UNBELIEVABLE...

Recently I read an article at JAMIEKEDDIEDOTCOM that a teacher lost his job because of one of Jamie's lesson plan. Basically, the activity involved using Google to investigate frequency of collocation pairs. The teacher was fired because his boss did not agree with that. Ok..here we go. How can we be teachers, I mean, English Teachers if we cannot use all the tools around us to make a class a little bit more interesting than usual? How come? I've seen this before. There was a teacher in a school were I used to teach (the same one where all the innovative projects were declined), who was fired because his classes were very noisy, consequence of the students' excitement...so, if students like it, it means that it is wrong? If students don't like it, the teacher is also fired...so, what do we have to do?

TTC (Teacher Training Course), Workshops, Teachers' meetings, all kinds of training we participate, for what? If we cannot use it, why bothering going to those training courses? Do you know why I had the urge to write about this? Because here in Brazil, specifically in my city, Recife, most of the schools here are like that...they want you to teach, but not to be very innovative, because it may disturb some of the "school authorities", or it is not the school's teaching philosophy, and you know what? It sucks! I keep motivating myself by using twitter, following teachers around the world, visiting websites, blogs and also going to teacher training meetings because I hope, I said I hope someday this will be over, and we will teach using our creativity to improve our way of teaching. 

I wish we can reflect abou what happened to that teacher, and I also would like you to have a say  and tell me what you think.

See you.

TO BE OR NOT TO BE?

I've been thinking about posting this for quite some time... Creativity has always been a challenge to me, in terms of being innovative everyday and not repeating the activities with my students even if their levels are the same (this is a little bit challenging!). We are not inspired everyday and there are not so many books available with a reliable proposal of creativity for you to develop some ideas and have your students do it. Recently, I read an article at Cecília Coelho's blog that she had read a book called Cem Aulas Sem Tédio (A hundred classes with no boredom) by Vanessa Menezes Amorim and Vivian Magalhães. I must say I had already done some of the activities from this book and I totally recommend it. But that's not the point, the question I keep asking is Can we, as teachers be creative 24/7? Is there a formula? Is the act of teaching suffice to make you creative? How does it happen?

There are, for sure, those people who were born with some kind of talent, (I know a few), who do not need to struggle looking for some light coming from the sky to find creativity. As I am not one of them, I have to do it my way and try to reach "perfection", if it is possible. In my opinion, one way of having some Ideas is simply reading. There are lots of books about ELT and some of them help you build a solid base for your profession. Definitely, my bedside book is The Practice of English Language Teaching by Jeremy Harmer. I used to take this book at the University Library for quite some time but I had the opportunity of buying it at XII Braz-Tesol National Conference and I also had it autographed (Yeah!). In this new edition there's a DVD with interviews and some real class observations which is fantastic! Talking about class observation, which is another way of improving your ideas, observing a class is not always boring, it is actually an opportunity for you to review your methodology and see if you can apply some of the other's techniques in your teaching practice. It is, for sure, a valuable moment in which you are inside the classroom not to teach, but to be part of it and learn from your colleagues. In my opinion, It gets hard to be creative if you stick only to one method or technique. I think diversity, as Cecília Coelho said in her blog, is the first thing one should look for, to find new paths and start a new teaching approach. Free your mind.
What about you? Are you creative? How do you do it? What do you think? I would like to know from you some ideas about how to be creative or how to develop creativity.  Is it a natural skill? Can anyone develop it? 

Have your say!  =D