Have you felt constrained by existing teaching methods and materials? Need a little inspiration to get making cool materials? Then let Steven Mayeux be your guide to the cooler side. Steven is an ESL teacher at the UC Davis Intensive English Program and has successfully combined his passion for hip hop music (yes, the kind with Kanye, Jay-Z, and the Wu-Tang Clan) and teaching English. Not only has he created an institutional course (yes, at his university) based around hip hop, but he’s also a launched his own hop hop English teaching website. And guess what, it’s pretty damn good. Here's my interview with Steve (~17 minutes): 

This weekend I had the opportunity to connect with over 300+ ESL teachers at the Northern Regional CATESOL conference. It was a wonderful experience to meet so many many interesting attendees and, with it being a smaller conference, actually make time for deep conversations. Those of you on conference circuits understand when I say it’s a rarity to have an in-depth hallway conversations. Most folks at large conferences are rushing from one talk to another, or succumb to conference-induced sensory and info overload type of ADHD*. Not at CATESOL, thankfully. Here’s what I learned a from our conversations: 

Today we hosted our first online ESL webinar. Thanks for all of you who were able to join - your questions were great and really added to the conversation! I'm glad to see the tool is so useful for many of you in-class and independent ESL teachers!For those of you who were not able to make it, or just want to see we covered, I've actually recorded the webinar (consider it the abridged <20 minute version) as well as the slides. Have your pick!Video (~20 minutes):

ESL week may still be a few months away (it's Oct 20-26th 2013) but it's not too early to start thinking about your submissions to the TESL Ontario ESL Week Contest. Haven't heard of it? Well listen up, it could land you $250 for something you already do and love. Here are the details form TESL Ontario: “The TESL Ontario ESL Week contest is designed to help us celebrate the hard work of all English language learners, instructors and administrators.  The contest includes a diverse set of activities that is designed to allow individuals with various creative strengths to participate.  Activities include a range of writing, photo and video entry options. All individuals involved with learning, teaching and organizing ESL in Ontario are invited to participate in the 2013 ESL week contests.”

One of my favorite expressions is “See One, Do One, Teach One”. Have you heard of it? It comes from the medical profession in which new doctors have to learn quickly - after they see a procedure completed, they then do one themselves under supervision, and then they teach one to a resident or another physician. Why is this relevant to teaching? For two reasons - it’s the way most people learn best, and it can help you with growing your English teaching practice.Here’s what I mean: I’ve given many demos on using WeblishPal for teaching now to a few folks (an I’m running a live webinar next week April 30th that you should sign up for at: eslwebinar.eventbrite.com). What I realized was that I was not completing the “See One-Do One-Teach One” loop. 

This year’s TESOL 2013 conference was a huge success - we met and talked to nearly 300 of you amazing ESL and EFL professionals and publishers from around the world.  From our conversations it was clear to see that you are incredibly dedicated to helping your students learn English. At WeblishPal, we are just as committed to creating great technology to make your jobs easier. From the cloud teaching portfolio that lets you showcase your experience and content, social CRM tools where you can easily reach your students, and the media rich course pages that let you add any file type to enhance your classroom .