For the Love of Teaching 2023

Konference pro střední školy

Speakers:
Simon Gill, Shaun Wilden, Jan Vojtko
Dates and Times:
29th-31th August 2023, 8:00 - 14:20 (CET)
Locations:
Brno, Ostrava, Praha

New school year 2023/2024 is here and with the new school year our largest face to face event for secondary teachers in the ELT calendar in the Czech Republic, delivered by experts and inspired by you. At For the Love of Teaching 2023, you’ll learn about the hottest topics in education and connect with a local community of language teachers. So register now, and join us at the end of August to get you started with 2023/2024. #MyLoveForTeaching

Overview Speakers Locations and programme Register

Overview

English today: Just what is it and who does it belong to? In this talk I don’t plan to spend much time sharing my thoughts on how we should teach but rather I would like to discuss what we teach, the English language. The aspects I will touch on include language change, the roles of international languages, the diminishing importance of ‘the native speaker’ model, the infinite beauty and complexity of vocabulary, and that perennial favourite of Czech teachers and learners, grammar and its deepest secrets.

Are your students ready to connect? Seeing our students swipe, play games, and create videos can easily lead us to think they are digitally competent, and mislead us into believing that as language teachers, discussing digital matters with them is not our job. So much so I would guess very few of us discuss with students how they connect or who and what they connect with. However, as educators our role is to prepare our students for the world they will have to function in, therefore shouldn’t we deal with digital literacy in the same way as would traditional literacy? In this talk I’ll discuss digital competence and its place in the secondary language classroom. Showing how language teaching and digital literacy can go together with some simple activities, and by drawing on examples from OUP’s Life Vision series.

Adaptation to change Adapting to change seems to be key to any profession one pursues. Our world is constantly changing and we all have probably already noticed that all changes are constantly accelerating and thus require us to react immediately and quickly process and integrate them into our lives. But our brain is simply not ready for such a speed. We are overwhelmed with information, demands from others, but also from ourselves, we are not only required to be professional in the fields we perform, but also to look after our emotional and psychological well-being, while change is the biggest stressor that annoys us in life. Successful adaptation is based on developed emotional intelligence, or knowledge of oneself. What fulfills me, what I see meaning in, what my values are, my vision, do I know my barriers, or difficulties that hinder me in my life, or do I avoid these questions instead and simply live somehow. We will talk about all of these at this lecture.

Agenda

8:00 – 9:00 Registration
9:00 – 9:25 Conference Opening (ŠKOLNÍ ZÁJEZDY, S.R.O. and PRO TRAVEL CK – conference partners’ presentations)
9:25 – 9:30 Knihkupectví MEGABOOKS – Introduction
9:30 – 10:30 English today: Just what is it and who does it belong to? - Simon Gill
10:30 – 10:50 Coffee Break
10:50 – 11:50 Are your students ready to connect? - Shaun Wilden
11:50 – 13:00 Lunch
13:00 – 14:05 Adaptation to change (in Czech) - Jan Vojtko
14:05 – 14:20 Raffle

CONFERENCE ADMINISTRATIVE CONTRIBUTION 650,– CZK. Payment in advance (by bank transfer), payment details will be provided by MEGABOOKS CZ after online registration.

Speakers

Simon Gill has been involved in ELT in what was once Czechoslovakia since September 1989, a period in which the role of English here has seen incredible changes. During that time he has both taught the language and worked with practising and trainee teachers. His last full-time job was in the English Department at the Faculty of Education of Palacký University in Olomouc, where he spent sixteen years. These days he doesn´t do much actual teaching but he is still very active in work with the English language (and improving his Czech) and continues to derive great happiness and satisfaction from interacting with teachers, learners, and users of both English and Czech in a host of different ways.

Shaun Wilden is an educational technologist, teacher trainer, and teacher of English with more than 30 years of classroom experience. He holds an MA in technology and education. He has published a number of books and articles on the use of technology in education including Mobile Learning published by OUP. Shaun manages the online teacher development site for the International House World Organisation. He also lectures and tutors in online education, and digital literacy on a number of programmes for international students and teachers at the University of Oxford’s Department for Continuing Education. He is a director of IATEFL and for a hobby makes the TEFL commute podcast. Outside of education, Shaun plays a lot of board games.

Jan Vojtko is primarily a couple and partner therapist who, among other things, focuses on working with LGBTQ+ clienteles and people in alternative forms of relationships. He studied andragogy with a focus on psychology at the Jan Amos Komenský University. Thanks to his training (cognitive-behavioral couple therapy, schema therapy, emotionally focused therapy and body therapy), he uses an integrative approach to partner therapy. He tries to pass on this integrative approach also in the newly opened integrated couple therapy training, where he teaches therapy together with his colleague Pavel Rataj, with whom he founded the "Institut párové terapie - INPAT". In his work, he tries to mediate and popularize couple and partner therapy, topics of the LGBTQ+ group and alternative forms of relationships, including the topics of sexuality and relationships of people with mental disabilities. In addition to popular science books about relationships (Vztahy a mýty + Vztahy a pasti), together with Ester Geislerová he speaks at a lecture on relationships "Terapie sdílením Live and Reset", writes books for children, writes scientific texts, studies further while teaching at the Fakulta humanitních studií UK , and he loves his job.