Authenticity in our classrooms with Mark Andrews

About course

This 5-day intensive face-to-face course offers participants a unique opportunity to explore what the concept of authenticity in education means as well as explore techniques to help teachers be more themselves in the classroom.  Teacher authenticity affects their relationship with students, deepens their student-centeredness, and influences their choice of learning materials. Higher levels of authenticity will change the way classroom management and decision-making are done, deepen humanistic principles, and bring other goals into the classroom besides language learning and development; a good example is building understanding and respect for other cultures.

Authenticity means bringing the principle of ‘here and now’ into the classroom, or transferring some of the responsibility for the teaching process and classroom management to the students. Authenticity forces (in a good sense) students to go further, encouraging them to talk and express themselves, to think about what and why they are learning, and how they intend to develop.  This leads to more effective learning strategies which are all the more valuable because students get to them by themselves.

On the course we’ll prepare sample assignments, practical ideas, and practice exercises for several areas related to authenticity. This includes demonstrating how to work with authentic texts from media and information sources, how and when to have students engage critical thinking and skepticism, how to help students choose the right information sources, and how to work with images in ways that go beyond simply describing them – a method for learning and developing vocabulary.

Who is the course for

For teachers of pupils aged 11+ who want to motivate and engage their pupils in a more authentic way. They are not afraid of change, are interested in what is happening in the world at the moment, and want to incorporate this 'here and now' into their English lessons appropriately. They are determined to teach their pupils to communicate better with people from other cultures and thus open a real door to the world for them.

What you will get from this course?

• Knowledge of the principles of authentic teaching leadership
• Understanding of the benefits of authentic teacher and student behavior for both the teaching process and personal development
• Skill in how to continuously build a more democratic classroom environment
• Understanding of how to reflect on one’s own teaching, for improvement through pupil perceptions
• A set of practical activities and guidelines for greater and authentic pupil engagement
• The ability to use the ‘here and now’ principle in the regular classroom
• The ability to develop critical thinking in themselves and their students
• Directions for working with authentic information from the media and online environments
• Principles of teaching in a multicultural environment and building respect between cultures
• Discussion and exchange of ideas in a small group of like-minded teachers in the heart of the Old Town