The 17th annual KOTESOL conference, held last weekend at Sookmyung Women’s University in Seoul, was not precisely what you might call a tourist destination. For the serious English teachers or those in a more formal academic setting, conferences such as these are great chances to socialize and meet up with other serious teachers. It’s the polar opposite of the chaotic drinking and partying of the Boryeong Mud Festival, and a great chance to meet a number of veteran expats.
The fall colors were nicely present on this campus – a nice respite between conference sessions.
At least a couple other bloggers were present – Brian from Jeollanam-do made the trip, and Stafford from the Chosun Bimbo carried a clipboard and walkie talkie working to keep things organized (thanks again for the free pass!). I’m sure there were others there, but this was easily the largest group of English teachers in one place – during the opening ceremony, one speaker mentioned over 1,000 pre-registered and another 800 or so registered on-site.
With standing room only, one of the more popular presentations was entitled “10 Minutes for Happiness (Positive Psychology in the Classroom)” by Marc Helgesen. Perhaps it helped that everyone got a cookie and a chance to win some teaching materials.
The crowd of teachers was generally foreign-born, but quite a few Koreans made it to the conference as well. Respect for the serious Korean English teachers who came out on a weekend.
After two sessions – which some people missed because of various registration snafus – it was time for an opening ceremony of sorts:
Another room with standing room only. A number of awards and presentations later, we finally got to hear one of the ‘household names’ in the ESL / ELT field:
David Nunan on supporting professional development – and showing off his Australian heritage before he got into his speech.
Oh yeah, about that speech… I’m sorry to say it, but it was boring. I left somewhere in the middle of the speech – along with quite a few others – and headed to lunch.
I’m not a member of KOTESOL, though I highly respect the ideals of taking teaching seriously and professionally. This conference seemed to take itself as seriously, however – as a result, it wasn’t as interesting or helpful as I hoped it to be. Most of the commercial presentations seemed focused on selling one person’s or one companies books, while the other presentations I attended on heard about didn’t seem to add anything new I didn’t already know. I ended up spending more time talking to other teachers about socializing / networking…
Although I was somewhat familiar with the details of the conference, I originally had no plans to go. Why? Too much ‘academia’ and not enough connection to the real world of teachers. Presentations like “On the Strength of L2 Lexical Knowledge” and “Finding the Middle Ground: Reconciling Constructivist and Traditional Approaches in a Content-based Class” do little to help someone keep a class of ten 7-year-olds attentive. Even working with adults means following the school’s rules about how to work with your students.
For next year, I’d love to see a few less speakers, but speakers of a more interesting nature – in other words, choosing quality over quantity. Maps and directions were generally good, once you figured out the basement was common to most of the buildings. That it wasn’t promoted by some schools – my girlfriend claims her public school never told her about the conference – isn’t the fault of KOTESOL. Perhaps some promises of events or activities other than academic topics would encourage teachers to find more of a ‘real-world’ connection to their classrooms. I stand convinced that many English teachers want to do the best job they can, and organizations like KOTESOL aim to help in that endeavor.
© Chris Backe – 2009
28/10/2009 at 2:28 pm Permalink
please reformat this so the pictures don’t take up the whole screen! Can’t read the sidebars, etc.
28/10/2009 at 2:44 pm Permalink
“Too much ‘academia’ and not enough connection to the real world of teachers.”
I understand that hardcore pedagogy isn’t for everyone, but what else do you expect a teachers’ conference to focus on?
That said, my boss is speaking at a conference like this in November that we’re expected to attend. Wish I could remember what it’s called!
28/10/2009 at 3:20 pm Permalink
Here’s the thing. I get that you may not have a background in education and so things like “constructivist” and “lexical” mean very little to you, however your dismissal of it as impractical is both unfair and amateurish.
If, as you state, the conference is meant for professional educators – people dedicated to and well-versed in the craft – then it is completely appropriate and helpful for it to be “academic.” Anyone with a B.Ed or M.Ed from any school worth its salt will understand this. Just because YOU don’t doesn’t make it worthless. The reason there are no workshops ” to help someone keep a class of ten 7-year-olds attentive” is because anyone in educational academia would have already dealt with this at university and thus it would be pointless to have a presentation on it.
You expecting this conference to have less “academic” language and hold less “academic” workshops is no different from me going to a convention for chemists and then complaining that they used the period table abbreviations for everything. There are certain expectations when one is attending a professional conference. Conferences are NOT meant to appeal to the lowest common denominator.
28/10/2009 at 3:33 pm Permalink
-periodic table…
*any chance of an edit function for the comments?
28/10/2009 at 4:05 pm Permalink
Does anybody else find the statement, “Too much ‘academia’ and not enough connection to the real world of teachers,” hilarious and ironic?
28/10/2009 at 4:55 pm Permalink
Hahahaha, yeah *cough*
I plan to do a lot more on the theme of professional development in Korea, but at the moment I’ll just say that “acedemia”—what you find in the journals and grad school courses—will have little application to wh at teachers are finding in hagwon and public schools. Little of it is written on the Korean context, litle is written with the Korean context in mind, and certainly very little is written sympathetic to the native speaker English teacher in Asia.
It’s trendy to bash the myth of the native speaker, not understanding that the countries where they’re found have made English teaching a joke. Sure, including a diss of “teachers backpacking through Asia” will certainly get a loud appluase, why not also mention that you have domestic teachers who have gone through all the quote-unquote training and have all the quote-unquote qualifications, but can’t function in the language, can’t control classes without beating students, don’t show up for mandatory workshops and co-teaching sessions, and coast by on the effort of others. Oh, yeah, I forgot it’s politically incorrect for English speakers to criticize non-native “professionals” like that.
Chris is right that there needs to be more practical training in Korea for native speaker English teachers here. Is that something for KOTESOL? Probably not, and it’s probably inappropriate to suggest KOTESOL cater more to that (after all, how many of the presenters have taught adolescents in the past . . . two decades?) The demand is there, though, but this may be something for local school districts to organize. When I taught in Jeollanam-do we had an informative two- or three-hour session with three experienced NSETs telling us tips for teaching, for lesson planning, for working with coteachers, for getting the most out of the books . . . all things the literature ignores. However, that was the only such session available to me in the three years I was there. One session in three years. Yeah. Great.
With all the down time we have, and with schools insisting we deskwarm when school is not in session, why not use this time to organize trainig sessions? After all, Korean teachers have loads of opportunities all year round for professional development . . . and they get paid for it.
Anyway, I get what Chris is saying, but I won’t levy any complaints against KOTESOL or the conference b/c I’m simply not deeply-enough involved to offer a fair assessment.
28/10/2009 at 6:19 pm Permalink
That KOTESOL is focused on meeting the needs of ‘serious’ / licensed / professional teachers is no problem – but at best that limits the groups effectiveness. Brian’s idea of practical training is great, and could easily be offered by KOTESOL – especially on things that our Korean co-teachers might either A: not know, B: not be able to help us with. or C: expect us to do without their saying. Even things like lesson plans, coordinating with co-teachers, or basic classroom management would go a long way to bringing newer teachers into the fold.
@Gomushin Girl: The ‘real world’ of teachers I referred to is quite removed from academia. That ‘hardcore pedagogy’ is part of the program doesn’t mean it ALL has to be geared to that demographic. Although I have been a teacher in several different contexts for a number of years, the educational terms have had little use outside of the academic world.
@Jesus: True, there were several sessions that offered more helpful information. I didn’t
Conferences don’t have to appeal to the lowest common denominator – but certainly they can welcome people that aren’t yet at the level of the all-powerful-and-mighty – I certainly wouldn’t expect everything to be geared towards newer / less experienced teachers, but those are some of the teachers most needing to gain professional experience and knowledge on how to teach. There are categories for sessions most relevant for teachers of kids, adults, university students, business English, etc.; can’t there also be categories for the different levels of teachers?
29/10/2009 at 10:28 am Permalink
Chris (sorry, I refuse, as a non-twitter, to adopt twitty language markers)
I’m sorry, but the sentence itself was ironic, and kind of hilarious. I think you were reading a bit too much into it ~ but surely you too can see the humor in stating that *teaching* and *academia* were not so strongly correlated? It wasn’t a dig at you, just your somewhat funny phrasing. Relax!
That said . . . it seems that your expectations for the conference were not in line with what the conference actually was. This isn’t to say that conferences can’t miss their topic or audience, or that the papers presented there can’t be boring, off topic, or poorly concieved. I’ve been to lots of academic conferences in my area of study, and belive me, there’s all kinds of problems. That said, once you understand the language and theory behind academic writing, it’s often not so very obscure. And again, as was pointed out by others, the conference was targeted at exactly the kind of people who would be conversant in these sorts of meanings. Other kbloggers who went there, such as “We’ve Got Seoul” had very different impressions, and seem to have found the presentations useful and informative. I’m not saying they’re right and you’re wrong, nor that there shouldn’t be some kind of professional development aimed at people with different backgrounds in education . . . just that it seems odd to take an organization for academic professionals to task for being so darned academic.
29/10/2009 at 2:40 pm Permalink
Kotesol is a professional organisation that is a bit separated from what people in public schools and hagwons do. I think that if you go to a conference like that and get one or two good ideas, then it wasn’t a wasted trip.
To somewhat second what Brian said, if you work in a public school, you really get some scant training in what might be considered “applied linguistics,” apart from that, if you just step off the airplane, and then find yourself teaching in a school a week later, after just recieving a B.A. in a field that has nothing to do with teaching English to Korean kids, it might be a bit difficult after you learn how to conduct a game of hangman from your Epik orientation.
That said, I think professional development can be done on one’s own. The internet has many resources, and there are many books published on the topic of Tefl or Tesol. The more exposure you get to different ideas the stronger you become in this job I think. It’s good to try new things and experience good lessons and absolutely terrible lessons so you know what works, what doesn’t work, what is too hard for the students, and what is too easy.
29/10/2009 at 8:17 pm Permalink
I agree with Chris, The KOTESOL conference is pretty focused on the academic as opposed to the methodology side of teaching.
And that’s more than appropriate methinks. (especially as a member of the organising committee this year).
Brian noted: “there needs to be more practical training in Korea for native speaker English teachers here. Is that something for KOTESOL? Probably not,”
Actually KOTESOL is involved in more of the practical things when it comes to teaching here in Korea. Once a month every Chapter from Seoul to Jeju holds a workshop aimed at the ins and outs of being in a classroom here in Korea.
The Seoul chapter holds it’s meetings at the Sookmyun University Injagwan Building on the 3rd Saturday of each month. It’s free and you don’t even have to be a KOTESOL member!
More information at http://www.kotesol.org/?q=chapters on all the chapters in Korea.
The next Seoul Workshop is 21 November and deals with “Successful English Camps – Planning, Teaching and After” – just in time for those winter intensives.
Injaegwan directions here: http://www.kotesol.org/files/directions.jpg
In addition the Seoul Chapter is having it’s own conference in March next year with the theme “Beyond Survival in ELT: Reflecting, Adapting and Thriving”. There is a call for presentations / papers here: http://www.kotesol.org/?q=node/701
I would encourage everyone to come along, or consult the website for your nearest chapter.