TweetMy dear friends, I’m delighted to announce that my blog post, ‘The Greatest Creative Writing Activity Ever‘ has been nominated for the British Council’s Teaching English blog post of the month award for January. I’m quite pleased about this, mainly because this is a resource I greatly enjoy and visit on a regular basis.
While I would of course like you to peruse all of the nominations, it would make me happy if you’d take the time to vote (for me or one of the other excellent nominees). Click here to cast your vote.
Simpson in blatant hunt for votes shocker!
I’d also like to take this opportunity to once again praise the hard work of Ann Foreman (@Ann_F on Twitter), who I happily got the opportunity to meet at IATEFL in March last year, for her work on the Teaching English webpage. It has grown exponentially since its launch and has recently smashed through the 130,000 followers mark.
New post: Nominated for the Teaching English post of the month http://t.co/ZoSoafnA
“@yearinthelifeof: Great new comment: Nominated for the Teaching English post of the month http://t.co/zQslAReg” congrats
Why is winning this important enough to you to ask for votes?
I misread. Let me modify the question. Why is this award important enough for you to suggest people vote at all?
Great new comment: Nominated for the Teaching English post of the month http://t.co/ZoSoafnA
Good question(s), Tyson, and I’m happy to answer.
I blog for the pleasure of sharing my thoughts and experiences with the teaching community.
I faff around with awards like this because my place of work has a performance review mechanism in which you need to ‘show’ that you ‘do stuff’ above and beyond merely teaching. I didn’t make the system, I have thoughts about it that I don’t feel would be pertinent to share on a public forum, but I do ‘play the game’. Consequently, whatever enthusiasm I have for such awards is not necessarily derived from intrinsic motivation.
To be honest, the best thing I could do would be to not win, then I could pursue a policy of racking up multiple nominations, which I’d get ‘credit’ for.
Ok, I see. I like the idea of part of the job being expected to do professional development, however one sees fit. Don’t think I’d require logging of it though.
Sometimes people put hoops in front of you and you have to jump through them to be able to do what you love!
The types of teachers I employ and ultimately want to work with are those that are strongly invested in this industry that they would seek out professional growth whether required by the job or not. It becomes evident after a while whether you are this or not.
Tyson, as much as I’d love to continue this line of conversation, I don’t really feel that I can on a public forum like this for fear of upsetting colleagues who could misinterpret something I say, and/or saying something that could be construed as being derogatory about the place I work. I’m sure you understand.
I love my job, my place of work and I have great colleagues. Nevertheless, i also ‘have to’ collect things like this as evidence that I go that extra mile.
Thanks for sharing and good luck.
Pingback: 7+7: A February blog roundup of great ELT posts | Teach them English
RT @yearinthelifeof: Nominated for the Teaching English post of the month http://t.co/Jg4HEN0tFl