Member Event Fund Report: GLS Sprachenzentrum/IH Berlin Teachers’ Day
“We were delighted by the response from our teachers and achieved our goal of creating a motivating forum for the exchange of teachers’ ideas and experience across the languages. It was a successful day and we’d like to say a big thank you to Eaquals for their support.”
Sue Herbert
Over 60 GLS language teachers and trainers from the German and Modern Languages departments took part in our first ever Teachers’ Day for all language teachers at GLS/IH Berlin. Teachers of at least 7 different languages were represented and the workshops were held in a mixture of English and German. In all, there was a choice of 8 different workshops, some running parallel, and the topics selected were relevant to all language teachers. Both Klett and Hueber publishers were represented with workshops and book stands.
The day kicked off with a crowded and fun workshop on “Energizers” with two of our German teacher trainers, Jana Kirchenberger und Markus Ammon. This was a great way for teachers to mingle and wake up as well as get fun activities for their own lessons.
This was followed by the workshops “A picture tells a thousand words” supported by Klett publishers; “Getting the Most out of Peer observations” from the Modern Language Director of Studies, Sue Herbert; and “Adapting course book material to make lessons more communicative” from our Head of Teacher Training, Christina Schmidinger.
After a good, communicative sit-down lunch, we followed up with four more workshops, two of which were concerned with ways of using digital media in language lessons. Stefan Dienzer (Hueber) talked about “The secret weapon in your pocket – using mobile phones in teaching”. He presented a variety of fun, practical ideas to motivate students and teachers. Another workshop took a very non-digital and photocopy-free approach looking at lesson ideas needing “Minimal Resources”. Lastly, the workshop with Jana Kirchenbeger on the topic of “Szenariotechnik” encouraged teachers to use a project and task-based approach and gave teachers lots of good ideas with very up-to-date Berlin material.
We then rounded off the day with a well-deserved drink! Teachers told us how valuable they had found the day and how much they had enjoyed the opportunity to get to know other teachers and learn from each other. Nearly all of our teachers are freelance and, with such a big school, it’s really important to create such opportunities. Thank you, Eaquals, for your support!
