Dr. J's Blog of ELT Praxis

Photo taken by Mohammedreza Jalaeian On Friday, February 19th, 2016, I, with the help of many colleagues and partners, successfully ran my first and maybe the first EdCamp for intensive English programs (IEPs).  I was so overjoyed with how smoothly it ran and,even more so, how many of my colleagues considered it an enriching and engaging experience.  I have been a fan and an advocate of EdCamps ever since my first experience at the Chicago EdCamp in October 2013. What's an EdCamp? An EdCamp is a type of "unconference," which is participant-driven and inquiry-driven.  There are no plenary, keynote, or other types of speakers.  Every session is a discussion on a topic decided upon by the attendees, which in this case were IEP faculty and staff.  EdCamps were originally designed for and by K-12 educators in the United States. I have attended three EdCamps, mainly designed for K-12 educators, in Illinois and Iowa.  These EdCamps helped me design an...

Recap about University Jobs I am continuing my series of blog posts covering the English language teaching job market in the United States with this post on community college jobs.  Last week, I discussed the job market for teaching English in American universities and colleges.  Since a month has past, it seems that the downward trend in job announcements is continuing.  This past January had the lowest number of job announcements for university jobs since 2012.  Of the many contributing factors, I believe the strongest one is the strong US dollar, which makes traveling to and living in the United States more expensive for international students. Community College Jobs Generally, community college ELT jobs are not announced as frequently as university ELT jobs.  Since October 2009, there have been 287 job announcements from community colleges compared to 795 from universities.  Just because there are more university ELT job announcements does not mea...