A teacher wrote to me in an email this week:
Q. Ben I am thinking of joining your PLC, but what would you say is the real goal of it so I can make my decision and see if I want to join?
A. What a great question! If we all step back from the canvas far enough, we might end up seeing different things. I can only say for myself that my prime goal in language teaching is to give my students confidence in themselves as language learners and to make doing so easy on me. So my focus here on the PLC is to talk about stuff that helps us build kids up and make them feel above all that my classroom – online or not – is a place where each student has a voice (silent or not – to give them a “place” – some “space”) in the group so that no one feels excluded. Besides that primary goal, another interest in my having this PLC is to help teachers with the mental health piece, which, with each passing day, is becoming worse and worse because of the pandemic. I want to help teachers understand and find teaching ideas and activities that (a) include ALL the students in my classes equally and (b) assure and protect the mental health of the teacher and that of her students. If we can’t at least try to figure out ways to address those two goals, we probably should not be in the field of language teaching in this new century, in my opinion.