I’ve just watched a recording of Fiona Dunlop‘s webinar for IATEFL, entitled “How to access your CPD“.

This, for me illustrates the availability of CPD today compared to when I started teaching, can you imagine it?- no internet, no blogs, no twitter, no amazon (*gasp*) and I hadn’t even heard of IATEFL.

Thankfully the wilderness years are over.

Fiona mentioned a variety of reasons for attending to your CPD, not that I need persuading, for me it’s definitely a question of the feel-good factor, that buzz you get when something goes *click-fizz* in the grey matter, not to mention that I believe in every aspect of life, if you don’t do your best then why bother doing it?

Fiona suggested some pretty amazing tasks:

Write down 250 of your achievements:

-250??? I can only get that many if I include getting to work on time every day this year! Actually she has a point, by including small achievements such as successfully dealing with a difficult student, detecting dyslexia in a pupil or not losing your temper in a difficult situation, you can build a very detailed profile of yourself as a teacher.

The next task was to choose twenty steps to achieve before the end of the year. This seems a lot with the end-of-year  rush so I chose 10, and tell someone about them (accountability is the key!), don’t worry I won’t bore you with them here.

SMARTER Goals

You know that SMART goals must be:

Specific

Measurable

Achievable

Realistic

Time-bound

SMARTER goals must also be:

Enjoyable – for me this is essential, I can’t believe no-one thought of it before!

Reflected- reflection on learning, and teaching is a very important, and often neglected part of CPD.

Now set yourself two SMARTER goals for the end of 2014.

Some simple CPD solutions:

-attend conferences

-attend local & in-house CPD events

-observation: peer, self, pop-in

-reflective journal

-online support

– write articles

-present at conferences

How to implement them:

-join IATEFL SIG groups

-join your national EFL group

-build it in to your routine

-set a goal and tell people

-watch a webinar

– check out calls for papers for your national EFL organisation and send in an article

– lead by example

– join a local group, and if there isn’t one then set one up

With all that, you should have some workable ideas on how to reboot your CPD, and some resolutions for next year!