Is it Justified to be Afraid of Technology at Work?

                                                                              By Zarela Cruz

      We are not going as far as technophobia, but we should admit that most of us have been afraid of technology at work up to certain extend. What can we do to deal with this fright successfully? How can we feel at ease, or at least, comfortable with it?

     Remember when Office burst out in the market? And we were told that overhead projectors would be replaced by a desk computer so we could use Power Point presentations? For some, it meant a new challenge; for others, a nightmare. I was quite fortunate to be picked in the first group of teachers that got some training from experts. Unfortunately, we did not make the most of it since the expert used terminology we were not familiar with and explained things really fast. How frustrating! I was sure there had to be another way, so I tried a course for grandparents at my children’s school. Yes, grandparents. What a difference! The teacher was very patient and their assistants too. And our big smiles when doing something well were genuine…and so was the teacher’s satisfaction. I realized the best courses and/or trainers are not the ones that have a lot of degrees, but the ones that are capable of putting themselves in their students’ shoes and are empathetic.

      Another experience was in a congress in Argentina some years ago. There was a lecture about technology, and it was fully booked.  The presenter talked about the advent of the cloud. I am convinced 90% of the audience could not grasp what he meant. Now I know clouds are used to storage information, like a USB memory. How simple it was!  On another occasion, I was very interested in learning about social media. The presenter showed us all her life in Facebook and LinkedIn and also talked about… yes, you are right, clouds one more time!!! There was I, frustrated again! Was it useful? Not at all, but since then, I keep that experience in mind as a clear example of what NOT to do when giving a workshop. I dislike people that use a lot of technical jargon with a novice audience. I do feel pleased when a presenter asks about the audience’s experiences with technology and gets to know how familiar they are with the topic and tailors their presentation to the current needs of that particular audience. These are the champions that will make us love technology and not to be afraid of it.

      Below, some suggestions to reduce our level of anxiety regarding technology at work:

1.   ASK A COLLEAGUE TO HELP YOU: There is always  someone at hand who has more experience with technology, or it seems easy for them to use some programs or devices. In exchange, perhaps you can offer your assistance in a task you know this person is struggling with. Sometimes, it shows up in a conversation during a break, while socializing. It won’t hurt to give it a try.

2.   READ ABOUT TECHNOLOGY. My advice: follow some people that are in the field and, most importantly, who YOU understand. Social media is very useful; you can use either Facebook or LinkedIn.

3.   TRY AN ONLINE COURSE. The range of topics and prices of these lessons is quite diverse. Having this kind of experience will give you more confidence to deal with technology at work.

4.   DON’T BE TOO HARSH ON YOURSELF. Some devices are friendlier than others. Take one step at a time. First learn one or two tasks, practice them and include them in your daily classes. Then, try another and so on. Sooner than later, you will have incorporated a considerable number of software functions successfully.

   

    

What about you?

Are you struggling with technology at work?

Have you ever found it frustrating to deal with it daily?

Let us know what you think!

Biodata

Zarela Cruz graduated from Ricardo Palma University as a translator.  She also finished her master’s studies in Linguistics and took some specialization diplomas in the Teaching of English and Spanish. She has also completed some online certificates:  Teaching the Working Adult, Online, Hybrid and Blended Education, among other self-study courses. She has taught different courses, programs and levels and has been a teacher trainer, a lecturer and online instructor for more than 25 years. She has just finished her master’s studies in Translation. This article aims to reflect on the (un)justified fear of the implementation of technology at work.

How to make the most of tedious paperwork

By Mayra Yaranga Hernández

A new school year is about to start and, before pupils arrive in their classrooms, teachers need to have completed quite a lot of work; for example, subjects need to be planned in advance for the entire year. This seems to be a logical step to ensure a sense of direction in our teaching. Although reality shows a quite different picture.

Teachers may feel overwhelmed even before the race starts. The paperwork that needs to be done seems never-ending to many: creating the subject annual plan, dividing it into units, lessons, components within each lesson, materials, coursebook choice, and so on. This can become rather stressful and it also limits teachers’ time to analyse their students’ actual needs and discuss alternative strategies and generate innovation in their own contexts.

It is all too easy to complain and blame the educational system or the school authorities for the mind numbing chore of course planning. Of course it won’t be possible to change this situation in the short term, but in the meantime we cannot remain arm-crossed but we must find ways in which course planning can actually add to our continuing professional development.

One basic rule to start planning is to identify real, achievable outcomes, not just in terms of language development but also of learning strategies. Most teachers focus on the structure and lexis that students need to learn, but ignore how they can gain new knowledge in a more effective way that can be useful when facing more complex language. For instance, having students practise language in realistic conversations not only requires us to focus on the language needed but also on how to control this type of situations (how to start or end one, how to keep it going, what intonation patterns invite turn-taking, etc.)

Another important rule is to allow for unforeseen events organised by schools (excursions, celebrations, performances) by allotting enough time for content and activities. Furthermore, the reasons for these events could be integrated into the plan so that, for example, if the school decides to hold a Talent Show/ Open House/etc., the contents and skills developed could serve as a basis for the activity to be held.

Although following these two rules may seem even more demanding and time-consuming, we must think about the long-term consequences: if Teacher A simply copy-pastes from scope and sequence in order to complete all the paperwork while Teacher B makes an effort to conscientiously determine goals, processes and outcomes, which of them will be investing in their professional profile? Which of them will be equipped with better methodological resources? Which of them will improve their career prospects?

All in all, it’s our mission to transform this daunting paperwork into something useful and flexible which will not constrain our teaching but guide it throughout the school year.

Now, it’s YOUR turn

Do you think planning is a vehicle for professional development?

     Biodata

     Mayra Yaranga (1985) Doctor in Education (UNIFÉ); Master’s Degree in Media, Culture and Identity from Roehampton University (London) revalidated by PUCP, a Bachelor’s Degree in Education - UPCH and the Professional Title of Licenciada - IPNM. Currently she is Cambridge Oral Examiner and Member of the Research Area for Universidad del Pacífico Language Centre. She is also ESP coordinator and Pre-University Centre Director at UNIFÉ.

What are those factors that seem to haunt teachers’ development?

                                                                          By Maria dela Lama
                                                                                               

                                                                                                                                                                                                       

       Dear readers

       What are those factors that seem to haunt teachers’ development?

     Sometimes very talented teachers are not able to thoroughly develop all their professional potential. Although they have the required knowledge, preparation and experience, something holds them back: their fears.  Fears are dangerous feelings that impede teachers´ development.  How to overcome them?  A first good step is to be aware of them. Here is a list of some of the most common teachers’ fears: the fear of programming, of setting goals and be able to stick to them; the fear of incorporating technology to their daily teaching practice; the fear of evaluating and being evaluated and finally the fear of assuming new challenges.

     In our next post, we will be dealing with each of them. Please, do share the post with your colleagues. Nowadays, empowered and brave language teachers is what is needed the most.

BIODATA:

DE LA LAMA, MARIA, Bachelor in Education, has a master's degree in Applied Linguistics and a Bachelor's in Linguistics, both obtained at the University of California, Davis. She also holds an MBA from Universidad del Pacífico. She currently serves as the Director of the Language Center at Universidad del Pacífico.

What to do to Enhance Our Employability

By María de la Lama

          Since 2009 there has been a dramatic increase in the demand for English teachers in our country. But even though these professionals are needed in schools and universities, for many of us those job offers do not respond to our expectations. Thus, it seems   that getting the desired job is not an easy matter.

          I have been hiring language teachers for a long time. And the truth is that most of the time successful teachers get the job for reasons that go beyond language proficiency and academic qualifications.

          Many teachers may believe that because of their command of the language and professional qualifications they will be hired easily, hoping that the fulfillment of these two requirements is enough.

          Somehow they have this idea in their minds:

          Today, a strong command of the English language, as well as an updated academic education, are expected; but, unlike some years ago, they are not a plus anymore. In fact, in addition to language competence and academic background, there are important characteristics that employers have started looking for. Then, the traditional belief that language competence and educational background are more than enough does not work anymore. Let’s see how our graphic has changed:

          The   teacher as a human being, with their talents and potential is indeed a key factor for the success of any language program.  In particular, there is a need for teachers with specific soft skills. Without them all the language competence and professional qualifications won’t be enough to reach an institutional goal. So which are those characteristics that will boost hiring probabilities?

About the teacher’s personality traits

ü  Cares for their professional growth

ü  Has excellent communication skills

ü  Knows how to handle conflicts and keep personal problems away from their work.

ü  Has empathy

ü  Knows how to listen

About the way a teacher works

ü  Enjoys working in groups and has the potential to become a leader in the institution

ü  Cares for their students’ progress

ü  Keeps their students’ motivation

ü  Loves to change the way things are done

ü  Has developed good organizational skills

          An educational activity will be successful only if the teacher, in addition to transmitting knowledge, makes an effort to reach the student through careful listening, continuous motivation and genuine interest in the development of their pupils.

And now your turn:

Are you looking for a job?

How are your job skills?

BIODATA:

DE LA LAMA, MARIA, Bachelor in Education, has a master's degree in Applied Linguistics and a Bachelor's in Linguistics, both obtained at the University of California, Davis. She also holds an MBA from Universidad del Pacífico. She currently serves as the Director of the Language Center at Universidad del Pacífico.

Emotional Intelligence: Is it More Important Than any Other Assets?

By Flor de María Vila

                                                         

      Nowadays people contend that it is essential to be able to handle certain difficult situations at work. These situations usually are related to the ability of managing your emotions in a social context.

      What does this have to do with teaching English? We think that our job is safe if we have a good level of English, we know how to apply the different teaching methods needed to instruct different kinds of learners and sufficient teaching experience, don’t we? Shouldn’t that be enough?

        Thinking about this, a memory of a difficult situation came to my mind.

This is it:

            I used to train teachers who gave lessons in a five-day program institute and one of them came to  me and related the following case: As part of his duties, he had to give a grade for the homework done in the workbook. He needed two scores per week, so he didn´t need to check students´ workbooks every day. One day, he checked the students´ workbooks and after that there was a break. When he returned to class, a lady (one of his students) was waiting for him outside the classroom. She claimed that he chose the day she didn´t do her homework to ask for it to make sure that she would fail. Unbelievable, wouldn’t you think? Everything that came to his mind was: “What! What in the world is she talking about?” Instead of retorting to the absurdity, which was his first spontaneous reaction, he tried to calm down himself, and tried to understand why she was behaving that way. Eventually, he realized she was extremely worried about the possibility of failing the course, so he serenely explained to her that there was no way he could know beforehand when she had o hadn´t done her homework. He also offered to help if she had trouble doing the assignment if she didn´t understand. The woman quieted down, returned to class and later in the course she asked for help only once. After that, she became the sweetest person one could ever imagine. Even more, she recommended him to all her contacts.

       So, what had happened? Why didn´t this episode with the woman become a nightmare?Had the teacher used his emotional intelligence or Emotional Quotient-EQ, as David Goleman calls it? According to him there are five components. Let´s see if the teacher in the example used them.

1. When he calmed down himself and tried to understand his student, he definitely identified his emotion and worked on regulating it. This covered two abilities: self-awareness and self-regulation.

2. Offering his help he showed he was able not only to understand how she was feeling but also to manage his response at the light of this information. This is related to a third component: empathy.

3. Being able to interact well with others is another important aspect of emotional intelligence. This ability is known as social skill and he used it when he could manage the woman´s emotions by listening actively when she was explaining what she thought was happening. He got her to return to classes and, even better, later act as a reference for other students.

4. Even though the example given does not display a specific action that illustrates motivation, it is certain that the teacher mentioned encouraged himself to achieve his goals which were beyond mere external rewards. In fact, he used this experience as a driving force to use his emotional intelligence every time it was necessary and became a teacher whom everybody liked and wanted to work with. 

            Was he born with these qualities? Can we learn them? 

                            Do we need to learn them?

       Many employers find emotional intelligence extremely important since it is the one quality that allows people to productively work with peers in better conditions. Employers consider soft skills as important as hard skills since without them employees find employment challenges insuperable.

For us, teachers, the situations in which we may need to use our emotional intelligence are many. Probably the most common ones are the circumstances in which we interact with our students, our colleagues, our students’ parents or relatives and our supervisors, whether they are coordinators, trainers or directors.

  

       A tip that usually works for me is to think the following: Behave, react and respond in the way that person would if he or she were you. For example, be the teacher that student would need if he were you. In the example given lines above, did he need an interlocutor as a punching back? or one that tried to find out what was happening that made her behave that way? It´s certainly not an easy job, but if we work on this, we will definitely be on the right track. Putting myself in the other person’s shoes works for me. What about you?

       And if you do not want to love your neighbor as much as yourself, think about the possibility of losing your job because it is very demanding for others to work with you. If it is extremely difficult to manage your emotions with students, it is very likely that the same happens with the other people with whom you work. We need to educate ourselves or look for help.

        We would be “safe” and keep our jobs if we act proactively and update not only our language skills and our methodological foundation but also train to improve our emotional intelligence since this is precisely what technology would never dominate, in the words of laureate professor Vikas Pota, Chairman, of Varkey Foundation, a family organization seeking to improve global teacher capacity and promote universal access to quality education.

What do you think?

Is Emotional Intelligence really important?

Have you ever been in a situation in which you needed to use it?

Have you trained yourself or is it natural in you?

References:

Goleman,D. "Emotional Intelligence (Goleman)," in A Blog by Concordia University, November 17, 2017, https://education.cu-portland.edu/blog/classroom-resources/daniel-golemans-emotional-intelligence-theory-explained/

Pota, V. World Economic Forum. https://www.weforum.org/people/vikas-pota

BIOGRAPHICAL DATA

M.A. in Cognition, Learning and Development from PUCP, B.A. in Education with a major in English Teaching. Ms. Vila is currently Teacher trainer, Pedagogic Consultant and Member of the Research Team at Centro de Idiomas de la Universidad del Pacífico. She is Academic Director of International Contacts (test training & foreign applications advisory) and relationship manager for American universities´ MBA admissions officers with International Contacts. She is official Examiner for several University of Cambridge tests, freelance consultant with Universidad ESAN, experienced speaker on diverse English teaching issues for prestigious institutions, and senior international examinations trainer (GMAT, GRE, TOEFL, IELTS).

Struggling With job Interviews? 10 Tips to keep in mind

                                                                                                  By Zarela Cruz                                                                        

         Looking for a new job may be a tiresome experience, even when we have been looking forward to a new opportunity or to making progress in our career path.  Have you ever felt overwhelmed by the prospect of the big day? Below you will find some important aspects to keep in mind, although they are quite often neglected.

1.   Get ready for the interview.

2.   Show up 10 minutes before the arranged time.

3.   Always bring a copy of your resume.

4.   Observe their dress code or a reasonable one.

5.   Do not use your cell phone during the interview.

6.   Make eye-contact with your interviewer.

7.   Do not criticize your former employer.

8.   Do not tell the interviewer that you really need the job and the money.

9.   Be ready to explain how the company will benefit if they hire you.

10.  Prepare a model class should you be asked to give one.

         Is that all? not exactly. Whenever I have been in charge of evaluating applicants for a teaching position, I could see that some of them had a tendency to replicate the teaching model they were used to.  Furthermore, they used the same slides, a grammar-centered approach and examples related to themselves. They did not have any information about the students’ profile, education, age and interests to name some; the kind of courses that the institution offered, even the technology that was available.  In a word, they hardly did any research about the institution they wanted to work for, not to mention the position.  On the other hand, some of them mentioned personal issues such as how much they needed the money or that they wanted to have additional income. We all work for money, up to a certain extent, but it should not look like our top priority.

      Once you got the job, your homework is not done yet: it is the beginning of a new phase in your working life, so you have to be ready to undo some routines and embrace new ones; such as working in teams and participating in the training programs.

    By keeping these remarks in mind you will show that you are really suitable for the institution and for the position.

And now your turn:

Have you ever made a mistake in the course of a job interview?

Did you find the job you were looking forward to?

         We will be expecting your comments, suggestions and/or tips regarding this topic.

References

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/03/the-most-common-interview-mistakes-job-candidates-make.html

https://www.thebalancecareers.com/most-common-interview-mistakes-2061111

Biodata

Zarela Cruz graduated from Ricardo Palma University as a translator.  She also finished her master’s studies in Linguistics and took some specialization diplomas in the Teaching of English and Spanish. She has also completed some online certificates:  Teaching the Working Adult, Online, Hybrid and Blended Education, among other self-study courses. She has taught different courses, programs and levels and has been a teacher trainer, a lecturer and online instructor for more than 25 years. She is has just finished her master’s studies in Translation. This article aims to reflect on the convenience of getting ready for a job interview to deal with it successfully.

Experience, Degrees or Language Proficiency? Does One Overshadow the Others?

By Mayra Yaranga Hernández

          As a new year starts, many English teachers begin to make decisions regarding their careers. This is the best time to analyse their strengths and weaknesses. They evaluate the labour market and may start looking for new jobs. Which aspects of their careers, as seen on their CVs, should they improve in order to stand out from the crowd?

          Some teachers take pride in their years of experience and consider them to be their best asset. Granted, seasoned teachers know the profession, which helps them justify their classroom decisions. However, if this experience is not linked to progress, it may not be so attractive to potential employers, since it may mean that these teachers were not able to step out of their comfort zone and try out new dares: teaching more challenging courses, preparing students for international exams, changing schools or adopting new methodologies, doing research, etc. Having said that, there should always be one or two areas in which English teachers should feel most confident and demonstrate more expertise.

          On the other hand, postgraduate courses (Diplomas and Masters’ Degrees) are nowadays much more attractive and more readily available than in the past; this is why quite a few teachers choose to take this option as part of their professional development. This seems to be a good idea: postgraduate courses usually provide theoretical foundations to many of the things that happen in class, as well as foundational research methodology for those more academically inclined. However, in practice, postgraduate study may not have an impact on the quality of language teaching and learning overall as some courses are probably too abstract or do not cater for their audience’s everyday needs.

          We could argue that English teachers may find that strengthening their language proficiency is probably more useful in the long run, as this is the core of their daily work as well as an important asset when seeking further challenges in their ELT careers. Teachers are usually advised to be at least one level above their students in terms of proficiency. This is especially true these days, since many Peruvian schools have decided to start teaching the language from early years and more parents also decide to enrol their children in private language schools after school classes. This results in an interesting challenge: by the time pupils arrive at secondary school, their standard is very close to B1 or B2, which means that teachers would need to operate at a good B2 or C1 in order to deal with language issues more confidently and without “losing face.” Naturally, spending in language training and qualifications requires time and money to invest, which not all teachers have, although maybe they could compensate for this by being constantly exposed to the language outside work.

          All in all, the three aspects are important for English teachers, and should be upgraded as much as possible throughout their careers; but, if they want to make themselves more attractive in our current career market, they should think very carefully about which of the three points they need to hone the most. Arguably though, improving their own language proficiency could yield the best long-term results.

Now, it’s YOUR turn:

Is it enough to focus on one aspect only?

 Is there one that you consider more important than the others?

     Biodata

Mayra Yaranga (1985) Doctor in Education (UNIFÉ); Master’s Degree in Media, Culture and Identity from Roehampton University (London) revalidated by PUCP, a Bachelor’s Degree in Education - UPCH and the Professional Title of Licenciada - IPNM. Currently she is Cambridge Oral Examiner and Member of the Research Area for Universidad del Pacífico Language Centre. She is also ESP coordinator and Pre-University Centre Director at UNIFÉ.