About CLT

About CLT

Welcome to my blog 'Change Lives Together!'.

If you're a Language Teacher or somebody who is interested in alternative education I hope you'll find this site a good resource.

My intention in making this blog was to provide a resource and a reference point for future and current language teachers but there are starting to be a lot of general education articles particularly focused on alternative means of education.

A little about myself, I'm a language teacher (English) and a teacher trainer for both language teachers and for general teaching pedagogy. I have been coming to Indonesia since 2001 and started training teachers here in 2008.

I believe that most of you have probably realised that the way we are educating our young, especially in regards to a second/foreign language is far from perfect. In fact in regards to language our current habit in education is a huge waste of time, resources and  effort. There is a better way to learn a second language, so we will be talking a lot about that here.

Also in regards to general teaching pedagogy, unfortunately the university system has produced too many graduates who are unable to practice the theory they have been taught in University. Often they are given practical placements in the last year before graduating which depending on their luck can be a good or a bad thing. Most of the time once they start working full-time as teachers the professional development support needed to blossom into a master teacher is not given, and the skills needed to do this autonomously were not given to them in university.

The above circumstance is quite common, what is also quite common is the amount of teachers who are hired for their content knowledge (knowledge of their subject) without having any proper teacher training. These three situations is what I hope to cover articles on and promote discussion and growth on in this space:

1. Language instruction/learning
2. Graduates not having the proper chance to learn application
3. Subject teachers without teacher training

I feel it's important that we face these issues with well prepared action, review and adaption because the job of a teacher is essentially to change lives. If we fail in changing the lives of our students then we fail as teachers.

I also hope some of the discussions here will help you change your life, because "A teacher teaches more by who is is that what he says..." and also because all sincere teachers deserve to live a good life.

So here we will talk about better ways to educate, train, assess and develop but also we'll talk about developing whole human beings and also ourselves.

Welcome to what I hope is one more base in your professional development adventure, now let's change some lives together!

-Hugh Elliott



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