Often part of the reason we feel left out in the cold as teachers is because we allow ourselves to be, and/or because we end up chasing the bright lights of the big ELT conferences at the expense of local action.
I've actually been meaning to blog on this issue for a very long time, as it is something I have felt very strongly about for many years. Since 2002, in fact, when I was president of a provincial Korea TESOL chapter in Busan.
Some recent shenanigans in the ELT blogosphere (in which I am probably not blameless) have brought the issue home to me more poignantly. On this blog and some others, the redoubtable Gavin Dudeney is 100% right when he points out that instead of knocking ELT conferences and the people who run or present at them, people perhaps ought to put up (and have a genuine go at organising their own conferences or professional gatherings) or shut up.
Having a nice old dig at international and 'prestigious' ELT conferences, and the 'VIPs' who present at them, and the publishers who support them, is relatively easy sport. It's because these people and entities make easy targets, and the shooting becomes very rapidly rather unsportsmanlike. I've been pulled up on this recently, partly due to being misunderstood and partly for allowing myself to be misunderstood.
The real problem with ELT conferences, who presents at them, who benefits most from them, and who actually gets to attend them does not in fact lie with the organisations, VIPs and publishers. The blame lies squarely with us - and by "us" I do mean we teachers.
When I was president of Korea TESOL's Busan-Gyeongnam chapter in 2002, we had monthly chapter meetings in Busan. Everyone and anyone associated with English language teaching at any level was welcome to attend. We regularly got attendances of between 20-50 teachers. We successfully adapted the standard Korea TESOL emphasis on university/academic priorities to cater equally to teachers of younger learners and provided seminars with much more emphasis on practical teaching ideas. We usually all went out for a meal or a drink after the meetings on a Saturday afternoon.
It was a blast, and deeply enriching as a teacher. So many wonderful ideas. So many great friendships.
We even managed, through some hard work and wonderful communication, a speaker exchange with the JALT Kitakyushu chapter. They sent a wonderful Japanese lady over to speak at our chapter meeting about gender studies and language learning, and one of our members put her up for the weekend. Following that, we sent our own chapter Vice President over the Kitakyushu to present and be hosted by them.
We had what I considered to be a really successful teacher association happening. It cost virtually nothing to run.
Not everyone saw it that way of course. Both in Busan and at Korea TESOL's national level, some people expressed dismay and criticism that in a city with almost 4 million people, we were only attracting 20-50 people to our monthly meetings. Our whole paid up membership as a chapter (covering Busan and the whole Gyeongsangnam-do province) rarely went over 150.
A little later, when I was national coordinator for KOTESOL's Young Learners and Teenagers SIG, we had two national symposiums focussing specifically on issues relevant to teaching children and teenagers. We attracted around 100-150 people to each of these. Publisher support was rather lukewarm, but the events were marvelous successes for those that presented and attended. No big VIPs, but a super-thick resource book containing all the extended handouts and teaching ideas from the people who presented. I got my school to sponsor the printing and production of these books (took some pretty persistent persuasion, but I got there!). I still hear positive comments about those events and the resource books we generated from them, and I get a genuine glow when they flow through to me.
But again, based on the numbers in such a populous country with so many thousands of English teachers, the external verdict was that our events were not all that successful.
Why?
KOTESOL's annual international conference gets close to 1,000 attendees and gets very liberal financial support from publishers. That was the measuring stick both our chapter meetings and YLT symposiums were being held up against - to some degree. The annual conferences attracted hundreds of people from Busan (who never came near our humble chapter meetings), and hundreds of teachers of children and teenagers who never came anywhere near our national YLT symposium.
This brings me to my main point...
In my very small and very biased opinion, the chapter meetings we put on in Busan and the YLT national symposiums we held were 10 times more successful than the most grandiose annual KOTESOL conference ever was, or ever will be. They were incredibly egalitarian and pretty much free of any commercialism at all. They were easy to get to and cost virtually nothing to attend except the commitment to a few hours of a teacher's time on a Saturday afternoon.
Problems with advertising and connecting with teachers aside, one of the reasons international conferences appear to be the only realistic avenue to professional development is because so many teachers elect to do it that way. One of the reasons VIPs are considered so important to ELT conferences is because so many teachers choose to make them so, often at the expense of their own talent and that of their colleagues living in the same town or region.
It must indeed come across as rather rich or at least very frustrating to hear teachers poke criticism at international conference events, when the same teachers won't get involved in professional development and sharing at their own local level. It's hard to take criticism of the costs involved with international conferences when teachers could be doing something even more enriching in their own area for virtually (and often very much literally) no cost at all.
In short, a variety of problems and inequalities associated with big sponsored conferences and their bright lights are because teachers themselves are drawn to such bright lights, and do very little to light their own bulbs or gather the ready-to-be-lit talents around them in their local contexts. As long as we prefer ELT concerts over genuine get-togethers, that's what we'll get.
So I do feel that the biggest problem with ELT conferences is us - the teachers - and the solution to more and better opportunities to network and share ideas with other teachers lies squarely with us as well.
:-)
Image at top used with permission:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/motleypixel/2729494918/in/photostream/
