Happy International Women´s Day

 

Earth Day 2021

 

Christmas Greetings

 

XXV CTS Academic Event

 XXV CTS Academic Event

Customized Training  Services is a small training company that runs workshops and academic seminars to support teachers. It is a company made up by teachers to help teachers but we also organize fund-raising events. For instance, Christmas celebrations for the children at AA HH Saul Cantoral in San Juan de Lurigancho in 2016.

All along 2019 the participants of our workshops, could study for free by paying their fees with bottle caps to support the NGO Niños de Cristal from the National Children Hospital.

This year 2020, we could not remain indifferent to all the problems that the Pandemia brought about and so we offered workshops related to teaching online from May to October and provided scholarships and free entrance to some of our colleagues who needed the instruction.

As a last activity we are organizing the XXV academic event on the use of Digital Portfolios divided in two parts: Tips for Implementation and assessment of Portfolios (English) and Herramientas para implementar Portafolios Digitales for a Christmas celebration in AA HH Saul Cantoral in San Juan de Lurigancho and Villa María del Triunfo.

We remain confident that in spite of the difficulties we are all going through, we will be able to help those less fortunate.

Merry Christmas !!!

My Christmas present:

Gratitude for what I received from all of you, for what I achieved, for your good will, your blessings and above all your love and friendship. 

Wish that the New Year be a messenger of peace, joy and good tidings

Teaching is probably one of the most rewarding jobs although it may be the least well rewarded in terms of money in many countries.

In spite of that I am really happy to be a teacher and so today I need to thank my teachers for helping me to become who I am, I thank my fellow teachers for supporting and helping me to improve as a teacher. Last but not least, I am grateful to my students for teaching me how important it is to learn in order to teach.

Happy Chinese New Year 2017

May your life go smoothly

May you find success in your career

Fortune will  smile on you

May  all your wishes come true

Happy New Year to all my friends. Long life and prosperity to you all.

TEACHERS HELPING TEACHERS

In the last V Facebook Event that took place last December 5th we collected toys and clothes from the participants who attended the event to help a teacher of English, Sylvia, from a very needed village in the outskirts of Lima.

 

She devotes most of her time and her meager salary to support a shelter for strayed dogs. She relies on the help of the neighbouring families who-in spite of having very little- are always willing to help.

 

Customized Training Services created this iniatitve because kindness and generosity are values we always talk about with our students and wanted them to see by themselves how easy it is to help even if you think you have nothing.

 

This video is of the day we gave all the donations away in the shelter whose name is Allco Wasi, which in quechua, the ancient language of the inhabitants of Peru, means The House of Dogs.

 

Closing CTS Academic Year with our Fifth Facebook event

 

 

It is with great pleasure that Customized Training Services closed our academic events on December 5th not only with full attendance but also with a good response to our request of taking presents to provide a different Christmas for some of the kids at A.A. H.H Saul Cantoral. Thanks very much for that!!!!

 At the end of the V Facebook event,  the teachers who had done the Cambridge English First, TKT Young Learners, TKT CLIL and the CTS Course Teaching English Pronunciation received their Certificates. Some teachers even collected two Certificates having done the two TKTs or the Cambridge English First and a TKT showing that when there is a will there is a can. Some of them studied Saturdays and Sundays to be able to have a sound preparation for their exams and they certainly achieved their purpose.

We would like to thank our teachers of English not only for their effort but also for their inspiration. It really inspires us to see people who feel enthusiastic about their jobs, their lives and families. The good energy they transmit is contagious and oblige us to follow the example and get even more enthusiastic about what we do, thanks for having the faith to consider us as your trainers.

 We would also like to thank Ms. Maricarmen Rosas, Marketing Manager of NUTESA for all  their support at providing us with the premises, the coffee breaks, the presents and the publicity for our events. Thanks to her and to Marita Duarte from SM for her always being there to lend us a hand.

It is certainly inspiring to work with this kind of people who know where they are going, that happily make every effort to reach their goals and are determined to achieve what they want with drive and enthusiasm.

 

 

 

 

 

Earth Day is celebrated on April 21 every year. However, I think that every day we should raise our students´ awareness  of the importance of protecting our planet.

 

It is never too late to act. On the contrary, we should act everyday doing simple but significant things like taking shorter showers, planting, reducing the amount of waste, recycling, unplugging appliances or devices (vampire energy) and some others you can read below. As usual you will also find some worksheets for your students to do some work and some other activities you may find interesting.

 

I hope you find this post useful and contagious!!

 

 

 

"The April 22 Earth Day, founded by Senator Gaylord Nelson, was first organized in 1970 to promote ecology and respect for life on the planet as well as to encourage awareness of the growing problems of air, water and soil pollution.

The April 22 Earth Day is usually celebrated with outdoor performances, where individuals or groups perform acts of service to earth. Typical ways of observing Earth Day include planting trees, picking up roadside trash, conducting various programs for recycling and conservation, using recyclable containers for snacks and lunches."

Here you are some more suggestions  to work as projects in the classrooms and a worksheet  if you also want to provide some language production.

 

 

 

 

(Taken from: www.earthday.org/2015)

 

 

 

 

The Earth Day flag

 

 

 

 

Enjoying the course. Students are really working hard preparing their chants and activities for practising intonation. Tomorrow´s lesson is on Integrating Pronunciation in everyday classroom activities. Yay!!!

 

Summer Course for Top Language Teachers of English - 2014

From January 20th to 31st we ran a 200-hour summer course for teachers of public schools and small private schools. The material we used for the workshop was based on the textbooks public schools use here in Peru.

 

The subjects we offered were: Making the most of the English textbook, Pronunciation, Developing Communicative Competence, Classroom Management and Language for Teachers. The most welcome were Pronunciation, Classroom Management and Language for Teachers.

It was a blended-learning course so at this stage we have finished receiving the participants´tasks but are still uploading some of their work in the different course blogs. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Good things are a product of collaborative work so we would like to thank Colegio de Profesores del Peru, Región Lima Metropolitana, Instituto Nacional Pedagógico de Monterrico, ELTeCS Peru and ELTeCS LatinAmerica (a very warm hello to my dear Renate for her continuous support). We must also express our gratitude to Mr. Guillermo Rivas from SM and Marita  for their support and offer. We are really pleased to know we have such good friends we can rely on.

 

I am not going to say  how successful the course was since that opinion belongs to the participants  and also because I believe that the outcome of this kind of events is seen in the medium or long term when participants  try out ideas and improve their teaching practice. Perhaps the fact that the participants treated us, tutors, to a pizza and sodas may indicate how satisfied they were with the course? Anyway, we are following-up this group of teachers and offering more opportunities for increasing their possibilities of development.

 

It is  almost a month since the course ended and we received participants´contributions until a couple of weeks ago, we would like to share with you some of their contributions shown in the blogs we created for each course. Needless to say that we have tried to include the use of IT in the course, we used blogs and some mobile apps that were accesible to almost all of the participants. The initiative was very-well received.

 

The main blog is Summer Course for Top English Teachers (http://summerenglishcourse2014.blogspot.com/)    and from here you can link to each of the other course blogs. I  cannot tell you how proud we are of the hard-work and the effort participants displayed in their blog tasks trying to deal with time constraints but working collaboratively to fulfill all of them.  This has certainly been a very interesting learning event for all of us and we are looking forward to repeating and increasing the experience with new groups and levels.

 

This course is for

 

 Presentation on Soft skills

 

Sharing and working together

According to a research conducted in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Spain, Mexico and Peru by Universia, Peruvian graduates are not so satisfied with the level obtained when culminating their university majors. Satisfaction percentage of Peruvian graduates is 59% compared to over 70% obtained by Colombia and Argentina.The main reason for this dissatisfaction is the difficulty graduates face to get a job immediately after graduating. Only 33% could get a job that relates to what they majored in while the rest had to take whatever job available.

 

However, the percentage of people satisfied with their secondary school learning is higher: 68% students, 62% teachers believe secondary school was good, even if university professors disagree. They claim that after finishing secondary school students are incapable of doing analysis and synthesis, do not master a second language and have poor time management, all of them important skills for a professional. The strengths these students show are interpersonal skills and mastery of the IT tools, their weaknesses are the lack of linguistic competences such as oral and written communication.

So what kind of knowledge, skills and attitudes should a remarkable professional display? Human Resources experts say that the core skills are not enough, professionals need to develop competences that provide them with adaptability, ability to learn and willingness to improve (soft skills).

Follow this link to view a presentation on soft skills that I did for the 5th International ICPNA Conference in Lima, Peru. http://prezi.com/pqqioqnr2twi/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share

April 22 is Earth Day, I hope you can find some of the suggestions I chose and shared here useful to raise your student´s awareness of this celebration and, most important, take action and make changes at home, at school and in the community to help preserve our natural resources.
 
My first contribution is a reading text taken from the page: http://www.teach-nology.com/themes/science/earth/ 
 
You can find worksheets, lesson plans and some other help about almost any topic and at different levels. Below you will read the teacher guide to Earth Day for introducing the topic and allow students to do further research or to follow it with specific actions on how to deal with the problems mentioned.

Earth Day is celebrated every year on April 22. The first Earth Day celebration was in 1970, and was organized by the United States Senator from Wisconsin named Gaylord Nelson to bring political attention to all Americans about how the earth was being neglected by trash and waste of water, electricity and natural resources, like gas. He noticed that there was a lot of pollution and waste in the United States, and believed that if enough people wanted to change the bad habits of turning the Earth into a garbage pile and making all the water dirty, then they could do it one person at a time. Now Earth Day is celebrated all over the world by many countries.

My next contribution to your class is a reading page on Global Warming and the Green house effect  that you can use to focus on specific problems and to initiate research on these issues by preparing your own questions on the text or, even better, asking students to prepare the questions. This page and some other sample pages can be downloaded from the same link above.

 You can send e-cards or ask students to make their own. This is an example of an e-card with a wonderful poem that you can send to your students or use in class for group discussion. You can  find the card in the link below.

 http://www.care2.com/send/earth-day-cards.html

An additional advantage of this page is that :

Sending a free Care2 ecard helps important organizations because Care2 members earn butterfly credits when they send free Care2 ecards. Credits can be redeemed for meaningful gifts like safe drinking water,carbon offsets, or help for shelter pets through amazing organizations.

Members earn the credits and they choose the gifts. Now it's easier than ever to make a difference.

Care2 connects you with over 350 nonprofits, elected officials, and millions of members so that you can take action and make your voice heard.

Last  but not least there is the song Heal the World from Michael Jackson but I found a version with slides that are not from the original video but that really motivate students to see how easy it is to make a change in the world. Warning: Watch the video first since some of the pictures could be really moving and may affect very sensitive people, so you need to decide if it is suitable for your class or not.

  Heal the World (link to video)

 

Remember : You can make a difference every day.

 

 

Classes start next week and most parents are worried about stretching their budgets to buy all the material and stationery that their children will need. However, I read in El Comercio on Monday that Education for children should no longer be based on pen and paper. The writer of this article (La Educación en un mundo cambiante) quoted Dr. Heidi Hayes Jacobs, who was one of the lecturers of the Seminar: Curriculum del siglo XXI: Educacion Esencial para un Mundo Cambiante held last year in Lima. The quote was: "The world is constantly changing and the enemy is the pencil" since, in his opinion, once something is in writing,it becomes static and outdated.

The writer of the article (Lea Sulmont, Facultad de Educación UPC) said she was worried about the curriculum and its effectiveness at integrating the necessary competences for this changing world. The writer´s concern was that the curriculum (contents, skills and evaluation) should be revisited so as to make sure we offer our students real opportunities of development in the global world.

 

It is true, she said, that the web and the technological applications allow access to updated content in real world and that evaluation could be done now with ppt, prezi, animations or simulations anytime and anywhere. However it is not only resources we should focus on but also the skills the students need to develop to access information, as well as to communicate, produce, collaborate and live in the XXI century.

I am confident that we, teachers, the most important resource an institution has, will do our best to incorporate technology in our classes and to organize activities that will allow students to develop the necessary skills for this century. So I wish my colleagues a Happy School Year full of interesting challenges, projects and success.

 

 

 

Induction: The Best form of Professional Development

 

The article starts mentioning that to redesign professional mentoring is not enough to have mentors but to have effective induction processes.

The main message of the article is that new teachers need more than just mentors who they try to reach whenever trouble arises and that institutions need to create a culture of professional growth and lifelong learning before beginning teachers ever see their first class.

 

Some of the characteristics of effective induction programmes are:

• They should help new teachers establish effective classroom management procedures, routines and instructional practices.
• They should promote unity and teamwork.
• They should train and support new teachers engaging them in the fulfillment of the institution´s mission.
• They should start with 4 or 5 days of workshops before school begins.
• They should integrate a mentoring component and some kind of framework for modeling effective teaching.
• They should provide opportunities for inductees to visit demonstration classrooms

Demonstration classrooms: Experienced teachers set up their rooms to model the first day of school in an effective classroom. Afterwards, observers discuss the strategies that new teachers found useful.

• They could provide  a SPA Day.

A SPA (Special Professional Assistance)Day is for mentees to spend a day with a mentor observing each other and then having lunch together to exchange ideas on what they have observed.

• There could be monthly support meetings and Curriculum facilitators

Curriculum facilitators: teachers to whom mentors and teachers can go to and who provide support, teach demonstration lessons, conduct informal teacher observation and offer sugestions for improvement.

According to Mr. Wong, what is needed is a sustained training programme to keep new teachers, nurture them and take them step-by-step through the year and beyond.

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

I joined the TESOL CALL Interest Section Electronic Village Online (EVO) Sessions last year when I read the invitation sent by RELO Andes in ELTeCS and really learned a lot. I am sharing this with you so you can join the different activities this year; some of the courses are really demanding but learning is guaranteed.
"For five weeks in January-February, participants can engage with volunteer ESOL experts in collaborative, online discussion sessions or hands-on virtual workshops of professional and scholarly benefit. The sessions are free and open".
I have joined the session on podcasting and am really looking forward to learning more about this.

This is the link http://evosessions.pbworks.com

Enjoy your learning!!