What happened at our conference?
Our tenth biennial TEA conference was held this year from 21-23 September just outside of Linz in the small community of Lachstatt. The rural environment meant that while it might have been difficult to reach, once there, all participants could enjoy all the conference’s activities under one roof. Our Vice Chair, Irena Köstenbauer, was primarily responsible for all the arrangements and with the help of Deborah Starkey, Doris Strauß and Petra Schiller, and a number of student helpers, they did a great job.
There were 45 sessions offered over the three-day period. In addition, there was plenty of time for networking at our lunches and dinners, including our gala dinner where the pair “North and South” entertained us with Celtic music while we sat in the two-story western-style saloon. A theatre production of Chekhov’s The Bear performed by The Bear Theatre and a story-telling session by Andrew Wright provided additional evening entertainment.
The conference was opened by dignitaries from the American Embassy, Mr. Robert Hugins and the Upper Austrian School Board, represented by Mr. Mag. Franz Kapellmüller, and this was followed by a glass of sparkling wine at the reception sponsored by the American Embassy. There was also enough time throughout the conference for participants to leisurely view the various books, CDs, pamphlets and brochures kindly brought to the conference by the 26 exhibitors.
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Our 170 participants gave very good evaluations of the program, and we are proud of the variety of topics that we could offer our participants as well as the number of important plenary speakers. These speakers included: Mark Fletcher, Yvonne Pratt-Johnson, Herbert Puchta, Andrew Skinner, Jim Wingate, and Andrew Wright . Each of these plenary speakers is well-known in their own special fields and each gave us excellent information to help in the continuing development of effective teaching methods. Both Mark Fletcher and Herbert Puchta emphasized the current brain research that helps us understand how learners learn, and how to implement those studies in the classroom. Jim Wingate and Andrew Wright emphasized how important putting personal experience into the
classroom is with story-telling methods. Yvonne Pratt-Johnson and Andrew Skinner gave us more insightful information about students and teachers of the twenty-first century.
However, in addition to these writers, we had 45 other speakers who presented topics as diverse as one on podcasting to another which was a voice clinic for teachers. There were sessions of interest to the young learners as well as specialized sessions on teaching
legal English. Each session took place in one of the many well-equipped and bright seminar rooms of the hotel. Teachers were taking notes and drawing, learning to be clowns and what body movements to use in the classroom. |
There were sessions on exams and on the European portfolio. Grenville Yeo, who was sponsored our main prize at the raffle, also held a workshop on “Insights into Everyday British Life that Course Books Tend to Miss.” We had many Austrian teachers presenting, but also our colleagues from the Czech Republic, Hungary and the United Kingdom came to exchange information with us.
Pat Häusler-Greenfield, former Chair of TEA, gave a session on Confidence and Creativity – Making Poems in the Classroom. Then, with Sandra Pelzmann, she introduced a new book in the session: “Be PEPared”. In addition, a number of the board members of TEA offered sessions so that you could get to know them better. The present Chair, Claudia Zekl gave a session on “Get your Students Involved”, Debbie Starkey gave two sessions on: Pearson Longmann Textbooks for the Four Skills Matura, and Cambridge ESOL Young Learners of English Exam. Candy Fresacher also gave two sessions on: Emotional Intelligence and Teaching as well as Body Language and Teaching.
The many exhibitors had the latest in their line of books to be of help to teachers at all levels. They were also more than generous in donating books for our TEA raffle. Our first prize, however, was a 12-day teacher training course in Devon, sponsored by SOL. TEA also gave away a place at our upcoming summer school in 2008 and two free TEA memberships. Valuable newspaper and magazine subscriptions as well as a basket full of goodies from Bobby’s, the English food store in Vienna were also top prizes. For those who did not win anything at the raffle, Spotlight was kind enough to leave a number of issues of their magazines so that everyone came away from our conference not just richer in knowledge, but also with a book or magazine full of additional ideas.
We are already working on the next ConneXion, to be held in 16-18 April, 2010, and we hope you will join us. Many thanks to those who came and made the event such a motivating start to the new teaching year. And to those who were unable to attend, leave space in your calendar in April of 2010 and be sure to join us then.
