Chris Mares, Author at iTDi Blog • Page 2 of 5

The Power of Professional Development

The Power of Professional Development
by Chris Mares.

In November 2017 I attended Colorado TESOL as a featured speaker and returned to Maine inspired, energized, and ready to hurl myself back into my teaching and writing with even more energy and enthusiasm than usual.

There is nothing quite like teacher energy, particularly at conferences and workshops. There we all were for two days sequestered in the Radisson South East, in Denver, surrounded by freeways and concrete, doing what we love – sharing our stories, listening for ideas, giving inspiration, pawing through texts, meeting new people, reconnecting with old friends, and realizing that what we have chosen to do is meaningful and worthwhile.

I was gripped by Andy Curtis’s pertinently brilliant talk on teaching as a political act and Dorothy Zemach’s artful commentary on music, metaphor, and teaching. Maggie Sokolik brought me down to earth with her pragmatic insights into writing, students, and classroom practice. Finally, the gifted and lyrical Thomas Healey, in the final session, had us all dancing The Chicken while revealing how it is possible for teachers to be in two places at one time.

I took frantic notes and my head span with ideas.

And I was in Denver, far from Maine, sitting at breakfast with a group of wonderful teachers attending their first conference. One was going to give her first ever presentation and our table hummed with supportive energy.

A month earlier I had been in Japan observing teachers in middle schools in Aomori Prefecture. It was wonderful to see how far along public school teaching has come since I had lived in Japan, twenty years previously.

I even managed to inspire myself with my own talk on using teachers’ anecdotes and stories as material for classroom use.

What a giving lot teachers are. There is so much sharing of materials and ideas, so much time spent supporting and advocating for students.

I listened to teachers talk of the work they do with immigrants and refugees. I was moved to my core by the lengths teachers go to on behalf of their students in various parts of Colorado.

Then, of course, there was the joshing and banter. Andy Curtis, who said to me, “Great presentation. So old school. No handouts, no power point, glasses up and down like a yoyo, get some gosh-darned bi-focals.” He had a point.

On the plane back to Maine, I looked down at the towns below thinking of all the teachers there are in the US and around the world. All of us trying to make a difference. And in these times of political despair, it struck me that we have a duty to do what we do as well as we can and to model acceptance and tolerance. We are in a position of power where we can inspire and motivate our students to become the best they can be, not only for themselves but for each other and for us. For the world.

And so I look forward to TESOL in Chicago in March of this year, and IATEFL in Brighton, in April. I know I will see familiar faces and meet new people, and return to Maine with that fresh feeling of wanting to make a difference.

In a good way.

Mental Health – There’s a lot you can do. And you should.

Mental Health – There’s a lot you can do. And you should.
by Chris Mares.

Having been brought up in England, a long time ago, mental health was not something that was ever talked about. We were taught to get on with it. Stiff upper lip and all that. Everything was always fine and if it wasn’t, no one would know what to say, except “Fancy a cup of tea?” Most males were hopelessly adrift from their emotions and were quite unaware of how to deal with the stressors in their lives, other than going to the pub, supporting a football team, or smoking cigarettes.

Now, looking back, I see that mental health in ELT needs to be addressed from the get go. Teaching is draining. Especially when starting out. The fears we have all experienced are numerous: Do I have enough material? What do I do if someone asks me a grammar question I can’t answer? What happens if I can’t remember their names or they don’t like me? What if I can’t think of anything to do? I’m teaching too many classes…

The list goes on. In my case, many years ago, I got divorced. That led to depression. That’s mental illness. And then, when my youngest daughter went to college, I no longer had to pay child support or alimony and, without realizing it, I went temporarily mad. In a manic state of euphoria I bought boats and bikes and almost bankrupted myself before suddenly coming to the realization that I had to stop.

Over the course of my career and certainly during my teacher training I often allude to the importance of mental health. We owe it to ourselves and our students to be both physically and mentally healthy.

The two points I’d like to make concern professionalism and the need to actively tend to our mental well-being.

During my times of duress, I found that I could, like an actor, hide behind my cheery teaching persona. Teaching, in fact, was a relief. I could escape my crumbling marriage, and temper my unbridled spending. Without teaching I may have come even more adrift than I already was.

On a personal level, being in the classroom, interacting with students, preparing and writing materials, all of these activities prevented my mental health from deteriorating.

My second point relates to how we address mental health. We need to treat it like physical health, i.e. you have to actively do things in order to remain or become mentally healthy. I know what works for me and perhaps some of these activities will work for you. Firstly, I need to get satisfaction from my teaching by teaching all my students and making the classroom experience both positive and worthwhile. Secondly, I need to have at least one writing project going that doesn’t relate to our field. At the same time, I need to have one writing project that does relate to our field, either a blog post, or materials for teaching. I also need to be learning something – currently new songs on the guitar and Spanish through Duolingo. The fanfare at the end of successful completion of a five-minute lesson is highly rewarding, motivating, and addictive. In my case I can only do these things if I do them at the same time of day. Every day. In short, I make them a practice.

Lastly, mental health is not possible without physical health. Rest, exercise, and a healthy diet are all central to this endeavor. The body supports the brain. The brain generates the mind.

There is one coda – honesty. Honesty with one’s self and others. If something is bothering you, admit it to yourself and take action. If someone is bothering you, the same applies, take action.

To ensure success, when you wake up in the morning, say the word “gratitude” and think of three things you’re grateful for. Then think of someone to forgive, even if it is only yourself. Next, remember that family and friends are more important than anything. And breaking bread together brings us closer. I bake brownies once a week. My students now order me to. I give the rest to strangers on campus.

It’s amazing what small acts of random kindness can do.

A Day in the Life of the Director of the University of Maine’s Intensive English Institute

By Chris Mares

When I left Japan, I pledged to myself that I would never commute again. If I walk to work, it takes twenty-five minutes. If I cycle, twelve minutes. And if I drive, one song (currently Wild West End by Dire Straits). Every morning I feel gratitude. No traffic. The river. The same people walking or jogging. Rural New England at its best.

I get up early. Very early. And write. I have different projects. ESL related blog posts, fiction writing, and a story-telling project. I write for about an hour. In the dark. In silence. Slurping my way through a pot of tea.

The early mornings are my time. I hear the first birds. See the sunrise. Feel the day slide into being.

I go to work early and arrive around 7:00 a.m. I can get a lot done before anyone else arrives. Email, lesson prep. Fiddly bureaucratic stuff. Letters of recommendation. Inquiries.

I teach three fifty-minute classes a day. Currently these classes are English through Film, Reading Fiction, and Special Topics. I love to teach. I always have. I care about my students and I give a lot of myself. My students are currently from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Korea, Guatemala, and Brazil. They are wonderful. Bonded through humor and mutual interest. Gentle with each other and interested in me. And I in them. I’m fascinated by where they come from, what they think, how they react to Maine, and what they plan to do with their lives.

I am an American citizen but obviously English. This gives me a certain cachet I don’t deserve but I get it anyway. Plus, I look like Bruce Willis – I tell them that Bruce Willis looks like me.

Last week I began working with a group of Mandela Fellows from twenty five African countries. My sessions are focused on giving TED Talk like presentations. This morning I have a three-hour slot and am looking forward to firing the students up. “Get in circle. I will give you an instruction. You do what I say. OK?” They will look bemused. Feel slightly anxious. And then we begin, “Walk like you are carrying very heavy luggage.” And off they go. Then a story in which the structure of a presentation is revealed. It will be fun. Productive. Rewarding.

Two weeks ago I taught a one-week TESOL Certificate Program. Sixteen delightful students all giving up a week of their lives, taking a gamble that it would be worth their while. It was a blast. For me. For them. For the students they observed and did their practice teaching with.

It’s a great job. A great life. And I always want to go to work.

And so it was a shock to get a call from my union representative a couple of weeks ago. A Thursday morning. Out of the blue. I barely caught his name. But I did catch the phrase, “bad news”.

We are a fee supported unit. The revenue we generate from students pays our salaries and for everything else. For the nineteen years I have been director we have stayed in the black. In fact, our surpluses have been used by the university to fund endeavors such as the Faculty and Undergraduate Research Project.

And then the shift. Our numbers are down. I have had to lay off teachers and now the administration wants to phase me out. Reduce my contract from a twelve-month contract to a nine-month contract.

Suddenly my world has been rocked. We currently have seventeen students. Less for our second summer session. And perhaps even fewer for the fall.

There have been cycles before. Peaks and troughs. But this is different.

And so, at fifty-nine, I find myself pondering the future. However, uncertainty can lead to opportunity. It’s time to rethink how the next few years will go. I had imagined continuing as I am. In Maine.

But now I am reminded that there is a whole world out there. Where I could teach, or train teachers, or consult.

And I will.

The Teacher as Author

By Chris Mares

I would never describe myself as an author, even though I have been one. I would describe myself as a writer. In the same way as I would describe myself as a reader. Writing and reading are two things I ‘do’ on a daily basis. They are an integral part of my life both in the world of teaching and outside it, too.

Reading informs me, inspires me, entertains me, and teaches me. Writing serves me personally and professionally. I write because I am creative, in the way a musician or painter is creative, and I write to hone and refine my thoughts on teaching, travel, and other matters.

To my mind, an author is someone who primarily writes for money. I have done this. It’s hard work. It takes time and sacrifice. But, of course there are rewards, at least there were back in the early nineties when it was possible for ELT authors to make decent royalties from four skills course book series, for example.

My experience as an author was back in the day when publishers were flush with money, they controlled the market and no one realized what changes were going to be wrought. The arrival of the internet, advances in technology, and the era of self-publishing were yet to come. And when they did, everything changed.

Now, getting published in some form or other is easy. Getting promoted and marketed is something else.

When I was a budding author with my pal Steve Gershon, we reviewed the market, reflected on our students needs, noted deficiencies in current materials and submitted proposals for competitive products. A competitive product in those days was the same as everything else, but different. Like most oxymorons.

I never made enough money as an author to survive solely on royalties and, to be frank, I have enjoyed being a writer much more. A writer writes. They don’t have to earn money doing it. They do it because they want to.

I associate my time as an author with writing under the direction of an editor for a specific market. The parameters were clear and the pressure relentless. First there is the writing, then the reader feedback, then the rewriting. This all takes time, during which one develops thick skin and learns to distance oneself from the criticism that inevitably comes. The most productive way to think about this type of authorship is to consider it as team work. The author is simply part of a team attempting to produce the best materials possible for the target market. In an ideal world the team are all on the same page. In practice this may not be the case. Publishers tended to be cautious. They wanted the same but different but couldn’t articulate what exactly that was. On more than one occasion I heard an editor say, “I’ll know when I see it.” The editor is key. They need to be informed, focused, clear, and relentless. Not all editors are. If your goal is to become an author, meaning that you will write a product that will be marketed and sold by a publisher, then find the right publisher and an editor you feel has the qualities I have mentioned, as well as being someone you can believe in and work for.

After the material is promoted and sold, there will be royalty checks. When I got my first royalty check, I actually owed the publisher money against my advance. That was not good for morale but par for the course, apparently.

My experience as an author helped to professionalize me in terms of materials writing, market awareness, current trends, etc. However, it was a demanding and relentless time. A work-life balance was sometimes not possible.

My experience as a writer, producing my own materials for my own use with my own students has been far more satisfying. Writing is my practice, something I do everyday. I have just completed The Richard Project, a collection of about two hundred 800(ish) word vignettes for use in class.

And this is what I write when I blog.

Remember. Whether you are an author or a writer you have to make it a practice. Do it at the same time each day. Preferably in the same place. Do it whether you feel like it or not. Never stare at a blank screen or page. Write. Anything. Eventually what you want to see will come.

On a final note, there is no such thing as writer’s block and no time for procrastination. If you suffer from either of these – author beware.

Making stories your own

By Chris Mares

Many of my students are not regular or passionate readers in their first languages and seldom read for pleasure. By the same token, a lot of my students can “read” in English and yet rarely do so voluntarily, or for pleasure. In most cases, in fact, my students only read in English only when they have to.

This situation is, of course, not uncommon and not a surprise to many of you. The question is, what can we do to engage our students in reading? To this end I would like to report on a pleasing success I have had recently with my students.

I have never met students who do not like a good story that they can relate to. Stories are told in all cultures. They are part of the fabric that binds us together through shared experience and the transmission of values and knowledge.

With the above in mind, I wanted to get my students engaged in listening to stories, then reading them, then ultimately writing their own. And so, the Richard project began, in a class that met four days a week for 50 minutes, entitled “Story Telling.”

As a reader with a life-long interest in writing, I decided I would write my own stories for students – about me, but presented through the eyes of Richard. My thought was to write about things that we can all relate to: the first day at school, making friends, making mistakes, getting to know oneself, having parents and siblings, loss, part-time jobs, etc. I wanted to make them authentic, simple, understandable, and most of all, stories my students could relate to. The stories are around 800 words in length. I use short sentences, direct speech, and try to inject useful language which I then recycle in subsequent stories. I try to craft the stories in the style of “sudden fiction” with a hook, a body, and satisfying ending. I have found that students enjoy the humor and a full range of human emotions, especially those that reveal uncertainty, doubt, love, pleasure, and all the others that make us human.

So far I have used the stories in our regular core program plus two intensive programs, one with Mexican students, the other with Japanese students. I have also had one of my colleagues use the Richard stories with success.

Over time, students began to look forward to the stories and request that they be in them. Consequently, with ongoing groups of students I would write some stories that included them, and incidents we had discussed or that had happened in class. I found that not only were the students eager listeners, they also valued reading aloud, and would voluntarily re-read the stories at home. Another interesting development was that some students in my Personal Writing classes began to write letters to Richard, or write their own Richard-like stories. What I am reporting is anecdotal, but true. Finally, a couple of my students asked me about the University Library as they would like to find books themselves to read, stories, they said, like the Richard stories.

With my Mexican students who were very motivated I developed a worksheet on how to write a Richard story. It worked much better than expected as the students not only wrote wonderful stories but clearly enjoyed reading each other’s. Below is the handout I used in this class.

Writing a Richard story

When I write a Richard story, I first try and think about something that has happened to me in my life that you might find interesting or funny. Usually it’s something that I think you will be able to relate to in some way. For example, your first day at school, making a mistake, falling in love, or making new friends. I find it difficult to write in the first person. For this reason I write in the third person. I like to use direct speech in the stories. I keep the sentences very simple and often quite short.

I chose the name Richard because it seems very English to me and doesn’t have any particular associations. It isn’t the name of any of my friends or relatives, for example.

It normally takes me about 45 minutes to write a Richard story. It might take you a little longer.

The Process

Think of a particular time in your life.
Think of something fun or interesting that happened to you at that time.
Note down the names of the other people who will be in your story.
Choose a name for yourself.
Think of a title.
Get writing.

Giving it a try

Like many things in life, it takes a bit of time and practice. If you find it hard to begin (get going)… Just write. Start with the name of your character. Visualize him or her. Have a picture in your mind. Where is he or she? What is he or she wearing/thinking/doing? etc.

It is possible to get students engaged in stories and interested in reading. The stories need to be accessible linguistically and culturally and have a universal appeal. They also need to be short enough to be read in one class including the time available for schema-raising, which is to say, getting the students hungry for the story.

If you are interested in reading a short selection of Richard stories, please email me at [email protected] and I will send some to you.