I’m still enjoying working my way through IATEFL Online 2016 – isn’t it amazing how much quality content is housed in one place?! This session was presented by Shirley Norton and Karen Chambers who both work at the London School of English. You can watch the recording here.

Here is the abstract:

According to recent research, 53% of teachers drift into management unconsciously. This session aims to question why moving to management is considered a promotion and to argue that there are other avenues for teachers to pursue. In addition, it aims to look at the considerations teachers should make in order to make more informed decisions about their future career paths.

I don’t expect you to remember, don’t worry, but this ‘progression to management’ idea is something arose in the first  Teacher Education Circle  discussion. We agreed that not everyone wants to become a manager and that as teacher educators part of ‘our’ role is to help teachers who aren’t interested in management progress nevertheless. (I say ‘our’ – I think I’m more of an aspirant teacher educator than an actual teacher educator!) I’m also one of those pesky teachers who doesn’t want to become a manager but still wants career development. So, I’m keen to catch up with this session as it sounds like it may complement the Teacher Education Circle discussions that I’ve been lucky enough to participate in and provide more food for thought.

In fact, Shirley and Karen start by asking the audience who they are – are teachers who are thinking about becoming managers, teachers who want to develop without becoming managers or are they already managers. There seemed to be a fairly even distribution amongst these roles.

47% of managers drift into management, 35% don’t have any management training at all (possibly rather alarming!) With this in mind, the audience were asked to consider how much time/effort/money their place of work puts into teacher training vs. management training. Then, they were to think about the essential qualities of a good manager and the training needs of a new manager. Shirley and Karen canvassed teachers’ opinions at their schools and the result was this:

The training needs that Shirley and Karen feel need to be addressed, that weren’t picked out by teachers, are:

They suggest you won’t get a good manager if you don’t invest in them, i.e. ensuring that they have the skills they need to manage a team. If you want to turn a teacher into a manager, they need management skills.

Next to consider is ways a teacher can develop without going into management. If teachers don’t have that in your institution, you are likely to lose them. You need to give them something interesting, something different to do, to keep them engaged.

Ideas:

• Materials development: updating existing materials, developing a course (tailored to teacher interest, what course would they like to make new lessons for)
• Teacher training: actual teacher training (i.e. TESOL); peer teaching (teacher development sessions – teachers are given time in their schedule to prepare and are paid, not just expected to do it in their own time); external stuff (let teachers go to IATEFL, do talks etc: development doesn’t have to all be done in your institute, let them out!)
• In quieter times, allow teachers to develop skills such as marketing by doing an intern in other departments within the institution
• Let teachers go and come back. Give them an opportunity to take a low-level risk i.e. work abroad for a year – like a “Sabbatical” – and be able to return afterwards, so basically longer term unpaid leave.
• If you are part of a franchise, use it – share skills via webinars etc.
• Take teachers off the schedule, not on cover, not on photocopying duty, they are given a work area and a plan for a project from start to finish for something that will benefit the school, which they will work on with support. A teacher who is not teaching is expensive, but Shirley and Karen feel that it is more costly not to develop teachers, so there should be a budget for it.
• If you are looking to improve something e.g. social programme, generally you would ask the students and teachers, but with this you get people from all different parts of the school and give them the autonomy to make changes.
• Academic management roles

The idea is to give teachers opportunities to develop in different areas and develop new skills.

Anyway, I recommend that you watch the recording to find out more about what Shirley and Karen have done in their school – it sounds really good!

Here are some thoughts of mine after having watched the talk:

• I think the key thing that institutions can give to teachers in order for development to happen is time. I think anybody would agree that when you already have 10 places to put every minute, it’s difficult to develop, not least because you are too tired to! This is one aspect of my current job that I feel very fortunate in – there are key times that are very busy (e.g. the weeks where you have 25 x 2000 word essays to look at and give feedback on) but generally there is time and opportunity built in for development, and funding available too, e.g. for speaking at conferences.

• I like the diagram. I think, by and large, though, that the ideas are all quite top-down, in that they rely on being enabled by the powers-that-be at the institution in question. I suppose, thinking back to the point made about the likelihood of losing teachers if you don’t provide development opportunities, it also depends on how fussed the institution in question is about holding on to teachers: do they want to keep as many of their teachers as possible for as long as possible or is a high turnover not really an issue for them?

• For some reason, the “Career Progression Wheel” diagram really makes me want to make something similar for bottom-up development options. It could be a fun project! <watch this space!>

• One thing’s for sure, looking at the ‘Training needs of a new manager’ list just reconfirms that management does not even remotely appeal to me! Just as well I don’t feel short of other ways to develop… 🙂