Category Archives: Methodology

What About The Teacher? – ELT Vista

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Press Release — October 2025

ELT Vista Re-established in the USA

ELT Vista, the original project that later evolved into ELT Visa, has now been re-established in the United States. The new website can be found at www.eltvista.com.

Much of the content first published through ELT-Vista periodical in the early 2000s and appearing on this website has been revised, expanded, and incorporated into the newly released book, What About the Teacher? – A Humanistic Guide to Self-Actualization for TESOL Teachers, now available on Amazon in both digital and paperback editions.

Published in September 2025, What About the Teacher? offers a reflective and non-linear exploration of teaching that blends practical TESOL methodology with the deeper human dimensions of professional growth. It emphasizes the teacher’s own development as central to the learning process—addressing not only how we teach but why.

The book carries forward the humanistic and arts-inspired spirit of the original ELT-Vista periodical while expanding its reach through new reflective sections, professional tasks, and thematic explorations of learner autonomy, identity, and self-actualization.

To learn more or to read the full article about the book, please visit the updated ELT Vista website at www.eltvista.com.

📘 Book Link: What About the Teacher? – A Humanistic Guide to Self-Actualization for TESOL Teachers on Amazon

Reposting: Truth from Fools: Polonius, Dada, and the TESOL Teacher’s Path to Authenticity

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Truth from Fools: Polonius, Dada, and the Teacher’s Path to Authenticity

Here is a warm, intellectually engaging LinkedIn post that matches your reflective tone and explains both the article and your larger project:

What can teachers learn from hypocrites, fools, and avant-garde artists?
Quite a lot, it turns out.

In my latest article, Truth from Fools: Polonius, Dada, and the Teacher’s Path to Authenticity, I explore how inner alignment—not perfection—can be the foundation for meaningful, humanistic teaching. From Shakespeare’s famously hypocritical Polonius to the absurd sincerity of the Dadaists, I examine what it means to “be true to oneself” in a profession often overshadowed by institutional expectations and performance.

This piece is part of a broader reflection as I edit my forthcoming book on self-actualization for language teachers. It’s also a nod to my ongoing attempt to reconcile two wildly divergent parts of myself: the teacher-trainer grounded in pedagogy and the Dadaist at large who still believes in poetic license and honest contradiction. To this end, despite being TESOL related, I decided to post the article on my creative sandbox blog. More soon on the book—and, with any luck, a new Lost Florida novel. Both will be published on Amazon.
– Jay Leonard Schwartz

The Devil’s Advocate: Why Should A Lesson Be Fun?

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As an EFL teacher for the last quarter century (sounds more impressive than 25 years), I have been taught and have taught other teachers the profits, or perhaps more accurately the necessity, of providing an enjoyable lesson. I have said in my teacher training workshops that if the students are not enjoying their lesson, they will simply tune out and perhaps even become disruptive. It all sounds perfectly logical, politically correct and nurturing.

In terms of teaching students, I have often experienced, as I am sure you have too, a sense that you can actually feel the learning process taking place when you have given your students a task that interests and motivates them. The question is, however, does it always have to be like this? Also, can it always be like this? More fundamentally, is it wise, educationally speaking, to put so much emphasis on creating entertaining lessons, and at the end of the day, will our students truly benefit from adopting this kind of approach.

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Lesson Planning: What Do You Know? – Part 2

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This is the 2nd part of my post on lesson planning. If you haven’t read through part 1 yet, there do that first. Click here for part 1.

In this part we’ll start with some of the unanswered questions in Part One. Concerning possible problems that may occur in some of the activities that you have planned for your lesson, it is a good idea to perhaps change the activity altogether or at least have an alternative. For example, if the activity in which students were asked to find 5 things that they had in common (an ice-breaking activity) it would be best to change it to one in which they discuss free time activities they like and dislike and then see what, if any, common ground there is.

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Lesson Planning: What Do You Know? – Part 1

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When I was training for the RSA Dip (currently the DELTA Diploma), the most useful lesson, the one that fundamentally changed the way that I had taught up to that point was ‘lesson planning’. Lesson planning gives direction and ultimately makes lessons more productive, interesting and professional.

What follows are a number of exercises which will help you see what you know about lesson planning. Tip: to make things easier, print this post out.

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Using Correction Codes: Saving your students from going down with their ‘slips’ in a sea of red ink!

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How often has this happened to you? You sit down with your one of your students (read: certificate exam candidates in Greece) and review an essay he or she has produced, and you have subsequently corrected. At one point, you come to a bit of text that you had previously underlined, and perhaps had inserted a question mark or ‘WTF’, in order to question the student on confusing point he oe she had made. You explain to the student that you aren’t quite sure what this part means. The student responds something along these lines: “Yes, what I meant to say was … uh …”, or “What don’t you get? I thought it was obvious…”, or perhaps “Come on! Anyone who reads it will know what I mean!”, or maybe even “Hello!? Do I have to fill-in the blanks for you?”

In my case, after pestering the student to provide more details, I might suggest, “That was a marvelous explanation! Why didn’t you write it down in the first place?”, or “Yes, well I understand what you mean now, because you just explained it to me. However, when someone else reads this, or an examiner grades your paper, you aren’t going to be able stand next to him and explain all that. You have to write it down so that he can see it and understand it in the first place!”

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The Cross-Curricular and Critical Thinking Connection

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Defining the Cross-Curricular approach to teaching is much easier than putting it into practice. This is because much forethought is needed into actually setting up a task or project as well as integrating different academic disciplines, matching said disciplines to component tasks, and then facilitating the usual management that comes along with any large-scale project. Whether you are contemplating a school level project involving many academic disciplines and class levels or you are an EFL teacher trying to weave different academic subjects into your class as material, the keyword, as mentioned above is “thought”. Yes, it takes much analytical thought. Critical analytical thought to be precise!

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