TESOL Macedonia-Thrace Convention, Trendy Terminology and Celebrating a 60th in Arkochori.

Here we are back at the American College, Thessaloniki setting up the equipment and about to start our workshop at the local TESOL Convention. This is our introductory screen-shot (thanks to Angeliki’s creative talent) followed by the summary of our workshop.

    

 

‘Today’s teacher is inundated with information overload whereby  he is exhorted to be like this, to do that, making it extremely difficult to evaluate what is of value out there. Our social media pages are vast market places which exert pressure on us in terms of how to be an up-to-date, efficient, informed classroom practitioner.

 Instead of supporting the teacher, this information plethora can alienate the time-strapped teacher, making him feel distanced from the elite entrepreneurs who dominate cyber space.  In addition to having this sense of distancing, the teacher can feel helpless and de-skilled in trying to keep up with new technological developments.

 In this workshop we review some of this information in an attempt to discriminate between marketing hype and issues of substance.’

                     

                                     

Here we are in action, with our dynamic audience hard at work with the tasks on their worksheets.

 The topics in focus helped generate lots of interesting discussion too!

            

                          

 Workshop completed, we draw breath and start out for the village of Arkochori at a height of 600 metres, in the foothills of Vermio mountain, near Naoussa, and in the vicinity of several ski-resorts.

   

We’re there to help Dimos (aka ‘The Daft Dentist’) to celebrate his birthday and he has brought along a rich supply of his home-made wine. It’s a rather excellent full-bodied, fruity, red and we are all instructed how to hold these glasses to enjoy the wine at its best.  Below are the three ladies who have helped organize the event, bless them: Eleni, Stephania and Maria! There is no birthday celebration without a cake, and the occasion is marked with a group photo: people have come from Italy, Thrace and Athens to honour him.

                         
                                                

         

                   

The select company – and wine - meant traditional dance was de rigueur: Thracian - including my beloved Baidushka-, Macedonian and Nisiotika (island dance) thrown in for good measure

 We were staying at the family-run Villa Vadolas, a traditional stone building with very thick walls and open fires in every one of their 7 bedrooms which we had taken over! As the evening wore on, we got worn out and gradually the company sloped off to bed.

 We were all greatly looking forward to our breakfast as the Vadolas family are renowned for them. Our hosts had brought some potted meat – a Thracian speciality known as kavourmas which resembles corned beef a little. Since some was left over, a lady of our group had asked if they could cook it for us in the morning. And did they live up to their reputation!  My favourites were the spinach and cheese pies, but they had cooked up a really delicious omelette with the left-over kavourmas, as well as great platters of French toast - the Greek equivalent being known as avgofetes - ‘eggy-bread’  would be a near-equivalent.  Mustn’t forget to mention their delicious home-made breads and marmalades- mmm!

It was actually snowing very delicately as Angeliki and I went for a walk around the village and found a bear on a plinth, concrete (sorry ! :) ) evidence that these animals  stlll roam around the area and, in fact, the original name of the village was Arkoudochori , or ‘bear village’! Fortunately they all seemed to be hibernating during our visit!

 We decided to take a shot of our villa with its distinctive red wall and realize later that Zissis had managed to photobomb from on high!

                                                                 

 After what has been a thoroughly enjoyable time, we bid everyone farewell and take one last photograph of the villa shrouded in a wintry morning mist. 

                                                             

TESOL Summit, Athens 9th February 2017, and...... What's Plato Doing in the Ladies' Loo?

 The sharp morning air cleared away the drowsiness felt after my early-morning flight from Thessaloniki in Macedonia, N. Greece, as did the brisk walk down Amalias Street to the Royal Olympic Hotel, venue of the Summit on the Future of the TESOL Profession -Teachers of English to Speakers of Other  Languages.  After registering, I joined the 200+ delegates from more than 70 countries. Round our table were arrayed ladies from a wonderful range of places: Indonesia, Bahrain, Israel, Washington D.C. and a Greek representative from National Geographic Learning.

The TESOL President, Dudley Reynolds, had come from the US headquarters in Virginia, USA, to welcome us and to open the summit.                                                                                                                                                 Our first speaker was Sue Garton of Aston University, Birmingham. She spoke of Futurology through the lens of Inquiry, listing the stakeholders in TESOL research:  researchers, ministry officials, head-teachers, schoolteachers and students. She regretted there was a theory-practice divide.

Considering the current megatrends of political instability, economic uncertainty, social change and rapid technological development, she said we need to anticipate how these might impact on our profession.

Stressing how important it was for everyone concerned to be involved in TESOL inquiry, she asked that all stakeholders be identified and form committees to draw up agendas, outlining the way forward.

 For our profession to be an agent of change, to value alternative approaches and disseminate findings from inquiry, she claimed we have to operate within an interlinking model.

Coffee breaks meant we could admire some beautiful items of décor in the hotel. I loved the floral tapestry as well as the copy of one of my favourites : The Charioteer, the original is housed in the museum at Delphi.

                          

 

But I did have a question: What was a bust of Plato doing in the anteroom to the ladies’ toilets? I guess he was being stoic – a term deriving from Stoicism: the Hellenistic School of Philosophy which held that the path to happiness was found in accepting that which we have been given in life. Bit of a comedown from conversing with great minds in the Agora!

 Our next speaker, Greg   Kessler, of Ohio University, continued our Futurology focus from the professional perspective and, in particular, on the role of the social media. With continuing global increase in the use of the social media and the internet, he sees these as powerful communicative tools to be actively involved with as individuals, institutions, professional organisations and students.

Though Facebook attracts around 75% of the internet traffic, he advised us to think critically before selecting which social platform to use and how to use it, given that they all serve different functions.

He saw the challenges before us as:

• to establish practices for ourselves and our students
• to become more engaged and better informed
• to learn to use IT tools to remove what is blatantly false  and in this way
• to improve the quality of the content we have access to.

 A lunch break was most welcome and gave me the opportunity to catch up with Lourdes Ortega, a previous Diploma student of mine in Athens. Now based in Washington D.C., she is a professor at Georgetown University and a member of the TESOL Summit Steering Committee. I am happy to say we are now Facebook friends so we can keep in touch. Another buddy it was good to meet up with was Roy Cross, of the British Council. We first met when studying Applied Linguistics together at Lancaster, then later became ‘neighbours’ when Roy had a BC  posting  in Baghdad while I was in Kuwait – small world !

     

 

Our final speaker on the subject was Asmaa Abu Mezied, of Internet2, who considered Futurology in terms of Equity. Speaking of the current trends of demographic change, economic change and protracted conflict, her map showing areas of organized violence brought home how serious the situation is. She asked us to consider, for those people whose lives are affected, what education, access and equity mean.     

While humanitarian aid will initially focus on providing food, water and shelter, she felt education tends to be overlooked. She supported that by stating that families in conflict zones, even when bombardment is going on, will send their children to school as education is seen as the key to breaking that cycle of poverty.

She also highlighted the importance of knowing the English language as a means of learning what opportunities were available, in particular, access to scholarships to study in the United States.

 She defined access to education as not being the number of schools but for children having safe access to schools with safe environments. In dealing with such major issues, she described UNICEF as being under-resourced and oversubscribed. For her, long-term planning was a basic requirement as this may show how we can compensate for entire generations being lost whose higher education had been interrupted in conflict zones, thereby denying these young people the skills and knowledge they could have brought into their communities to instigate change.

 She outlined one project where young displaced persons could continue their education online  and another which had brought blended learning – onsite and online instruction - to young people in refugee camps. If international organizations and local stakeholders work as partners, and students could create and use a digital identity, then they could receive an online education.  She did acknowledge, however, that there was no one-size-fits-all solution and that some refugee camps were devoid of the infrastructure that was a necessary prerequisite for such development.

 Such support programs could be beacons within the current turmoil, showing us what the future could hold. That they were in operation was inspiring, but the problems being so widespread and enormous felt overwhelming!

The day was nicely brought to an end with a reception on the hotel roof-garden, attended by the American Ambassador to Greece. We all enjoyed the tempting buffet, a welcome glass of wine and a magnificent view over the city, with Mount Lykavittos in the background and, before us, the pillars of Olympian Zeus. As I left, admiring the well-waxed moon hovering over Hadrian’s Arch, I felt that it had been a long day, but one that had been extremely stimulating.

      

A Scottish Poem by William Soutar, TESOL Conferences - National and International

I know some of you did have a bash at the Vocabulary Worksheet I composed for you in my last post and so here, as promised, are the answers:    

1. Bampot, eejit and glaikit belong to a group describing someone who is a bit of a nutter   while           braw, canny and stotter are complimentary adjectives.      

 2. a) Dreich describes the weather and                                                                                                       b) gallus is a personal attribute- someone thus described could be ‘a wee hard man’.                                    
3. a) ii) Someone who’s bealin is angry;                 b) iii) If you’re crabbit you’re irritable  and                                  c) i) wabbit would describe exhaustion.

4. The anagrams were: i) stramash   ii) pochle    iii) wheesht                5. i,c)   ii,a)     iii,b)  

 This is the ‘parchment’ that was my linguistic source. I hope you enjoyed that!

 

Now the word ‘clype’ ( or cleip) brought to mind a poem I learned as a small child and thankfully Google helped me piece the entire poem together. Written by William Soutar (1898 – 1943), it reminds me of how, as children in good Scottish Presbyterian mode, we were imbued with the idea of there being , if not a political Big Brother, most certainly a spiritual and moral one who was aware of our every action. Here nature has somehow got into the picture! 

Aince Upon a Day

Aince upon a day my mither said to me: Dinna cleip and dinna rype And dinna tell a lee. For gin ye cleip a craw will name ye, And gin ye rype a daw will shame ye; And a snail will heeze its hornies out And hike them round and round about Gin ye tell a lee.	Aince upon a day, as I walkit a' my lane, I met a daw, and monie a craw, And a snail upon a stane. Up gaed the daw and didna shame me: Up gaed ilk craw and didna name me: But the wee snail heezed its hornies out And hik'd them round and round about And -- goggled at me.

Glossary

aince - once;	cleip - tell tales;	rype - steal;	lee - lie;	gin - if;	craw - crow;
daw - jackdaw;	heeze - lift;	hike - swing;	a' my lane - alone;	monie - many;	ilk - every.

I needed the Glossary of terms used, so I assume you do, too. I wonder if any of you are familiar with the poem?  I would love to know!

This brings me to a subject that I’m really keen to explore at a later date: the concept that there is a Scots language. If anyone cares to comment on that I’d be interested to exchange views.
However,  I have to leave that for another time: tomorrow I’m heading off on the early flight .. L ..to Athens – all very exciting, with delegates from all over the world and the event will be live-streamed globally! (TESOL = Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages)

 And immediately after that Angeliki and I (aka The Tartan Epsilon) are once again running a workshop at our local TESOL Convention.  TESOL Macedonia-Thrace, Northern Greece 24^th Annual International  Convention

"Teachers, Trends, Techniques: A world of Change’’

10^th-12^th February 2017 ACT, Thessaloniki, Greece

Trendy Terminology in the Flipping Classroom! Joan Macphail & Angeliki Apostolidou   (Greece) 45' (WS)

It’s going to be an extremely busy few days. Wish us luck!