An alternative way of planning your lessons
1. Put a metal plate by the side of your sofa
2. Hold a spoon in your left hand
3. Lie on your sofa with your left hand draped over the plate
4. Read something boring connected to your lessons, e.g. previous lesson plans, syllabus, applied linguistics book
5. You should soon nod off and enter the world of vivid TEFL dreams
6. As the spoon will fall from your hand onto the plate and wake you up before you fall into deep sleep, you should easily be able to remember your sleeping teaching inspirations
As recommended by Salvador Dali, an unusual source of TEFL tips but no more eccentric in ideas and facial hair than Alan Maley, via an article on creativity from Scientific American Mind (everything a TEFL or Linguistic magazine would be in my dreams).
No crazy facial hair as a recommendation (and little hair elsewhere on my head either), but here are my own tips for TEFL creativity anyway:
- Brainstorm everything
- Take a walk, swim or other exercise
- Change of scenery/ prepare outside the school and your house
- Give your subconscious time,( e.g. plan the lesson, don’t look at or consciously think about it for 24 hours, come back and see how bad it now looks and how much better you can make it despite putting in no conscious effort)
- Turn off distractions/ have a do nothing time
- Note it down before you forget,( e.g. send a mobile phone message to yourself with it written in)
-Innovate in increments/ a little variation every time
- Let your students innovate, (e.g. if they misunderstand or change the rules of the game, maybe their version is better)
- Vary trivial things. e.g. position of desk and chairs, lighting, posters, part of lesson you check homework
- Work on several different things at the same time (to help cross fertilization of ideas)
- Read things as unrelated to TEFL as possible (ditto)
Tags: Creativity, Tips