Empower yourself with Self-compassion: a guide for teachers

Self-compassion for teachers 

It is true that the teaching profession attracts generous people. Teachers are generous with their time, dedicating extra hours to planning, marking and creating to make their students enjoy classes and learn in the best way possible. Teachers are generous with their colleagues, often helping to share materials, bring in cakes and biscuits to the staff room, and attend meetings after hours. Teachers are also generous with parents, taking the time to help them to understand more about their child’s progress. Yet, many teachers are not generous to themselves – they easily get stressed out, blame themselves if a lesson doesn’t quite go as planned, focus so much on their profession that their personal lives can be negatively affected. This is why, on this ‘Teacher’s Day’ on 27th November, I would like for teachers to think about, and then hopefully practice, self-compassion. 

What is self-compassion? 

When a family member, friend or colleague goes through a tough moment in life and you feel nothing but a sense of concern, and wanting to help and support that person, this is showing compassion, not judgement or pity. Self-compassion is to direct that love towards yourself when you face similar hurdles, rather than being angry at yourself, telling yourself off or feeling inadequate. It also involves facing the problem and the feelings involved, rather than ignoring it or burying it inside yourself where it will eat away at your self-confidence and sense of worth and will likely manifest itself later as anger. 

Why is it important? 

Living a life where your inner critic’s voice is the dominant voice is not a nice way to live! Nobody would choose that, and yet so many of us fixate on the negatives, rather than the positives. For example, if we had a good day at school and then one thing went wrong, we would fixate on that one thing rather than remembering all the good that had come before or after it. Such thinking can out us into a bad mood, cause anger, depression or a feeling of wanting to give up. It is interesting to note is that students are very perceptible to how their teacher is feeling, and it has implications for their learning. A study carried out by Moskowitz & Dewaele, 2019 showed that how students perceived the contentment of their teacher was directly and positively linked to their attitude, motivation and relationship with their teacher. If we can practice self-compassion, we will directly be able to help our students learn better. 

Self-compassion stages 

Self-compassion has been theorised to have three components, each with a positive pole and a negative pole: 

  1. Self-kindness versus self-judgement. This is where you would talk to yourself as if you would a student – you acknowledge a mistake for what it is but do not let something that happened consume you.
  2. Common humanity versus isolation. This is connected to the common phrase: ‘a problem shared is a problem halved.’ By seeking out people to socialise with and talk to, you can be reassured and be helped but keeping away from people will only put the problem front and centre of your thoughts. 
  3. Mindfulness versus over-identification. This is where being calm and centred is better than over-dramatising a problem, thus letting it consume you. 

 How can I start to be more self-compassionate? 

It is really difficult to change deeply rooted habits, and to be self-compassionate is to start a long process of change, but one that is really worth it. There are great books and courses on mindfulness and self-compassion that you can read and attend that will offer you much better insight and help than I can write in this blog. However, if you want to start right away, here are some practical tips to begin with: 

  1. When you make a mistake, talk to yourself as you would a friend – be compassionate, rational and kind. I often find talking aloud if I can’t find a friend lets those emotions out into the universe and I can vocalise my what-ifs and doubts to help myself to rationalise what happened, rather than let it be emotion-driven.
  2. Breathe. Breathing in for 5 second and out for 10 seconds helps the oxygen get to the brain, the adrenalin to calm down and I can process things much more calmly, rather than over-identify (see step 3 above).
  3. When you leave the classroom, say out loud to yourself one thing that you were happy with or grateful for that day to focus the attention, rightly, on the good aspects. You can also write this thought down in a diary and then you can have a collection of good memories of the school year. This can also help you to write nice reports too at the end of term as you have a record of some great things achieved in class. 
  4. Do something active. Doing sport (don’t groan!) truly does help. It doesn’t have to be a marathon but getting off the bus two stops earlier and power-walking home gets the stress out, the endorphins up and you feel much better. 
  5. Seek out people to feel better – have a coffee, play board games, go for dinner. Get distracted, and as time passes, you’ll see it wasn’t that bad whatever was causing you stress.  

 

An Introduction to Language Assessment Literacy

What is Language Assessment Literacy?

The original use of the term “literacy” is still commonly defined as the ability to read and write, but in its wider sense teaching professionals prefer to view it as a concept that brings together knowledge and competences in a given area of learning. We are all now becoming increasingly familiar with terms such as Digital Literacy or Research Literacy, as well as Assessment Literacy, which will now be the subject for a series of posts we are going to be sharing with you in the coming months, focusing specifically on the theme of Language Assessment Literacy, or LAL. Since the term first appeared at the start of the 1990s, there have been many attempts to define it, but we will use Pill and Harding’s simple yet concise definition from 2013, which considers LAL as a series of “competences that enable the individual to understand, evaluate and in some cases create language tests and analyse test data”.

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Five things to love about teaching English

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No two people have quite the same experience of teaching English.  My own history includes mostly private sector teaching to adults and teens (so this post might not reflect your situation exactly).  But regardless of the context you teach in, many of us, and this is undoubtedly true of any profession, might get to a time when we question why it is that we are doing it, or maybe we forget why we got into it in the first place.

For native speakers there is the added “I’m JUST an English teacher” issue to face as well, as in: I’m JUST teaching something that I didn’t have to put any real effort into learning myself, or Am I JUST taking the easiest option?  Shouldn’t I be more of a go-getter in world of increasing “go-getting.”  I would bet that this thought has crossed the minds of a fair number of you out there.  Perhaps if you are a NNS (non-native speaker) of English you haven’t had this same feeling, and the things listed below are somewhat more obvious to you.  If so, scream and shout about them!  Kick up a fuss about your profession!  And get your colleagues stoked about their job!  Because there are a great many things to love about being “just” an English teacher.

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It’s time for the National EOI Convention!

Once every two years the Official Language Schools in Spain hold their national convention.  This year’s event at the EOI in Valencia (this Thursday 30th March until Saturday 1st April) marks the 10th time they will come together to share ideas and best practices.

X jornadas eeooii

We at Pearson are also very proud to be taking part by providing three engaging workshops. Two of these talks will be given by award-winning ELT author, novelist and co-author of Pearson’s Speakout series, JJ Wilson, on the topics of creativity and authenticity in the classroom.  Also on hand will be Spain-based Teacher Trainer for Pearson Michael Brand who will offer his perspective on the characteristics of a C1 user of English and how to get our students up to this level.

For more details and times please consult the information below.

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3 ways to bring assessment for learning into your classroom

rocketWe all want our students to become more independent and responsible for their learning, but this won’t happen without the right support. Enter assessment for learning! As opposed to assessment of learning (think end of term exams, categorisation of students, awarding a number), assessment for learning sees learning as a journey: what does my student know, where are they going, what do they need to get there? Let’s look at three simple ways that good teachers employ assessment for learning.  

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Effective classroom management part 1: be the boss!

Socrates quote - Effective classroom management part 1: be the boss!Some of you may have noticed that I am sharing part of a quote attributed to Socrates from 400 BC. I have seen it used as a starting point for many a classroom management seminar, with the speaker aiming to show that teachers have been dealing with naughty students for millennia. However, the contents of training workshops on classroom management can of course vary wildly: it’s such a broad area. In many ways ‘How to be a good classroom manager’ is the same as ‘How to be a good teacher.’ With this in mind, I’ll be splitting this post into a series of three blog posts, each looking at a different ingredient in the recipe for good classroom management.

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Check out our teacher training sessions at the British Council

It’s been a busy few weeks for Pearson’s teacher trainers who have been giving talks at the British Council ‘Teaching for Success’ events across Spain. As promised, here are the links to the presentations we gave:

Valencia, Barcelona & Madrid with Brian Engquist, Marta Cervera & Michael Brand

Saturday 1st October 

Exploiting video to the max

From the Classroom to the Wider World

Bilbao with Elena Merino  

Saturday 24th September

Embracing Authenticity

Ten Top Tips for Terrific Teachers

Thanks for attending the talks and we hope you found them useful!

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More info at Pearson ELT Spain & Portugal

Meaningful speaking activities and blended learning for adult learners

blended-learningWhat constitutes a meaningful speaking activity for an adult and can blended learning help them improve in a task-based setting? At the end of this weekend I will be participating in the IX Congreso Estatal de escuelas oficiales de idiomas with a couple of sessions which will deal with these questions.

Speaking activities and blended learning for adult learners

In my first session “Speak Out Challenge: How to get our learners to produce meaningful oral language”, we will look at practical examples taken from SpeakOut (Intermediate), that can foster out students’ communicative interactions in English. Putting words together in order to utter a meaningful message is not an easy task. So in order to build fresh, motivating and significant speaking exercises, we need to consider quite a few things: 1) relating the activities to our students’ own reality; 2) using authentic material; and 3) engaging the learners. That is why, we will not only explore what prevents our students from speaking but we will also show effective ways of getting our students to really communicate, in other words, to say more than a few words, by combining both traditional interactive tasks with other handy technological tools. Continue reading

Making Writing Meaningful

A practical workshop about "Making Writing Meaningful", by Elena MerinoThis month I have been sharing perspectives, comments and knowledge about ESL Writing with teachers in Catalunya. The Department of Education of the Generalitat invited us to participate in their regular formative sessions.

This session aimed at providing primary, secondary and adult teachers with strategies to Make Writing Meaningful.The practical examples provided the teachers with diverse techniques and activities that they could use later in their classrooms, but we also had a reflective approach towards writing and its importance as a productive skill in second language development. Continue reading

Getting to know you: Elena Merino, Pearson Teacher Trainer

Elena Merino Teacher Trainer ELTThis week let’s get to know a person who has recently started working in our Teacher Training team for Spain and Portugal. Her name is Elena Merino and she joined Pearson 2 months ago. Read on to find out more!

Interview with Elena Merino, Teacher Training

1. How long have you been teaching English?

I’ve taught English for 12 years in very different contexts and for varied learning profiles. My main focus is teenagers and adults but I’ve also worked with children. Continue reading