Humanising Language Teaching
Year 4; Issue 1; January 2002

SETTING UP A TEACHER DEVELOPMENT GROUP
OR
BEING SET UP AS A TEACHER DEVELOPMENT GROUP!

In September 2000, after being inspired from reading for my dissertation about CPD, I decided to try and set up a teacher development group in Brighton. I spoke to my then DOS who was a little sceptical as she felt that it might take people away from her regular monthly teacher 'training' sessions which, although non-profitmaking, were a good way of promoting the school. She did, however, agree to let me use the school for the initial meeting and that she would pay for the promotion of the first meeting. I faxed all schools in a 20-mile radius of Brighton and followed the faxes up with a phone call to explain to the DOS concerned the idea of the proposed group. I was trying to set up the group based on ideas from from an article I had read on the Humanising Language Teaching web-site by Paul Davis.

• It was a place for teachers to build contacts and share ideas.
• There should be no power dimension to the group - for the initial meeting I asked DoS's not to attend. This was to enable teachers to be able to talk about failures as well as successes, this may have been a little difficult if their DoS was present.
• The meetings should not be linked to one school - this was to enable teachers: 'to get out of their shoeboxes' and see how things operate in other schools.

During the first meeting, which ten people from five different schools in the Brighton area attended, I outlined what I considered to be the main points of the group (listed above). We then discussed what we as individuals wanted from the group, and how we felt it should be set up:

What do we want to get out of the group?

• A natural environment for discussion
• Support – teachers are isolated
• Ideas/alternative methods and how to exploit resources
• Up-to-date information/approaches
• Pool of shared knowledge
• Opportunity to put ideas into practice – peer observation
• Ongoing training
• Book recommendations – coursebooks, resource books etc.

Suggestions for the way forward:

• Regular meetings (once or twice a month)
• A website
• A monthly newsletter
• A day and time to suit all
• Contact other schools to encourage participation
• Arrange a speaker and interesting topic for next meeting (internet teaching)

It was agreed that the second meeting would be held at the same school, two weeks later. The reason for this was that teachers did not want to offer their school as a location as they wanted to clear it with their DoS's first. I also agreed to contact a friend who had expressed interest in the group and was a specialist on video conferencing - an area that people at the meeting had expressed interest in.

The second meeting came and went, and was a success with over 20 teachers attending. This is where the problems had started with my DoS, though. The trainer had agreed to do the session free of charge, but as soon as our DoS had started promoting it in the name of the school he rightly decided that he wanted to be paid for the session, as it was promoting the name of the school, and not solely for the group. We had to make a quick decision to start charging for the session. As a way of making peace the school said that they would provide wine and snacks for the group (a nice tradition that continued). Also because of the topic of the session, the main idea of the group had changed a little, as it had changed more into a teacher training session, as most teachers were learning about a relatively new topic. The important thing was that teachers were in control of their own CPD - they decided which areas they were interested in.

We decided to change tack for the third meeting which was to be held at a different school, we decided that we would use the Internet group that we had formed to discuss the format of the next meeting. Over the course of the following week we had consensus that we could have three or four different rooms, each with a different discussion topic e.g. ideas for teaching writing, discipline problems in the classroom, using video etc. The idea was that teachers could move from one room to another when they wished, and that no one was in charge. It was just a free flowing activity with small groups to enable everyone to have their say. The idea was great in theory, but the weather had other ideas - hurricane strength winds, and pelting rain kept most people away, we were left with only six teachers - not many when you split them between four rooms! We decided to use the meeting to plan the next three meetings in order to cut down on advertising costs. There were also calls from DoS's to be able to attend. We decided that they could attend, but only if confidentiality was kept, and that there may be certain sessions where they would be asked not to attend.

Our fourth meeting, our last one before the Christmas break was a sure-fire success. A trainer well-known in the UK had offered to come and run a session in return for a pint and a train fare. This is where things started going a little wrong. Teachers who had not previously attended the group wanted to join, and I was told about a local ARELS school where the DoS was not promoting the group as it was not held at a British Council recognised school. My DoS also forced me to make sure that the session was held at her school as she wanted the kudos for her school.

Our session with the well-known trainer came and was a resounding success, but there were the inevitable problems. My DoS had decided that she wanted to make the most of this session. The newspaper was contacted several days beforehand. A bottle was presented to the trainer, and although a generous gesture on behalf of the school, it was a way of ignoring the function of the group. What is it with DoS's? Why do they have to try and control everything?

The session with the well-known trainer was my last with the group I was going to Brazil for six months, and although not able to attend the meetings in person, I was able to follow progress on through e-mail. Progress what progress? I know I had been pushing the group to make things happen, but unfortunately without anyone there to push the group seemed to fall apart. There were was one more meeting, but poorly attended. The e-mails stopped coming in, and the group died!