Spring Journal 2013 - English Teachers Association of Switzerland

More documents

Recommendations

Info

ETAS 29th AGM and Convention SupplementAnnual Committee Reports: The Year in ReviewTEACHER DEVELOPMENTCHAIRREPORTETAS Teacher Development has seen a yearof change and is facing a year of challengeahead. I took over the position of TeacherDevelopment Chair from Stephanie Wimmerat the beginning of 2012. I would like tothank Steph for her work in the positionand for organizing the programme for twosuccessful SIG Days in 2010 and 2011.She also started the ball rolling for the2012 programme, for which I am grateful.We have welcomed four new SIGCoordinators: LeAnn Barnes for YoungLearners, Ian Sowers and Bianca Müllerfor Drama & Literature, Neil Bullock forExaminations, Testing & Assessment,and Christina Kwok, who has started anew Cross-Cultural SIG and is the SIGCoordinator in charge. We’re really lookingforward to developing this new SpecialInterest Group. A big thank you to theprevious SIG Coordinators, Nina Blaettler,Gillian Eames, and Joy Cosslett.I would also like to thank the SIGCoordinators, Local Organising Committee,and all the volunteers who organized ahighly successful SIG Day in Zug in 2012.This leads me to our biggest change for2013. The SIG Day is being revamped andrenamed, and we are looking forward to ourfirst Professional Development Day whichwill take place in Baden in September. Wehave taken on feedback from past eventsand look forward to running a successfulProfessional Development Day this year,one that will be even better than our pastsuccessful events.One of the challenges facing ETAS is havingenough volunteers to run our events. Manypeople have been volunteering for severalyears and would like a break. We hadtrouble finding a venue and forming a LocalOrganizing Committee for the ProfessionalDevelopment Day but were able to form anEvents Subcommittee and were relievedand happy to say we could go ahead thisyear. As well as needing help to ensurethe future of the Professional DevelopmentDay, some SIG Coordinator positions havebecome or will soon become vacant.So please consider taking on a role,small or large, in helping us to keepthis important part of ETAS alive.Currently the School ManagementSIG Coordinator position is vacant.Your feedback, suggestions, andnew ideas are always welcome.Cindy StiegerTREASURERREPORTETAS ended the Fiscal Year 2011 - 2012year at breakeven. The marginal positiveresult was due to the recuperation ofCHF 4,400 that had been reserved forZürich cantonal taxes but subsequentlynot needed. Thus, compared to the 2010 -2011 profit of CHF 11,500 CHF, adeterioration in the ETAS financial situationwas underway.As the first half of the Fiscal Year 2012 -2013 year progressed, a noticeable fall inrevenues persisted. As against theprevious year, ETAS revenues went downby 10% and as of 31st December 2012stood at CHF 209,000 as compared toCHF 233,000 a year ago.Although ETAS has sufficient reservesto cover any 2012 - 2013 deficit, theCommittee is reviewing means of increasingrevenues as well as streamlining the ETAScost structure in order to balance theBudget for the 2014 - 2015 Fiscal Year.Much of the falling revenue is explainedby a declining membership. Individual andassociate members declined by nearly11% and individual memberships by 6%compared to a year ago. Individualmemberships are down 37% over thelast 10 years.As an ancillary endeavor, the Committee iscollecting members’ birth years in order tounderstand better the age profile of theETAS membership. Understanding themembership age structure is a key elementin the longer-term strategic planning for theAssociation. With 65% of the membershipcovered at the end of 2012, here is theage distribution profile using the base yearof 2013:ETAS Membership 2012-2013 Age DistributionAge Category20 - 2930 - 34Members822% Dist1%3%% Dist Grouped11%35 - 39 40 6%40 - 44 67 10%45 - 49 89 14%24%50 - 5455 - 5912113619%21% 53%60 - 64 89 14%65 - 69 49 8%70 - 90 29 4%12%TOTAL 650100%WEB CHAIRREPORTThe ETAS website carried on with thesame infrastructure as the previous year. Itcontinues to be a team effort. Many thanksto Hazel Trepp (Regional Coordinators andevents), Cindy Anderson (links), andAntoinette Breutel-O’Donoghue (who tookover the Job Board at the beginning of theyear) for their great efforts and the timethey devoted to the task. Our Administrator,Corinne Tschumi, continued to providetremendous support throughout the year,and made the website a good deal betterthan it would otherwise have been.Feedback on the site has remained verypositive to date.Our survey application was again usedto collect feedback on the AGM andConvention and SIG Day 2012. ETASE-News, the monthly electronic newsletter,was sent out during the year, with atwo-month break in the summer (no E-Newsin July and August) and a one-month breakat Christmas (no E-News in January).After more than four years as Web Chair,I am now handing over to Hansjoerg Stieger,who I am sure will keep the quality of thewebsite very high. I have gained a lot fromrunning the ETAS website and am verysatisfied with how it has developed.I wish Hans-Jörg every success.Site use statistics are available on request.Steve LanderRaymond Rogers24 ETAS Journal 30/2 Spring 2013
PlenariesPLENARYMess and DifficultyA D R I A N U N D E R H I L LThis is a summary of some of the mainpoints from my plenary talk Mess andDifficulty, given at the ETAS AGM andConvention in Sierre/Siders on 26thJanuary 2013, in which I explored threeinterrelated themes:1. Russell Ackoff’s distinction betweenDifficulty and Mess2. Overcoming systems blindness andlearning to ‘see’ systems3. Qualities of (post-heroic) leadershipnecessary to embrace systemicintelligence.Russell Ackoff was a systems thinker,interested in how complexity impacts onsocial systems. Like Donald Schön, withwhom he cooperated, he had experience incity planning, and planners, like architectsand engineers, face both hard problems,like erecting buildings and bridges, andsoft problems, such as how thesestructures impact on human life.Difficulty and MessIn 1974 Ackoff proposed his distinctionbetween Difficulty and Mess. A Difficulty hedescribed as a fairly clear-cut, containedproblem. It is explainable and capable ofresolution within current thinking andtechnology. We may even know what theanswer will look like. When it is solved, thedifficulty will be more or less extinguished.A Mess, however, is extensive, boundaryless,high in uncertainty, and contains manydifferent and changing variables. Everythingis interconnected. Thus it is ambiguous,resists definition, has no single correctview, nor any tidy fix. The aim can only beto adapt and improve the situation, ratherthan to attempt to ‘solve’ it. According toAckoff, “every problem interacts with otherproblems and is therefore part of a setof interrelated problems, a system ofproblems. I choose to call such a systema mess” (1974).As an example, take the building of a bridgeas a Difficulty. It is within current thinking;we know ‘what it looks like’, and we knowwhen it is finished. The technology isavailable, and even if I can’t build it myself,I can find someone who can. However,whether to build the bridge is a softproblem that changes even as you workwith it. Trying to factor together the benefitsand downsides of the multiple impactsit will have on people, communities,landscape, traffic, roads, ecology, boating,economy, and so on constitutes a Mess,further complicated by the unintendedconsequences created by the solutions.People and their viewpoints are part of aMess; in fact, “where there are humansthere’s mess.” The class you teach is aMess, and so is your school, and probablymost of your personal affairs. But note thatpart of the beauty of Ackoff’s use of theterm ‘Mess’ is the absence of the usualnegative connotation. It just describes afact. It’s OK to be in a mess, and in fact ifyou’re alive, that’s what you’re in.The point in all this is not that Mess itselfis a problem, but the tendency to see aMess and to mistake it for a Difficulty. Toattempt to ‘solve’ a Mess as if it were aDifficulty – THAT’S the problem. And thereason it’s a problem is that if you have asystem improvement that improves partstaken separately, you can be sure that thesystem will not be improved. If you createsolutions inside the box of your perspective,you will be simultaneously oblivious of thefurther problems your solutions createoutside your box. Systemic Thinking is adiscipline that has been developed overthe past 50 years to make the full patternsclearer, to see connections and relationshipsrather than isolated entities, and to seehow to change them effectively. This hasinfluenced organisational thinking in anumber of ways, one of which has beenthe formulation of the idea of the learningcompany, or learning school, or team.Learning organisationA learning organisation is one in which allactivities are carried out as conspicuouslearning, and the organisation facilitatesthe learning of all its members while atthe same time, and through that learning,continuously transforming itself (Pedler &Aspinwall, 1998).Thus learning itself is a way of gettingthings done. The activity of learning yourway into a situation has the potential tochange the situation itself. Here is anillustrative quiz that could get you andyour colleagues talking about how openyour own school/college/department is tolearning. Give yourself 3 if your school isjust like that, 0 if it is the opposite, and1 or 2 if in-between.1. It’s easy to get people to listen to andexperiment with new ideas andsuggestions.2. Making mistakes is part of learning.People can be open about it. It is notcareer-limiting.3. Staff members of all ranks give eachother plenty of quality feedback fromabove, below, sideways.4. Everyone is involved in discussing schoolpolicies before adoption.5. People in one department know whatpeople in another department think andneed, and they help each other.The point here is that you have to stopthinking of learning as an individual activityand see it as only meaningful whenconnected up, as an organisationalproperty, a system property. Such questionscan start conversations that help people to‘see’ the system they are part of. Learningto ‘see’ systems is not quickly explainedor learnt from a book but from our daily lifeusing some disciplined way of learningfrom experience. So here’s a favouritelearning mantra of mine, for learning fromexperience. It is a portable form ofexperiential learning cycle, and goes like this:The Mantra: See what’s going on.Do something different. Learn from it.See what’s going on: in yourthinking/feeling/sense making, in youractions, and in your impacts on others(e.g. as a teacher in class). Develop ways tomake your actions visible, to see how youchose what to see, to see the multipleperspectives in any situation. And to seethat you are part of the system you observe.Do something different: if you discern apattern in your actions, try doing somesmall thing differently, not to do it better,but to see better what’s going on. By‘doing different’ you prod the system andit pushes back and begins to reveal howit works. There are essentially three waysto do something different:1. Do something you don’t usually do2. Refrain from doing what you usually do3. Do what you usually do but watch itmore observantlyLearn from it: this means reflect on yourseeing and doing. What provisional insightsdoes it afford? Talk to different people aboutit, value their different perspectives, takethese insights back into your next seeing(Step 1) and doing (Step 2) and test themout. An organisation with a learning ethoswould encourage everyone in it to engagewith this mantra, especially in the smallthings that make up a lesson or a staffmeeting. This mantra could also be acentral part of staff training, annualappraisals systems, Continuous ProfessionalETAS Journal 30/2 Spring 2013 25
Page 1: V O L U M E 3 0 • N O . 2 • S P
Page 4 and 5: ETAS OrganisationThe CommitteePRESI
Page 6 and 7: Editor’s Notes(On Modern Linguist
Page 9 and 10: ETAS NewsFaces of ETAS Support“Li
Page 11 and 12: ETAS NewsAnnouncementsFeedback: wha
Page 13 and 14: Conference for English Teachers in
Page 15 and 16: ETAS NewsETAS Teacher-to-Teacher Pr
Page 17 and 18: ETAS 29th AGM and Convention Supple
Page 20 and 21: NATIONAL COORDINATORREPORTSome chan
Page 23: Yet, though the prospect of dwindli
Page 27 and 28: We identify 14 different cognitive
Page 29 and 30: expressions, and hopefully finding
Page 31 and 32: ack of the mouth (for example,/p -
Page 33 and 34: B7Oblique strategies: a powerfultoo
Page 35 and 36: C10Adding sparkle to yourprimary cl
Page 37 and 38: ETAS 2013S N A P S H O T Stheir co-
Page 39 and 40: 2. Include students in creatingrule
Page 41 and 42: The Techy CornerHere comes the blog
Page 43: The Techy CornerIllyaVirtual teachi
Page 47 and 48: From the RegionsWorkshop ReportsBAD
Page 49 and 50: ETAS Journal Book Review Guidelines
Page 51 and 52: ServicesLibrary updatesRECENT ACQUI
Page 53: ServicesLibrary order and check-out

Spring Journal 2013 - English Teachers Association of Switzerland

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?