Beyond the Boundaries of the TESOL Curtain
Wednesday, February 14th, 2007Teaching seminars are great for teacher development. One can be exposed to many new ideas during a single weekend and establish networks with like-minded educators. As a bonus, some schools will even reimburse us for attendance fees.
The downside is that these seminars suffer from Power Point overkill. The teachers that attend such conferences often behave as badly as our students — talking in class, speaking on mobile phones, gossiping about unrelated matters. This article was inspired by a TESOl seminar in Bangkok. Oddly, it was one of the most controversial article that I wrote. My email inbox was stuffed full with complaints and supportive comments. I must have hit a nerve.