Raise Up! B1 Launch Event

On 27th June 2020, we launched our second Raise Up! book for B1 level. We were joined by two of our authors, Heloisa Duarte and Sergio Durand, as well as our co-founders Ilá Coimbra and James M. Taylor, and Bruna Caltabiano from Caltabiano Idiomas, our generous sponsor.

Below you can find the recordings of the presentations, plus the slides and references.

The co-founders of the Raise Up! Project and co-authors of the first book in the series, Ilá and James introduced the new book in the series. They will gave you a guided tour of the lessons, and talked about the creation process behind it. They also discussed some of the developments since they published the first book just over a year ago.

James has taught English to adults and teenagers since 2007. He wrote the soon-to-be published ‘Our Languages’ coursebook series, and produces the ELTON nominated TEFL Commute podcast. Currently he is Second-Vice President of BRAZ-TESOL Brasília and a committee member of IATEFL TDSIG.

Ilá has been an English teacher since 2001 and a teacher trainer since 2011. She is based in Munich, Germany, holds DELTA Modules 1 & 2, CELTA and CPE certificates and is one of the founding members of BRAZ-TESOL Voices SIG.

Bruna Caltabiano

Empathy as a driving force for learning

There are numerous benefits of empathy in education, including building positive classroom culture, strengthening the sense of community and leading students to better outcomes. This mini-plenary aims at identifying the role of empathy in the learning process and showing how it can make students learn more and better. 

Bruna Caltabiano has worked with ELT for over 20 years. She is the co-founder and academic director at Caltabiano Idiomas. She holds a degree in Psychology and the Cambridge CPE, ICELT and DELTA, having done her Module 3 on the ELT Management Specialism. She is also a Cambridge CELTA tutor. She is a board member of the LAMSIG (Special Interest Group on Leadership and Management) at BRAZ-TESOL.

Sergio Durand

Othering in ELT materials: How to deal with it

Current ELT materials have tried to adapt to the new reality of English as a world lingua franca. Unfortunately, they are still produced from a very subjective and privileged perspective. The topics and how they represent (if they do) diversity reflect a polarized world: those who belong to a standard, westernized, heteronormative society and how they see those who don’t. During this talk I will describe and give examples of how vulnerable groups end up being othered by English textbooks and I will present some alternatives to disrupt this normativity.

Sergio Durand is head of the languages department at Escuela Normal Veracruzana in Xalapa, Mexico. He also lectures literature written in English at Universidad Veracruzana. Sergio holds an MA in Humanistic Studies and is currently completing another MA in TEFL. He’s been a materials writer and teacher trainer for more than 10 years. Sergio is particularly keen on materials that reflect learners’ contexts.

References

• Spivak, G. C. (1985) The Rani of Sirmur: An essay in reading the archives, History and Theory 24, no. 3  247-272.
• Latham-Koening, C. & Oxenden, C. (2016) American English File 2. New York. Oxford University Press.
• Jones, V., Kay, S., Daniel, B. (2016) Focus 2. London. Pearson.
• Healan, A. & Gormley, K. (2015) Close-up B1 second edition. New York. Cengage-National Geographic
• Schwalbe M. (2000) Generic processes in the reproduction of inequality: An interactionist analysis. Social Forces 79, no. 2 (2000): 422.
• Clandfield, L. (2012) Global pre-intermediate. London. Macmillan

Heloisa Duarte

We need to talk about granny – older adults in coursebooks

In the last few years, we have witnessed a crescent concern among teachers and material writers regarding the way minorities are represented in ELT coursebooks and in materials in general. However positive these concerns have been, more often than not they tend not to include older adults. In this talk, we will have a look at how older adults are commonly represented in ELT materials, what consequences this kind of representation may have, and ways through which we, as teachers as materials writers, can avoid it.

Heloisa Duarte has been involved in English language teaching for over 26 years as a teacher, teacher educator, materials writer, consultant and manager. She has recently finished her MA in Language Education at NILE, and specialises in the portrayal of older people in ELT materials.

References

• World Health Organization (2018) A global campaign to combat ageism. [Online] Available from: https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/96/4/17-202424/en/ [Accessed 11th December 2019].
• Jönson, H. (2012) We will be different! Ageism and the temporal construction of old age. The Gerontologist, 53, 198–204.
• Couper, D. P. and Pratt, F. (1999) Learning for longer life: a guide to aging education for developers of K-12 curriculum & instructional materials. Denton, National Academy for Teaching and Learning about Aging.