mere cottage industry, back in 1987, and has probably regretted it ever since.

It's no understatement to say that the EL Gazette has faced major financial headaches to keep afloat in recent years, and continues to do so, and Melanie has done incredible work to keep the journal alive.

There is no comparison to the EL Gazette in existence and its absence would be I believe, a great loss for the TEFLtrade. It really should have a much higher profile and be read by a far wider audience of EFL teachers and managers.

Moreover, Melanie and her team of intrepid journalists have carried out a good number of major investigative pieces and dealt admirably with the usual libel threats that accompany perceptive and accurate stories of this type.

For that alone I think she deserves the thanks and admiration of the entire EFL/ELT sector.

However, in truth, there was just one main reason I interviewed this crusading journalist back in June for The TEFL Tradesman: I knew that Melanie and I stand on the same side of the fence when it comes to

(a) revealing the shysters in the EFL business, and
(b) wanting to improve the lot of the average 'downtrodden Tefler.'


In short, those are the two principal reasons I feel that she deserves this special mention from me. Actually, she has also paid me for the odd bit of freelance reporting, so that's a third motive, I guess!

Melanie has been very vocal in exposing the illegal and immoral practices that permeate the shoddy and dangerous UK summer school scene even to the extent of having advertisers threaten to with-hold future advertising - it takes a really brave person to risk alienating your source of income!

Moreover, her sharp comments about the British Council and their 'stupid' decision to ignore teachers' terms and conditions from their accreditation scheme were extremely accurate.

"About time too", I would say, as it is farcical to maintain the illusion that UK EFL schools can guarantee quality when they oblige teachers to be in the classroom for up to 45 hours a week in some cases.

The whole British Council Accreditation Scheme has become a milch-cow, in my opinion, as they work in collaboration with the country's only EFL employers' federation, English UK.

The whole scam needs exposing, I believe, and Melanie Butler is the person to do that (well, one of them - guess who the other one is!?).

For her unwavering devotion and dedication to EFL, she deserves more than just a mention, instead- a medal!

Sandy McManus is the nom-de-plume of someone in the TEFL industry currently at large somewhere near an oil well by the Caspian. Or Libya. Or not...

He writes the TEFL Tradesman blog and is also the blogger behind the TEFL blacklist.

Jeremy Day on Vicki Hollett's Opportunities & Objectives

The ‘she in ELT’ who has had the biggest impact on me – Vicki Hollett.

I’ve never met Vicki face to face, so I’m afraid this piece will be more technical than personal. As you’ll see, I’m a bit obsessive about two of Vicki’s books: Business Objectives (BObjs) and Business Opportunities (BOpps).

Forgive me if I go on a bit about them …

Over the years I’ve met a handful of fellow BOpps and BObjs obsessives – people who rave about them at length. But most teachers remember them simply as “Yeah – great books”, but without the passion.

I think those teachers just didn’t get it.

It took me a long time to get it, too. In my first year or so of using the books, I saw them as nice, straightforward ways of getting students to talk about interesting business topics in English. The functional language syllabus was excellent – that was easy to spot straight away – with just the right amount of phrases for meetings, presentations, socialising, etc.

The section on telephoning in BOpps was the best of any I’ve used, with its lovely role-play map. The section on business writing at the end of unit 4 contained a rich bank of essential writing phrases, all contextualised and presented over a super-efficient three pages. What’s more, the topics were ideal for the students I was teaching in various factories (but perhaps more than they would be for, say, marketing types or bankers). So I liked them a lot, but I was still missing something …

I spotted it one day when I was pondering a minor mystery in unit 4.

There was a nice little role-play activity on p39 about managing the environment. Students played the roles of directors of a manufacturing company who had to weigh up the suitability of a range of proposals for making the company greener. The proposals ranged from “Tell our suppliers to provide less packaging with their products” to “Install a large fan on the hillside to blow away pollution” (great idea, by the way).

It was a nice role-play, but at the bottom of the page was a strange little activity: “Now compare your decisions with your colleagues from other groups. Find out which proposals they decided to implement and why”. What’s the point of that, I thought?

Did you spot it? What language were they using to make their decisions?

“I’ll do that if you like”; “I’ll leave that to you”; “Shall I do that or will you?”. And what language should they be using to compare answers with other groups? Aha … it’s will vs going to. Making decisions vs talking about decisions. So actually the follow-up was the key to the whole activity. (Or would have been, if only my students had been aware of the language they were expected to use – mine just used will all the time until I worked out what was going on.).

It kind of made sense.

There’d been a presentation on will and going to earlier in the unit, back on p35. But why wait til p39 for the practice? I decided to take a closer look at the nice reading/speaking activity on pages 36 and 37. Exercise 1 was a harmless little quiz on cultural differences in international meetings, with some good vocabulary. Exercise 2 was a compare-with-your partners speaking, and exercise 3 was a here’s-what-the-expert-says reading. At least, that’s how I’d treated it, but a closer look at exercise 1 showed me it was will again:

“You’re putting forward a proposal that several people at the meeting disagree with. How will you handle the situation?
a. I’ll stick to my guns;
b. I’ll drop the proposal;
c. I’ll do something else”.

And exercise 2 was going to! (“What are you going to do with the working papers?”)

I then looked ahead to the writing activities on pages 41 to 43. As I said above, these were a brilliantly concise everything-you-really-need-to-know guide to standard phrases for business writing. Surely Vicki wouldn’t also squeeze in practice of will and going to? But she did!

In exercise 1 we had to read the letters and discuss with a partner which ones are urgent and how to deal with them. In exercise 2 we had to explain our decisions to a new partner. Exercise 1: will. Exercise 2: going to.

Amazing.

And that’s the point.

The whole unit was practising will and going to. But it did it in such an interesting way that it was actually very difficult to see past the topic or the work on other skills to see the practice exercises concealed beneath. And it’s the same in every unit of both books. They’re full of grammar practice exercises which look like something else!

(There’s an obvious concern here: if the grammar practice was so well hidden that teachers didn’t spot it, it meant that most users of the books missed out on their greatest strength. This was something I asked Vicki about when I interviewed her at the Virtual Round Table here.)

Anyway, unit 6 of BOpps is the best unit of any book I’ve ever used for practising the difference between 1st and 2nd conditionals.

On page 60 we have a fantastic role-play about dealing with shrinkage (losses through theft). Students discuss a list of suggestions using great functional language they’ve been taught throughout the unit (“We’d better …”; “No, that’s simply not feasible”).

The intro to the exercise gives some examples of things to say: “Proposal 1 is a good idea. If we position tills at the exits, it’ll make it more difficult to steal. I don’t like proposal 2. The staff would object if we issued uniforms with no pockets”. Did you spot it that time? (OK, I primed you to make it easier).

1st conditionals for proposals we like; 2nd conditionals for ones we don’t like. How elegant is that!

Now, you may disagree with me on this, but I think intermediate and upper intermediate business students need a lot of work on grammar accuracy.

Many of them already have the fluency, especially the ones who use English every day at work. They come to English lessons to tidy things up. But most business English books (including the most popular ones today) barely touch on grammar, or if they deal with it, it’s not systematic. There’s never enough practice.

Now, if I want to give my business students reading texts from the business press, I can get them from the business press – I don’t need that from my course book. What I need from a course book is the stuff that I can’t create myself in 5 minutes before the lesson.

That’s what BOpps and BObjs provided.

I’ve taught plenty of advanced-level students, high-powered business leaders who can talk with wonderful fluency but who are desperate to fix their grammar problems. And I used to put them all on BOpps – even though it was supposed to be only upper int. And it worked.

(I say used to because I’m no longer a manager – a fact which has nothing to do with my choice of course books, I hasten to add).

I haven’t said much yet about Vicki’s other classic, BObjs, although that too did some pretty cool things.

For example, in the unit on Business Travel there’s an exercise called Future Possibilities where students have to match sentence halves. We end up with sentences like “If you haven’t met before, how will you recognize him at the airport?”, “If you have to be there by ten, you’d better hurry up” and “If she wasn’t on that flight, she’ll be on the next one”. In other words, conditional sentences about the future which break free of the traditional rules and formulas of first conditionals.

In fact, out of 12 sentences, only 1 fits the classic IF + PRESENT SIMPLE formula taught by all other books since the beginning of time. Only 1! And this is for A2/B1 students, many of whom will never have learnt about conditionals before.

So Vicki tells them, right from the start, “don’t worry about formulas – there’s nothing scary about conditionals. Just use normal tenses!” I wish all course books at this level were as brave as that, but unfortunately I’ve never seen this approach in any other book.

As a course-book editor, I’m obsessed with two things: aims and flow.

Each unit has to have an underlying structure – a series of sections linked together naturally in a logical order so as to provide the right amount of context, language input and practice at just the right time to really achieve the unit aims. Each section and sub-section can itself be analysed in the same terms, so a perfect unit is like a wonderfully intricate mechanical device – cogs within cogs, all perfectly aligned.

The units in BObjs and BOpps were (almost) all like that.

Let me take you step-by-step through unit 10 of BObj, which is about Progress Updates, to show you what I mean. We start with a personalisation task (“Who services the equipment and machinery in your company? And who fixes it when it breaks down?”) to lead in to the topic of the first section: a situational dialogue between two managers at an office equipment repair company.

The first focus is on the content – comparing call-outs in October with those in September, but then we get to the language focus, present perfect, with examples of the structure pulled out of the dialogue. Contextualised presentation.

On the next 2-page spread, we have a new context – a profit and loss account, for a couple of very controlled practice exercises of present perfect, one spoken (explaining what has happened to the figures) and one written (completing the chairman’s report).

Finally there’s a personalised practice activity, talking about your own company or department.

Most course books would leave it there – or they wouldn’t even bother to provide this much practice of present perfect. But Vicki keeps going.

The next page focuses on another new topic, staff changes, with some vocab work (e.g. sack, recruit) to take us off in a new direction, but then we come back to more written and spoken controlled practice of present perfect using this new context and language.

Then we get another freer-practice personalisation activity: “Have you taken on any new staff recently?”. Another topic: targets, with contrastive practice including an information exchange to focus on the difference between past simple (“How many units did they sell last year?”) and present perfect (“How many have they sold this year? They haven’t achieved their target”).

Do you think our students have mastered present perfect yet, after six pages and four contexts? Again, most course books would assume so, but of course as teachers we all know that A2/B1 students really take a long time to master present perfect.

So the more practice the better, as long as you can keep the topics interesting and the activities varied and personalised.

So on the next spread we have a cycle of activities (personalisation – controlled practice – freer practice – role-play) on present perfect with yet. And on the final spread, we listen to the business news (guess which tenses we’ll hear) and do yet another information exchange, this time on share performance, and yet again using present perfect.

So the whole unit practises different uses of present perfect (contrasted with other tenses).

But it’s never boring or repetitive because it’s also excellent fluency work, vocab work, listening … and it’s all personalised and contextualised.

Anyway, I did warn you that I’m a bit obsessive. I guess what I’m trying to say is: through these books, Vicki taught me a huge amount about how to teach business English, how to write courses and how to edit other people’s books.

If you’re serious about teaching grammar, business English or ESP, if you write courses or books or would like to in the future, if you care about aims and flow, I suggest you get hold of copies of these two old classics and learn from the master.

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Vicki Hollett is the author of textbooks like Tech Talk, Business Objectives, Business Opportunities, Quick Work, Meeting Objectives, In at the Deep End and the soon to be Lifestyle. Vicki’s special interests are business English, sociolinguistics and pragmatics.

British by birth, she’s currently based in the US where she’s writing more courses, teaching at the University of Pennsylvania and Learning to speak ‘merican: http://www.vickihollett.com.

She'll also be giving the Plenary at BESIG in Poznan, Poland, November 20th 2009.


Jeremy Day is Series Editor of Cambridge English for ESP a series of short courses.

He has written two teacher’s books on legal English (International Legal English and Introduction to International Legal English), both for Cambridge University Press, as well as major ESP courses for the British Council and International House. He also has several more books in the pipeline. He teaches general, business and legal English at the British Council in Warsaw, Poland, and is passionate about grammar. His new blog, Specific English, is aimed at teachers of ESP.

The She-in-ELT series:
Articles from

• Shelly Terrell
• Gavin Dudeney
• Vicki Hollett
• Alex Case and
• Karen Schweitzer.

to contribute your own piece:

• submission details

Special thank you for the photos to the folks at Linguarama: Colin, Claire & Howard!

Shelly Terrell on Sister Luz Moreno

As a Hispanic American, we would frequently drive to the border and do missionary work in Mexico so I'd like to describe Mexico for those who have only been to the resort areas.

Families often live in shanty towns and there are cardboard cities where houses look like they were made from boxes. As many as seven live in these homes. Children do not know the luxuries of basic needs or a formal education, they ask tourists to buy Chiclets and other goods to get enough money to eat.

This is the México that Sister Luz has dedicated her efforts to make a difference in and where she began her journey.



Sister Luz Moreno is not just a "she" in English Language Teaching, but a remarkable person who possesses an intense passion for helping people. She was born and raised in León Guanajuato, México.

Not only did Sister Luz teach in Mexico, but she drives there annually to give poor children toys and clothing. I found this out by just Googling her name because she never boasts of her service. Read this amazing article about her, Good Works in Mexican Village Multiply like "Fishes and Loves."

She learned English in her teens by attending a Brigidine Boarding School in Abbeyleix, Co. Laois, Ireland and entered the Religious Life after Vatican Council II.

Although she has taught in México, Ireland, and Italy, I met her in San Antonio, Texas where she became my mentor in my second year of being the English language teacher at our high school.

At the time, we had over 30 international students from 12 different nations and various proficiencies.

Sister Luz noticed that the English language learners were struggling in their mainstream classes and that they rarely interacted with native speaking students so she sought my help in creating an International Society.

In the first year, over 70 native speakers and English language learners attended several festivals and cultural activities. We even hosted an International Thanksgiving supper featuring over 30 dishes from various countries. Over 100 members of the community attended.

I asked Sister Luz why she chose to help the English language learners at the school.

She responded, "The Sisters in Ireland helped me to learn English. I worked hard to master the language and to love its literature. I believe foreign students will have something like two souls when they master, appreciate and love the culture where they live, in this case, our American culture.

I get chills when I hear Sousa's Stars and Stripes Forever, just like when Mariachi's play.

I also get chills when I hear an Irish tenor or my Italian songs. That is to have a soul that speaks to God in different languages."

For the She-in-ELT series, I interviewed Sister Luz and was touched by her answers.




Describe your experience as a nun
I have experienced the love of God in my life. I am sure he takes care of me and holds me in his embrace. He is a provident husband, friend, father and brother to me.

He gives me a large family in the people who love me here and opens the doors of opportunity for me wherever a door closes.

What obstacles have you faced as a teacher and as a nun?
The main obstacle I sometimes face is poor self-image. This is an obstacle that I have worked to overcome and with God's grace and support from family and friends, I have improved.

What made you want to teach?
I love to work with people. My teachers gave me self-confidence and wings to fly. I want many to fly with me, fly on their own and soar high so they can touch God, so to speak.

What has been one of the most cherished teaching experiences in your career?
I remember encouraging Richard Castillo by giving him sheet music and asking him to play it. I love when I see a talent and I am able to bring it forth and the person flourishes in that area.

I fondly remember teaching vocabulary to the foreign students who came from Asia, feeling I was making a difference.

Who has been a great influence on your teaching style?
The Sisters from Ireland have been a great influence in my teaching style. Also, Señorita Coco who opened my mind to classical music and many other beautiful aspects of life. She taught me many a course in León.

Lately, I have learned a lot from being involved with a team in a small mission ministry in Matehuala, México. Giving to others in the form of teaching energizes me. I desire to be a good teacher and the Holy Spirit shapes my daily teaching with the words that come out of my mind and the way my lessons are presented. I could not do it on my own.

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I am blessed to have a mentor like Sister Luz in my life. She has encouraged me to step beyond the boundaries of teaching and to reach the heights of giving. She is also a close friend.


Shelly Sanchez Terrell is an English language teacher from Texas who now teaches in Germany where she has been fortunate enough to meet another inspiring "She in ELT," Karenne Sylvester. Shelly has worked in nonprofit organizations and taught in unstructured settings for 12 years before becoming a "She" in ELT herself. Find out more about Shelly by visiting her LinkedIn profile and her Teacher Reboot Camp blog.

Useful links related to this posting:

• Gavin Dudeney, introduction to the series
• Vicki Hollett on Cristina Whitecross
• Alex Case on Paula Reynolds
• Karen Schweitzer on Deborah Healey

Do you know another inspiring women in the field of English language teaching?
Contribute to the she-in-elt series by visiting this post for details.

Best,
Karenne

Alex Case on Paula Reynolds

You almost certainly haven’t heard of Paula Reynolds, partly because until she retired she was, to most people, just another of those hard working female teachers busy cutting up packs of cards on coloured paper and occasionally getting bolshy about standards while her male colleagues were out getting drunk, pulling their students, but also because she worked in a time where there was a singular lack of opportunities for female TEFLers.

Paula and I think remembering that situation can both show us how far we've come in making She central to ELT and remind us of the dangers that still lurk if we take equal opportunities for granted.

Here are some of the indignities she endured over 35 years and three continents:

• Schools in Thailand having uniforms just for the female staff
• Having to wear a skirt of a precisely determined length in China

• Schools asking for a younger photo to put in the school brochure
• Being offered kids’ classes “because the parents prefer a woman”, “to bring a woman’s touch” or even “to make up for having none of your own”

• Schools in Japan expecting female teachers to pour the tea and do photocopies for everyone
• Housewife classes always being given to male teachers in Japan
• Schools with predominantly housewife classes not recruiting female teachers in Japan
• Being told to pretend she was married to her male flatmate in Turkey (to “stop the neighbours talking”)

• Repeatedly being asked to give talks on teaching kids at conferences, despite never having taught them

• Being a victim of London schools specifically trying to recruit straight male DoSs (in the brief ARELS positive discrimination days)
• Staff Xmas parties in topless bars in Bangkok
• Pirelli calendars in staff rooms all over the world

• Being told “Yes, I can imagine why a woman of your age would teach in Bali”

• Michael Lewis’s letter in the ELTJ saying that her criticism of The English Verb was “a clear case of PMT speaking in the place of logic”

• Publishers suggesting that she’d get work more easily if she was in a TEFL writing couple

• A gay teacher proposing a sham marriage for that purpose (she says you’d be surprised how many famous TEFL “couples” actually started this way)

• Asked to wear a fake beard to teach a class of mainly middle eastern males in London

As Paula herself says, most of these things could never happen nowadays... but in 20 years’ time, there'll plenty of things that do happen today and we'll look back on them with just as much surprise that they ever could have.

Alex Case, blogger, is unfortunately He in ELT, but has worked with and dated female teachers, students, customer service staff and ELT editors in Turkey, Thailand, Spain, Italy, Japan, Korea and the UK.

Useful links related to this posting:

• Gavin Dudeney, Sexy Redux (intro)
  
• Vicky Hollett on Cristina Whitecross
• Karen Schweitzer on Deborah Healey
• To contribute an article to the She-in-ELT series see here.
  

Gavin Dudeney's Sexy Redux

She-in-ELT, intro

It seems a slight condescension to even consider writing an article like this, despite the fact that it was an original blog posting of mine which kicked off the series.

So maybe we should first go back and take a look at the conversation that ensued…

The blog post was entitled ‘sexy ELT’ (it should, of course, have been ‘sexist’, as one of the comments from Sara Hannam pointed out – more on her later - but I’m renowned for my impish humour online, and anyway, I thought the point was better made with the word ‘sexy’) and it was very short:




“An idle thought, but why are most sponsored speakers at ELT conferences nice (young) men when the majority of teachers of ELT worldwide are women? Oh no…. wait…. I see what they did there…”


Sara pointed out, quite rightly, that it really pretty much echoes the glass ceiling encountered in other professions, and whilst she acknowledged that there might be an ‘eye candy’ element, it was probably more to do with accepted ‘norms’ – the ‘that’s the way things are’ scenario.

Alex Case chipped in with the suggestion that women and their egos are not prone to the relentless attention seeking that men seem to be, and that there were plenty of women in positions such as DoS, etc., which was partially my point, I think. Chalk face – good, conference bad.

Karenne reckoned men are simply more territorial and ‘yell more’ and that in some places there’s an ingrained respect for the ‘Papa’ figure, which covers rather a lot of regular conference plenary speakers, despite their protestations of youth!

Scott Thornbury suggested that there was some geographical skew going on, with women much more prominent in the States and Australia than in the UK, and indeed that has partially been my experience when attending conferences in Asia – but it’s still true that whichever way you cut it, there are way more male plenary speakers than women.

A quick glance at some of my conference attendances in the early part of the year came up with 33 male and only 9 female plenary speakers. Scott then wondered what would happen if you factored in sexuality to the equation, but we never got to explore that avenue.

Anne Hodgson shared that her local teachers’ association was considering a ‘Women Speakers Year’, but I have to say I’ve always been troubled by concepts of positive discrimination and quotas.

We struggle with this every year when sitting down to discuss plenary speakers for the IATEFL Annual Conference – do we have a good balance of men and women, NEST and non-NEST, etc.?

And sometimes I find myself thinking why don’t we make a list of the best speakers we’ve seen and then vote until we have four and invite them and not worry what sex, nationality or sexuality… Surely people want to see the best?

Barbara Sakamoto brought up the subject of logistics – she thought that men often didn’t have the babies to deal with, the packing of extra stuff, childcare… and there may certainly be an element of truth in that.

You’re hard pushed to find a crèche or similar facilities at most conferences and that’s something that should be addressed as a matter of urgency. She also thought there were issues of efficiency – people involved in tours, the saving of money, etc. and of expediency – who wants to be the person who invited the rubbish plenary speaker? There’s an A list, a B list and a C list. The problem, however, is how one changes list…. Or how one gets on it if it’s full of long-lived Papa legends.

Sara returned to the debate at that point, and she’s actually quite hard to summarise due to her lengthy posts and lucid arguments.

But essentially she debunked a lot of the talk about sex and sexuality, male aggression and male egos and suggested that men and women need to get in touch with their similarities, not their differences (go and see the comments for her far-more-lucid posting). Essentially, though, she thought that it was an issue that needed sorting by all involved, and that talking about it openly was a good place to start.

Other factors crept into the discussion.

Alex thought men were more humorous and that this teaching style was attractive to learners.

Sara thought that women generally had to work harder at generating laughs, largely for historic reasons in that stand-up had been a male domain for quite some time. Many people around this point in the discussion started poring over conference programmes and finding lots of female speakers – but this was rank and file, rather than invited or plenary, so perhaps not relevant at this stage.

And that was where it left off.

It’s unusual for me to see such a lively debate on an ELT blog and as it tailed off I thought perhaps we hadn’t solved anything, but we had – at least – talked about it together and that was a good thing.

And so we fast-forward to Lindsay Clandfield’s notoriously polemical poll of the most influential people in ELT (where were the technologists, we screamed, where were the women….?) and now we’re here, co-creatingKarenne’s current series of ‘She-in-ELT.’

And here I am, a man, being asked to contribute to the conversation.

Some people think everyone’s making too big a thing out of it.

But again, to quote Spinal Tap (as Lindsay did in that blog entry), “making a big thing out of it might have been a good idea”.

Karenne invited me to do an interview, an obituary or a thought piece to contribute to the series and we had a little email discussion about what that might entail. So, with all that said and done, I’d like to tell you about some of the women I’ve met during my career even though that sounds vaguely condescending to me …


It’s weird making a female only list, and weirder still to know that someone, somewhere, is going to wonder why I forgot them. For that I apologise – for Karenne’s assertion that I should even be doing this, and for my inability to remember all the people that have had an effect on my life over twenty years in the profession.

There’s no order, no ranking.




Having mulled it over, I simply decided this would be my thank you to the professionals who have influenced me. You may not find books of theirs in bookshops, but you should definitely seek them out, say hello and buy them a cup of coffee if they’re ever near you.

Not many of them are famous, as you’ll see – though plenty of them should be, even if they don’t crave it like we attention-seeking men do. And perhaps not many of them would make great plenary speakers (but hey, sponsors, you’ll never know unless you go and see them speaking and get over the ‘must have bearded middle-aged men or spunky young Turks’ approach to conferences) but they’re all part of my ELT life and I’ve enjoyed meeting (or working with) all of them.

These are not biographies – just notes on where and when and why…



IATEFL

Has always been a place to meet good people – the sort of people who give up their time to contribute to the profession, volunteers – yes, people who work for no money! I’ve been volunteering for some time now, and some of the people who have given me cause to think, offered advice and lent a sympathetic ear include:

• Catherine Walter, Susan Barduhn, Tessa Woodward, Marion Williams
Past Presidents

• Glenda Smart
Indefatigable Executive Officer

• Sara Hannam
My social conscience on the Coordinating Committee

• Sophie Ioannou-Georgiou
Long-standing Learning Techs SIG volunteer

There are others who should be on the list, but to mention them all would take quite a while.

IATEFL survives to an extent on the time dedicated by its large volunteer body. If you’ve got some time and some skills, please consider getting involved.

http://www.iatefl.org/volunteering/

BLOGOSPHERE

Plenty of people here... Our very own Karenne has an eye for a story and often makes me laugh with her enthusiasm which can rub people up the wrong way. A very good read.

Burcu Akyol is rapidly rising up the ranks of visible bloggers and she’s enthusiastic and helpful to the extreme. She’s writes a blog and is also a classroom blogger and this mix of using technology for her own development and in her classroom practice is a poke in the eye for all those ‘educators’ who think technology is all very well for them, but that we mustn’t confuse the poor little mites in our classes (or the teachers we train) with the perils of the flashing light.

Others should be on this list, too – but again the list would be too long. Visit some of the popular ELT blogs, examine their blogrolls and follow through - I guarantee you won't be disappointed.


SECOND LIFE

My own personal hero in SL is Eloise Pasteur.

Immensely talented, opinionated, and one of the most generous educators I’ve ever come across. El’s fame runs way back in SL, and she’s driven some of the most popular teaching tools and some of the most amazing builds in-world. She’s also the person who suffered the indignity of teaching me SL scripting, and was so good that although I booked and paid for ten classes, she’d taught me more than enough after seven.

SL and ELT are increasingly synonymous with the name Nergiz Kern (or Daffodil in-world), and if you want to get into SL and meet a friendly, supportive person and community then I would seek her out.

And lastly, but not leastly, Carol Rainbow who has supported the EduNation project throughout, is a regular tenant and creator of things, and volunteers as estate manager whilst I'm travelling - couldn't do without her in my virtual world!

Join the SLExperiments group and go along to a meeting – you won’t regret it.

http://slexperiments.pbworks.com/

WORK

I’m lucky enough to work with one of the brainiest people in ELT, Nicky Hockly, and it’s been an immense piece of luck on my part to hook up with her and run a company with her.

She’s perceptive, focussed, well-read, organised and many other things which are sadly lacking in me. She’s even better at the accounts than I am (and my Dad was an accountant – you’d think something would have rubbed off, wouldn’t you?)

Last year at IATEFL she did the funniest Pecha Kucha I’ve seen, which belies the notion that women have to work harder at being funnier.

Catch the video on the IATEFL site for more…
http://exeteronline.britishcouncil.org/

We’re also lucky to be able to work with people such as Ana Falcao in Brazil, Valentina Dodge in Italy, Kristina Smith in Turkey, Anne Fox in Denmark…





In past professional existences working with Jenny Johnson at International House Barcelona taught me loads (you’ll find her at Cactus TEFL now) and an ongoing consultancy with Maureen McGarvey at International House London has also been instructive and often fun (note to Maureen: must make backups, must make backups).

In recent years I’ve done a lot of work with the British Council and you could do no better than to seek out Caroline Meek (Singapore), Mina Patel (Kuala Lumpur), Rebecca Hales (Hanoi), Olga Barnashova (Moscow) or any number of local support staff in offices all around the world who are experts in organising, welcoming, making visits and work easy and fruitful.

It’s a large organisation, but some of the people working there are some of the most professional and amazing people I’ve had the fortune to work with.

And of course I could go on and talk about inspiring training course participants, etc., but by now I feel Karenne is already regretting asking me to contribute to this series, so I’m going to draw this to a close soon.

So what of this list?

Well, firstly, it’s not exhaustive...

Secondly, it’s part of a complex picture and a complex professional existence which involves many men too.

And it really only means one thing, and that thing is personal: I work in a profession full of amazing people of all shapes, sizes, colours, nationalities, lifestyles…, I’m lucky enough to travel a lot in my work and, by extension, lucky enough to be able spend time with these people and to benefit from their kindliness and their professional experience (as well as the odd mad karaoke night in Manila).

Some of these people happen to be women, and that’s about it, really.

And what of the ‘big’ names – where is my list of them (maybe the list you were expecting?). Well, I’ve read a lot of them and taken inspiration from their work. Occasionally at conferences I’ve been delighted by people like Joy Egbert, Carol Chappelle, Catherine Doughty and many others.

But you see my problem here – I’m struggling to name women plenary speakers in my field who I’ve met at conferences.

And that sort of proves my original point.

In the next instalment, watch out for ‘a list of men in ELT.’

No, just kidding…

Gavin Dudeney is an edu-technologist.

Project Director of the Consultants-e and Honorary Secretary of IATEFL. Author of 'The Internet and the Language Classroom' (Cambridge University Press 2000, Second Edition 2007) and - with Nicky Hockly - 'How to Teach English with Technology' (Longman, 2007).

His specialities include: Conversion of courses to distance delivery, full range of training, installation, configuration and support for VLEs, setting up CoPs amongst professional groupings, online support systems for educators, development and design of online courses, evaluation of online, distance educational projects, f2f workshops in ICT-related issues, creation of flash and video-based training tutorials, design of educational environments in Second Life.

To contribute to the She-in-ELT series: please see original posting here

• Post 1 Karen Schweitzer on Deborah Healey
• Post 2 Vicki Hollett on Cristina Whitecross