One of my favourite ELT people (whom I've never been fortunate enough to meet in person) is Andy Hockley, and I regularly skip over to his excellent From Teacher to Manager blog for great insights and advice about making the transition from being a teacher to a manager in ELT settings.
This is a transition I went through many years before ever getting exposure to Andy's excellent exploration of this fuzzy and often fraught with peril pathway - to my great regret. All I can say, with my Ravenesque muninn benefit of hindsight, is that most all of what Andy has to say is absolutely spot on and really worth thinking about.
On my most recent visit to Andy's blog, I came across this outstanding pecha kucha performance he put on in Russia earlier this year (titled "How to be a Bad Manager"):
Not bad at all for a bloke doing his first ever pecha kucha presentation!
But I got confused by the date of the video... March 2010?
Because I swear to God and any other deity that happens to take your fancy, I've worked for and with people in private insitute settings during the noughties that had obviously seen this video and made it the cornerstone of their ELT management approach!
Some of the observations here were frighteningly close to real experiences from my past (some of them admittedly on my own part as a manager, but mostly as an actual victim or observer).
Anyway, a huge thanks to Andy for this, and if any readers here found this interesting, I really recommend visiting Andy's blog from time to time and getting involved with some of his posts. He's one of the real gentlemen in ELT and you can be assured of a warm and considerate reception there.
:-)
