Into the Unknown!

Yes, it's me again. The one who speaks in song lyrics. 

The students are still on break (we hear they have been trying to come to campus even though it's been closed for students). Loving the enthusiasm! 

Training Days 

While the students are away the Academic team has been hard at work (and play), training and prepping for the upcoming term. As per our usual way of work, we are constantly reflecting and revising on how to do what we do, better next time around. 

Some snippets from our training days :) 

We've been discussing a lot about the ChatGPT buzz and what it means for education and our students. The best way to help our students was to learn and demystify the concepts for ourselves. We had a sandbox session where we played around with the emerging AI tools to help us in the classroom. It was definitely a learning experience that we enjoyed. 

I shall leave you with a quote that we are using to inspire ourselves this week. 

"Technology is nothing. What’s important is that you have a faith in people, that they’re basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they’ll do wonderful things with them. It’s not the tools that you have faith in — tools are just tools. They work, or they don’t work. It’s people you have faith in or not. "

-STEVE JOBS, 1994, ROLLING STONES

We've made it our mission to educate our students to become people to have faith in among all the amazing tools technology will bring us in years to come. Who could be better suited to help us kickstart this mission than our very own CTO Samisa, who will be delivering a session to our students on making the best of AI tools this week. 

Congratulations to Anju! 

Our very own Anju Moses presented at the Annual IATEFL Conference this week. Here are some snippets from our social media posts followed by a video of her post session interview can be viewed here. 

A few words from our globetrotter...

My topic for the session is "Managing and Motivating Teaching Teams for Excellent Results." It's a subject that is close to my heart, as it's something that I've been mulling over a lot. Over the past few weeks, I've been trialing out a few things with my willing colleagues, and it's given me much food for thought.

The idea for the session was born back in mid-2022, when we were just barely making it out (or what we thought then was out) of the pandemic. It was a time when we were trying to recuperate and consolidate the events, memories, and trauma of the last 2-3 years. In Sri Lanka, along with the April attacks, we had a longer recovery time than most. But it was the learnings of those years that helped me put together this proposal.

The pandemic made us think differently, work differently, and now that we are back in some shape or form, we know we will never be the same again. We have learned to adapt and evolve, and that's what I want to share at IATEFL. Managing and motivating teaching teams is not an easy task as we all know from experience. What matters is not paper, systems or processes. Yes, those are important. But at the heart of it all are people. People who need to be inspired, motivated and most importantly empowered. In my session, I plan to share some of the techniques and strategies that I've used over the years to manage and motivate my own teaching team. Watch out for this in the next few blogs 🙂

For this week I shall leave you with two key principles close to my heart:

Building trust: Trust is the foundation of any successful team. Trust is vital and the only way to build it is through honesty, transparency, and reliability.

Creating a positive work environment: A positive work environment is key for team’s to function at their best. You have seen the memes going around of toxic work places, so we must learn. We need to work towards creating a culture of positivity, respect, and support. Most importantly, be committed to this even when the going gets tough as it is never smooth sailing. We know this in real life. 

To see change, we need to be the change. Each and every one of us!

...and on that inspired note, we get back to prepping for our Term 2 that begins on Monday! 

Cheers! 

Dee