Affiliate News - May 2021 (Plain Text Version)
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In this issue: |
HOW ETAI CROWNED CORONA Lisa LeebhofETAI, English Teacher's Association of Israel, ETAI Vice-Chair, Israel
ETAI, English Teacher's Association of Israel, has had a very busy 2020. We started the year with three ETAI members meeting at one of the last face-to-face conferences. We met in Greece at the TESOL Greece and TESOL Macedonia Thrace based in Thessaloniki Macedonia Thrace's International Conference February 21-23, 2020. What plans we had made at the end of that conference! What hopes we had of sharing ideas and making new friends as we continued to meet up at future international IATEFL and TESOL events! Though Corona had already begun to spread, no one then had any idea that our world was going to change dramatically.
In fact, despite the depressing news throughout March 2020, there were high hopes at ETAI that our April 1st, Spring Conference would still be face-to-face. However, that conference was the first to fall, or so we thought. However, within less than a month, we had organized and convened ETAI's first Web Conference, "Pedagogy, Not Technology" on April 22, 2020. This was something new for us and many in the industry did not think it was a good idea. Not only was it a very good idea, in retrospect, but it was also a sign of premonition of things to come. We had over 300 participants - too many for our Zoom room. Dozens more who could not get in enjoyed watching the live stream on Facebook. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive. We were able to offer our members quality sessions, an opportunity to gain new ideas, and more importantly, a chance to catch up with old colleagues and meet new ones.
Despite this success, we were still wedded to the idea of face-to-face conferences and continued to plan our two-day Summer Conference as such. By June, it became very clear that this too would need to be via Zoom. We came to realize that online conferences were just as important as our face-to-face conferences. Though Israel is a tiny country, it is still difficult for people to travel hours from one end of the country to the next to attend a conference.
Summer Conference 2020, Hands Up for Hands On-Line Our Summer Conference, "Hands Up for Hands On-Line" was followed by our "Back to School Conference", usually in Tiberias. Attendance increased as members from the center and south easily attended where teachers left with lots of practical activities that could be used in their face-to-face or virtual classes
Back to School Conference 2020 delivered via Zoom As a result, using Zoom, our conferences were in demand. After great, we continued to use the online format that we had established and begun scheduling and organizing several 'mini' conferences throughout the 2020 academic year. We began the year with a members-only webinar "Zoom for English Teaching" given by Penny Ur. In November we collaborated with TESOL International and hosted Julie Schlam Salman's talk, "Usage of English in East and West Jerusalem: implications for language Teacher Education".
We realized that webinars had eliminated the travel time and allowed us to cater to different audiences. We scheduled two afternoon conferences, one in December and one in February 2020 for teachers who work in the Ministry of Education with the focus on implementing the Ministry of Education's new curriculum, called "From Curriculum 2020 to the Classroom". During the early spring, our focus shifted to special interest groups, first for pedagogical instructors titled, "Rethinking Teacher Education" followed by a conference for student teachers called the "National Online Students Event". Through it all, we had a theme; giving our members tools, ideas, information, and support so that they could adapt their classrooms to the current reality, whether in person, virtually, or in a hybrid form. To do this, we expanded beyond the format of ETIA only conferences. We began to collaborate with other academic institutions to offer monthly webinars given by national and international experts in our field. We also started working with teaching colleges to offer programs to enrich their student-teachers' needs. Besides, with the Ministry of Education, we developed a professional development program for our members. In short, though many of us were physically locked down by the Corona Virus – ETAI chose to transcend Corona's grip on our lives. We were determined not just to survive but to thrive during this time.
In Spring 2021 we will have come full circle; whether we resume face-to-face or continue online, we have found a way to continue to fulfill ETAI's mission:
Though we all look forward to attending and presenting at face-to-face national and international conferences we know that ETAI has changed. We, along with the rest of the educational world, will continue to grow and adapt during this period. Eventually, ETAI will evolve into a hybrid form, a combination of face-to-face and web conferences, which will allow us to meet the needs of our many dedicated educators throughout the country and the world. Corona has flipped not only our classrooms but our professional development as well and thankfully, ETAI has emerged wearing the real crown. Lisa Marti Leebhoff, ETAI Vice Chair Lisa Leebhoff has been an educator for over 30 years. In addition to teaching EFL / ESL, she is a teacher trainer, lecturer, and material developer. Currently, she is Head of the English Unit at Shenkar College of Engineering, Design and Art, Israel, and the co-editor of the ETAI Forum |
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