Tag Archives: teacher training

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

Keeping Ahead Of Disruptive Behavior

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One of the jobs teachers have is to foster student participation. After all, ‘class time’ is for students to practice and produce language expression and skills. I’m sure you will agree it’s not for ‘teacher talking time’ (TTT). However, if you find yourself ‘all talked out’ at the end of a lesson, it’s useful to examine whether most of your time is spent explaining things, and how much of your time and effort is spent trying to maintain discipline and interest levels.

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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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Classroom Dismanagement

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As a teacher trainer, I often enter a classroom, observe a class that a trainee conducts, make notes and then discuss what happened. One of the elements that we discuss, is the trainee’s class management skills. The following account is what I would describe as ‘typical’ of trainees who go into the classroom with very little experience and with a somewhat incomplete grasp of what classroom management means in practice.

Following the account below are my comments and advice given to the trainee. The trainee (who is now a working teacher) was informed of this article and has agreed for it to be published. The name of the ex-trainee has been withheld. For practical purposes, I’ll call her ‘Sheila’.

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Why Choose Teacher Development: A Personal Perspective

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Some years ago, I embarked on the arduous but professional and personally rewarding journey of undertaking the Cambridge ESOL (formerly RSA) Diploma for English Language Teachers of Adults (DELTA). When I finally received my diploma in the mail, I went back and reflected on the portfolio of work I had produced for this endeavor. Early on, I was asked to reflect on why I felt teacher development was important to me both at the general and personal level. Here is what I wrote:

I have been a teacher in a variety of contexts for a number of years now. Although I initially received some ESL specific teacher training early in my career, I have over the years, developed a sense of confidence in my teaching methodology based on my past teaching experiences, my personality and creativity, the influence of my other professional experiences as well as my desire to improve myself professionally. For sometime, I even believed that being a good teacher was something inherently within me. However, while in many ways teaching is indeed an art, I now believe that the required combination of organizational skills and talents to produce educational ‘masterpieces’ are not garnered via genetic predisposition, but rather via the result of teacher training and experience honed over time and practice.

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