Planted

As a response to the overwhelming moaning and whining about the complete lack of 'professional development' within our teaching environment, the management ordered a two-hour period be set aside each week for the very purpose of aforementioned development.

Today saw a training workshop entitled 'How to teach vocabulary' which involved a bit of planning and preparation for the four volunteers (myself included) to deliver some fresh ideas for this rather simple teaching concept. My section dealt with activating students' schemata using PowerPoint as a support for the primarily visual type of learning preferred out here in Oman.

Most of my colleagues are unenthusiastic, unmotivated, poorly trained, lazy teachers who don't so much teach, as give out crap worksheets and let the students 'get on with it' whilst counting down the minutes until they go home. Before the workshop, I heard a couple of teachers say these things:

"Do we have to do these every week?"
"I don't have a class after this. I want to go home."
"Is this compulsory?"

Pitiful.

They could learn so much from workshops like this, and improve their standard of teaching which, to be honest, wouldn't be difficult to do. The response after was generally positive though, which is a good thing.